Everyone wants to feel like they're special. Of course, doing so implies that at least some others aren't special. And just like that, you've got Instant Hierarchy. Just add human.
That shouldn't be surprising. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's in-built, inherent to us. After all, evolution isn't "survival of the everybody," is it? So we get everything that comes from that. Competitiveness, keeping up with the Joneses, jealousy and resentment, lording it over others, the whole schmeer.
Which leads to some odd results, if you think about it. Consider how many people out there think they're superior because they're good at playing some game or other. Or they're really good at pretending to be someone they're not. What odd things to value for a civilization or a species, don't you think?
Not that I'm condemning either of them. I myself am lamenting that there's no one currently pretending to be a Time Lord from Gallifrey on tv. And certainly I paid attention to enough sports as a kid. We all like to be entertained.
And, evolving in feast-or-famine situations, we all like to feel certain of our next meal. Of the security of our shelter. Of the viability of our tools and technologies. Which is why we all want to earn enough to eat well this day and every other, to have a nice home, to own the things we need to survive.
Naturally, if others' homes, foodstuffs, and so on are better than ours, we can feel threatened. So we all run our rat races.
Doesn't go particularly well with "all created equal," does it?
And in fact it never has. Even at the beginning the likes of Washington and Jefferson wanted to own plantations, and if that involved owning others, they would put up with that, despite the inherent contradiction. "Give me liberty or give me death - oh, but some of you get no liberty at all" just doesn't make sense.
Then add to that that the only people who could vote in the US in the first few of its 250 years were white men of property. Women, people of color, poor-ish people? They didn't get to rule, they got ruled.
So today, a quarter-millennium later, we really haven't advanced any in the hierarchy line, even though we like to think we have on every line. We've got celebrities and politicians who can be tempted into thinking they're better. People good at a game, good at academia, good at making money - or inheriting it - wanting to think that their superiority at a single trait makes them overall superior. It's in our nature. It's human.
It's bad for democracy, of course. I've got one vote. Nobody gets more than that. One vote is as much as you can get. But people wanting to be aristocrats want more power than that.
They want to use money to influence elections, or they want to use their skills at swaying people to do the same. Or just try to use their celebrity or other status to get their way.
We all want to get our way. We all want to feel special. We all want to feel safe.
Wow. We're more equal than we maybe thought, aren't we?
Now if we can all just keep that in mind, maybe the US will still (again?) be a democracy in 250 more years.
Maybe.
