Neither a Follower nor a Leader be: Lent 2024, Day 38

"Don't follow leaders," sang Bob Dylan. Wise words. Don't lead followers either. People who push themselves to become leaders tend to have big egos, inflated sense of self-importance, a need for adulation and approval. This can have Freudian causes – compensating for an unhappy childhood – or genetic causes ("papa was too"). Putin, Trump and Johnson all spring to mind. 

Religious cults are typically led by the same sort of person, requiring faithful acolytes. Religions, political systems and corporations should screen for people with the 'dark triad' of personality traits (psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism) to ensure that such people will never lead. However, this type is adept at masking the true nature of their character.

Followers, on the other hand, tend to look for simple answers to adopt, an ideology or religion that they can plug into and, having found it, many will remain with it, unquestioningly. In psychological terms, followers are on the lower rungs of the ladder of authority. The dynamics of this thirst to find a leader is beautifully portrayed in this scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian:

ARTHUR: Hail Messiah!

BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah!

ARTHUR: I say you are, Lord, and I should know. I've followed a few.

FOLLOWERS: Hail Messiah!

BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!

GIRL: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.

BRIAN: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!

FOLLOWERS: He is! He is the Messiah!

BRIAN: Now, fuck off!

[silence]

ARTHUR: How shall we fuck off, O Lord?

So – neither wishing to be a leader, nor a follower, which path is the right one? 

Open, honest seeking. Seek, but at your own pace. The quest for truth should accelerate with age. Your twenties and thirties are not the time for your ego to retreat whilst engaging on such a quest for esoteric knowledge and supernatural phenomena; this is the time to put food on the table, earn money and get on with it. But once the children have left home and some degree of comfort has been achieved – seek.

"Embrace widely, hold lightly," to quote John Ramirez. Reject ideas you once held should they no longer hold true; continually fine-tune your metaphysical worldview, discuss it, modify it, parse it on the basis of intuition. Work on it; over the years it becomes more accurate, and more useful.

I am informed by intuition; much of what I have written in this Lenten series of posts is the result of inspiration; ideas entering my stream of consciousness, bidden, aligned, extraneous teaching.

Aiming ultimately for a better understanding of life, for greater contentment, for fulfilment of our human potential – these goals are best achieved individually rather than collectively under the watchful gaze of a self-appointed leader (or worse – one who claims to have been appointed by God). The metaphysical world has no need for leaders. Teachers, by all means, learn from them but accept them not as leaders.

Lent 2023, Day 38
Go with the flow, or swim against the tide

Lent 2022: Day 38
When I was a child, I understood as a child

Lent 2021: Day 38
Will we ever understand what's inside the atom?

Lent 2020: Day 38
Religion, Society and the Individual

On human failings

Student SGH's latest blog post has prompted me to respond. And so (at last!) I'm publishing a post that I've been putting off writing for several days – a post about procrastination and attention deficit.

It occurred to me that one reason I find completing tasks difficult – particularly when I'm not facing any external deadline – is that my mind tends to wander off to something more interesting, more curious, more affecting. Then off I go, at a tangent. [Since starting to write this I've been distracted by a dozen small tasks, each getting in my way.]

It's this trait that I wanted to write about, in particular when combined with certain traits found along the autism spectrum, namely nerdish RRBI (repetitive and restricted behaviours and interests). 

As I've written before, I believe that most of us live our lives affected to a certain degree by one psychiatric spectrum or another, whether it's autism/Asperger's, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, narcissism, schizophrenia etc – in most cases well below the threshold for diagnosis. And these traits can co-exist – two or more, at low levels, low enough not to be picked up by the casual observer - or indeed, even by the subject. [This case shows how difficult it is even for healthcare specialists to spot the symptoms in themselves.] 

Looking at my life, my education, my career, my personal life, I can now look back and identify how my inability to focus has held me back from reaching my own internally-set goals and ambitions. However, having said that, to balance it out, the RRBI has been helpful in narrowing down fields of interest. 

