Equality, Deference and Dominance

[Mole]

Should I treat you as an equal?

The immediate answer is yes.

But for 200,000 years we lived with deference and dominance. It was only in the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries that we started to see ourselves as equals.

And so today when I don't treat you as an equal, your ego objects, because your ego has introjected the recent values of the Enlightenment of freedom and equality. Why, even the President is only the First Among Equals.

But things are changing.

For 200,000 years deference and dominance were a necessary part of the roles we played in society.

And as we look around us on Central, we find all of us are playing roles. We have an avatar with a role playing name.

On Central, the first thing we do give up our individual identity based on equality, and adopt a role, dare I say, based on deference and dominance.

But I would be pretty daring to say who should defer to who, but this is because we are in a stage of transition, and before long we will be demanding deference and dominance. We will have a moral crusade for deference and dominance. And before long we will take deference and dominance for granted. And once again deference and dominance will be the natural order.

 

[Little_Sticks]

Let God's word be known! Victor judges all as one!

 

[Mole]

Let God's word be known! Victor judges all as one!

Yes, as we move from literate individualism to electric tribalism, we feel all as one.

This is the work we are doing here. We are learning to synchronise our feelings across the world, just as a traditional tribe synchronise their feelings across the village.

The traditional tribe could synchronise their feelings across a village, because everyone in the village was in shouting distance, and feelings become contagious, and all feel as one.

In the same way the electric tribe can synchonise our feelings across the world because everyone in the global village is within spontaneous emotion contact, and we are all starting to feel as one.

Of course it is taking a while to get our head around this.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

My ideal is also equality and symmetry in relationships. I can be convinced of the utility of the other dynamics if it is more efficient when applied in a specific context. If someone has greater or lesser knowledge than myself, I hope to acknowledge that honestly and benefit from whichever dynamic results in the most gain of skill or knowledge. I also could be convinced of deferring to someone else if it meant I didn't have to be responsible for something I am not skilled at or in which I am not interested.

 

[En Gallop]

Should I treat you as an equal?

The immediate answer is yes.

But for 200,000 years we lived with deference and dominance. It was only in the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries that we started to see ourselves as equals.

And so today when I don't treat you as an equal, your ego objects, because your ego has introjected the recent values of the Enlightenment of freedom and equality. Why, even the President is only the First Among Equals.

But things are changing.

For 200,000 years deference and dominance were a necessary part of the roles we played in society.

And as we look around us on Central, we find all of us are playing roles. We have an avatar with a role playing name.

On Central, the first thing we do give up our individual identity based on equality, and adopt a role, dare I say, based on deference and dominance.

But I would be pretty daring to say who should defer to who, but this is because we are in a stage of transition, and before long we will be demanding deference and dominance. We will have a moral crusade for deference and dominance. And before long we will take deference and dominance for granted. And once again deference and dominance will be the natural order.

Objectively speaking, human beings are all equally unimportant in the grand scheme of things, so in this respect Equality is the correct attitude. The only reason why some people (eg Albert Einstein) are held as more important than others (eg Paris Hilton) is because we, as human beings, tend to believe some achievements/people are more "worthy" than others. But these are just emotional evaluations.

If this is about group dynamics, then there have always been leaders and followers. It's the quickest, most efficient way of getting things done.

 

[Kalach]

So, "we" means white people?


*skywhale*

 

[Mole]

Objectively speaking, human beings are all equally unimportant in the grand scheme of things, so in this respect Equality is the correct attitude. The only reason why some people (eg Albert Einstein) are held as more important than others (eg Paris Hilton) is because we, as human beings, tend to believe some achievements/people are more "worthy" than others. But these are just emotional evaluations.

If this is about group dynamics, then there have always been leaders and followers. It's the quickest, most efficient way of getting things done.

In a society based on roles, the protocol of deference and dominence allows one role to relate to another role.

Of course this is foreign to us today as we live in a world of freedom and equality.

 

[Mole]

So, "we" means white people?
*skywhale*

The 'we' is the etribal 'we'. It is not the royal 'we, nor is it the white 'we'.

So the etribal 'we' is the 'we' of the global village, and includes anyone in reach of the electronic media, and that means almost everyone alive today.

 

[Kalach]

Sounds like a yes.

By far the largest group in this global non-village is Asian. They didn't have the Enlightenment and they don't use English. They barely if ever communicate with we, and we wouldn't know they were there if we didn't go looking. In fact, by language the internet is currently only about a quarter English-speaking. And that percentage is shrinking.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

85% of Africans, 70% of Asians, and 60% of the Middle east are not yet online. The majority of North Americans and Australians are. You're already outnumbered and it's only going to get... better.

 

[Typh0n]

ITT about equality I see not a valid logical arguement for the basis of equality.

 

[Coriolis]

Should I treat you as an equal?

Everyone is not equal. This would be tantamount to saying we are all the same.

