Status and Superstatus in the Human Zoo

In any organized group of mammals, no matter how cooperative, there is always a struggle for social dominance. As he pursues this struggle, each adult individual acquires a particular social rank, giving him his position, or status, in the group hierarchy. The situation never remains stable for very long, largely because all the status strugglers are growing older. When the overlords become senile, their seniority is challenged and they are overthrown by their immediate subordinates. There is then renewed dominance squabbling as everyone moves a little farther up the social ladder. At the other end of the scale, the younger members of the group are maturing rapidly, keeping up the pressure from below. In addition, certain members of the group may suddenly be struck down by disease or accidental death, leaving gaps in the hierarchy that have to be quickly filled.

The general result is a constant condition of status tension. Under natural conditions, this tension remains tolerable because of the limited size of the social groupings. If, however, in the artificial environment of captivity, the group size becomes too big, or the space available too small, then the status rat-race soon gets out of hand, dominance battles rage uncontrollably and the leaders of the packs, prides, colonies or tribes come under severe strain. When this happens, the weakest members of the group are frequently hounded to their deaths, as the restrained rituals of display and counterdisplay degenerate into bloody violence.

There are further repercussions. So much time has to be spent sorting out the unnaturally complex status relationships that other aspects of social life, such as parental care, become seriously and damagingly neglected.

If the settling of dominance disputes creates difficulties for the moderately crowded inmates of the animal zoo, then it is obviously going to provide an even greater dilemma for the vastly overgrown supertribes of the human zoo. The essential feature of the status struggle in nature is that it is based on the personal relationships of the individuals inside the social group. For a primitive human tribesman in a group with 80 others, the problem was a comparatively simple one; but when the tribes grew into supertribes of 80,000 or 8,000,000, relationships became increasingly impersonal and the problem of status rapidly expanded into the nightmare of superstatus.

Before we probe this tender area of urban life, it will be helpful to take a brief look at the basic laws that govern the dominance struggle. The best way to do this is to survey the battlefield from the viewpoint of the dominant animal.

If you are to rule your group and to be successful in holding your position of power, there are ten golden rules you must obey. They apply to all leaders, from baboons to modern presidents and prime ministers. The ten commandments of dominance are these:

1. You must clearly display the trappings, postures and gestures of dominance. For the baboon this means a sleek, beautifully groomed, luxuriant coat of hair; a calm, relaxed posture when not engaged in disputes; a deliberate and purposeful gait when active. There must be no outward signs of anxiety, indecision or hesitancy.

With a few superficial modifications, the same holds true for the human leader. The luxuriant coat of fur becomes the rich and elaborate costume of the ruler, dramatically outshining those of his subordinates. He assumes postures unique to his dominant role. When he is relaxing, he may recline or sit, while others must stand until given permission to follow suit. This is also typical of the dominant baboon, who may sprawl out lazily while his anxious subordinates hold themselves in more alert postures nearby. The situation changes once the leader stirs into aggressive action and begins to assert himself. Then, be he baboon or prince, he must rise into a more impressive position than that of his followers. He must literally rise above them, matching his psychological status with his physical posture. For the baboon boss, this is easy: A dominant monkey is nearly always much larger than his underlings. He has only to hold himself erect and his greater body size does the rest. The situation is enhanced by cringing and crouching on the part of his more fearful subordinates. For the human leader, artificial aids may be necessary. He can magnify his size by wearing large cloaks or tall headgear. His height can be increased by mounting a throne, a platform, an animal, or a vehicle of some kind, or by being carried aloft by his followers. The crouching of the weaker baboons becomes stylized in various ways: Subordinate humans lower their height by bowing, curtsying, kneeling, kowtowing, salaaming or prostrating.

The ingenuity of our species permits the human leader to have it both ways. By sitting on a throne on a raised platform, he can enjoy both the relaxed position of the passive dominant and the heightened position of the active dominant at one and the same time, thus providing himself with a doubly powerful display posture.

The dignified displays of leadership that the human animal shares with the baboon are still with us in many forms today. They can be seen in their most primitive and obvious conditions in generals, judges, high priests and surviving royalty. They tend to be more limited to special occasions than they once were, but when they do occur, they are as ostentatious as ever. Not even the most learned academics are immune to the demands of pomp and finery on their more ceremonial occasions.

