Part of the Casswiki article series Cassiopaean Experiment
For a system where all participants seek to maximize their own power and position, a pyramidal hierarchy is the natural resulting configuration.
Self-serving beings, such as humans, realize that in order to more effectively serve themselves, they must cooperate with other similar beings. This cooperation is based on an idea of opportunistic alliance if direct domination is not possible.
Also, the necessity of hierarchy is in such a system explained as the only alternative to a state of anarchy where each exclusively serves their own short term advantage. In such systems the most ruthless and opportunistic elements rise to the top. Cultivating a code of clan allegiance with progressive gradation of social position is a typical stabilizing mechanism in such a system. This may be coupled with a personality cult.
Having fought out an internal pecking order, the service to self hierarchy turns to the outside for sustenance and plunder. It must feed itself by absorbing more ‘food,’ which may be, depending on the case, temporal or spiritual power, wealth, new members, etc.
Examples of such organization are found everywhere, from organized crime to military, government, secret societies, street gangs and so forth.
These organizations always suffer from a degree of internal entropy and the participants only seldom work seamlessly together, since they at least in principle stay on the lookout for a possibility of double crossing another or being double crossed themselves.
At the human level
The science of ponerology studies the dynamics of such groups (called ponerogenic associations), how they give rise to inhumanity and suffering, and the nature of their participants.
While selfishness is a normal part of human nature, normality does not extend to the degree of it which inspires repressive regimes, the rapacious exploitation of masses of people, and the committing of atrocities. Such macrosocial evil requires the influence of pathological people. In particular, psychopaths play a main role in the co-opting (or ponerization) of groups, and the transformation of a society into a pathocracy – i.e. into being ruled by a pathological elite.
For millenia, human history has been defined by the rise and fall of empires – of civilizations that grew, were infected by pathology, and fell apart as a result of the entropic nature they took on. In the fall of such civilizations, the connection between Earth changes and mass consciousness plays a very important part. A population believing and living in accordance with lies, and condoning and engaging in entropic activities as a result, attracts disaster.
It is a lesson of humanity to learn to not believe the pathological individuals who want power for their own ends at the cost of others. Currently, this lesson has not been learned: [we live in a global pathocracy](Politics and pathocracy). Much of the selfishness and subjectivity (an attribute of service to self) of humanity at present is, one the one hand, a cause of repeating this mistake, and on the other hand, reinforced by the outcome: a society and culture of lies and deception, shaped by the pathological so as to gain and hold power over others.
At fourth density
Main article: Fourth density service to self being
According to Ra and the Cassiopaeans, the fourth density [service to self overlords](Fourth density service to self being) of Earth exist as so-called STS social memory complexes, which are hierarchies where the members share a certain common pool of knowledge and otherwise have individuality. These organizations suffer from the normal dissent and conflicting purposes among members typical to STS, but may be aided in holding together thanks to the telepathic transparency typical of fourth density. Thus they may see more point in absorbing energy from the outside than in fighting among themselves, specially since any change in relative position may only come from energy acquired through new conquests.