Paper 70 Overview: The Evolution of Human Government

This paper explains how human government began and developed throughout history. People created government to help solve problems between different groups and individuals. Government evolved through many stages, from simple family and tribal organizations to more complex state systems with laws and courts.

As civilization advanced, governments changed from using mostly force to developing fair laws and representative systems. Even though war has caused much suffering, it also helped push societies to become more organized and efficient. The creation of rules and laws helped groups of people live more peacefully together.

People developed government to help manage problems between human groups. When humans developed industries and private property, they needed rules and order to work together. Government forces people to coordinate even when they naturally have conflicts with each other.

Government was not planned but developed through trial and error as people found what worked. It continued because it helped groups survive and thrive. The struggle to survive forced humans to create better systems of working together, which led to civilization and government.

War is a natural condition for early humans, while peace is a sign of civilization's progress. Humans started as very individualistic and suspicious beings who fought often. Violence is natural behavior, and war is just violence done by groups instead of individuals.

The earliest humans did not have organized war because war requires some social development first. As groups formed, people got along better within their own group but were hostile to outsiders. Early chiefs would sometimes allow tribal fights just for fun. The main causes of war included hunger, need for women, vanity, slaves, revenge, recreation, and religion.

War sometimes created rapid social changes and helped new ideas spread faster than might have occurred naturally. While war has been costly and dangerous, it sometimes fixed social problems but also sometimes destroyed societies completely.

War has helped society by enforcing cooperation, rewarding courage, promoting nationalism, removing weaker groups, and creating social classes. As civilization advances, modern societies must find better substitutes for war's functions because modern warfare destroys the best people rather than the weakest. Just as doctors once used bloodletting but found better treatments, society must find better ways to solve problems than war.

In primitive society, the group was more important than individuals, even children. Real government began when groups larger than families formed. Sex attraction and mother love created families, but government came from larger groups.

Before families, informal leadership existed in groups. Later, blood relatives united into clans, which evolved into tribes with some internal peace. The first peace groups were families, then clans, tribes, and finally nations. The development of language, better communication, and trade helped create more peaceful relationships between groups.

The first peace group was the family, followed by the clan, tribe, and later the nation. Today's peace groups extend beyond family ties to include nations, which is progress even though countries still spend much money preparing for war.

Clans were groups within tribes based on common ancestry, religion, language, dwelling place, shared enemies, or military experience. Clan leaders were under the authority of tribal chiefs. The peace chiefs usually ruled through the mother's family line, while war chiefs established the father's line of authority.

Every human institution had a beginning, and government developed through evolution just like marriage, industry, and religion. From early clans and tribes, different forms of human government grew and changed throughout history.

The first real government was the council of elders, made up of men who had shown themselves to be wise and effective. This group handled all government functions: making decisions (executive), creating new rules (legislative), and settling disputes (judicial). The leader of this council was an early version of the tribal chief.

Effective state rule came when a single leader was given full authority. Rulership began from family authority or wealth. Later, kings were thought to come from heroes or to have divine origins.

Making kingship hereditary helped avoid the chaos that happened between a king's death and the election of a successor. Kings were eventually considered sacred and were greatly feared. As government developed, kings appointed assistants who became the nobility, and the king's wife eventually became the queen as women gained more respect.

Blood relationships determined the first social groups, and marriage helped enlarge these groups. The next social development was religious cults and political clubs, which started as secret societies that were originally religious but later became regulatory organizations.

These societies kept their activities secret for several reasons: fear of rulers, practicing minority religions, protecting trade secrets, or enjoying special powers. Secret societies helped control young men, especially adolescents, teaching them self-control. These groups evolved into charitable organizations and later into religious societies, the forerunners of churches.

The mental and physical differences between people ensure that social classes will appear. Only the most primitive and most advanced worlds don't have social divisions, which are normal in all stages of evolution between these extremes.

As society developed beyond savagery, people grouped into classes for many reasons: natural connections like family ties, personal abilities and skills, chance separations caused by war, economic differences between rich and poor, geographic differences between city and country, social worth determined by the community, vocational specialization, religious groups, racial differences, and age groups. Social classes help society function but can limit individual growth if they become too rigid.

Nature gives humans no rights, only life and a world to live in. Even the right to live is not given by nature, as shown by what might happen if a person met a hungry tiger in the forest. Society's greatest gift to humans is security.

Over time, society established many rights, including food supply, military defense, peace preservation, marriage and family control, property ownership, competition, education, trade and commerce, improved working conditions, and religious freedom. Human rights are not natural but are created by society and change over time as society changes.

Natural justice does not exist in reality; it is a human theory. In nature, the only justice is that causes lead to results. The concept of justice means getting one's rights and has developed slowly over time.

Early humans blamed deaths on people, not causes. Primitive justice punished based on the harm done, not the criminal's intentions. In early societies, people watched their neighbors' behavior because the group was responsible for each person's conduct. Later, people believed ghosts administered justice through medicine men and priests, the first crime detectors and law officers.

It is hard to tell exactly when unwritten customs become formal laws. Customs are laws in the making, and when customs are established for a long time, they tend to become precise laws and clear social rules.

Law started as negative rules telling people what not to do. As societies advanced, laws became more positive and directive. Early society operated by giving individuals the right to live and ordering everyone not to kill. Every freedom given to individuals limits the freedoms of others, which is controlled by taboos, or primitive laws.

The great struggle in government evolution has been about how power is concentrated. Universe administrators have learned that evolutionary worlds work best with representative government that balances executive, legislative, and judicial powers properly.

Early authority was based on physical strength, but the ideal government is a representative system with leadership based on ability. In the long struggle between divided and unified power, the dictator usually won. The powers of early elder councils gradually concentrated in absolute monarchs. After real kings appeared, the groups of elders continued as advisory bodies, which later became legislatures and supreme courts separate from the legislatures.