When looking at the pre-1914 world, it's amazing how much they tried to introduce (propagate?) artificial total orders: if you have a bishop and a baron over for dinner, who gets served first, that sort of thing.
Not just hierarchy but to create a common ground for everyone involved. Very helpful. If you’ve ever felt awkward at an event because you didn’t know the customs — this is to avoid that.
The other way to avoid it is to just respect everyone at your table, like Guru Nanak and those like him who have trod the road to universal compassion, and just keep things as simple as possible.
Hierarchies are great for govt, militaries, and companies, but only when kept to a minimum. The US was successful in WWII because the commanders set the goals and then let their sub-leaders get on with their jobs, allowing for creative, adaptive improvisation. Korean Airlines' cultural hierarchies almost got them delisted from Canada's airspace.
Spiritual folks within their orgs each have different levels of development, but if someone believes they are "better" than another person, that's the ego.
An enlightened individual is kind and respectful to everyone. At the same time, they always bear the truth without regard to people's ego-bruises and supposed slights. Those are what they are and are solely that person's responsibility to level-up from.
Of course, while the USA has been so organised as to develop and document its customs in great detail, this in itself has created a whole new set of customs for foreign diplomats to learn!
I also noted with amusement this extract from the USA's Office of the Chief of Protocol website:
> Formal invitations... ...preferred lettering style is script and all wording is spelled out without the use of acronyms.
You still see some of that in etiquette books from the mid 20th century.
I think it's funny how hierarchies proliferate in people's imaginations, for instance in Chinese mythology they believe fox spirits form a hierarchy under
The difference is that we hear the voices of people who don't run in the same circles as bishops and barons...or to put it another way, bishops and barons still exist with all that their existence implies.
The bishops* and barons of my acquaintance don't stand on outdated protocol during social events — or at least they don't during the sorts of events to which I'm invited.
* then again, our local bishop has fallen on hard times: the bishopric used to wield both spiritual and temporal power, but these days is pretty much restricted to the former.
Are you referring to the United Kingdom? Because there is no formal difference between 'spiritual' and 'temporal' power in the upper house, only a difference in how the peer gets into it. All bishops in the House of Lords (which is only a fraction of bishops in the Church) can vote on the same motions that the lords can, and some of them (but not that many) choose to do so.
Such customs are still around and are proudly followed in places like military especially the Navy.
Common wealth navies still have ceremonial dinners which cater to the attendance of the Queen (or King now). There is a whole lot of intricacies that goes on there.
The problem isn't the projecting. The problem is treating a projection as if it was the thing itself, or its One True Representation, instead of merely a facet that should be considered together with many other projections along different axes.
You have a point, but you know where it originates: we all want to know if A is better than B. This article adds a bit to existing models by not only estimating the values of the As and Bs, but also of the structure of the competition.
When looking at the pre-1914 world, it's amazing how much they tried to introduce (propagate?) artificial total orders: if you have a bishop and a baron over for dinner, who gets served first, that sort of thing.
In official diplomacy that is very much alive, eg for the US: https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/secretary-of-state/off...
Not just hierarchy but to create a common ground for everyone involved. Very helpful. If you’ve ever felt awkward at an event because you didn’t know the customs — this is to avoid that.
The other way to avoid it is to just respect everyone at your table, like Guru Nanak and those like him who have trod the road to universal compassion, and just keep things as simple as possible.
Hierarchies are great for govt, militaries, and companies, but only when kept to a minimum. The US was successful in WWII because the commanders set the goals and then let their sub-leaders get on with their jobs, allowing for creative, adaptive improvisation. Korean Airlines' cultural hierarchies almost got them delisted from Canada's airspace.
Spiritual folks within their orgs each have different levels of development, but if someone believes they are "better" than another person, that's the ego.
An enlightened individual is kind and respectful to everyone. At the same time, they always bear the truth without regard to people's ego-bruises and supposed slights. Those are what they are and are solely that person's responsibility to level-up from.
Of course, while the USA has been so organised as to develop and document its customs in great detail, this in itself has created a whole new set of customs for foreign diplomats to learn!
I also noted with amusement this extract from the USA's Office of the Chief of Protocol website:
> Formal invitations... ...preferred lettering style is script and all wording is spelled out without the use of acronyms.
Répondez s'il vous plaît?
That is not USA specific thing. This is general diplomacy thing. As in, USA is not special and other countries behave in exactly the same way.
Diplomats are used to this.
You still see some of that in etiquette books from the mid 20th century.
I think it's funny how hierarchies proliferate in people's imaginations, for instance in Chinese mythology they believe fox spirits form a hierarchy under
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxian
I guess the one-tail foxes follow the two-tail foxes and so forth. Maybe it is just my fox affinity but I like my vision of that.
Those things still apply.
The difference is that we hear the voices of people who don't run in the same circles as bishops and barons...or to put it another way, bishops and barons still exist with all that their existence implies.
The bishops* and barons of my acquaintance don't stand on outdated protocol during social events — or at least they don't during the sorts of events to which I'm invited.
* then again, our local bishop has fallen on hard times: the bishopric used to wield both spiritual and temporal power, but these days is pretty much restricted to the former.
Are you referring to the United Kingdom? Because there is no formal difference between 'spiritual' and 'temporal' power in the upper house, only a difference in how the peer gets into it. All bishops in the House of Lords (which is only a fraction of bishops in the Church) can vote on the same motions that the lords can, and some of them (but not that many) choose to do so.
Such customs are still around and are proudly followed in places like military especially the Navy.
Common wealth navies still have ceremonial dinners which cater to the attendance of the Queen (or King now). There is a whole lot of intricacies that goes on there.
In which humans continue to try to understand complex systems by projecting them onto a single axis.
The problem isn't the projecting. The problem is treating a projection as if it was the thing itself, or its One True Representation, instead of merely a facet that should be considered together with many other projections along different axes.
You have a point, but you know where it originates: we all want to know if A is better than B. This article adds a bit to existing models by not only estimating the values of the As and Bs, but also of the structure of the competition.
But you're right: it remains superficial.