Where emperors have given way to elected presidents and prime ministers, personal-dominance displays have, however, become less overt. There has been a shift of emphasis in the role of leadership. The new-style leader is a servant of the people who happens to be dominant, rather than a dominator of the people who also serves them. He underlines his acceptance of this situation by wearing a comparatively drab costume, but this is only a trick. It is a minor dishonesty that he can afford, to make him seem more one of the crowd; but he dare not carry it too far or, before he knows it, he really will have become one of the crowd again. So, in other, less blatantly personal ways, he must continue to perform the outward display of his dominance. With all the complexities of the modern urban environment at his disposal, this is not difficult. The loss of grandeur in his dress can be compensated for by the elaborate and exclusive nature of the rooms in which he rules and the buildings in which he lives and works. He can retain ostentation in the way he travels, with motorcades, outriders and personal planes. He can continue to surround himself with a large group of "professional subordinates"—aides, secretaries, servants, personal assistants, bodyguards, attendants and the rest—part of whose job is merely to be seen to be servile toward him, thereby adding to his image of social superiority. His postures, movements and gestures of dominance can be retained unmodified. Because the power signals they transmit are so basic to the human species, they are accepted unconsciously and can therefore escape restriction. His movements and gestures are calm and relaxed, or firm and deliberate. (When did you last see a president or a prime minister running, except when taking voluntary exercise?) In conversation, he uses his eyes like weapons, delivering a fixed stare at moments when subordinates would be politely averting their gaze, and turning his head away at moments when subordinates would be watching intently. He does not scrabble, twitch, fidget or falter. These are essentially the reactions of subordinates. If the leader performs them, there is something seriously wrong with him in his role as the dominant member of the group.

2. In moments of active rivalry, you must threaten your subordinates aggressively. At the slightest sign of any challenge from a subordinate baboon, the group leader immediately responds with an impressive display of threatening behavior. There is a whole range of threat displays available, varying from those motivated by a lot of aggression tinged with a little fear to those motivated by a lot of fear and only a little aggression. The latter—the "scared threats" of weak-but-hostile individuals—are never shown by a dominant animal unless his leadership is tottering. When his position is secure, he shows only the most aggressive threat displays. He can be so secure that all he needs to do is to indicate that he is about to threaten, without actually bothering to carry it through. A mere jerk of his massive head in the direction of the unruly subordinate may be sufficient to subdue the inferior individual. These actions are called intention movements and they operate in precisely the same way in the human species. A powerful human leader, irritated by the actions of a subordinate, need only jerk his head in the latter's direction and fix him with a hard stare, to assert his dominance successfully. If he has to raise his voice or repeat an order, his dominance is slightly less secure and he will, on eventually regaining control, have to re-establish his status by administering a rebuke or a symbolic punishment of some kind.

The act of raising his voice, or raging, is a weak sign in a leader only when it occurs as a reaction to an immediate threat. It may also be used spontaneously or deliberately by a strong ruler as a general device for reaffirming his position. A dominant baboon may behave in the same way, suddenly charging at his subordinates and terrorizing them, reminding them of his powers. It enables him to chalk up a few points, and after that, he can more easily get his own way with the merest nod of his head. Human leaders perform in this manner from time to time, issuing stern edicts, making lightning inspections or haranguing the group with vigorous speeches. If you are a leader, it is dangerous to remain silent, unseen or unfelt for too long. If natural circumstances do not prompt a show of power, the circumstances must be invented that do. It is not enough to have power; one must be observed to have power. Therein lies the value of spontaneous threat displays.

3. In moments of physical challenge, you (or your delegates) must be able to forcibly overpower your subordinates. If a threat display fails, then a physical attack must follow. If you are a baboon boss, this is a dangerous step to take for two reasons. First, in a physical fight, even the winner may be damaged and injury is more serious for a dominant animal than for a subordinate. It makes him less daunting for a subsequent attacker. Secondly, he is always outnumbered by his subordinates and, if they are driven too far, they may gang up on him and overpower him in a combined effort. It is these two facts that make threat rather than actual attack the preferred method for dominant individuals.

The human leader overcomes this to some extent by employing a special class of "suppressors." They, the military or (continued on page 202)The Human Zoo(continued from page 124) police, are so specialized and professional at their task that only a general uprising of the whole populace would be strong enough to beat them. In extreme cases, a despot will employ a further, even more specialized class of suppressors (such as secret police), whose job it is to suppress the ordinary suppressors if they happen to get out of line. By clever manipulation and administration, it is possible to run an aggressive system of this kind in such a way that only the leader knows enough of what is happening to be able to control it. Everyone else is in a state of confusion unless they have orders from above and, in this way, the modern despot can hold the reigns and dominate effectively.

4. If a challenge involves brain rather than brawn, you must be able to outwit your subordinates. The baboon boss must be cunning, quick and intelligent as well as strong and aggressive. This is, obviously, even more important for a human leader. In cases where there is a system of inherited leadership, the stupid individual is quickly deposed or becomes the mere figurehead and pawn of the true leaders.

