A Guide to Social Hierachy

A Guide to Social Hierarchy

Foreword

As I will come to explain later, being the reader of this post you will approach this writing differently that someone who did not who i was. If you don't know who I am on a personal level then my words of advice would be for you to do something other read the blog of unknown teenager as it would affect your social standing if it were to be ever found out. To the readers who do, please forget for the time in which you read this passage. Thank you.


Definition

The core aspect to social hierarchy is, and always will be, the definition of a person. The accepted definition of an individual will decide the way in which that person will be perceived by others. Once defined, it is usually very hard for one to part with that definition without dropping down the hierarchy. The process of definition usually occurs within the first minutes of social interaction with someone already well established on the social ladder. Personality is by no means the only factor involved. Factors including social history, financial history, wit and intellect are also taken into account. Although individual perceptions may change, eventually through social speculation (gossip) a general consensus is built up and then fixed around that person. Definition rarely changes as society is built of self-serving individuals. By exposing a radical opinion, one risks damaging their own position. However, change is not impossible, but is usually incredibly slow.

Social Evolution

Not only is the individual subject to definition but also the ladder itself. Thus, the ladder is also open to gradual change. Although the defining process still occurs, the attributes deciding position in the hierarchy change. This is called social evolution. As history shows, ideas and perceptions change over the years. This progress is also made on the short term social scene as well. A change in definition will therefore not guarantee a change in social rank if it correlates with social evolution. It is argued however, that "ageing" rather than evolution would be a more appropriate word. Since different social parts change at different rates and in different ways I feel evolution would be better fitting as social groups change in order to ensure the survival of the group. If social groups were unable to evolve it may lead to social REvolution which would destroy the ladder itself. Considering the ladder is not a strictly singular form, it cannot choose to evolve, but its leading members tend to take steps towards conserving the existing form through satisfying reform. It is the idea to reform and to preserve social advantages of the high social class that keeps society a perpetual organism.

Social Hierarchy

There are four main ranks in the social hierarchy; Monarchs, citizens, peasants and outcastes. Only through the workings of definition is one placed on the social hierarchy. A major factor in the determination of position is social history. This is the amount of influence one carries before being defined. If one has more social links when being defined then their spot is going to be higher. This leads us to one of the fundamental rules of social importance "rank α no. of social links", your social position is directly proportional to how many friends you have. Society is one super structual molecule, with an almost an infinite number of individual atoms. The more links each atom can make with other atoms, the higher their stability is within the molecule. So by increasing the number or friends you have, your definition will keep getting higher, dragging the consensus of your definition higher as well.

The behaviour of each rank within society is different. Monarchs are occupied only by the consolidation of their position. Being so high up the "food chain" provides influence and authority, which is an advantage to any person. This leads me to the "paternal theory". In order to ensure survival, monarchs must constantly secure themselves, by expanding the number of social links they have. It this need of the monarchs that gives the next rank "citizens" some sort of power. Monarchs need support of the middling sort to keep themselves status safe. They usually take citizens under their wing and provide some sort of security or reward. This can lead to the building of factions. This technique keeps monarchs in power while limiting competition.

Citizens are high members of society. They are the higher middling sort, not preoccupied with power but still influential. Unlike the monarchs, citizens tend to interact with the peasants, and their position fluctuates the most out of all four social positions. Peasants are the lower orders, often striving for social progression or not interested at all. Both these social groups can fly up the ladder through paternalistic monarchs or through the "parasitical theory". The theory is that people can act as parasites to climb the ladder. People tend to use the influence of others to boost their own position and then jump to another person to boost their influence again and so forth. This theory is distinctly different to the paternal theory. The paternal theory is strictly action from the top-down whereas the parasitical theory is actions from the bottom-up.

The last social position are outcastes. This group usually contains people with foul personalities or people who are too radical that they endanger social stability. Outcastes usually claim not to be part of the social hierarchy, however, this is just a ploy to convince others or themselves that they don;t need social interaction. This reaction is an attempt to redefine themselves as independent and to boost themselves up the ladder once more. Social outcastes can usually reconcile themselves with the hierarchy through social evolution but scars are often made.

