In an earlier post I suggested that the easiest way to understand the divisiveness and contentiousness that now surrounds us is to use the frame of capitalism vs socialism. I just finished reading a book that takes a similar view but frames it differently: Goliath vs Democracy. The book is Goliath’s Curse—The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp. Kemp is a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. Kemp does a brilliant job tracing out patterns of rise and fall in empires and city states over time starting in the late Paleolithic. Rome is an example we all know. Kemp often brings his observations back to present time. In essence, the MAGA movement is actually Make America Goliath Again. Kemp describes the rise of Goliaths as the buildup phase of an empire or city state whereas so-called democracies are the teardown phase and aftermath. Goliaths are hierarchal in nature typified by elites, rulers, and oligarchs at the top and impoverished commoners below, very much like today. Democracies are ruled by the people with decisions made by the people for the people. Our Constitution starts out We the People for a very clear purpose: No Goliaths.
Kemp describes the hunter gatherers of the Paleolithic as the first egalitarian democracies in large part because they did not engage in cultivating, harvesting, and storing what Kemp calls “lootable resources,” for instance resources (e.g., wheat and corn) that could be easily detected and, most importantly, stolen. Lootable resources along with such things as weapons and geographies that did not allow for people to easily exit, were (are) fuels for Goliaths. Now, Kemp mentions another ingredient that I found fascinating: what psychologists call the dark triad. The dark triad is comprised of people who display a combination of “psychopathy (callousness, and a lack of empathy and remorse), narcissism (an inflated sense of entitlement and self-importance), and Machiavellianism (manipulating others for personal gain),” quoting Kemp. So it’s not enough to have Goliath fuel; you need persons who display dark triad tendencies to capitalize (no pun intended) on these resources. We will come back to the dark triad because I think there is a psychological implication that Kemp overlooks.
Putting my archealogical ignorance on display, Kemp talks about how there were earthen mounds or pyramids dotting the landscape of North America in the 11th century. I had no idea. One of these mound or pyramid cities was known as Cahokia. Cahokia was a Goliath, and like many Goliaths it fell. As Kemp talks about, Goliaths fall for various reasons whether climate change, volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, disease, drought, etc. Cahokia fell. As Kemp reveals, “Native Americans in the aftermath of Cahokia stopped building pyramids throughout much of the Mississippi basin.” Why? Simply, they did not wish to be dominated and forced to live in sedintary settlements (a fate that ultimately befell them as European colonizers moved in). What I find fascinating is many (but not all) Native American groups made it a central part of their culture to not allow Goliaths to develop and grow ever again. Now, this caught my attention. Why? Well, I wrote a post that pulled from Thom Hartmann’s book The Hidden History of American Democracy. In his book Hartmann points out that the founding fathers pulled heavily from Native American culture as they wrote our Constitution. Specifically they pulled those elements of Native American culture that stood in defiance of Goliaths and Goliath building, and put them into the Constitution. Again, We the People shouts out the message “No Goliaths.” The recent No Kings protests shout out the same message. In fact, there have been No Kings or No Goliaths protests since the appearance of the very first empires toward the end of the Paleolithic according to Kemp.
Now, Kemp’s treatment of administrations, administrators, and other bureaucratic processes also caught my attention. He points out that as Goliaths get big (think of Rome), they depend more and more on administrators to keep people in line. However, administrators then use the opportunity to undermine Goliath structures for their own purposes. As a Goliath falls, both Goliath elites and democracy administrators ramp up extraction processes, that is to say, getting as much out of the Goliath as they can. This reminded me of the article by Ken Corvo entitled Prometheus on the Quad wherein Corvo talks about the rise of administrators on college and university campuses. As Corvo points out, on many campuses today there are more administrators than tenured professors. Many of these administrators our housed in DEI offices. As Kemp points out, anti-Goliath movements across time have been about getting back to egalitarian democracies that display diversity, equity, and inclusion, and move away from a focus on extraction, typically natural resources and now digital resources like information. Unfortunately both sides of the political isle have focused their “extractor tractor beams” on colleges and universities. And maybe both sides see science (primarily) as a Goliath that needs to come down.
