Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
The need to assert individual or group superiority, I would guess, is based on an actual sense of inferiority, and if an individual or a group doesn't have objective reasons to feel good about themselves the only alternative is to assert the inferiority of others....
The need to assert individual superiority is built into all intelligent mammals, especially predators. It is absolutely fundamental and inescapable. I would call it human nature but it goes way beyond humans, to all primates and beyond.
You can trigger vivid examples in any group of people within about a half-hour, simply by segregating them and assigning roles to them, even when everyone knows the roles are fantasy. This is a well-known experiment in psychology. For example, you take a group of high school or college kids, and you randomly assign half of them to be "guards" and half of them "prisoners." You give the guards some arbitrary power to rule over the actions of the prisoners, bully them and push them around. In practically no time you will see actual bullying and persecution. Experiments like this usually have to be terminated quickly before someone gets seriously hurt or upset.
Perhaps it is an apocryphal story, but one of the funniest examples of this I heard was during the making of one of the "Planet of the Apes" movies which featured a variety of primates: chimpanzees, gorillas and so on. They had hundreds of actors dressed up in one category or another. Because it took a long time to put on these costumes, they would put them on in the morning and wear them all day, except for the headgear. Since the various groups such as chimpanzees appeared in scenes together as a group they had to practice together, and they tended to bond and have lunch together. So far so good -- it would be reasonable for them to bond together. But I read somewhere that after a week or so the chimpanzees began insulting the guerrillas and vice versa. They started circulating rumors that only inferior actors were given that role, and you can't trust those gorillas; you know they are sabotaging the picture and God knows what else they are up to. I mean, would you want your daughter to marry one . . . etc.
- Jed
