You have provoked many thoughts in me, with few words. This is a sign of clear thinking, and skillful writing.
I do believe that there are whole companies that are paid to do PR for words, both to promote them, and to saddle them with unsavory connotations. 'The' Company, for one. There has in fact been a long PR campaign to taint the word conspiracy with exactly such a burden, despite that fact that most criminal convictions for non-violent crimes, and many violent crimes, involve conspiracies. Think of insider trading and gang wars.
I long ago realized that we are very much self flattering, and that our very Latin appelation, Homo sapiens, is the rankest flattery. How many of the people you know do you consider deserving of being called wise? I have preferred the name H. domesticus, as I reckon that well describes our present evolutionary and social state, but the cynical rebel in me has settled on H. vulgaris.
While I recognize vulgaris means 'common' in Latin, I like that it means vulgar, which seems to be the trait most common to us.
As to hierarchical society, it is highly intraspecifically competitive (and I believe interspecifically as well, as I suspect it is why H. neanderthalensis remains but snippets of our DNA). In war, a ruling class that can allocate resources to mobs of screaming savages is likely to be better able to prosecute successful attacks than egalitarian barbarians who each gain and apply their own wealth in war. History is replete with examples of this: the Romans and Picts, US Cavalry and Apaches...
However, this is only true for war. In cooperative situations, it is the egalitarians that (IMHO) best attain higher quality of life outcomes.
Note I do not segue off into 'isms' capital or social, as I reckon every society is a blend of both, and they aren't opposites, but complement each other.
So, Master/Slave societies best war, and for we survivors, or at least our genes, that is good. Not so much for my kids, as I hope war might soon be obsolete. Along with war, I shall hope oppression vanishes into history as well.
Thank you, that's my calling. Nice to be noticed.
You are so right @ valued-customer. I can't remember the author or the book he wrote, but he was such a person who worked for the government as a PR wordsmith. He's the guy responsible for morphing "global warming" into "climate change." The reason he gave was that people sitting around in Minnesota when it's 30 below might think that global warming wasn't such a bad idea.
You and I must have the same Muse. In 2007 I wrote a light-hearted book, The Slacker's Guide to the Good Life. After the crash of 2008 I changed the name to The Slacker's Guide to the Great Remission. I refer to Homo Sapiens Sapiens (long name) and say it should be Homo estupidicus estupido. I also talk about Homo domesicus, the city-dweller and his evolution to Slacker: Homo feralis. It's the hundredth monkey thing!
Egalitarians wage guerilla war. They are the hardest of all to defeat. Yes, Indians eventually got smashed, mostly due to inferior technology, but it might have not been so if they hadn't been virtually eradicated by germ warfare beforehand. Afghanis have never been conquered.
As Jay Ward, the producer of the 1960's TV show Fractured Flickers once said, "The only ism for me is plagiarism." ;-) All the others are simply economic models.