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Baseball Bats And Dominance Hierarchies
The Lessons of History
The Durants’, prolific historians, open The Lessons of History with a simple premise: human interactions are the manifestation of biology: competition, selection, and propagation.
Life is Competition – All living organisms, including humans, must compete for resources, survival, and dominance. This competition occurs at individual, group, and national levels. (If some manage to skip competing for resources it is because they are lucky and protected, but inevitably their groups compete to provide them with this security.)
Life is Selection – Nature favors the strong, intelligent, and adaptable. Over time, certain individuals and groups rise to prominence due to their ability to outcompete others.
Life Must Breed – Societies that fail to reproduce sufficiently (either biologically or culturally) will decline and be replaced by those that do.
Darwinism shows how small advantages compound over generations, like autocatalytic feedback loops accumulating resources, influence, and power. Indeed, natural selection is even a form of networked effects – traits that enhance survival and reproduction – tall pretty people with thick lush hair and pearly white teeth – propagate and dominate. While those who can’t get dates, their traits fade like a fart in the wind. And because of the 80:20 rule, only a few lucky-duckies can rise to the top.
The Winner-Loser Continuum
Even the neurochemicals that power our meaty biological brainy hardware, follow distinct patterns, like when serotonin and octopamine constitute feedback loops as outlined in the great lobster analogy: 480 million years on this earth lobsters behave much like trash-talk-fighting humans because of our shared neurotransmitters. (Humans are only 300K years old.) Research into lobster brains and social interactions reveals that lobsters compete for resources like shelters and there are winners and losers, which manifests in their neurochemistry via autocatalytic reactions. If a badass lobster needs a home, there’s a duel. In the beginning both lobsters start the fight with high levels of serotonin, displayed by their impeccable posture: they stand tall, strut, and fuss. If the battle proceeds, they excrete fluid from glands beneath their eyes to communicate health and stamina status—much like human posture and the quantity of collagen showcases vitality in our faces. Next, a lobster is losing a limb, but when the dust settles a clear loser and winner with a house emerges. Unfortunately for the loser – their brain breaks: a surge of octopamine bums them out, and contracts their posture as an octopamine feedback takes hold. Coincidentally, when researchers feed losing lobsters prozac they fight again because much like in humans, prozac cures depression with a shot of serotonin. On the flip side, winning brains are standing tall and pumping serotonin.
Dominance Hierarchies
Leveling up with horse herds, the same neurochemical feedback loops dictate strict kick-you-in-the-teeth hierarchies, which operate much like corporations. In herds, each horse simultaneously dominates and is dominated, with the exception of the top and bottom horses: A dominates B, B dominates C, C dominates D, D dominates E. C is subservient to A and B, but gets to dominate D and E. E is the lowest thus is dominated by ABCD (E can’t say no if someone wants them to get their knees dirty). The same dynamics govern corporations: senior vice presidents dominate vice presidents, vice presidents dominate senior directors, senior directors dominate directors, directors dominate managers, managers dominate entry-level workers. And just like duelling lobsters, those in the herd are winning and losing on octopamine and serotonin feedback loops. Where winning lobsters secure the best shelters near great food in lobsterland, the biggest chickens position themselves at the front of the coop for the best food and senior vice presidents and directors, with the best pay, live in the best communities with great shops, schools, and hospitals.
In Conclusion
Neurochemical feedback loops and dominance hierarchies are the archaic systems, the hardware layer maintaining society, that keep people and by extension the economy motoring. Let’s dig into the software layer to see why the medium is the message.