Hierarchy Drama Quotes

Part of the hem floated loose. She spun around again—the fabric tightened like wool on a spindle. She breathed in fear. The boat was farther away. She swung her head around—so was the shore.

Von Trotha said, “The Wahehe are a tribe of about one quarter of a million people! On the 17th of August 1891, they defeated the German expedition against them which was led by Zeleski.

Kumakura’s use of the word sensei, reserved for professionals, including doctors and lawyers, but which Japanese doctors tried to reserve to themselves, was tacit acknowledgment that Kumakura knew the hierarchy had changed.

What is the place of art in the Christian life? Is art- especially the fine arts- simply a way to bring worldliness in through the back door? What about sculpture or drama, music or painting? Do these have any place in the Christian life? Shouldn't a Christian focus his gaze steadily on "religious things" alone and forget about art and culture? As evangelical Christians, we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the lordship of Christ over the whole man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives, and for our culture. The lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul, and redemption is for the whole man.

The eldest child is the golden one, the middle child invisible, and the youngest child is loud.

In a social system there are three levels of democracy. The lowest level is the undemocratic system, where the government falsifies the voting system. This is a political tragedy. The middle level in a democratic hierarchy is pure democracy, where both the government and the opposition are in tough competition in political elections. This level of democracy is reminiscent of political drama. And the last - the highest level - is supra-democracy, where the falsification of the electoral system is carried out by the opposition, which leads to a political comedy in the political arena.

This jostling for position in the household hierarchy was a drama that was played out every day. It must have been important to the people involved, in the context of their narrow lives and their work, but to us it appeared petty and absurd. It had probably been going on for generations before us and will probably continue for generations into the future. But it must inhibit industry and innovation and is no doubt, even now, contributing to Britain’s commercial and social decline.

Each man’s place in the company hierarchy, perhaps painfully won over many years, became meaningless if his new super boss, the conglomerator, didn’t see things his way. Robert Metz told in The New York Times about an executive of an acquired company who observed that he and his colleagues had been given what he called the “mushroom treatment”: “Right after the acquisition, we were kept in the dark. Then they covered us with manure. Later they cultivated us. After that, they let us stew for a while. And, finally, they canned us.

The ability to confront and work through conflict, without the drama and angst that we typically associate with it, is at the heart of making a fluid hierarchy work. Conflict resolution has long been an underdeveloped skill inside organizations.

Unlike at the top of the rubber tree, here on the ground things were less comfortable, infested with anthills, pests and tree parasites. Anthills appeared overnight, sculpting dark mounds on the wooden fence and the tree trunks. The task of destroying the anthills would always be left to me. It was quite a spectacle seeing these organised families going up in flames. What a pleasure I got from witnessing a whole hierarchy of insects turn to ash.

Given the obvious “will to power” (as Friedrich Nietzsche called it) of the human race, the enormous energy put into its expression, the early emergence of hierarchies among children, and the childlike devastation of grown men who tumble from the top, I’m puzzled by the taboo with which our society surrounds this issue. Most psychology textbooks do not even mention power and dominance, except in relation to abusive relationships. Everyone seems in denial. In one study on the power motive, corporate managers were asked about their relationship with power. They did acknowledge the existence of a lust for power, but never applied it to themselves. They rather enjoyed responsibility, prestige, and authority. The power grabbers were other men. Political candidates are equally reluctant. They sell themselves as public servants, only in it to fix the economy or improve education. Have you ever heard a candidate admit he wants power? Obviously, the word “servant” is doublespeak: does anyone believe that it’s only for our sake that they join the mudslinging of modern democracy? Do the candidates themselves believe this? What an unusual sacrifice that would be. It’s refreshing to work with chimpanzees: they are the honest politicians we all long for. When political philosopher Thomas Hobbes postulated an insuppressible power drive, he was right on target for both humans and apes. Observing how blatantly chimpanzees jockey for position, one will look in vain for ulterior motives and expedient promises. I was not prepared for this when, as a young student, I began to follow the dramas among the Arnhem chimpanzees from an observation window overlooking their island. In those days, students were supposed to be antiestablishment, and my shoulder-long hair proved it. We considered power evil and ambition ridiculous. Yet my observations of the apes forced me to open my mind to seeing power relations not as something bad but as something ingrained. Perhaps inequality was not to be dismissed as simply the product of capitalism. It seemed to go deeper than that. Nowadays, this may seem banal, but in the 1970s human behavior was seen as totally flexible: not natural but cultural. If we really wanted to, people believed, we could rid ourselves of archaic tendencies like sexual jealousy, gender roles, material ownership, and, yes, the desire to dominate. Unaware of this revolutionary call, my chimpanzees demonstrated the same archaic tendencies, but without a trace of cognitive dissonance. They were jealous, sexist, and possessive, plain and simple. I didn’t know then that I’d be working with them for the rest of my life or that I would never again have the luxury of sitting on a wooden stool and watching them for thousands of hours. It was the most revelatory time of my life. I became so engrossed that I began trying to imagine what made my apes decide on this or that action. I started dreaming of them at night and, most significant, I started seeing the people around me in a different light.