We abandon hierarchies of competence at our peril. We see examples of them all throughout nature. Hierarchies of competence are older than trees. Without them, life would dissolve into weakness and homogeneity.
Lobsters, for example, use the same dopaminergic mechanism that humans have to promote productive behavior. When a male lobster is defeated by another male lobster, he adopts a deflated posture- just as humans do when they feel dejected. The losing lobster is depressed. He loses initiative. His body is telling him that he is unfit for prosperity- and his body language transmits that message to the other lobsters.
In human society, we have removed the hierarchy of competence from a direct relationship with imminent danger. We have replaced them with professions, trades, craft, leadership, and so on. People have a greater chance than any other type of animal to prosper due to their peculiarities- rather than in spite of them.
If you wanted to sabotage a society, a good way to do it would be to convince people that hierarchies of competence are only hierarchies of dominance where the winner brutalizes the loser- worse that the winner is necessarily base, stupid, animalistic, uneducated and mean. You would tell people that strength is only a tool of the oppressor- that virtue and beauty are only subjective ideas, rather than the obvious goods that they are.
You would begin to pressure people to accept incompetence into their hierarchies in the name of ‘inclusivity’ or some such nonsense.
Here, Dirty Harry reminds us- dramatically- why this is foolish.