And here I return to the great question I've often asked, regarding specialists vs. generalists, the former being more likely to be on the autism spectrum, the latter having a degree of attention deficit. My father used to tell me off as a child for trzymanie zbyt wielu srok za ogon – literally, holding too many magpies by the tail – rather than focusing on, and completing, one task.

So the two tendencies - one being the pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest, the other being a tendency to lose focus and wander off – lead to my main characteristic – inconsistency. Straying between "That was really good!" and "That was crap." 

Because my mind does indeed wander, it takes me longer to get things done; it takes me longer to learn. I now realise, aged 66, why it's taken me so long to acquire a deep understanding of those things I deeply understand – and how to communicate my understanding of them. But then again, this returns me to my threads about longevity. A long life of life-long learning will allow you to gain deeper knowledge of individual topics (if you are a scatter-shot generalist), or broader knowledge across a wider range of topics (if you are a focused specialist).

Masking one's behavioural failings requires good self-knowledge, emotional intelligence, and the ability to read how people see you. [One set of autism-spectrum traits that I lack is the inability to empathise or socialise. So just the RRBI. And the ADHD trait that I lack is the hyperactivity. Just the attention deficit.] During my socialisation period (age 10-50), the RRBI was kept in check, so that I'd fit in. Don't talk to girls about trains. Now, I'm less bothered to mask. I am as I am.

But then there's another trait - and I'd argue a character-neutral one – that keeps (lost focus again, time to make some breakfast)... [Two conference calls and some office work later, I finally get round to finishing this post, and realise I forgot how I intended to finish this sentence.]

So – what do I consider to be the worst human trait? 

Psychopathic/sociopathic behaviour, especially when presented in conjunction with narcissism. 

Which human beings are doing most damage to humanity right now, in the past, and – unless restrained by societies – in the future? Egotistical psychopaths, megalomaniacs using murderous force to get their way. If only Putin and Xi had been hamstrung in life by chronic procrastination! [But then some other evil bastard would have got to run those two systems; I'd have to move on from psychology to political science...]

I have worked with and for psychopaths – ultra-competitive, heartless, ruthless bastards, trampling over human lives, over the people who find themselves working for them, who have to endure stress, humiliation, job loss – and all because one man (and it's nearly always a man) has personal wealth-and-power goals to meet. And most psychopaths are highly skilled at masking these traits. Fortunately, such people are far fewer in number than procrastinators. Unfortunately, the psychopaths tend to gravitate toward (or rather push themselves into) positions of power, using power to enrich themselves, and using those riches to buy more power. This is the worst human trait. Until we fully understand the ladder of authority, and turn the hierarchy that's innate in mammalian societies into networks built upon consensus, we will have to live with psychopaths ruling over us.

Procrastinators won't push the nuclear button. 

About procrastinators, I worry not.

This time last year:
Sunny Sunday meditations

This time seven years ago:
To Dawidy Bankowe, Łady, Zamienie and back

This time 12 years ago:
Town planning and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time 13 years ago:
On the long road from Zero to One

This time 14 years ago:
Łódź Rising

The Ego, the Soul and the Individual: thoughts occasioned by my 66th birthday

As I age, the flame of my ego turns down from a 7 to a 3; then on towards a 1 before being inexorably extinguished. Yet the flame of my consciousness grows in strength from year to year, as does my understanding of the world. And with them I grow in wisdom.

To what extent are we egos, and to what extent souls*?

The body is the vehicle that contains both. Which one controls your vehicle? 

Two contrasting statements to ponder then:

1. "We live, as we dream - alone" - Joseph Conrad, from Heart of Darkness

2. {{ I am part of the continuous whole }} - an intuition I felt while walking in Jeziorki one day, probably sometime around 2004-5.

How to square the two? Are we individuals, or members of a collective? I have written about the existence in childhood of the conscious mądry Michaś and ego-driven głupi Michaś, and how the latter won control over the former in adolescence to rule uncontested until mądry Michał finally emerged victorious over the course of the past decade.

