A hierarchical society is only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. Nothing is your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. One is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body. Only a disciplined mind can see reality. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.
Power is collective.
The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. It needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. It is impossible to found a civilisation on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.