#18 Spiral Dynamics Stage Blue CHAPTER 4.3, When Egos Become Holy

How do you convince thousands—or millions—of strangers to obey the same ruler, follow the same laws, and believe in the same social order?

History shows us that the brash confidence of a large ego can get you surprisingly far. But even the strongest of egos will eventually fail to keep large societies stable.

In this episode of Deep Play, we explore one of civilization’s most consequential transitions: the movement from personal power to institutionalized order intertwined with a claim of sacred authority.

As agricultural societies grew into cities, kingdoms, and empires, rulers increasingly grounded authority in something bigger than themselves—gods, divine mandates, sacred laws, priesthoods, and eventually written systems that could survive the ruler who created them.

Along the way, we play with something I call the “divinity feedback loop”: What happens when a charismatic leader attracts followers, those followers reinforce the leader’s sense of extraordinary purpose, and growing influence begins to feel like evidence of divine favor? Do leaders simply invent claims of sacred authority to manipulate others? Or, do they eventually come to believe their own audacious claims?

The divinity feedback loop helps us understand how men from Pharaohs, Emperors, warrior kings, cult leaders and even our current president have come to believe in their own divinity.

We follow that transformation from ancient kings and pharaohs through Hammurabi, Mosaic law, Rome’s Twelve Tables, religious authorities, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young—and into the modern world.

Following the 2024 assassination attempt Donald Trump claimed that god had saved him to "save the country." His later sharing of himself as Jesus Christ in his AI-generated religious imagery shows what Donald Trump really believes about himself. And let's not forget that he called the Pope a "loser."

The spin on all this has been incredible. People who want to turn a blind eye will. But what was Donald Trump really showing us is that he is just one more man in a long list throughout history who have legitimately come to believe in the divinity of his own ego.