The main advantage of social substance is the bandwagon effect. If you are to say something, it will be more believable if others around you agree. This means people in the higher orders have opinions that are worth more, which is of course an incredibly powerful weapon. The next advantage is that of ego. Social standing can help to satisfy and often inflate many an ego. Outcastes and lower peasants usually have low self-esteem and this affects their social interactions, pushing their status even lower, as well as living rather sad lives.

The Future of Social Hierarchy

Society and social hierarchy will always exist as the power elite will always look for ways to perpetuate their power. Even if there was to be a revolution, power would simply change hands and the new power elite will look for ways to perpetuate power. Social distribution is possible but however unlikely. So until Neo-Marxist find a solution it looks like we're stuck with it.

japaneesee

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nope its never gonna catch on, i reli dnt understand those stupid japs!

now i dont condone racism...but some times its funny.

or is it?

nah not reli if u think bout it

i mean how much offense do u actuli cause?

i make jews jokes all the time

but as soon as someone makes a stupid many arms hindu god joke i get all pissd off

maybe cos its so inaccurate

ignorance makes me so angry

but i love being igonrant, its bliss

does that make me a hypocrite?

how do u spell hypocrite?

hippo means horse

it latin

u now how u can tell latin is dead?

cos catholic priests dnt have babies....

cos theyre gay paedophiles...

now thats a huge generalisation!

and a lil racist aswell

but catholicism isnt a race now is it?

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i never got that

i never got a lot of things

like why does everything i talk about end up being about me?

am i that self obsessd?

why do i always end up analysing what i do?

like mussolini's economic policy

failure innit;)

so school starts soon

these exams have been well stressful

didnt even have time to write on my blog

but lukkily i dnt think ppl actuli red this wen they were revising

altho.....

im nt sure where i ws goin there

lol while im writin this im sorta half blankin george..

thats quite deep

lemme reply to what he sed hold up...

...

well i sed something stupid and he politely laughed..

they always do

theyre probly dying on the inside

i wouldnt know

theres alot i dont know

but who cares?

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lol?

freshly squeezed blog juice

hey guys, heres me squeezing out a post in the middle of so far very unsucessful january exams. but we're not george so were not gnna talk about that ;) 2 all y'all that dont write on a blog on a regular basis u wouldnt understand how difficult it can be to simply churn one post out when u choose to do so, especially in the uninspiring january study leave. nothing has happened, i mean nothing! well apart from like israeli conflict n shiz but that doesnt really affect ME. so my c:/ gt corrupted a few days ago, and i sed goodbye to about 300gb of information while shedding a tear. its weird how personalized pc can get, like adjustin ur living room so its juuuuust right. well actuli i dnt do that my mum dus so visitors will be impressd. but we dnt get ne visitors nemor cos my house is crap. lol women.... its weird how u can get so emotionally attached to house hold objects aswell. i mean i ws sad cos i gt a new bed, all the memories that i had in that old one.. *thinks* good good but confused times. i havent had coffee in 72 hours and i slept like a baby last night, wel i woke up three times but u kno wen uve had a good sleep wen it feels like uve been asleep for ages. some people say they go to sleep and then they wake up not realising the time passing. i dnt think thats tru, well atleast not for me, i can sorta tell how long ive been asleep for most of the time. but last night i thought it ws like 7AMish but it ws only 3am, i ws pleasantly surprisd. u kno wt i ws sayin like at the start of this post, about it bein hard to write posts, well now ive sorta gt in the groove in this one ive changed my mind. its only hard if ur tryin too hard. like if ur tryin to sound cool or creative or funny or like wen i make a serious one. its ur mind set reli, u gtta just start day dreamin but then type wt ur thinkin even if its not interesting cos sometimes wt we think of as normal can seem weird to other people. lol y am i givin u tips on how to write a blog, like im an expert. but it is reli weird tho wen u write a post, now i kno how anne frank felt...sorta...it wud be unwise to make such a comparison. but i never RELI thought of it this way but writing is like the opposite of reading, i mean i did but i didnt REALLY. now i now people read differently aswell cos some ppl-like me-imagine a person reading out loud in their head or if its a novel the words eventually turn into pictures, but some ppl see the words and form images str8 away even if its like a biology or math txt book and thats kinda weird i thought. but neway reading sort of creates a stream of thought that ur sorta latching on to.... writin is like transmitting and then latching on to the stream ur on to keep u goin... lol that reli doesnt make sense.. ive always found it hard translate wt i think into words, my rents i talk way too fast but i think i speak just fine. u kno wt, i reli dnt trust recordings of my voice cos that reli isnt wt i sound like, i mean i WOULD know!! or wud i? wt do i know? actuli lets not get into epistemologics .. i tell wt i do know, man utd are like 2 points off the top of the table with a game in hand (15/1/09) lol it felt odd typin 09! its 2009 alredi man lifes just shooting past isnt it! it felt like only yday wen i ws revising C3.. oh yh 2 points of the top, but they lost rooney for 3 weeks. it wud take the piss if they win the league. arsenal were hypin up the 20th anniversary of when they won the league at anfield in like the 89 min or something wt a game! but in the advert the focus on fabregas and walcott.... how about we compare players that have their joints intact ay? man it feels following football is all i do anymore, apart from writin on a blog and revisin occasionally... and helpin my mum find fukkin gyms on the internet! that fukkin woman is so clueless! sigh *inhale..exhale..inhale..exhale*. well i lost that "stream" or wteva the fuk i ws ranting about, yh i can have sound like such a douche sometimes.. peace