I can associate with both of those two statements above. Solitude is a comfort for those deep of soul. An ego alone is trapped - there's no audience to show off in front of. Or anyone to boss around. But the wise consciousness has no need to conform to the will of other egos, or to try to impose. You may wish to ascribe this to my 'low hierarchy status', a life lived upon a lower rung of the Ladder of Authority. That diagnosis, dear reader, is a mirage - an affect of the materialist worldview.

Yet the continuous whole - the cosmic consciousness - underlies space and time. Indeed, consciousness spawned space and time; space and time are the products of consciousness, and not the other way around. Increasing numbers of theoretical physicists and philosophers are now getting this.

To the materialist, there is only matter - there's no such thing as 'soul'. Consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon - a by-product of biological evolution, something found only within the brains of higher-order animals on our planet.

Whatever your worldview, the matter that is your body is subject - as is all matter - to entropy. 

Entropy. The second law of thermodynamics. Decay. The destiny of all matter is to break back down into a state of random atoms. The material wonders of this world, brought about by complexity, are short-lived; finite. To the materialist, who scorns the very notion of a soul, who considers consciousness to be a constructed illusion that lies beyond empirical measurement, the process of ageing is tragic. One's youth fades, and all that there's to look forward to is decay.

But Consciousness abides. It was there at the beginning of all things; it will be there after their end. And it is present everywhere. It survives matter. Grasp this, and ageing, and what comes after death, hold no fear.

In my own place, I am comfortable.

I can see now that I have been a slow learner (due to laziness? Lack of focus? Attention deficit?), but  I am a broad learner, a generalist, not a specialist. I am still learning. The constant chipping away at a rough-hewn block of stone from which emerges an exquisitely detailed sculpture. Our digital age has brought a wealth of knowledge to humanity - I wonder to what extent we're aware of that? Wikipedia, for example, is stupendous in terms of what it offers us all - for free! Plus the endless streams of podcasts, YouTube videos and TED talks covering every area of human knowledge - and our ability to plug into all that knowledge on the go via a smartphone. Ignorance is no longer the default state, but a conscious "can't be arsed to find out" choice. Curiosity, then, becomes the most important human quality after kindness.

[Kindness - cooperation and empathy - is the default setting of the winning strategy of the Prisoner's Dilemma - get on with your fellow humans all the time except after such occasions when they defect on you first (never, ever, be the first to defect!) - then retaliate and continue doing so - forcefully - until they relent, and then immediately return to cooperation. Should they defect again, retaliate again.]

Today, a year after reaching the Polish state-pension age, I have reached the UK state-pension age. I no longer need to work, but shall continue doing so for as long as it brings me fulfilment and sense of purpose. I should say 'slow down' to myself, but this is the busy time of year, with event after event galloping onward toward Christmas, it's not easy! I have long said that I shall work until Poland overtakes the UK in terms of GDP per capita (at purchasing-power parity). The gap between the two economies is narrowing each year (around 20% at the moment; it stood at around 40% ten years ago).

Below: back to the metaphysical. Prof Bruce Greyson from the University of Virginia, is one of the pre-eminent researchers in near-death experiences. In this YouTube video from 2012, he presents this slide, which I think squares with what a spiritual approach to life yields anyway, without the need to face death head-on. However, many of the subjects of his research had their near-death experiences at an earlier age than 66, so these may accelerate a change of worldview that might have occurred more slowly otherwise.

*I use the words 'soul' and 'consciousness' interchangeably, according to context, sometimes maybe using 'spirit'.

This time last year:
In which I reach the Age of Maturity

This time two years ago:
Golden Autumn, Golden Years

This time three years ago:
Last embers of summer

This time four years ago:
It's that Day of the Year again!