But I would be pretty daring to say who should defer to who, but this is because we are in a stage of transition, and before long we will be demanding deference and dominance. We will have a moral crusade for deference and dominance. And before long we will take deference and dominance for granted. And once again deference and dominance will be the natural order.

The young should defer to the old; student to teacher; solider to commanding officer; employee to supervisor; someone with less skill/ability/knowledge to someone with greater; someone doing well to someone having trouble. None of these are absolute, e.g. we might defer to our boss at work, but not at home. Many of these relationships are also not permanent, and can be changed or terminated if the "dominant" person no longer merits our deference. We might defer to some people in certain situations, and have others defer to us elsewhere. This is where the balance is found.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Why can't Victor find something else to talk about?
Why must he always recycle the same things, over and over?
IS there nothing else to think about in Australia?

 

[Mole]

Why can't Victor find something else to talk about?
Why must he always recycle the same things, over and over?
IS there nothing else to think about in Australia?

Not one, but three good questions.

1. Why can't Victor find something else to talk about?

He does, he does try, he casts around for something to talk about. But then his good angel waves a little golden finger and warns him not to talk about things but to experience them directly, just like his good angel.

2. Why must he recycle the same things, over and over?

Ever since Victor discovered that repetition is all that is necessary to induce a trance, he has been recycling the same things over and over, so that he will slip the bonds of his critical mind and enter the realms of the imagination.

3. Is there nothing else to think about in Australia?

Australia, being full of rare beasts, is a rare beast herself. For Australia is a project of the Enlightenment. Australia is a project of evidence and reason, freedom and equality.

 

[digesthisickness]

Have you ever wondered if your ancestors ended up in Australia due to transportation in the 1700s?

 

[Mole]

Have you ever wondered if your ancestors ended up in Australia due to transportation in the 1700s?

The Scottish and English Enlightenment occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, just prior to the settlement of Australia.

Also just prior to the settlement of Australia there was one hundred years of peace under the Aristocratic Ascendency. So Australia inherited the values of the Enlightenment of evidence and reason, freedom and equality, as well as inheriting the peaceful values of the Aristocracy.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we gained our independence from Britain peacefully, and we united a whole Continent peacefully. And today we practise a liberal democracy based on freedom and equality, and our science, based on evidence and reason, often leads the world.

 

[digesthisickness]

I wasn't saying anything bad about it. Just wondered as, being American, I do.

 

[Mole]

I wasn't saying anything bad about it. Just wondered as, being American, I do.

The USA was a colony for 150 years and a penal colony to boot.

And the USA was founded, not by the Enlightenment, but by dissident religion.

And the USA was founded not by peaceful Aristocratic values but by warring Royal values.

And the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You have been forced to eat a violent rebellion against lawful authority in 1776 and then a violent Civil War of brother against brother.

And you have been forced to eat a religion based on no evidence and reason, where 40% of the USA reject Natural Selection.

 

[digesthisickness]

Ergoooooooo.... my wondering. There was also a point where they sent women over to marry the sad, sad men, so there's that too.

My wondering about you was only because you're Australian. And, because after the Revolutionary War broke out, they switched to sending convicts to Australia and records at that time, regarding names (even their spelling) leaves a lot of questions. It was just a passing thought.

 

[Mole]

Ergoooooooo.... my wondering. There was also a point where they sent women over to marry the sad, sad men, so there's that too.

My wondering about you was only because you're Australian. And, because after the Revolutionary War broke out, they switched to sending convicts to Australia and records at that time, regarding names (even their spelling) leaves a lot of questions. It was just a passing thought.

In the basement of our National Library there is a whole industry of individuals devoted to researching geneology.

For instance, an ancestor of mine, Alice Shortus, was brought to Australia as a convict. It was an open prison and the convicts came and went at will. So Alice escaped, and with a few other convicts stole a sailing ship in Sydney Harbour.

As soon as the ship was missed the Royal Navy sent a ship in pursuit. But it was tail pursuit and the Royal Navy never caught them.

However they were running out of water and pulled into the shore and were wrecked on a reef. Everyone made it to land but unfortunately there was a large gathering of aborigees nearby and they slaughtered everyone on the beach except Alice.

Alice was kidnapped by the tribe and bore a number of children who we know quite a bit about because they became Bush Rangers who were inevitably caught by the police and so found their way in our records.

And Alice had a measure of fame as the Queen of the Aboriginees and featured on the cover of our Womans' Weekly magazine.

 

[digesthisickness]

Nice! I've been reading so many cases that ended in transportation (on oldbaileyonline.org) and have frequently wondered about what happened to so many of them afterwards. The only time it's recorded in their records is when they were captured coming BACK from transportation before their time was up.

I looked up Alice's name in their database, but didn't find it. But, like I said before, name changes were frequent as was spelling. It would have been fun to find her though.