Kings are for Coordination

In which I explain the origin of kinghood

Imagine that you find yourself in the situation of Buridian’s ass: equidistant between two identical piles of hay. Buridian’s ass died of hunger because couldn’t “rationally” decide which pile of hay to go for but you, a much more rational human, decide to just flip a coin. Humans 1 - Asses ZERO.

Later, realising that hay doesn’t even taste that good—and the stink of the dead ass filling the air—you decide to bail and put all of this behind you. You get in your car—since the ass isn’t with us to pull the cart anymore—and turn on the key and—Oh no. Oh now. To drive left, or right? You feel panic crawling up your spine but you breathe deeply and remember: I’m a human. Not a stupid ass. I’ll just flip a coin!

Left. Left it is. You start driving and BAM!, someone immediately crashes into you. Humans 0.

You’re maimed, but no bother. You’ve learned your lesson, you’re a rational human, after all. Right is always right. The way to drive too. You move the car to right, relieved and BAM! Another crash. GOD DAMN IT. Humans -1.

Anyways. What have we learned with this anecdote? We’ve learned that while individual actors choosing randomly between two equivalent options in coordination problems—because you gotta coordinate, get it?—works it only works if they’re doing so alone. If a bunch of individual actors are making random choices they will fail to find an outcome that is satisfactory for everyone.

So… what then?

Well, it’s simple. (In theory). Someone just needs to make a choice for society. It doesn’t even matter who [1] makes a choice so long as a choice gets made. We can even use our favourite mechanism (randomness!!) to decide who gets to choose. They can then choose randomly (zomg!!!) which side to drive on, so long as everyone follows that choice.

So let’s do just that: let’s have a randomly chosen person flip a coin to randomly decide whether we all drive left or right. We’ll call this person the Sovereign or the King—he who decides—and shower him with gifts and adoration as a thank you for solving this deadly car crash problem that was plaguing our kingdom ever since the donkeys died.

Years go by. No car crashes ever since we all shifted to drive right. The King has solved our coordination problem. He was indeed the rightful king, hooray!

Now, his ruling has worked and worked because people adhered to it. As they should, since because they did, although they individually curtailed their freedom, they made everyone (including themselves) better off, overall. [2]

(A small aside: this is all evident now. But no part of this is evident before everyone had already adhered to it. So how to convince them to do so, ex ante? Perhaps it wouldn’t be wrong to… “bring the future into the present” by presenting a small distortion,—nay, a simplification—of the truth. A sort of… lie of a noble kind, a Noble Lie, we could call it, that we should follow King because he is wiser than all of us. And is it really a lie? What is a lie, anyways. Did King’s choice not end our car crash epidemic? Can anyone say that they could’ve done alone what King did for all of us? Must he not be wiser, indeed one could even claim favoured by Heaven, to achieve such an outcome?…)

Anyways. Rhetoric aside, the king’s choice worked. The Sovereign decided and the coordination problem got solved. The fact that things are better is evidence of his good judgment. He has the Mandate of Heaven and everything is good in the Kingdom.

Until. Oh no. Why does this stuff keep happening. We’ve just made contact with ANOTHER polity where EVERYONE drives the OPPOSITE way. How dare they question King’s judgement?? There is only one option. We must murder all of them.

Unless. Unless. Maybe. Perhaps. No. It’s too crazy. So crazy it might work? No. It’s insanity. But maybe. Maybe we just make a new king? Perhaps? It worked in the past, you know? We wouldn’t want to totally slight the previous kings and their rulings have been good and their loyalists love them so maybe we could call this new king something else? I know! Let’s call him a meta-king! Just kidding. That’s horrible. Let’s call him a king of kings. That will slight the previous kings less lmao.

Previous Kings understandably push back against it. No one wants to feel diminished. Ok, fine, fine. Let’s say this “King of Kings” is not even from here. Not human. His polity is not material, not even on Earth it’s, uh, the sky. Yea, his polity is the sky, lol. He’s not even a king, ok? We’ll call him something else. We’ll call him “god”. Some people just…hm… “hear him” but they’re not him, okay?? But they have no power, okay!!?! Totally facultative “““rulings”””. You rule over these people that can “hear” him [3]. C’mon, kings, let’s just try it out?

They do, and of course “““god’s””” totally not random ruling on whether to drive left or right works and, of course, this is just evidence of his existence, power, and wisdom. God is indeed great.

Guess what happens after lol. Our two polities—now unified under god—just met a different empire with a different god. 🤦 Ok. Fine. Whatever. We can agree to disagree aka have freedom of worship. Everyone worships whichever god they want.

This doesn’t work. Freedom of worship with many gods with many contradictory rulings is an unstable equilibrium. Everything under Heaven falls into chaos and will we survive this and and -- SMACK!

— SNAP OUT OF IT MAN. It has worked before and it is gonna work again, god damn it!

— W-What? We make an… King of Kings of Kings?

— Well, yes and now. The religious crazies aren’t gonna take it. We need to give them an even stronger supply of gods. Not a temporal king of kings of kings. A god of gods. We can even call the other gods “fake”. Call this the one true “God”.

I know it sounds funny but this is exactly the move that the monotheistic religions pulled and it totally worked. They crushed, often literally. The same way a King who’s rulings don’t work is fake, illegitimate, and a usurper a god whose rulings don’t work is fake, illegitimate, and a usurper. Whether a god is real can be observed by, for example, whether his believers win battles.

This, very funny, move is pulled in the the Christian Bible [4], the Israelite Bible [5], and the Quran (no footnote for the Satanic Verses where other gods besides Allah get mentioned lest I get stabbed).

This is where the bucket has stopped: the way a god is a “king of kings”, the monotheistic God is the “god of gods”—the king of kings of kings.

In sum, a “King”—someone who gets to decide and everyone else follows and who gets praised if it works and killed it if doesn’t—is what happens when you need to solve collective coordination problem stalemates. That’s why they get rediscovered all over, with different names: they solve a societal problem that keeps reocurring. Then, “gods”, exploit the same idea, applied “one level up”. This is, of course, not all that is going on with Kings and kinghood, or with gods and Godhood, but it is a substantial part of it.

The story is a bit clunky because precisely because this gets independently rediscovered making terminology is not consistent. Temporal kings of kings sometimes get called “Emperors”. But Christ is called King too. At some point temporal kings realise they can reclaim for themselves the power attributed to gods by crowning themselves gods (first the pharaohs in Egypt and, later, Napoleon inspired by them). But these are just complexifications. The core insight is sound: kings are for coordination.

[1] - ofc a lot of blood has been spilled over who gets to make the choice but we’re gonna avoid that complication here. Also if you don’t think randomness plays a (big part) check how to elect the Doge of Venice

[2] - And if hadn’t worked? Well the we get the king as victim: he was a fake, illegitimate, usurper King and we’d just kill him and crown someone new.

[3] - If only lol

[4] - “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.” Deuteronomy 10:17

[5] - “The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place.” Daniel 11:36