We are all only truly happy when we can elevate ourselves over others.
In the secular world this usually comes down to financial status, job, position at work and postcode.
Why do people always ask you 'so what do you do for a living?' as soon as they feel they are able to.
The answer is to see whether you are above them or below them and then how to act accordingly.
Why do people ask you what your religion or denomination is?
again, this is to see if they are above or below you in their sense of the hierarchy of man.
Why do people oppose certain forms of poor relief yet happily donate to 3rd World nations - again this is to make them feel good about themselves whilst keeping the nearby poor in their own countries at a significant disadvantage to themselves and thus maintain their own Lordship status.
We all think we are God and conflicts always arise when our Godhood status is threatened or there is a misunderstanding about who is above who in the order of status.
Thus all mainstream religions are doomed - as we can never let go of our supposed positions - this even happens within families.
Children are always supposed to be respectful of their parents regardless, this is even one of the biblical Commandments.
So is there a way to transcend this human failing?
There is one flaw in assuming that hierarchy is an innately human attribute, and it can often be found in the works of anthropologists who specialize in studying pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer (if there are any left) peoples who made up most of the evolutionary history of what is that has made us human.
Hunter/gatherers had to emphasize cooperation/ not competition of today's increasingly aggressive capitalist societies. Even among the men of a tribe, there was little to signify status or some sort of hierarchy when everything has to be picked up and moved to a new location in search of food. So, there was little incentive to acquire possessions and no incentive to try to claim land. Hierarchies among the women of the tribe were primarily based on age and acquired knowledge...pretty much the same for a hierarchy of the males, except that hunting skill would be a big factor if hunting large game was a major part of their lives.
To sum it up, those early hunter/gatherer societies from which we've taken our genetic heritage were socialistic, egalitarian societies. They had no need to be concerned about "incentives" or concern for anyone not working, since the community was small enough to eliminate any "free rider" problems that game theorists often tell us are essential for creating rewards and punishments.
The pecking order is certainly a foundation of the modern world, and it is a source of aberration, not something that should be encouraged. In highly income stratified societies (the way most of the world is going these days) hierarchies become more and more important. And social cohesion declines as greater divisions decrease the numbers of people we could regard as peers. Instead we are on a ladder, and would like to move up higher, but a lot of our natural human tendency is to attack and try to kick off those we see as beneath us in the pecking order. For more on an exhaustive worldwide list of collated studies of the effects of income stratification on a whole variety of social measures, go to the
Equality Trust project started by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett a few years ago.
And we can witness how politicians and opinion-formers on the political right - who consider the hierarchy a social value - divert attention from rampant and in many cases even - illegal - acquisition of wealth and protection for ill-gotten gains by using that natural human tendency to try to push others down rather than act collectively against the relatively few wealthy and powerful in modern societies. They do it by using race, religion, ethnicity, immigration, or social programs that are still left for the poor. And I don't need to add, that they are usually successful in this strategy...even in societies that have turned dystopian in their decline in general, overall wealth and living standards. Societies in decline usually turn into fascisms not communisms...as we here so much of from the right! So today, when I look at where North America is heading, I see us already sliding into fascism, not communism! And I don't hold out much hope for the kickback from the left -- such as the Occupy movements that have started. If there was a groundswell of support from young people who have had their futures obliterated before their eyes, I would give it a chance. But the reality is that young people today, who have grown up without any living memory of what it was like before the middle class and unions started to disappear are even more materialistic, hedonistic and focused on their own desires than any generation before them. They are compartmentalized by the technology (I don't consider cell phones and Facebook etc. to be real community), the increasing emphasis on social status at younger and younger ages....helped along by the mind-numbing brainwashing of modern media that has created a seamless blend of "content" and advertising and product promotion. So, I see no relief from the increasingly ruthless pecking order, although if I come across any hopeful news, I'll be the first to jump on board!