Brainwashed Britain?

You know what guys? It’s time for another “serious” post... yay?! You know what else guys? The response to the freedom of speech post I wrote scared me. There seemed to be no opposition to the concept whatsoever, but is there any need to oppose it in any way? Of course there is! That’s why I’m going to give a more sustained version of my opinion and hopefully it’ll trigger some more encouraging feedback, not that I was unhappy with your comments before ;).

So why do we have freedom of speech in the first place? One argument is that it's one of our “natural rights”; anyone and everyone should be able to say whatever they want. This explanation doesn’t take into account laws on inciting racial hatred; it’s clearly not a natural right to convince people that coloured people are less than human. Well what other use could this freedom have? It allows different ideas to circulate as well as allowing people’s actions and ideas to be openly questioned and scrutinised. In other words it lays the foundations for political, ideological and social pluralism. It’s always a good idea to have different opinions, it’s what keeps scientists discovering and stops politicians turning into gods on earth. I suppose in turn this could lead to idea of toleration of different views and even a reduction of violence provoked by beliefs. On the other hand it could increase the amount of ideological clashes; too many cooks spoil the broth. This could lead to rather than reduce violence; looking at prime ministers questions, maybe different views doesn’t always produce a pleasant outcome.

I think the right of free speech was developed on the idea that people are rational thinkers. We are quite clearly not so rational, at least not all of us and certainly not all of the time. If we were, then we’d be in a war-free world. We’d be robots, probably communist robots :p. Not all people are educated and we're not all the brightest bulbs, people really are easily swayed. Set one Christian missionary in Nigeria and... whahey! You have a country of Christians, who think some kids are witches. Freedom of speech is potentially very dangerous. Hitler roused the masses through speech, but you’d defend his right to do so wouldn’t you Mr Voltaire?

Now I’m going to quote myself “freedom of speech allows... Ideas to be openly questioned and scrutinised” yet it seemed no one questioned the concept of free speech itself in my earlier post (does that make it useless?or is it ironic...whatever!). Does the idea of allowing others to express different views just mask the fact that there might well be an ideological monopoly already in place? Are we a nation of brain washed liberals? I mean if you met someone who was against the idea of universal suffrage you wouldn’t think twice about branding him as a radical, you’d “defend his right to say it” but his opinion would be worthless. If I were to openly oppose the idea of freedom of speech then my views would be seem as intolerant, I wouldn’t be taken seriously, and my opinion would not count as much as others’. I feel that this is precisely opposes what freedom of speech represents. We should be able to listen to different views (even if intolerant) and take them into consideration, not to unquestioningly obey liberal principles. There’s no point allowing other views to be expressed just to pay no attention to them.

I am well in favour of freedom of speech but I am aware of the many negatives it could produce. I feel the crucial notion cannot be truly understood or valued until its own existence is questioned. I hope you don't mind how I’ve patronized you, the majority of you probably feel that you’ve already thought of what I’ve said and i apologize. But I ask you now, are we a brainwashed nation just like any other fundamentalist country like Iran? Islamic theocracy and social democracy aren’t so different after all, are they :p?