Today the problems are so complex that the modern leader is forced to surround himself with intellectual specialists; but despite this, he cannot escape the demands of quick-wittedness. It is he who must make the final decisions and make them sharply and clearly, without faltering. This is such a vital quality in leadership that it is more important to make a firm, unhesitating decision than it is to make the right one. Many a powerful leader has survived occasional wrong decisions made with style and forcefulness, but few have survived hesitant indecisiveness. The golden rule of leadership here, which in a rational age is an unpleasant one to accept, is that it is the manner in which you do something that really counts, rather than what you do. It is a sad truth that a leader who does the wrong things in the right way will, up to a certain point, gain greater allegiance and enjoy more success than one who does the right things in the wrong way. The progress of civilization has repeatedly suffered as a result of this. Lucky, indeed, is the society whose leader does the right things and, at the same time, obeys the ten golden rules of dominance; lucky—and rare, too. There appears to be a sinister, more-than-chance relationship between great leadership and aberrant policies.

It seems as if one of the curses of the immense complexity of the supertribal condition is that it is almost impossible to make sharp, clear-cut decisions, concerning major issues, on a rational basis. The evidence available is so complicated, so diverse and frequently so contradictory that any reasonable, rational decision is bound to involve undue hesitancy. The great supertribal leader cannot enjoy the luxury of ponderous restraint and "further examination of the facts" so typical of the great academic. The biological nature of his role as a dominant animal forces him to make a snap decision or lose face.

The danger is obvious: The situation inevitably favors, as great leaders, rather abnormal individuals, fired by some kind of obsessive fanaticism, who will be prepared to cut through the mass of conflicting evidence that the supertribal condition throws up. This is one of the prices that the biological tribesman must pay for becoming an artificial super-tribesman. The only solution is to find a brilliant, rational, balanced, deep-thinking brain housed in a glamorous, flamboyant, self-assertive, colorful personality. Contradictory? Yes. Impossible? Perhaps, but there is a glimmer of hope in the fact that the very size of the supertribe, which causes the problem in the first place, also offers literally millions of potential candidates.

5. You must suppress squabbles that break out among your subordinates. If a baboon leader sees an unruly squabble taking place, he is likely to interfere and suppress it, even though it does not in any way constitute a direct threat to himself. It gives him another opportunity of displaying his dominance and, at the same time, helps to maintain order inside the group. Interference of this kind from the dominant animal is directed particularly at squabbling juveniles and helps to instill in them, at an early age, the idea of a powerful leader in their midst.

The equivalent of this behavior for the human leader is the control and administration of the laws of his group. The rulers of the earlier and smaller supertribes were powerfully active in this respect, but there has been increasing delegation of these duties in modern times, due to the increasing weight of other burdens that relate more directly to the status of the leader. Nevertheless, a squabbling community is an inefficient one and some degree of control and influence has to be retained.

6. You must reward your immediate subordinates by permitting them to enjoy the benefits of their high ranks. The subdominant baboons, although they are the leader's worst rivals, are also of great help to him in times of threat from outside the group. Further, if they are too strongly suppressed, they may gang up on him and depose him. They therefore enjoy privileges that the weaker members of the group cannot share. They have more freedom of action and are permitted to stay closer to the dominant animal than are the junior males.

Any human leader who has failed to obey this rule has soon found himself in difficulties. He needs more help from his subdominants and is in greater danger of a "palace revolt" than his baboon equivalent. So much more can go on behind his back. The system of rewarding the subdominants requires brilliant expertise. The wrong sort of reward gives too much power to a serious rival. The snag is that a true leader cannot enjoy true friendship. True friendship can only be fully expressed between members of roughly the same status level. A partial friendship can, of course, occur between a dominant and a subordinate, at any level, but it is always marred by the difference in rank. No matter how well-meaning the partners in such a friendship may be, condescension and flattery inevitably creep in to cloud the relationship. The leader, at the very peak of the social pyramid, is, in the full sense of the word, permanently friendless. And his partial friends are perhaps more partial than he likes to think. As I said, the giving of favors requires an expert hand.

7. You must protect the weaker members of the group from undue persecution. Females with young tend to cluster around the dominant male baboon. He meets any attack on these females or on unprotected infants with a savage onslaught. As a defender of the weak, he is ensuring the survival of the future adults of the group. Human leaders have increasingly extended their protection of the weak to include also the old, the sick and the disabled. This is because efficient rulers not only need to defend the growing children, who will one day swell the ranks of their followers, but also need to reduce the anxieties of the active adults, all of whom are threatened with eventual senility, sudden sickness or possible disability. With most people, the urge to give aid in such cases is a natural development of their biologically cooperative nature. But for the leaders, it is also a question of making people work more efficiently by taking a serious weight off their minds.

