They do have some structure – their chief or elder gets the best bit of the baboon – and their pacifism may be as much due to the way they are vastly outnumbered by the people now moving into their territory. They eat reasonably well, but are starved for protein. They have gender-specific tasks – but their lives in general allow for very little in the way of individual interests or jobs. There’s little entertainment, no mention of healers or midwives, no religious or spiritual life, no care of or interest in animals or plants other than the immediately practical…and there’s really no place for the sickly or elderly (unless they’re healthy and strong). I’d have no place in a narrow society (or extended family) like that; I’d find it incredibly narrow and limiting. Hurray for agriculture, say I!

Do the French intellectuals want to be dominated themselves, or do they just want some right-thinking person to dominate everybody else?

As for submitting to a tyrant, I’m not so sure. Just read a National Geographic article about a tribe of hunter-gatherers who live as humans did for hundreds of thousdands of years. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text
Great article. No leaders. No set groups in which to live, people move freely from group to group, and spouse to spouse. Women are free and equal, though there are gender-specific tasks. Their environment provides enough food that subsistence takes fewer of their hours than working does of ours.

So apparently there isn’t really an inborn human need for power, or the exercise or submission to same. It’s interesting to observe an entire human society where having enough and no more, and desiring no more is actually valued. Probably comes from having to move constantly. More possessions mean less mobility, and mobility is survival to them.

London was a powerful city. Still is, I guess. But I think that in the Middle Ages the kings didn’t assume they controlled London until they were actually installed there, without the citizenry rioting in the streets and with the civic authorities showing up to lend their support.

I think it’s a bit misleading to talk of people wanting to submit to a tyrant, particularly in sexual terms. As Robert said, just about anyone will trade some degree of freedom for some degree of power or riches or authority. I think our need to belong is important, too. We all have it and satisfy it in various ways, with our families and our professions and our friends and our nations or regions and so on and so forth. Mostly this is probably beneficial – we feel comfortable in a bone-deep way that probably is generated by our genes. We give up some of our autonomy, sacrificing time and energy to the benefit of the group, and besides comfort, we get to be part of something bigger than ourselves; something that can produce things that we cannot on our own.

Of course, like all human endeavours, this can go wrong. We can end up destroying our family in an attempt to protect it or destroying others in order to protect our family or our society. But it’s not a case of wanting to be dominated; wanting to be a slave. It’s a case of wanting connection with others or to be part of something big and permanent and important – and giving in order to get this. Giving time and money and energy. Giving all those at the request of someone who promised what we want…it’s just a normal human process of creating a society, gone wrong.

As far as the Middle Class in the Middle Ages goes – am I correct in remembering that the King of England had to appeal to the Londoners for permission to rule? Or did Shakespeare mislead me on that? After the plague, skilled workers were in high demand throughout Europe – hence a strong middle class.

You can make a better case that an intellectual hopes for influence over a totalitarian state he will never have in a free one. No Obama “Science Czar” will ever have the power of a Lysenko.

But try this one: for many people–intellectuals at least as much as anyone else–being important is a high priority, and importance is very much a zero-sum game. In the United States, a political theorist probably teaches political science somewhere, and if he’s diligent and reasonably competent he’ll have tenure, and be able to afford a house in the suburbs and a respectable car. He will publish in a university press–hundreds of copies of each volume. And no one will know his name except for a few freshmen who will have forgotten it by their junior year. In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or China perhaps even today, the same theorist will publish by samizdat, be locked up in lunatic asylums or sent off to destructive labor camps. In which society is he taken seriously? In which is he important? It’s worth repeating that the defection of the intellectuals begins about when they could see what status they would have in a free prosperous society.

I think the number of people who simply don’t want to be free–who would prefer a life of slavery–is right up there with the number of people who want to have sex with chickens. The number who would trade some freedom for something else–power, riches, security–is pretty much everyone: it’s a matter of finding the balance. But the number who would give up their freedom–or at least the freedom of others–in order to be important could be a large and troubling element.

What I find interesting is that we (or I at least) tend to think of the Middle Ages as having occurred pretty much exclusively in England. Italian MA? Turkish MA? Not so much.