This time five years ago:

Decline and growth

This time six years ago:
Health at 60

This time eight years ago:
In search of vectors for migrating consciousness

This time nine years ago:
Slipping from late summer to early autumn

This time ten years ago:
Turning 56

This time 11 years ago: 
Turning 55 

This time 12 years ago:
Turning 54

This time 13 years ago:
Turning 53

This time 16 years ago:
Turning 50

Take it easy or get rigorous? Lent 2022: Day 37

Finding the balance between pushing yourself too hard and taking it too easy is extraordinarily difficult. If you believe that life is a competition, a rat-race in which to win you have to show more baubles than the next man or woman - in my books - you've lost. You are a materialist, you are człowiek który się nie zastanawia - the person who contemplates not. The mammalian ladder of authority, the innate struggle to show who's top dog, who's higher up the pecking order, is a false driver.

The spiritually important driver is the life-long quest for understanding; working out for yourself why you exist. Dial down the ego on the dimmer switch, set the slider towards consciousness.

Pushing myself on this journey means facing up to guilt when I fail to live up to my own ambitions. Yesterday, I did only four out of my seven routine sets of exercises, and walked a thousand paces less than my target - but ticked off everything on my to-do list, which was rather long. So I have an excuse. But I could have always squeezed in more, had I procrastinated less... Physical exercises are only part of equation, I do them for health and longevity. What did I learn yesterday? That's the more important question.

Writing it down I now acknowledge as being extremely important. Were I to tabulate my own religious practices into a set of Commandments or Mitzvot, this would be one of them. From the daily morning routine of creating to-do list, to recording my dreams as I wake, to jotting interesting insights as I get them in my notebook, to blogging and tweeting - if it's committed to paper or to the web, it's a step forward. An edited photo or film footage uploaded and shared is also an important digital footprint. I can return and check progress.

As I wrote last summer, and indeed in the summer of 2020, the long, hot days of June, July and August are the year's reward, the time we've been looking forward to all winter. And when summer arrives, it can be a bit of an anti-climax, especially if the weather's disappointing. Which is why perfect blue-sky days should be treated with respect - if you know one's coming, or a spell of fine weather, plan for it, do something, make the most of what you've been gifted. Don't procrastinate until half past three.

Taking it too easy during the summer months brings on those guilt pangs. I feel I must be doing, optimising my time, travelling, writing, doing something different. And as I wrote yesterday, summer is not devoid of its spiritual moments.

Finding the balance between rigor and luz (expressed more neatly in Polish!) I would set the slider much further along the scale towards rigor, with luz being in the form of rest as consciously distinct from idleness, dithering and time-wasting. Rest to get back into the swing of work during the autumn and run-up to Christmas. Then the wait for Easter - then Rebirth - and then soft summer to recharge batteries once more.

You owe it to yourself to fulfil your human purpose; you owe it to the miracle of your existence. Push yourself that bit harder, and yes, feel the guilt when you don't!

This time two years ago:
From Zero to One

This time three years ago:
Childhood memory flashback

This time six years ago:
In which I learn to speak

This time nine years ago:
Sunshine and snow, Łazienki

This time 12 years ago:
Wealth and (social) mobility

This time 13 years ago:
Six weeks into Lent

This time 14 years ago:
Foggy morn in Jeziorki

This time 15 years ago:
Sixteen poplars
[just ten left standing today]

Ego, Consciousness and the Ladder of Authority

What do you make of leaders like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump? I see a vacuous rampant ego; a narcissistic bully, without a moral compass. Yet I also see an almost total detachment from the calm, quiet workings of consciousness. Consciousness that should be at the helm. From the spiritual perspective, they are empty vessels.

"Nobody has done more for Christianity or for evangelicals or for religion itself than I have" - Donald Trump, 1 October 2021.

Can a group of people - a company, a nation - accomplish great things in the absence of an ego-driven leader? "When the best leader's work is done, the people say: 'We did it ourselves'." - Lao Tzu. True leadership should be invisible. 

Biology provides the entitlement to give commands to others. We are hierarchic creatures; the Ladder of Authority stretches from the pinnacle of the pyramid to the bottom of its broad base. Over the millennia - and in particular over the past two centuries - the idea that might is right has given way to a more enlightened notion that a leader's key characteristic in a complex world should be intelligence.