8. You must make decisions concerning the social activities of your group. When the baboon leader decides to move, the whole group moves. When he rests, the group rests. When he feeds, the group feeds. Direct control of this kind is, of course, lost to the leader of a human supertribe, but he can nevertheless play a vital role in encouraging the more abstract directions his group takes. He may foster the sciences or push toward a greater military emphasis. As with the other golden rules of leadership, it is important for him to exercise this one even when it does not appear to be strictly necessary. Even if a society is cruising happily along on a set and satisfactory course, it is vital for him to change that course in certain ways in order to make his impact felt. It is not enough simply to alter it as a reaction to something that is going wrong. He must spontaneously, of his own volition, insist on new lines of development, or he will be considered weak and colorless. If he has no ready-made preferences and enthusiasms, he must invent them. If he is seen to have what appear to be strong convictions on certain matters, he will be taken more seriously on all matters. Many modern leaders seem to overlook this and their political platforms are desperately lacking in originality. If they win the battle for leadership, it is not because they are more inspiring than their rivals but simply because they are less uninspiring.

9. You must reassure your extreme subordinates from time to time. If a dominant baboon wishes to approach a subordinate peacefully, it may have difficulty doing so, because its close proximity is inevitably threatening. It can overcome this by performing a reassurance display. This consists of a very gentle approach, with no sudden or harsh movements, accompanied by facial expressions (called lip smacking) that are typical of friendly subordinates. This helps to calm the fears of the weaker animal and the dominant one can then come near.

Human leaders, who may be characteristically tough and unsmiling with their immediate subordinates, frequently adopt an attitude of friendly submissiveness when coming into personal contact with their extreme subordinates. Toward them they offer a front of exaggerated courtesy, smiling, waving, shaking hands interminably and even fondling babies. But the smiles soon fade as they turn away and disappear back inside their ruthless world of power.

10. You must take the initiative in repelling threats or attacks arising from outside your group. It is always the dominant baboon that is in the forefront of the defense against an attack from an external enemy. He plays the major role as the protector of the group. For the baboon, the enemy is usually a dangerous member of another species; but for the human leader, it takes the form of a rival group of the same species. At such moments, his leadership is put to a severe test: but, in a sense, it is less severe than during times of peace. The external threat has such a powerful cohesive effect on the members of the threatened group that the leader's task is in many ways made easier. It takes a remarkably inefficient leader to bungle it. Of course, he has to have an enemy who is capable of being painted in sufficiently villainous colors, or he is likely to be in trouble. The disgusting horrors of war only become converted into glorious battles when the threat from outside is really serious, or can be made to seem so. Then the more daring and reckless the leader is, the more fervently he seems to be protecting the group, who, caught up in the emotional fray, never dare question his actions (as they would in peacetime), no matter how irrational these actions may be. Carried along on the grotesque tidal wave of enthusiasm that war churns up, the strong leader comes into his own. With the greatest of ease, he can persuade the members of his group, deeply conditioned as they are to consider the killing of another human being as the most hideous crime known, to commit this same action as an act of honor and heroism. He can hardly put a foot wrong; but if he does, the news of his blunder can always be suppressed as bad for national morale. Should it become public, it can still be put down to bad luck rather than bad judgment. Bearing all this in mind, it is little wonder that, in times of peace, leaders are prone to invent, or at least to magnify, threats from foreign powers that they can then cast in the role of potential enemies. A little added cohesion goes a long way.

These, then, are the patterns of power. I should make it clear that I am not implying that the dominant baboon/human ruler comparison should be taken as meaning that we evolved from baboons, or that our dominance behavior evolved from theirs. It is true that we shared a common ancestor with baboons, way back in our evolutionary history, but that is not the point. The point is that baboons, like our early human forebears, have moved out of the lush forest environment into the tougher world of the open country, where tighter group control is necessary. Forest-living monkeys and apes have a much looser social system; their leaders are under less pressure. The dominant baboon has a more significant role to play and I selected him as an example for this reason. The value of the baboon/human comparison lies in the way it reveals the very basic nature of human dominance patterns. The striking parallels that exist enable us to view the human power game with a fresh eye and see it for what it is: a fundamental piece of animal behavior. But we must leave the baboons to their simpler tasks and take a closer look at the complications of the human situation.

For the modern human leader, there are clearly difficulties in performing his dominant role efficiently. The grotesquely inflated power that he wields means that there is the ever-present danger that only an individual with an equally grotesquely inflated ego will successfully be able to hold the supertribal reigns. Also, the immense pressures will easily push him into initiating acts of violence, an all-too-natural response to the strains of superstatus. Furthermore, the absurd complexity of his task is bound to absorb him to such an extent that it inevitably makes him remote from the ordinary problems of his followers. A good tribal leader knows exactly what is happening in every corner of his group. A supertribal leader, hopelessly isolated by his lofty position of superstatus and totally preoccupied by the machinery of power, rapidly becomes cut off.

It has been said that to be a successful leader in the modern world a man has to be prepared to make major decisions with a minimum of information. This is a frightening way to run a supertribe, and yet it happens all the time. There is too much information available for any one individual to assimilate and, in addition, there is a great deal more, hidden in the supertribal labyrinth, that can never be made available. A rational solution would be to do away with the powerful leader-figure, to relegate him to the ancient, tribal past where he belonged, and to replace him with a computer-fed organization of interdependent, specialized experts.

