As part of being social animals, we humans develop folkviews that "explain" the regular rules of behavior for specific social contexts that collectively make up the institution governing that context.

But institutions are past bound, and history always moves through the present toward the future. New questions arise that must be resolved, and different parties benefit depending upon which institution the question is determined to lie within, and according to how the regular behavior of that institution is applied to that novel context.

Part of this process creates appeals to sovereign authority.

Many actors in our societies have become quite skilled in taking the folkviews that are found resources in our societies and manipulating them as part of their appeal to sovereign authority to attempt to ensure that strategic conflicts are resolved in their favor.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.