Social control begins in terms of force and authoritarianism. All social systems function to maintain control ultimately by force, although the emerging intelligent life form quickly learns that behavior will follow belief. Belief becomes the main means of controlling behavior consistent with the agendas of human institutions, force being brought to bear when indoctrination, dogma and coercion fails. This form of control is authoritarianism. It is arbitrary, determinations being by made by the authority, to any extent possible or desired.
Human history is largely a repeating story of a struggle for power by competing authorities.
In such systems, rationality and solutions to problems remain relatively incidental to social control processes. All social control institutions, predominately religion and government, are fundamentally authoritarian, focused primarily on maintaining and increasing control over populations. Such control, being arbitrary, is eventually destructive to a population and the species, resulting in divergent beliefs, conflict and parasitical behavior destructive of the host environment. At the present stage of human development, populations continue to be controlled largely by belief and institutional propaganda. The institutions maintain the cultural delusions, generation after generation.