Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“The Big Man’s usurpation of the sacred center, in Gans’s historical account perhaps the most revolutionary act in human history, can be understood as evincing just such a resentment of the center. The sacred center within the egalitarian community could not provide due recognition of the Big Man’s actual status. At the same time, the Big Man’s usurpation resolves some crisis within the community—if the Big Man were just acting on his own desire for centrality, he would have no idea what to do once he acquired it. It was either him or another contender, or an increasingly destructive struggle amongst various contenders. The Big Man knows, more or less consciously, that he must manage the very resentment that enabled his own elevation, resentment that will now be directed towards him. Resentment within the community is now modeled on this new mode of centrality—it is no longer directed towards the absent center for not presenting itself, but towards the occupant of the center precisely for occupying it and thereby denying my own centrality (which I model on his). We should note the paradoxical nature of this resentment, which depends upon its object for self-definition: the more the Big Man preserves his own centrality, the more I am being denied my own.”

— Adam Katz, Power and Paradox (Adam Katz) · Essays & Articles