Hanzi

In early societies without laws and police, power was not an enjoyment but a heavy burden. Priests became the earliest rulers in history not because they possessed some mysterious magic, but because they took on something that everyone else was avoiding yet had to face: failure.

When looking back at ancient societies, we often tend to overestimate the power of "belief" while overlooking humanity's most primal emotion—fear. In those times, crop failures, rampant plagues, or military defeats could lead to the extinction of an entire tribe. What was more terrifying than the disaster itself was the inability to explain why it occurred. Once a reason could not be found, suspicion and blame would arise within the group, leading to severe internal friction.

In this context, the role of the priest emerged. Their significance lay not only in seeking divine blessings but, more importantly, in providing an "explanation" for unpredictable disasters. Such explanations might not have been scientific, but they allowed an angry populace to find direction and helped stabilize a chaotic order. Explaining disasters was, in essence, about preventing the complete collapse of society.

However, the position of a priest was fraught with risk. In records from ancient Mesopotamia or the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty, we can see that divination was not random nonsense but a process that required repeated verification. If a priest's prediction about war or weather proved wrong, they had to bear the corresponding consequences. At that time, it was a high-tension, high-risk profession that could even cost one's life.

Why did society need such a structure? Because when failure was clearly attributed to a specific person or position, the internal pressure of the group could be released. In ancient Egypt and Mayan civilizations, if the Nile failed to flood or a war was lost, rulers might even need to perform public self-mutilation rituals to take responsibility. Priests were more like society's "insurers," trading their own personal risk for the tranquility of the group.

Over time, because priests were responsible for all failures, they inevitably began to interfere in the decision-making process. To reduce the risk of being punished, they started deciding when to sow seeds, when to migrate, and when to go to war. In this way, responsibility gradually evolved into control. When decision-making power concentrated in their hands, true sovereignty was born.

We can reach a counter-intuitive conclusion: humanity's earliest forms of rule did not originate from a desire to dominate others, but from the fear of failure. The position of a ruler was not initially desirable; it was the product of highly concentrated responsibility. Because in moments when disaster strikes and the group faces disintegration, someone must step forward to catch that fear and shoulder that failure.