 But democracy is a two-edged sword; the poorly educated can look at a Trump or a Johnson and think "he is smart", and on that basis put their X in the box. Because they don't know what 'intelligent' looks like, a blustering ego shouting  "vote for me, I'm clever, I know what I'm doing" louder than more modest candidates, have an edge in the democratic process. The more monstrous the ego, the less intelligent their supporters. 

In a work or personal situation, it's easy to walk away from toxic people. They are no good to have around. It is said 'you join a firm, but leave a manager'. But how can you walk away from an elected leader that's clearly no good for your country or for you? The United States got itself together and pushed Trump out of the White House, the only president to lose two successive popular votes. The UK has to wait until December 2024 for a chance to remove from office the worst prime minister it has ever had (unless the Conservative Party remove Johnson before then, seeing him as a liability).

The notion of 'the hierarchy' vs 'the network' is more relevant than ever in a complex world. Our greatest challenge is dealing with climate change - which will require huge sacrifices in life style among the world's well-off. This in turn requires leadership by example - not flying private jets to get up north for a photo opportunity.

The free world will be distracted from this task by simultaneously dealing with two despots - Putin and Xi Jinping, who are using strident nationalism to bolster support. This does not look like it will end well.

Can the world's conscious community work together to steer us to a better direction? Meditations against ego-led despotism? 

This time last year:
Trains and snowy days

This time two years ago:
"I wake up at five and queue for bread and soup"

This time three years ago:
Getting over this year's flu

This time four years ago:
War and the absence of war

This time six years ago:
Sensitivity to spiritual evolution

This time seven years ago:
75th anniversary of Stalin's deportations of Poles

This time eight years ago:
Peak Car (in western Europe at least)

This time eight years ago:
Pavement for Karczunkowska NOW!
[I still have to walk through mud or snow dodge speeding drivers!]

This time ten years ago:
Until the Vistula freezes over 

This time 11 years ago:
Of sunshine, birdsong and wet socks

The Ego and Evil

Theologians wrestling with the existence of evil in God's universe need look no further than the human ego. There's no need to invent a Satan; look no further than our own human imperfections, born of our animal inheritance - this is our original sin. It is the human ego that fosters man-made evil in our world.

Hitler - Stalin - two monstrous, perverse egos, unrestrained, allowed to take control of ultimate power of life and death over many millions of people. Utter evil, monuments to what can happen when single-minded egos rise unchecked. Today's evil men - Putin, Lukashenka, are also full of themselves. Pride, arrogance, limitless power, wealth and luxury.

At the top of the Ladder of Authority sit the boastful egos, full of themselves, commanding those egos lower down the ladder by way of stick (threats) or carrot (those below wishing to ingratiate themselves to those above, for whom a kind word from the Leader will make their day). In Western democracies, the monster ego rises but falls as it is put to the electoral test. I can't see Johnson staying long in Number 10; Trump's fall has only just begun.

The chaos that befalls humanity is either natural or man-made. The former - volcanoes, tsunamis, droughts, the latter - wars, revolutions. In between there are those where natural and human causation - famines and  pandemics - over which mankind does have some control. And once humans enter the equation, so do their egos. Coping with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse calls for teamwork, putting away the ego in favour of workable solutions, ones based on science not personal advance.

In the world of work, the big ego all too often becomes the toxic employer; "you join a firm but leave a manager" is an old truism. At a time when the labour market is full of job offers, ego-maniacs are having a hard time hanging to the the very staff they need to feed their egos. There's simply no point of enduring the discomfort of a bullying or stupid boss today.

Back away from demands of the ego. It is the ego that wants to be pampered with luxury, that is not content with mere comfort. It is the ego that wants to be lavished with praise.

The quiet counsel of consciousness should prevail over the brash, risk-taking shouts of the ego. Overtaking a stream of traffic that's moving at 65km/h (in a 50km/h zone) on the approach to a pedestrian crossing - an ego heedless of consciousness. Or even bereft of a consciousness. A P-Zombie?

