Re: White Lives Matter
by doogles on September 13th, 2020, 6:52 am
Here's an excerpt from a book titled ANIMALS, BRAINS AND CULTURES on the similarities of motivation and behaviour in humans and other animals. This brief comment on pecking orders is one of about 13 drives I regarded as innate because of its prevalence across many species. It's not posted as a response to Serpent, so much as just one person's view of pecking orders and their possible role in racism, sexism and nationalism. The book itself is not popular because it tends to show that we humans are still just as 'primitive' in our behaviour as other animals lower in the phylogenetic order.
WE ALL LEARN TO KNOW OUR PLACES WITHIN OUR GROUPS
Isolated groups of bulls will brawl to the detriment of the farmer’s barbed wire fences until they establish an order of physical superiority. The lacerations from the fences are nothing compared with the desire for dominance. Once the order is established, no more brawling ensues unless a new bull is introduced, or unless the equilibrium is disturbed by removing one of the bulls from the paddock for a while, and then returning it.
Herds of cows have definite pecking orders. Any dairy farmer can point out the boss order in his herd. He may have some difficulty with the exact order in the middle group, but he will have no trouble pointing out the top boss and the lowest in the order.
If ever a flock of sheep is confined for a prolonged period in a pen or a yard, an hierarchy will be established, sometimes to the detriment of some of the sheep that may be prevented from feeding. Jostling ceases once all animals accept certain positions in the pecking order.
Rabbits also have bullies. At a laboratory-animal holding house I once supervised, we decided to take all of the rabbits out of individual cages and place them in groups in pens on wood chips - for animal welfare reasons. One of the problems was that bully rabbits emerged. In one particular pen, a large brown rabbit was so bossy that it started inflicting multiple bite wounds on the other rabbits. In this case, we collectively decided to try putting a collar around the neck of the offending rabbit, and tying a weight to it. This had the effect of handicapping it from pouncing on the others. It turned out to be too effective. The other rabbits found that they could bite the bully without reprisal and mount it in a simulated sex act, even though we had neutered all of the males. They did this to the point where the bully seemed to completely lose its spirit. The assaults continued even after we removed the weights. We had to isolate that rabbit in a cage for its own survival. Such is the nature of the pecking order - even in penned rabbits.
If dogs are kept in pairs in pens, one will occasionally kill or badly injure the other. It was my assumption that they were cases of dominance assertion. I saw a number of cases while in practice, and I had to patch up many badly mauled dogs. It may be similar with people. Every year in Brisbane, we see media reports of cases of stabbing incidents between two human males living together. Whether it’s for dominance, or a result of an insult to self-image, is never discussed.
It may seem surprising that one never hears of the cases that occur in animals of the kind I’ve cited. But then again, I’ve never notified a newspaper of such things, and I have a feeling that people would not really want to hear about them; it would shatter their delusion that animals are kind to one another. There is one report though. In 1987, JA Serpell, an American veterinarian wrote about litter mates of dogs killing one another in an article on The Influence of Inheritance on Canine Behaviour: Myth and Fact.
Although none of us had heard of such a thing at the time, a strong physical pecking order did exist among my peers when I was at primary school. It reflected the imagined physical strength of other young males. There weren’t any contests of strength, although there were physical contact games that tended to give you some idea of your relative strength. There were a couple of boys who were a little bigger or a little older, whom we acknowledged as top of the pecking order. At the next level, there were one or two who had demonstrated either some form of physical superiority at games, or who, as in one case, showed a slight tendency towards insanely berserk reactions in a fight. Others left this one alone.
I fancied myself in my self-image as being just somewhere below this group. As studies have shown with other species, it was among a lower group, at my own perceived level, where physical challenges occurred. Although I was small, I felt physically superior to some of the other boys. It wasn’t as if anybody spoke about these things. The entire pecking order just seemed to exist.
There came a day when one of the boys at my own perceived level, challenged me to a fight. Like gentlemen, we agreed to meet in one of the playgrounds at lunchtime. I was wishing the other kid would show up sick or something because I wasn’t looking forward to the idea of a punch-up. No such luck! Anyhow, the result was that I retained my status, because just about when I started to feel it was hurting a bit much, the other kid broke down crying and ran off.
Within six months, another kid wanted to have me on. Life’s tough if you’re not at the top of the tree, and if you don’t readily accept a position at the bottom.
These types of fistfights were quite common in the area in which I was reared, and the status of the victor was always enhanced.
Apart from attempts by individuals to gain dominance within their own groups, there are now many reported cases of conflict between entire groups of animals of the same species. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee (p 261), Jared Diamond cited examples of inter-troop conflicts between Langur monkeys, lions, wolves and hyenas that resulted variably in the killing of neighbouring infants, the repulsion or killing of neighbouring males and the killing or kidnap of neighbouring females.
In the same book on pages 262 to 264, Jarod cited the report by Jane Goodall of the guerrilla type attacks by one group of mainly bachelor male chimpanzees from one troop on a neighbouring troop. They eliminated the neighbouring troop one by one over a period of several years, till they were able to take over the territory. The only difference between this case and human genocide seemed to be, as Jared pointed out, that chimpanzees lacked the educated skills to kill efficiently.
Not all confrontations between neighbouring groups of animals result in combat. In most cases of confrontation, one troop will back off without a fight if it is obvious that the numbers are greater on the other side. Apparent might determines the rights at the time. So what’s new about the ‘Arms Race’, or even border confrontations in our own species?