Something approaching such an organization already exists, of course; and in England, any civil servant will tell you without hesitation that it is the civil service that really runs the country. To emphasize his point, he will inform you that when Parliament is in session his work is seriously hampered; only during Parliamentary recesses can serious progress be made. All this is very logical, but unfortunately it is not "bio-logical," and the country he claims to be running happens to be made up of biological specimens—the supertribesmen. True, a supertribe needs supercontrol; and if it is too much for one man, it might seem reasonable to solve the problem by converting a power figure into a power organization. This does not, however, satisfy the biological demands of the followers. They may be able to reason supertribally, but their feelings are still tribal and they will continue to demand a real leader in the form of an identifiable, solitary individual. It is a fundamental pattern of their species and there is no avoiding it. Institutions and computers may be valuable servants to the masters, but they can never themselves become masters (science-fiction stories notwithstanding). A diffuse organization, a faceless machine, lacks the essential properties: It cannot inspire and it cannot be deposed. The single dominant human is therefore doomed to struggle on, behaving publicly like a tribal leader, with panache and assurance, while in private he grabbles laboriously with the almost impossible tasks of supertribal control.

Despite the great burdens of present-day leadership and despite the daunting fact that an ambitious male member of a modern supertribe has a chance smaller than one in a million of becoming the dominant individual of his group, there has been no observable lessening of desire to achieve high status. The urge to climb the social ladder is too ancient, too deeply ingrained to be weakened by a rational assessment of the new situation.

Throughout the length and breadth of our massive communities there are, then, hundreds of thousands of frustrated would-be leaders with no real hope of leading. What happens to their thwarted ladder climbing? Where does all the energy go? They can, of course, give up and drop out, but this is a depressing condition. The flaw in the social drop-out's solution is that he does not really drop out at all. He stays put and pours scorn on the rat-race that surrounds him. This unhappy state is avoided by the great majority of the supertribesmen by the simple device of competing for leadership in specialized subgroups of the supertribe. For some, this is easier than for others. A competitive profession or craft automatically provides its own social hierarchy. But even here the odds against achieving true leadership may be too great. This gives rise to the almost arbitrary invention of new subgroups where competition may prove more rewarding. All kinds of extraordinary cults are set up, everything from canary breeding and train spotting to UFO watching and body building. In each case, the overt nature of the activity is comparatively unimportant. What is important is the fact that the pursuit provides a new social hierarchy where one did not exist before. Inside it, a whole range of rules and procedures is rapidly developed, committees are formed and—most important of all—leaders emerge. A champion canary breeder or bodybuilder would have little chance of enjoying the heady fruits of dominance, were it not for his involvement in his specialized subgroup.

In this way, the would-be leader can fight back against the depressingly heavy social blanket that falls over him as he struggles to rise in his massive supertribe. The majority of all sports, pastimes, hobbies and good works have as their principal function, not their specifically avowed aims, but the much more basic aim of follow the leader and beat him if you can. However, this is a description and not a criticism. In fact, the situation would be much more grave if this multitude of harmless subgroups, or pseudo tribes, did not exist. They funnel off a great deal of the frustrated ladder climbing that might otherwise cause considerable havoc.

I have said that the nature of these activities is of little significance, but, nevertheless, it is intriguing to notice, in passing, how many of the various sports and hobbies involve an element of ritualized aggression, over and above simple competitiveness. To take a single example: The act of taking aim is, in origin, a typically aggressive pattern of coordination. It reappears suitably transformed in a whole range of pastimes, including bowling, billiards, darts, table tennis, croquet, archery, squash, netball, cricket, tennis, football, hockey, polo, shooting and spearfishing. In children's toys and fairgrounds, it abounds. In a slightly heavier disguise, it accounts for a great deal of the appeal of amateur photography, where we shoot film, capture on celluloid, take snap shots, and use cameras/pistols, rolls of film/bullets, cameras, with long telescopic lenses/rifles, and cinecameras/machine guns. However, although these symbolic equations may be helpful, they are by no means essential. Matchbox-top collecting will do almost as well, providing, of course, you can make contact with suitable rivals, similarly preoccupied, whose matchbox-top collections you can then seek to dominate.

The setting up of specialist subgroups is not the only solution to the super-status dilemma. Localized geographical pseudo tribes also exist. Each village, town, city and county within a supertribe develops its own regional hierarchy, providing further substitutes for thwarted supertribal leadership.

On a smaller scale yet, each individual has his own closely knit social circle of personal acquaintances. The list of noncommercial names that appears in his private phone book or address book gives a good indication of the extent of this kind of pseudo tribe. It is particularly important because, as in a true tribe, all its members are personally known to him. Unlike a true tribe, however, all the members are not necessarily known to one another. The social groups overlap and interlock with one another in a complex network. For each individual, however, his social pseudo tribe provides one more sphere in which he can assert himself and express his leadership.