This time two years ago:
Warsaw's Christmas lights 2019-20

This time three years ago:
Pawlikowski's Cold War

This time six years ago:
"Extreme weather events are now a feature of the British climate"

This time eight years ago:
Cheaper public transport for Varsovians

This time nine years ago:
Swans on ice

This time ten years ago:
Cars 

This time 11 years ago:
What's the English for kombinować?

This time 12 years ago:
The demographics of jazz

This time 14 years ago:
A day in Poznań

I'm better than you! Lent 2021: Day 31

Watching the traffic on ulica Puławska pulling up at the lights. A parade of vanity. BMW M8, Porsche Cayenne Turbo S, something orange and loud, Volkswagen Arteon R-Line with huge wheels, the tyres a mere lick of rubber around the rims, a brand new Toyota GR Supra. And lesser traffic. 

I look at the drivers of these show-off vehicles. What is their point? Trying to impress other people? Other people they don't know - random passers-by? How vain, how futile, how... infantile. 

I bask in self-righteousness. For a moment or two, it is I - a pedestrian, car-less, car-free - I am superior! No, really - I am! Right? Not wasting money on a statement ride, no need to resort to such primitive showing-off to display my place in the status hierarchy (or rather my insecurity) - not wasting our planet's resources, not turning fossil fuel into greenhouse gases! I... am... BETTER! Qualitatively, morally, ethically, philosophically, inherently BETTER!

* * * * * * * * * * *

We get caught up in this kind of thinking, don't we. Our mammalian biology - our desire to express ourselves in terms of place in our hierarchy - is matched by our human intellect. Now, this intelligence can either be harnessed to make money, which can then be spent on baubles of vanity, or else it can be used to attain a higher understanding of our human condition. Now, I happen to consider the latter to be a more worthwhile use of the human intellect.

Does that make me intrinsically better than those who roar up and down ul. Puławska in their status symbols? Of course they will have their justifications. Except I don't want to hear them!

Or is my self-righteousness merely my own attempt to stratify society into a hierarchy in which I'm near the top - a Philosopher-Sage looking down on the shallow attempts of the show-offs and loud-piped boy-racers trying to make an expensive point? 

Of course it does!

Does that put me on par with the very people that I look down on?

What's the difference between me looking down at them, and them looking down at the drivers of six-year-old Honda Civics or ten-year-old Opel Merivas?

Don't we all tend to do this? Looking down on people with a different worldview to our own - an important element of contemporary culture wars, with the virtue-signalling woke looking down on the racists and sexist and homophobic conservatives, and flag-waving nationalists looking down on lefty degenerates?

We all (including me!) need to rise above our innate mammalian instinct to rank and segregate and categorise into 'better' and 'worse', into 'one of us' and 'one of them', to see our worth in terms of the diminished worth of others. We subconsciously apply rank: inferiors and superiors, and self-hierarchise ourselves. And from this stem our complexes of inferiority and superiority.

At times like this I ponder with a degree of sadness just how much evolution - spiritual evolution we still need to undergo before we can drop our instinctive behavioural ties to lesser life forms.

It's hard for us all - including the self-righteous! Our subjective conscious experience is central to how we see the world - the Universe - around us, so it is natural that we weave a self-serving narrative about our lives in which we justify our existence in terms we can understand - hierarchical terms. However we wish to frame them.

This time last year:
Refutation (I)

This time five years ago:
Before Spin by Keith McDowall

This time six years ago:
Mill town Łódź 

This time seven years ago:
Today, a tipping point in European history

This time eight years ago:
Church and state

This time nine years ago:
Scrub fire in Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
Airbus A380 visits Warsaw
[yesterday the last one left the Airbus factory]

This time 11 years ago:
Lenten recipe no. 7

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's economy - upturn in sight?

More about the Ladder of Authority

Much as we like think of ourselves as the greatest species to inhabit our planet, we are but mammals, viviparous, hairy and with breast-feeding females. Scrape away the veneer of civilisation, and we find we have much in common with our biological cousins, from three middle-ear bones per ear and a neo-cortex.

