In the earliest societies, power belonged to the wisest.
A Sicilian proverb recalls it well: “Cu’ havi cchiù sali conza la minestra.”
He who has more salt — that is, more judgement — seasons the soup, and thus leads and governs others.
And yet, unlike in the animal world, where no herd ever follows the most foolish, the most cruel or the most inept, among humans this paradox occurs — and frequently so. Why?
Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian zoologist and ethologist, Nobel Prize laureate and founder of modern scientific ethology (which he himself defined as “comparative research on behaviour”), observed that once humanity had eliminated its great natural enemies — from pachyderms to big cats to large herds — through weapons and organisation, it was left with only one adversary: another human being.
From that moment on, selection was no longer external but internal. It was no longer a matter of surviving cold or predators, but of prevailing over neighbours, rivals, colleagues.
In this new scenario, it was not cooperation, creativity or the ability to build that were rewarded, but rather the capacity to eliminate, manipulate and dominate.
Over time, aggressiveness, cynicism and ruthlessness became shortcuts to social success.
And so, almost as a mathematical consequence, the highest positions — political, military, even corporate — have too often been occupied not by the wisest or the most empathetic, but by those most adept at eliminating their competitors.
The danger for every modern human organisation is the same: when opportunism, internal rivalry and cold calculation alone are rewarded, predatory leaders are selected.
Thus the worst rise to power not because they are better, but because the system itself defines as winning precisely those anti-human, predatory traits.
Healthy leadership must overturn this logic: it must create contexts in which collaboration, collective intelligence and the ability to bring out the best in others truly count.
Only in this way can the cycle that elevates the “anti-humans” be broken, and the ascent encouraged of those who know how to build rather than destroy.