In his podcast interview with Dr. Corvo (see my last post), Walter Olson suggests that attacks on science started back in the 1960s and 70s with the rise of postmodern thought and its focus on deconstruction (i.e., tearing down Goliaths). Postmodernism along with its “destruction” and “extraction” tendencies remained mainly within left-leaning academic settings according to Olson. Recently, however, right-leaning groups glaumed on to its “destructive, extractive nature” and are using it to likewise attack science. I would suggest this is part explains why so many on the right distrust science. The rise of anti-vaccine and anti-climate change groups would be examples here.
Just a quick note here that Kemp’s book ends by focusing on what is known as Earth Systems Science. Essentially Kemp talks about how we humans living in the Anthropocene are killing the planet whether by extracting fossil fuels or developing AI systems or developing new generations of nuclear devices. Kemp suggests that the world is so interconnected at this point that it has become a global Goliath. So, yes, tearing down the global Goliath is tearing down the world. Any thought of a global democracy is moving further and further away.
Now, back to the dark triad. Goliaths are characterized by dark triad tendencies such as lack of empathy and remorse, narcissism, and self-importance. In my mind, Kemp (and psychologists in general) are describing people who live out of the their middle brain. In contrast, democracies are described using terms such as reflective, thoughtful, inclusive, perspective-taking, etc. As Kemp writes, “It is easy to imagine that we outlasted the Neanderthals and came to dominate the world owing to our intellectual superiority.” A bit further along we hear Kemp suggest that “more important than our individual intelligence is our ability to cooperate with one another.” Here’s his bottom line: “We can cooperate flexibly and in large numbers partly because we can share ideas to create imagined communities.”
Well, imagining the future is a central Executive Function skill. And the EF skills are housed in the upper brain. As Russell Barkley points out in his book Executive Functions: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Evolved, EF skills are required to build such things as systems of justice and high culture. I guess you could frame Goliath vs Democracy as middle brain vs upper brain. The question then becomes How do you cultivate EF skills and thinking? How do we once again win the battle against Neanderthals (sorry Neanderthals)? Ahhhhh! That’s the question I have been trying to answer ever since I started writing this blog back in 2010. My answer is simple: safe and secure early attachment relationships with stable, reliable and dependable attachment figures.[1] Not to be glib but the answer is Bowlbian attachment theory. As I have suggested, early safe and secure attachment relationships between infants/children and their attachment figures (typically mother and father) pours the foundation upon which rests robust Executive Function skills. More than anything, the Internet and now AI are sucking or extracting EF out of our citizenry. And, yes, both sides of the political spectrum are letting it happen. Both sides are building up or tearing down Goliath, hard to say which. There is very little emphasis being placed on building up the cornerstone of democracy: robust Executive Function skills, which are, for review, empathy, perspective-taking, mental modeling, time travel like imagining the future, appropriately focusing and shifting attention, among others. Sadly, as attachment researchers have discovered, secure attachment worldwide is on the decline. If we are not able to reverse this trend then I think our fate has been sealed.
Notes:
[1] – I just started reading attachment researcher Allan Schore’s recently (October 2025) released book entitled The Right Brain and the Origin of Human Nature. Schore suggests that the early secure mother-child attachment relationship leads to development of what he calls “hot” EF skills. Additionally, the secure father-child attachment relationship, which starts at around age two, leads to the development of “cold” EF skills. I have to admit that I have not heard of “hot and cold” EF skills. A Google search provided these AI-generated examples of each: hot examples would be “showing empathy and managing interpersonal conflicts” and “emotion regulation” whereas cold examples would be “planning and organizing” and “running ‘as if’ scenarios.” Generally hot examples involve processing emotionally-charged information whereas cold examples involve processing logically-charged information. And, yes, each type of EF skill is processed in different parts of the brain. Consulting my AI-generated summary, cold EF skills are held primarily in the “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.” Hot EF skills are held in the “medial prefrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and limbic system.” It would appear that cold EF skills are held primarily in the upper left brain whereas hot EF skills occupy right brain areas that bridge between upper and middle brain. Fascinating! I’m certain that I’ll have more to say about Schore’s book once I finish my read.
