This latest post is going to be discussing chapters 10, 15 and 16 of Johann Hari's book, Lost Connections.
In chapter 10, Hari talks to a scientist named Robert Sapolski, who studied baboons in their natural habitat. Baboons have a hierarchical structure, and for the males, the strongest is on top. At the top of the troop of baboons he studied, there was Solomon.
Solomon was allowed to do whatever he pleased. He could take food from the other baboons, kick them out of the shade when it was hot and take the spot for himself, etc. At the bottom of the troop was Job. Job would have stress related seizures. His hair would fall out from stress. And as Solomon was allowed to do whatever he wanted to any baboon, it was permitted that the baboons could do anything they wanted to Job. And they did.
One of the tasks Dr. Sapolski had to do for his research was hit a baboon with a tranquilizer dart and draw their blood. The blood was tested for many things, including cortisol, the stress hormone. Solomon rarely had high levels of cortisol, while Job was filled with it.
Humans are the same way. To quote the book:
Some human cultures (like the United States) have very large gaps between the people at the top and the people at the bottom. In thos places, there is a small number of Solomons at the top, and most people are left like Job at the bottom. But other human cultures (like Norway) are quite different-with highly equal ways of living, where the top and bottom are close together. In those cultures, there are hardly any Solomon and hardly any Jobs-most people live in a middle zone, like Numbers 10 to 13 in the baboon hierarchy
And when sociologists did similar research on human societies, the results were similar to the study of baboons. When there's a high amount of inequality, there's a high amount of anxiety and depression. Lower amounts of inequality lead to less amount of anxiety and depression. The book states, "When the status gap is too big, it creates 'a sense of defeat that you can't escape from.'"
The book (and my previous posts) have discussed the solutions to this problem. Destroy the hierarchies. Create a system where all people have their basic economic needs met. Democratize the workplace. It should be easy to create this system, but it's not. Why? Well, that's where Solomon comes in.
Solomon rarely had high levels of cortisol when his blood was tested. Rarely. But when he did, it was when another baboon went gunnin' for that #1 spot. "It turned out-when his blood samples were tested-that when there is a war on for the position of alpha male, the most stressed baboons are the ones at the top", the book states.
Solomon's power was eventually challenged by a young baboon named Uriah. It took almost a year, but eventually Uriah took the top spot and Solomon ended up being number 9 in the hierarchy. All the other baboons that he had spent years fucking over enjoyed their sweet revenge until Solomon left the troop and never came back.
Just like the study with baboons, humans are the same way. Those on top get very, very stressed at the thought of losing their position within the hierarchy. And they're very, very invested in keeping their spot at the top of it. So much so, that according to the book, the thought of losing their spot in the hierarchy creates even higher levels of cortisol than those who live at the bottom of it.
We're a nation of hierarchies. Class hierarchies, racial hierarchies, patriarchal hierarchies, and so on. And people are scared of giving up their spot in one of those hierarchies, even if it'll make their life better. LBJ said it best when he said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
So what can we do about that? Well, chapters 15 and 16 help to give an answer.
Chapter 15 tells a story about a housing project in Berlin in 2011. Gentrification had raised the rents in the area, and one elderly woman was about to face eviction. Knowing she'd be homeless, she decided she would commit suicide. She posted a sign on her window saying she would.
This gave the community the kick start they needed to organize. The community didn't get along very well. It was filled with the outcasts of society-Turks, gay people, leftists, Muslims, etc. And they all had mostly segregated themselves in that neighborhood because of prejudice.
And I really hope that those reading my post get this book (even if you don't have money to buy it, find a local library and check it out), because I can't quote this chapter enough to explain how goddamn glorious this protest is. I can only sum it up by saying that all these people that had long been suspicious of each other, started not only working together, but liking each other. To quote:
"It wasn't a straight line toward greater tolerance. It had zigs and zags. 'Everyone should do what they want, so long as they don't try to convert me' Nuriye [the woman who posted the sign] told me. 'I'm not sure how I'd react if my children said they were gay-I don't know.' Sudblock [the local gay bar] offered to sponsor the Turkish teenage girls' soccer team. Their parents said it was a step too far-to put the name of this gay club on their daughters' jerseys.
