Burners (Centre, Template, Shipbuilding), by Stanley Spencer (Date: 1939-1945)
The model
The model I use to explain administered society presupposes that administration was not yet discovered in the preexisting and contemporaneous forms of society. The “we do not permit the existence of leaders” group-over-person societies and the “like it or not we do require smart and strong leadership” person-over-group societies both lacked the modern organisation. Every era has its own modernity, and in the periods before 1000 BC the epitome of modernity was organisation by means of administration.
Agriculture may have pushed society toward administration, but its transformative potential could not have been realised without administration. Thus the pinnacle was administration. The progenitors were Mesopotamian. The organisation phenomenon originated in slow outgrowth from preexisting societal types when, by accumulations of new individual wealth and power made possible by agriculture, some househo…