As within most mammal societies, we homo sapiens naturally order ourselves into a hierarchy, based on dominance and submission. In other mammals, there's a 'top dog' and an 'underdog'; an 'alpha male/female' and the runt of the litter. A leader, many followers, and outsiders.

We think of ourselves as a species that differs from animals by dint of our sophistication and intellect; and yet, much as we try to deny it, it is our mammalian nature that casts a natural hierarchy upon us. If tens of thousands of years of human evolution have adapted us to live, cooperate and collaborate together in society, we have still failed to cast off that instinct to dominate one another within a hierarchy. The gradations within that hierarchy may appear small when we cast our eyes around us, but taken across mankind as a whole, they are huge.

If we can at least be aware of this, we can to some degree consciously mitigate its effects on us and on our society.

Take a walk into the crowded city street, a busy shopping mall, a rush-hour train. Cast your eyes over your fellow human beings. The way they bear themselves, the way they dress, how they hold their head, where they direct their gaze – at the floor or towards your eye – these things tell you much about their place in the pecking order. It's a hierarchy that no one talks about yet everyone can see. Once upon a time it was easy to spot the difference between a lord and a peasant. These days, jeans, sweatshirts and sneakers clad us all in egalitarian fashion.

Yet we still live in a hierarchy, just like any other social mammalians. There are cues, signals, behaviours, that determine our place.

“The rich man in his castle/The poor man at his gate/God made them high and lowly/And ordered their estate”, runs a verse from Cecil Frances Alexander's Anglican hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful, now omitted. Then, during the 20th century, along came social revolution – equality. Suddenly, we were ALL equal! Wealth is not just the preserve of the toff – who didn't earn it but inherited it. A happy conjugation of politics, economics and history that allow the hard-working and talented to earn and save, building up capital, they allowed the Western world to enjoy the most successful period in history. The industrial revolution that required a new caste of engineers, administrators, accountants, lawyers, educators and healthcare practitioners created a middle class that flourished from the late 18th Century onward, generating new wealth, passing it down to their offspring in the form of property.

For nearly all of our human history (for around 380,000 out of the past 400,000 years!) we were tribal hunter-gatherers. Gifted with huge brains (compared to other animals), able to communicate effectively, able to fashion tools, and with the ability to sing, and laugh, and to cooperate with one another, our tribes depended on diversity for their survive. Mobbing the taciturn flint-napper because he was somewhat lacking in social skills so he'd leave the tribe would be counterproductive. The same goes for the shaman, whose wild screams at the moon would lead us to a successful hunt. 

But as the tribes spread out over the earth, and adapted agriculture - driven by the planting, harvesting, storing and trading of grain - the leaders of the more effective societies gained in power, prestige and riches. They eventually evolved into the kings of nation-states and created a system of gathering tributes from their dukes and knights, who in turn collected tribute from their serfs. Feudalism was about having the biggest fists and darkest guile and using these traits to hammer out a hierarchy from the top down. 

The onward march of civilisation since feudal times is all about working out consensus-driven antidotes to might-is-right, such as the rule of law and property rights.

The story of civilisation is about the less-powerful tempering the instincts of those born with natural tendency to seize resources and power from those weaker than themselves. Religion – in particular Christianity – helped temper the powerful, although they used their bishops to turn the religion of Jesus to their advantage – the doctrine of the divine right of kings. "Think your king a brutal, rapacious thief? Turn the other cheek. (Matthew 5:38-42.)" The evolution of law also helped, as did the code of chivalry, which turned into everyday politeness. Politeness is a very important civilising force; the powerful put into place by a convention that frowned upon boorish behaviour. Christianity became co-opted by the elite to become a force for social order rather than a force for revolutionary social levelling.

And politeness – hat-tipping, opening doors for ladies, has evolved into political correctness – not wishing to hurt the feelings of those deemed to be disadvantaged by birth. To those of different race, ability, gender, there's also the original group of underdogs – the poor, the weak, the downtrodden.