Perhaps one of the reasons we wage wars is because we have not established the natural physical superiority of the warring groups. No! Let’s put it another way. If it was clear beforehand that one of the two groups could destroy the other, then the less adequate group would stick to negotiations rather than force a military issue. Wars only stop when one of the two groups establishes the ability to destroy the other, or when both groups realise that neither is achieving dominance and they mutually agree to cease hostilities. Of course, the initial reason for the war is usually an insult or threat to the established psychosocial ways of one of the groups, or disagreement over territory, or a threat of economic loss, the equivalent of accumulated harvest. But the lesson is that the more established the pecking order, the less the number of conflicts.
Within our society, we have established pecking orders in many ways. From an early age, we accept that our parents are stronger and higher in the order than we are. Of course, there inevitably comes a stage in our lives when we have conflicts with them in a vague attempt to establish our own position within the family. Mostly we do this too soon and when we are far too little. It’s natural for two- and three-year-olds to attempt to defy their parents’ requests. Up till the last decade or so, a token smack on the backside used to quickly establish the correct pecking order.
We usually make a more serious attempt during our teen years, sometimes resulting in prolonged conflicts within families. Some husbands and wives indulge in lifetime battles to achieve psychological superiority over one another. I find it uncomfortable to be in the presence of couples who indulge in points scoring.
We tend to avoid such attempts in public life by establishing status. It’s primitive in one way but it works. Many big businesses have hierarchy systems. Chief Executive Officers, Directors, Managers, Assistant Managers, Foremen and Workers all have to acknowledge the rankings, otherwise conflict occurs in the firm. Workers usually do not talk to managers as they would to another worker of equal rank. We usually regard any departure from this situation as unusual. Generally, there is relatively free communication between foremen and workers, but even then, there are limits. One does not tell a foreman that he doesn’t know his job without the foreman reacting in the usual way to an insult to self-image. In such a case, the foreman has the power of the hierarchy, the power to dismiss you from your job.
If you’ve ever worked in a large organisation you will also have noticed that there is a corollary to this pecking order. We have terms such as toadies, sycophants, and brown-nosers in our language for people who ingratiate themselves with the bosses, and who, because of this established liaison, lord it over others who do not ‘brown nose’ the boss. In a recent e-mail dictionary, a new word has been introduced – ‘arsemosis’, which is defined as the absorption of success and advancement in the workplace by sucking up to the boss. As I said, if you’ve ever worked in a large institution, you will know what I mean.
Would you believe that a similar social situation has been described in a troop of baboons? Lorus and Margery Milne in The Animal in Man, cite the work of Irven de Vore who studied olive baboons in Kenya. Apparently, a number of sycophantic baboons kowtow to the dominant male baboon and become part of the central hierarchy. These baboons can and do threaten males outside the central group and even attack them with impunity. The attacked males cannot retaliate without appearing to challenge the dominant male.
We have pecking orders within many of our groups. Democratically we elect presidents, vice-presidents, and committee members in most organisations within my culture. In doing so, we establish mutually agreeable pecking orders for specified periods. Groups seem to function better with pecking orders.
Status means power of one sort or another. As a bonus, there is usually more money associated with top jobs, and in all societies, money equates with power. People in the top positions have a sense of being in control, and this gives them a sense of security.
Perhaps the next best thing to being the top person in an institutional pecking order is having the feeling of being better than someone else is. Racism, sexism, and all forms of bullying fall into this category. There will always be a tendency for bullying to occur in schoolyards simply because of our innate natures. The best we can do is to devise ways of keeping it under control.
It seemed to me while dealing with cattle that if ever one cow found another one in a disadvantageous position she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to give it a good hard thump. I concluded it was an attempt to assert authority over another. Aren’t Australian politicians exactly like that too? If you ever watch Question Time in Parliament, you will see something similar every day. Whenever a politician of one persuasion finds any evidence of a mistake or mis-demeanour associated with a politician of another persuasion, he will never miss the opportunity to denigrate his opponent. If cats find themselves face to face, it usually results in a slapping contest till one backs off.
An American schoolteacher named Jane Elliott demonstrated how easy it is to establish relative dominance and submission of not only children, but of adults, over others on the basis of such an arbitrary characteristic as the colour of one’s eyes. In an initial experiment, she divided a class of all white students into two groups depending on their eye colour - light colours such as blue or green, and dark coloured. She broadly classified them as blue or brown. On the first day, she proclaimed that the ones with blue eyes had superior intelligence and that brown eyes equated with inferiority. She reported that the ‘superior’ students quickly began to dominate the brown-eyed ones, the latter exhibited self-loathing and fear. When she reversed the roles the next day, the behavioural attitudes of the respective groups also became reversed.
Later in 1996, she produced a videotape called Blue-eyed in which she demonstrated this same experiment with mixed age adults. Even though it was only role-playing, those deemed to be inferior, really felt inferior. Some adults in the so-called inferior group were reduced to tears after only hours of torment because of a morbid feeling of inferiority. As Jane Elliott pointed out, eye colour was a characteristic over which they had no control, because they were born with it.
If authority is to be asserted, it needs to be obvious to the lower orders exactly which individuals are in charge. Now humans can’t go around asserting their authority in the same way as top dogs, stallions, bulls or silverback gorillas, but consider the equivalents. They may wear a uniform, which announces their rank or position. Or they may have special privileges and accessories that will make their status plain -- reserved parking places, the keys to the executive washroom, a certain quality of carpet on the floor, a chair with a higher back than those used by subordinates, are all well-known markers of a person’s status among his or her colleagues.
Peter (1973) wrote about hierarchies. He claimed he had founded a new science, Hierarchiology. On this subject he wrote (p 4) - “Man orders his affairs in hierarchies. His schools are ordered in grades from kindergarten through graduate school. His businesses are operated with employees in order of rank. His government is organised with taxpayers forming the base and the national leader as the apex. Similarly, the military, fraternal orders, social welfare, sports and the Mafia are all structured on hierarchies … Each hierarchy consists of an arrangement of ranks, or classes to which each individual may be assigned."