Another major supertribal pattern that has helped to split the group up without destroying it has been the setting up of a system of social classes. These have existed in much the same basic form from the times of the earliest civilizations: an upper or ruling class, a middle class comprising merchants and specialists, and a lower class of peasants and laborers. Subdivisions have appeared as the groups have swollen and the details have varied, but the principle has remained the same.

The recognition of distinct classes has made it possible for members of classes below the top one to strive for a more realistic dominance status at their particular class level. Belonging to a class is much more than a mere question of money. A man at the top of his social class may earn more than a man at the bottom of the class above. The rewards of being dominant at his own level may be such that he has no wish to abandon his class tribe. Overlaps of this sort indicate just how strongly tribal the classes can become.

The class-tribe system of splitting up the supertribe has, however, suffered serious setbacks in recent years. As the (continued on page 210)The Human Zoo(continued from page 207) supertribes grew to even bigger proportions and technologies became more and more complex, so the standard of mass education had to be raised to keep pace with the situation. Education, combined with improvements in mass communication and especially the pressures of mass advertising, led to a major breakdown in class barriers. The comforts of knowing your own station in life were replaced by the exciting and increasingly real possibilities of exceeding that station. Despite this, the old class-tribe system kept on fighting back and is still doing so. We can see the outward signs of this running battle very clearly today in the ever-increasing speed of fashion cycles. New styles of clothing, furniture, decoration, music and art replace one another more and more quickly. It is often suggested that this is the result of commercial interests and pressures, but this is not so. It would be just as easy, easier in fact, to go on selling new variations of old themes rather than introducing new themes. But new themes are continually demanded because the old ones permeate so rapidly downward through the social system. The quicker they reach the lower strata, the quicker they must be replaced by something new and exclusive at the top. History has never before witnessed such an incredible turnover in styles and tastes. The result, of course, is a major loss of pseudo-tribal identity provided by the old, rigid social-class system.

Replacing this loss to some extent is a new supertribal-splitting system that has recently reared its head. Age classes are emerging. A widening gap has appeared between what we must now call a young-adult pseudo tribe and an old-adult pseudo tribe. The former possesses its own customs and its own dominance system that are increasingly distinct from those of the latter. The entirely new phenomenon of powerful teenage idols and student leaders has heralded a major new pseudo-tribal division. Desultory attempts on the part of the old-adult pseudo tribe to encompass the new group have met with very limited success. The piling of old-adult honors on the heads of young-adult leaders, or the tolerant acceptance of the extremes of young-adult fashions and styles, has only led to further rebellious excesses. (If Cannabis smoking is ever legalized and widely adopted, for example, an immediate replacement will be required, just as alcohol had to be replaced by Cannabis itself.) When these excesses reach a point that the old adults cannot engulf, or refuse to copy, then the young adults can rest easy for a while. Safely flying their new pseudo-tribal flags, they can enjoy the satisfactions of their new pseudo-tribal independence and their more manageable, self-contained dominance system.

The sobering lesson to be learned from all this is that the ancient biological need of the human species for a distinct tribal identity is a powerful force that cannot be subdued. As fast as one supertribal split is invisibly mended, another one appears. Well-meaning authorities talk airily about hopes for a global society. They see clearly the technical possibility of such a development, given the marvels of modern communication, but they stubbornly overlook the biological difficulties.

A pessimistic view? Certainly not. The prospects will remain gloomy only as long as there is a failure to come to terms with the biological demands of the species. Theoretically there is no good reason why small groupings, satisfying the requirements of tribal identity, should not be constructively interrelated inside thriving supertribes that, in turn, constructively interact to form a massive, global megatribe. Failures to date have largely been due to attempts to suppress the existing differences among the various groups, rather than to improve the nature of these differences by converting them into more rewarding and peaceful forms of competitive social interaction. Attempts to iron out the whole world into one great expanse of uniform monotony are doomed to disaster. This applies at all levels, from breakaway nations to tear-away gangs. When the sense of social identity is threatened, it fights back. The fact that it has to fight for its existence means, at the least, social upheaval and, at the worst, bloodshed.

• • •

Where, exactly, does he stand, the modern status seeker? First, he has his personal friends and acquaintances. Together they form his social pseudo tribe. Second, he has his local community—his regional pseudo tribe. Third, he has his specializations: his profession, craft or employment and his pastimes, hobbies or sports. They make up his specialist pseudo tribes. Fourth, he has the remnants of a class tribe and a new age tribe.

Put together, these subgroupings provide him with a much greater chance of achieving some sort of dominance and of satisfying his basic status urge than if he were simply a tiny unit in a homogeneous mass—a human ant crawling about in a gigantic, supertribal anthill. So far, so good; but there are snags.