How aware of this are we in our daily lives, as we seek to find order and security for ourselves? How much are we gaining at somebody else's expense, and how much are others gaining at our expense?

All things for further consideration...

This time last year:
By bike, south of Warsaw

This time three years ago:
Functionalist architecture in Warsaw

This time four years ago:
What's the Polish for 'to bully'?

This time five years ago:
Making plans

This time six years ago:
The setting sun stirs my soul

This time seven years ago:
Rain ends the drought

The Ladder of Authority

A comment on a recent post (on RRBI) from Adthelad included a link to a thought-provoking BBC documentary, The Trap - Whatever Happened to our Dream of Freedom by Adam Curtis. The documentary linked Cold War game theory, psychiatry, monetarism and New Labour, with an over-arching theme of social control. I thoroughly recommend it.

Watching it has prompted me to write (at last) about how I see humans cooperating and competing with one another. Man is a mammal, a social animal. As man is a mammal, mammalian rules of hierarchy apply within human society too. A pecking order clearly applies. There are alpha males and females. Leaders and followers. Top dogs and runts. Dominant individuals and submissive individuals. The rules of the hierarchy are sometimes clearly visible (in an army), sometimes less so (within a family); the hierarchy is always there, present in every social exchange. The Ladder of Authority. The same real hierarchy exists in tribes, in gangs, in schools, in the workplace.

At the basic level, the alpha individual will be taller and larger, will show external signs of above-average testosterone levels (larger jaw, deeper voice). And age, too, has a part in determining authority, peaking in the early 50s. Yet in complex modern society, these physical attributes in themselves are not enough to place an individual higher up the Ladder.

There's something else required - a will to dominate.

Even if we reduce 'society' to two people, there will be one individual who tends to be the leader, the other who tends to be the follower.

In a large society, there are innumerable ladders (family, school, workplace, church, state), with rungs, one above the other; in some, people know their place and are content in the knowledge that there are those above them, and those below. In other cases, there's a constant struggle going on, to be top dog - or at least to be higher up the ladder than someone else. This is largely innate. You can be taught to behave in a way that demonstrates your authority. "From Harrow School/ To rise and rule". You can be sufficiently aware of what's going on around you to consciously adopt the effective verbal and non-verbal commands of those above you on the ladder. You can be sent on a management training course. Yet you will need to be brave enough to use them! And you will want to use them. Those you wish to see below you will see right through such attempts - if in the natural hierarchy of things they are above you.

Among animals that work together in packs, homo sapiens, is a species unique in being able to externalise individual consciousness through verbal communication. And as such, humans have evolved complex stratagems and ruses to camouflage the simple biological truth of social hierarchy.

Politeness, courtesy, etiquette; all these conventions have arisen for smoothing over external signs of the Ladder. The more civilised the country, the less externally visible is it as to who's a rung above you. It becomes coded. (Much of my thinking in this area has been formed by observing the contrasts between social exchanges in the UK and in Poland. In this respect, Britain is more civilised, Poland less hypocritical.)

Over the millennia, human evolution has provided those with brains to overtake those with brawn when it comes to giving orders. A big bold man with large fists will not lead today's corporate giants on the strength of those attributes. Bawling commands and insulting subordinates is a sign of insecurity, not strength. The evolution from agriculture (brawn necessary for following the plough) to industry (brawn necessary for hammering the iron) to information technology (brain now necessary to manage systems-integration projects) has upset the pecking order, but does not dismantle the Ladder. It is still there.

The question that Curtis's documentary unravels is to what extent is man a genetic robot, driven and determined by genetic predisposition. In the second part, he questions Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene theory, that we are but vessels through which our genes survive and reproduce.

So again I come to what I see as the core of the issue - what it is to be human, what it is to rise beyond the Ladder of Authority, beyond the constraints of genetic destiny, and to fulfil our potential, not just a biological creatures, but as spiritual beings.

This time last year:
St Pancras, what a wonderful place

Two years ago:
Ar y Ffordd i Pwyll Rhydd