Strongman Leader
Why is politics the world over dominated by strongmen who project themselves as a panacea to all problems?
Animals depend heavily on non-verbal communication. They signal their feelings and convey their approval or disapproval quite clearly. They will not care how another of their species is going to feel about that.
Cats will rub up against you and purr when they are happy around you. There is no complex interpretation required. Cats won’t purr for cheap thrills, nor will they purr just to make you feel good.
Hence, you will not find a Lion sitting and wondering, “Does she really like me?”
By contrast, humans depend heavily on verbal communications. Further, that communication can often be unclear and uncertain. The fact that the French expression “Double Entendre” exists as proof that what is said and what is meant, is often different. This makes it rather difficult to know what a human is really thinking or feeling about a situation. Do they really mean what they are saying, or are they saying it to just make someone happy or not to hurt them?
That, in turn, contributes to the thinking and overthinking about the motivations and the feelings of others. On the one hand, this is highly unproductive, but on the other hand, it also gives rise to a lot of insecurity.
In our pursuit of verbal communication, we have completely lost any form of non-verbal communication we may have, except for rolling our eyes. Society and “civil” existence have ensured that we do not say what we mean, which further exacerbates the scenario.
The modern ‘civil’ society is also the most insecure. Some people overcome that insecurity by marrying money, some by marrying violence, but most people just want to overcome their insecurity by abdicating all agency to someone who can tell them what to do.
Hence, the rise of strongman leaders.