To begin with, the dominance achieved in a limited subgroup is itself limited. It may be real, but it is only a partial solution. It is impossible to ignore the fact that there are bigger things going on all around. Being a big fish in a little pond cannot blot out dreams of a bigger pond. In the past, this was not such a problem, because the rigid class system, ruthlessly applied, kept everyone in his place. This may have been very neat, but it could all too easily lead to supertribal stagnation. Individuals with minor talents were well served, but many of those with greater talents were held back, frittering their energies away on strictly limited goals. It was possible for a potential genius from the lower class to stand less chance than a raging idiot from the upper class.

The rigid class structure had its value as a splitting device, but it was a grotesquely wasteful system and it is not surprising that it eventually succumbed. Its ghost goes marching on, but it has largely been replaced today by a much more efficient meritocracy, in which each individual is theoretically able to find his optimum level. Once there, he can consolidate his social identity by means of the various pseudo-tribal groupings.

This meritocratic system provides an exciting format, but there is another side to it. With excitement goes strain. An essential feature of a meritocracy is that, although it avoids waste of talent, it also opens up a clear channel from the very bottom to the very top of the enormous supertribal community. If any small boy can, on his personal merits, eventually become the greatest of leaders, then for every one who succeeds, there will be vast numbers of failures. These failures can no longer put the blame on the external forces of the wicked class system. They must place it firmly where it belongs, on their own personal shortcomings.

It seems, therefore, that any large-scale, lively, progressive supertribe must inevitably contain a high proportion of intensely frustrated status seekers. The dumb contentment of a rigid, stagnant society is replaced by the feverish longings and anxieties of a mobile, developing one. How do the struggling status seekers react to this situation? The answer is that, if they cannot get to the top, they do their best to create the illusion of being less subordinate than they really are. To understand this, it will help at this point to take a sidelong glance at the world of insects.

Many kinds of insects are poisonous and larger animals learn to avoid them. It is in the interest of these insects to show a warning flag of some kind. The typical wasp, for example, carries a conspicuous color pattern of black and yellow bands on its body. This is so distinctive that it is easy for a predatory animal to remember it. After a few unfortunate experiences it quickly learns to avoid insects bearing this pattern. Other, unrelated, poisonous insect species may also carry a similar pattern. They become members of what is called a warning club.

The important point for us, in the present context, is that some harmless species of insects have cashed in on this system by developing color patterns similar to those of the poisonous members of the warning club. Certain innocuous flies, for instance, display black and yellow bands on their bodies that mimic the color patterns of the wasps. By becoming fake members of the warning club, they reap the benefits without having to possess any real poison. The killers dare not attack them, even though they would, in reality, make a pleasant meal.

We can use this insect example as a crude analogy to help us understand what has happened to the human status seeker. All we have to do is to substitute the possession of dominance for the possession of poison. Truly dominant individuals will display their high status in many visible ways. They will wave their dominance flags in the form of the clothes they wear, the houses they live in, the way they travel, talk, entertain and eat. By wearing the social badges of the "dominance club," they make their lofty status immediately obvious, both to subordinates and to one another, so that they do not have to constantly reassert their dominance in a more direct way. Like the poisonous insects, they do not have to keep on stinging their enemies; they only have to wave the flag that says they could if they wanted to.

It follows, naturally enough, that harmless subordinates can join the dominance club and enjoy its benefits if they can display the same flags. If, like the black-and-yellow flies, they can mimic the black-and-yellow wasps, they can at least create the illusion of dominance.

Dominance mimicry has, in fact, become a major preoccupation of the supertribal status seekers, and it deserves close examination. First, a distinction between a status symbol and a dominance mimic: A status symbol is an outward sign of the true level of social dominance you have attained. A dominance mimic is an outward sign of the level of dominance you would like to attain, but have not yet reached. In terms of material objects, a status symbol is something you can afford; a dominance mimic is something you cannot quite afford but buy all the same. Dominance mimics therefore frequently involve making major sacrifices in other directions, whereas true status symbols do not.

Earlier societies, with their more rigid class structures, did not give so much scope for dominance mimicry. As I have already pointed out, people were much more content to know their station. But the upgrading urge is a powerful force and there were always exceptions, no matter how rigid the class structure. The dominant individuals, seeing their position weakened by imitation, reacted harshly. They introduced strict regulations and even laws to curb the mimicry.

The various rules of costume give a good example. In England, the law of the Westminster Parliament of 1363 was concerned chiefly with regulating the fashion of dress in the different social classes, so important had this subject become. In Renaissance Germany, a woman who dressed above her station was liable to have a heavy wooden collar locked around her neck. In India, strict rules were introduced relating the way you folded your turban to your particular caste. In the England of Henry VIII, no woman whose husband could not afford to maintain a light horse for the king's service was allowed to wear velvet bonnets or golden chains. In America, in early New England, a woman was forbidden to wear a silk scarf unless her husband was worth $1000. The examples are endless.