One day, long into the protest, Richard Stein [the owner of Sudblock] was in his bar when one of the conservative Turkish residents-a woman who wears the full niqab-gave him some cakes. He opened the box. Out of icing, on top of one of them, she had made a little rainbow flag.
Chapter 16 follows up on this story. Reconnection One: To Other People, is the title of the chapter. The opening chapter says in part:
In most parts of the Western world, Nuriye would have been told there was something wrong with her brain chemistry. So would everyone else in Kotti. They would have taken their pills and stayed alone in their little apartments until they were thrown out and scattered. I never felt more keenly that this story was wrong than at Kotti. They taught me that when people rediscover each other, problems that previously seemed insoluble start to look soluble....
What solved their problems? It seemed to me it was other people standing by their side, committed to walking on the path with them, finding collective solutions to their problems. They didn't need to be drugged. They needed to be together.
Fixing this shit will be hard, but if we're to do so, we need to find common ground by going out and talking to people. Not on Facebook, or other social media platforms, because we're at our worst there. We need to actually go out, and talk to people.
I work in private security. It's the only civilian job I've had in two decades. I didn't really choose this to be my career, but it was more or less forced on me. I started doing the job because they offered $7 an hour when the minimum wage was $4.25. Then I got home from Iraq in 2006 when we were just about to hit another recession and the only industry that would take me in was private security once again. I was unemployed by 2009 and in 2012, the only job I could get was, once again, private security. I've been doing that ever since. I make this point because private security isn't exactly a career path that one chooses if they're a leftist. My profession is filled with, to put it lightly, those right of center. Or, to put it more accurately, filled with reactionary assholes.
At my current job, that's not any different. I'd really like my current job if many of my coworkers weren't reactionary shitbags. But it's actually forced me to talk to these reactionaries in real life, instead of arguing them on social media. And that's where everything above that I've talked about comes in.
One of my co-workers is Pat. I argue politics with Pat on a regular basis. I have to keep it civil when I argue with Pat, because he's a Sergeant, so I have to tread very carefully with my words. He is, after all, middle management, so I can't insult him directly when we debate. He really likes Trump. He's also dropped the occasional racist or homophobic remark that I've called him out on. He's in his late 50's, so his casually racist and homophobic remarks are that of the stereotypical boomer. I imagine that if we were strangers on Facebook in a comment section, I'd find one of his comments towards minorities and proceed to rip him to shreds. But this isn't Facebook. This is real life. And despite his occasional comments, he's also very compassionate and professional in his dealings with minority patients.
And here's the real kicker: Like many in my profession, he's a retired cop. Not just a retired cop, but he was the president of his local police union when he was a cop.
Pat's right-wing on most issues, but when you bring up the topic of labor unions, he is Che Guevara. He is Walter Reuther. He is Bill Heywood. He is so goddamn leftist that during one of his rants on the need for labor unions, I held out a fist and said, "Are you ready to join me in the revolution, comrade?!" Of course he responded in the negative.
The security personnel in my company aren't unionized. And I haven't made any attempt to change that because my experience with organizing workers is, well, horrid (in this month of Facebook memories, I've seen my past attempts to organize get completely steamrolled while my fellow workers had been intimidated into voting no on a union through straight out illegal intimidation by management). But should we ever decide to change our minds on organizing, I know that Pat would be one of the fiercest soldiers in the effort to join a union. Capitalism be damned, Pat wants the right to collective bargaining.
Fixing this shit really will be hard. But the solution is to get out and talk to people, in the real world. When you do that, you'll find that we all have more in common than one might think. And when we find that common ground, we'll be more ready to do away with our previous prejudices.
I just realized that this is the end of this post, and I haven't posted any picture to bring in people on social media. Well, here's a picture of Bill Haywood I guess.
