Sunday, July 15, 2007
Hierarchy again
This is again about hierarchy but pretty much hidden and not too obvious
Nothing to hide responses
An excellent observation about how people get used to think in the same way, sometimes their responses are only similar, sometimes they are completely the same, word by word. Here the author, Daniel J.Solove, describes responses of Americans to the fact that the USA government has started, carried out projects of data mining about the USA citizens. Basically, all the responses can be reduced down to the phrase:”I have nothing to hide, so I do not care.”
You may wan tot download the full text of this paper under this link
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
Author tries to get scientific explanation for these reactions and tries to establish a definition what it means privacy. This approach is really useful but I see a better approach for such similarities in human responses. I have experienced several times that people who never had seen each other gave the same response. In such a case there must be a different explanation.
I suggest that the explanation lies in the similarity of the system that generates the response. We all are humans, but we go through different lives, and our values get slightly different. Some people went through more similar lives than the others, so there is a strong probability that they will respond in a similar way.
So I have heard two men, one in his late 40´s, the other one in his late 50´s, saying the sentence: “Now everybody would like to have a university degree.” It was the response to my proposal to establish a university or a college in one Czech town. For some time I was not able to decode the sentence. Later I found out that the motivation behind this sentence was the fear that the offsprings of these two men might not withstand the competition of so many new competitors, and also their own position in the hierarchy of this small town would come under the evolutionary pressure of competitors. So basically, this response is absolutely illogical, but extremely highly emotional.
The second time I have heard exactly the same response from two people who never had met before was the phrase: Czechs like to behave like the brave soldier Schweik.” This was a response to my criticism of Czech culture, Czech habits and traits displayed nowadays in the Czech Republic. Again I needed some time to decode the response. In this case the motivator is the perceived feeling of intelligent Czechs that what is happening here is a lost of basic culture that Czechs were used before, this on one side, on the other side it is a sentence protecting the group of Czechs to which these to people belong.
Again this response is not logical at all, it is only motivated by emotions. If one would like to apply logic to this statement one would have to know the story of “The brave soldier Schweik”. He was a poor man of incredibly low intelligence but anyway he somehow got through the tough years of WWI. So applying logic to this sentence would mean to maintain that Czechs are as stupid as this Soldier Schweik, which was no way the intention of the authors of the responses. The intention was to decrease the impact of my criticism of Czechs because they were Czechs too and felt that the group they belong to was offended.
The same happens with the reaction of Americans: “I have nothing to hide, so I do not care about my government mining data on me. What they want to say by this sentence basically means: I do not want to get involved with the government, they are too big mouthful for me, so I prefer to make out that I do not care, and in the direct competition with the author of the question, the second part comes:…”do you have something to hide?” This in turn shows a retort, that means – if you have something to hide that means that you are a bad guy, well and I have nothing to hide and therefore I am not a bad guy, which means I am standing above you in the hierarchy of American society.
So the situation is used or misused for a fight between two individuals in the hierarchy of human society and has absolutely nothing to do with logic, only with emotions, emotions of hierarchy.
The next reasonable question to ask were: where does the hierarchy from? I am not sure but I would suggest that it comes from the fact that the last one, the most handicapped is usually given up as a prey, as a target for predators. Therefore there might be a system evolved in our minds that we do not want to be eaten up and therefore we fight for higher position in hierarchy.
I am not 100 % sure to be right but as I gather information from all over the world in the Internet, I start to be more and more secure that I might be right. Quite recently I read an article about facts on Malta, and they show the same structure and the same principles.
When so called “boat people” , the African immigrants come to Malta, the lowest layer of the population on Malta feels a bit higher than these immigrants, and they gain on status, their position in hierarchy gets higher.
This pattern corresponds with a statement:”Nobody wants to be the last one.” And the reason for this statement might be the fear of being eaten up.
Nothing to hide responses
An excellent observation about how people get used to think in the same way, sometimes their responses are only similar, sometimes they are completely the same, word by word. Here the author, Daniel J.Solove, describes responses of Americans to the fact that the USA government has started, carried out projects of data mining about the USA citizens. Basically, all the responses can be reduced down to the phrase:”I have nothing to hide, so I do not care.”
You may wan tot download the full text of this paper under this link
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
Author tries to get scientific explanation for these reactions and tries to establish a definition what it means privacy. This approach is really useful but I see a better approach for such similarities in human responses. I have experienced several times that people who never had seen each other gave the same response. In such a case there must be a different explanation.
I suggest that the explanation lies in the similarity of the system that generates the response. We all are humans, but we go through different lives, and our values get slightly different. Some people went through more similar lives than the others, so there is a strong probability that they will respond in a similar way.
So I have heard two men, one in his late 40´s, the other one in his late 50´s, saying the sentence: “Now everybody would like to have a university degree.” It was the response to my proposal to establish a university or a college in one Czech town. For some time I was not able to decode the sentence. Later I found out that the motivation behind this sentence was the fear that the offsprings of these two men might not withstand the competition of so many new competitors, and also their own position in the hierarchy of this small town would come under the evolutionary pressure of competitors. So basically, this response is absolutely illogical, but extremely highly emotional.
The second time I have heard exactly the same response from two people who never had met before was the phrase: Czechs like to behave like the brave soldier Schweik.” This was a response to my criticism of Czech culture, Czech habits and traits displayed nowadays in the Czech Republic. Again I needed some time to decode the response. In this case the motivator is the perceived feeling of intelligent Czechs that what is happening here is a lost of basic culture that Czechs were used before, this on one side, on the other side it is a sentence protecting the group of Czechs to which these to people belong.
Again this response is not logical at all, it is only motivated by emotions. If one would like to apply logic to this statement one would have to know the story of “The brave soldier Schweik”. He was a poor man of incredibly low intelligence but anyway he somehow got through the tough years of WWI. So applying logic to this sentence would mean to maintain that Czechs are as stupid as this Soldier Schweik, which was no way the intention of the authors of the responses. The intention was to decrease the impact of my criticism of Czechs because they were Czechs too and felt that the group they belong to was offended.
The same happens with the reaction of Americans: “I have nothing to hide, so I do not care about my government mining data on me. What they want to say by this sentence basically means: I do not want to get involved with the government, they are too big mouthful for me, so I prefer to make out that I do not care, and in the direct competition with the author of the question, the second part comes:…”do you have something to hide?” This in turn shows a retort, that means – if you have something to hide that means that you are a bad guy, well and I have nothing to hide and therefore I am not a bad guy, which means I am standing above you in the hierarchy of American society.
So the situation is used or misused for a fight between two individuals in the hierarchy of human society and has absolutely nothing to do with logic, only with emotions, emotions of hierarchy.
The next reasonable question to ask were: where does the hierarchy from? I am not sure but I would suggest that it comes from the fact that the last one, the most handicapped is usually given up as a prey, as a target for predators. Therefore there might be a system evolved in our minds that we do not want to be eaten up and therefore we fight for higher position in hierarchy.
I am not 100 % sure to be right but as I gather information from all over the world in the Internet, I start to be more and more secure that I might be right. Quite recently I read an article about facts on Malta, and they show the same structure and the same principles.
When so called “boat people” , the African immigrants come to Malta, the lowest layer of the population on Malta feels a bit higher than these immigrants, and they gain on status, their position in hierarchy gets higher.
This pattern corresponds with a statement:”Nobody wants to be the last one.” And the reason for this statement might be the fear of being eaten up.
# posted by Dalibor @ 4:29 AM 
