The Dominance Hierarchy
This dominance hierarchy has a structure, structure A, B, C, and so on. It exists for 300 million years and cannot just be ignored.
There are thousands of them across thousands of years.
What is central to all of them? That’s the pyramid of value.
What’s at the top of the pyramid? That’s the ideal, the eye at the top of the pyramid or the golden Buddha in lotus or the Crucifix. It’s all the same thing.
How is this achieved? It has something to do with the voluntary acceptance of suffering and therefore, transcendence of suffering.
These are not simple ideas or beliefs. It has been studied these very closely. They are deeply rooted in biology and culture.
The dominance hierarchy is not a framework either, it is also deeply rooted and derived from our biology because the dominance hierarchy has been around for about ~350 million years.
You can’t just ignore this and say morality is some sort of second order cognitive issue. It is not.
We have a counter at the bottom of the brain that keeps track of where you are in terms of your status and it very efficiently regulates the sensitivity of your emotions.
If you’re at the bottom of this hierarchy barely clinging on to the world then every single thing is going to overwhelm you and so you’re pretty much dead physiologically.
And everything should overwhelm you because if you’re at the bottom of this hierarchy, it is implicitly implied that you have no extra resources to exploit. You’re just a particle of dust wasting his/her life living.
Let us explore the contrast: The top of the dominance hierarchy.
Your serotonin levels go up, cortisol goes down.
You’re less sensitive to negative emotion, you’re less impulsive, you live longer because your immune system functions well and in conjunction with your emotions.
Life starts working in your favour and you’re oriented to some degree towards the near and long term future.
Life now is a bit more easier to live and suffer along with. Why? Because hell isn’t breaking lose around you all the time.
The ultimate question is: Is there a way of being that increases the probability of you moving up dominance hierarchies?
Yes, there exists one and it is very easy to implement. We all know inside how to implement it.