Survival under mythic divinities requires total submission to power

Evidence

You know that in the classical theory of sovereignty, the right of life and death was one of sovereignty’s basic attributes. Now the right of life and death is a strange right. Even at the theoretical level, it is a strange right. What does having the right of life and death actually mean? In one sense, to say that the sovereign has a right of life and death means that he can, basically, either have people put to death or let them live, or in any case that life and death are not natural or immediate stant phenomena which are primal or radical, and which fall outside the field of power. If we take the argument a little further, or to the point are - ly where it becomes paradoxical, it means that in terms of his relationship with the sovereign, the subject is, by rights, neither dead nor alive. From the point of view of life and death, the subject is neutral, a and it is thanks to the sovereign that the subject has the right to be alive or, possibly, the right to be dead. In any case, the lives and deaths of subjects become rights only as a result of the will of the sovereign. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 255 (#expands, via linked claim)

Power-holders are to use their power for the good, to uphold the law, to protect the poor. The other side of this coin is that opportunism and adapting oneself to the situation must then be sacrificed. Consistency constraints are built into the chain of the power-holder’s own conduct (see point 4 in the previous chapter). The myth of legitimation increases the consequences of the exercise of power. If one has started a project, it is very hard, from a normative viewpoint, to abandon it. Each engagement reduces the freedom of the power-holder, who is caught up in consequential obligations. If pronouncing on any appeal made to him has the force of law, he must be careful about showing favour. In spite of all precautions and tactical readiness for inconsistency, it is, in such initial structural conditions, probable that the normative, moralistic dimensions of power, and the frequency of its actual exercise, will increase reciprocally. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 671 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Submission to mythic command simultaneously liberates the repressed nature within; Legitimating myths trap power-holders in chains of forced consistency — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 671; Power-holders must restrain themselves or power’s potential is squandered — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 625 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Sovereign power makes the subject’s very life and death depend on its will #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 255
• Submission to mythic command simultaneously liberates the repressed nature within #complicates (0.80)
• Legitimating myths trap power-holders in chains of forced consistency #qualifies (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 671
• Power-holders must restrain themselves or power’s potential is squandered #complicates (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 625