It is human nature to want to aggregate in groups that have
something in common, and that usually revolve around common roots and beliefs.
But as we can usually observe, while some groups form, others separate, and new
ones are born all the time depending on external conditions.
WHY.
We humans have this basic, instinctive need to travel in
packs, a characteristic that we share with many other animals. While this - now
futile - instinct has persisted for favoring survival in the past, we still
haven't gotten over it and nor will we anytime soon. Elliot Aronson was the
first to refer to the human being in his famous work as "The Social
Animal". That is after all what distinguishes us from any other animal;
and although we might lack the organization that other animals have, we sure
focus a lot of our time and energy to stay integrated in a social organization
we don't really need; and although it is this organization that made humanity
the supreme species it is today, we can clearly see that this particular social
arrangement is trivial and futile.
When I say all that, I'm not talking about human relations
and their need for contact with other humans in small circles, but about the
whole multidimensional, gridded, and varying hierarchy of society.
It starts out from the youngest age and goes on to
adulthood. Though we might find some schools that escape this hierarchic
madness, we still can't but find kids who get together and think of themselves
as superior to others, and exclude other kids on the sole condition of them
being different. This might not be representative of our adult society but it
gives us an idea about the inborn instinct that accompanies the man since its
birth.
In adult life, the criteria differ, but we still have that
same exclusion/inclusion. Money adds itself as a condition to enter a social
group, and we still find the same old fear of the Other and the comfort when
being surrounded by people who are like us. And what makes it even more ironic
is the fact that the more exclusive the group, the less humanity governs the
relations between its members.
But we can affirm that after all, it's not a matter of
hierarchy as much as a matter of belonging. Of course there is always the
ineluctable feeling of superiority of the group one as an individual belongs
to, but this only goes back to the natural born vanity of human beings.
At it all goes back to the jungle law and the protected
feeling we get when in a mass.
We are all a bunch of civilized sheep.