Today, with the breakdown of the class structure, these laws have become severely curtailed. They are now limited to a few special categories such as medals, titles and regalia, which are still illegal, or at least socially unacceptable, to adopt without the appropriate status. In general, however, the dominant individual is far less protected against the practices of dominance mimicry than he once was.

He has retaliated with ingenuity. Accepting the fact that lower-status individuals are determined to copy him, he has responded by making available cheap, mass-produced imitations of high-status goods. The bait is tempting and has been eagerly swallowed. An example will explain how the trap works:

High-status wife wears a diamond necklace. Low-status wife wears a bead necklace. Both necklaces are well made; the beads are inexpensive, but they are gay and attractive and make no pretense to be anything other than what they are. Unfortunately, they have low-status value and the low-status wife wants something more. There is no law or social edict preventing her from wearing a diamond necklace. By working hard, saving every penny and eventually spending more than she can afford, she may be able to acquire a necklace of small, but real diamonds. If she takes this step, adorning her neck with a dominance mimic, she starts to become a threat to the high-status wife. The difference in their status displays becomes blurred. High-status husband therefore puts on the market necklaces of large, fake diamonds. They are inexpensive and superficially so attractive that the low-status wife abandons her struggle for real diamonds and settles for the fake ones, instead. The trap is sprung. True dominance mimicry has been averted.

On the surface, this is not apparent. The low-status wife, sporting her flashy fake necklace, seems to be mimicking her dominant rival; but this is an illusion. The point is that the fake necklace is too good to be true, when judged against her general way of life. It fools no one and therefore fails to act as an aid in raising her status.

It is surprising that the trick works so well and so often, but it does. It has infiltrated many spheres of life and has not been without its repercussions. It has destroyed a great deal of genuine but overtly low-status art and craft. Native folk art has been replaced by cheap reproductions of the great masters: folk music has been replaced by the gramophone record; peasant craftsmanship has been replaced by mass-produced plastic imitations of more expensive goods.

Folklore societies have been rapidly formed to collectively bewail this trend, but the damage has already been done. At best, all they can achieve is to act as folk-culture taxidermists. Once the status race was opened up from the bottom to the top of society, there was no turning back. If, as I suggested earlier, society is repeatedly going to rebel against the dreary uniformity of this new monotony, then it will do so by giving birth to new cultural patterns rather than by propping up old, dead ones.

For the really serious status climber, however, there is no rebellion. Nor, for him, do the cheap fakes provide a satisfactory answer. He sees them for what they are, a clever sidetrack, a mere fantasy version of true dominance mimicry. For him, the dominance mimics must be genuine articles and he must always go one step further than he can afford, when purchasing them, in order to give the impression that he is slightly more socially dominant than he, in fact, is. Only then does he stand a chance of getting away with it.

For safety's sake, he tends to concentrate on areas where cheap fakes are out of the question. If he can afford a small motorcar, he buys a medium-sized one; if he can afford a medium-sized one, he buys a large one; if he can afford a single large one. he buys a second car as a runabout; if large cars become too common, he buys a small but wildly expensive foreign sports car; if large rear lights become the fashion, he buys the latest model with even bigger ones. The one thing he does not do is buy a row of life-sized, cardboard models of Rolls-Royces and display them outside his garage. There are no fake diamonds in the world of the status-climbing fanatic.

Motorcars are a single example, and an important one because they are so public; but the ardent status struggler cannot stop there. He must extend himself and his bank balance in all directions if he is to paint a convincing picture for his higher-status rivals. The whole rental, mortgage and overdraft system depends for its survival on this expression of the powerful upgrading urge in terms of dominance mimics.

Unhappily, the extravagant trappings of the unrelenting status seeker acquire such an importance that they appear to be more than they are. They are, after all, only mimics of dominance, not dominance itself. True dominance, true social status, is related to the possession of power and influence over supertribal subordinates, not the possession of a second color-television set. Of course, if you can easily afford a second color-television set, then it is a natural reflection of your status and acts as a true status symbol. A second color-television set, when you can just afford only the first one, is a different matter. It may help to impress the members of the social level above you that you are ready to join them, but it in no way ensures that you will do so. All your rivals, at your own level, will be busily installing their own second color-television sets with the same idea in mind; but it is the fundamental law of the hierarchy that only a few from your level will make the grade to the one above. They, the lucky ones, can justifiably hang wreaths around their second color-television sets. Their dominance mimics worked the trick. All the rest, the power failures, must sit there, surrounded by the expensive clutter of the dominance mimics that have suddenly revealed themselves for what they are: illusions of grandeur. The realization that although they are valuable aids to successful dominance ladder climbing, they do not actually guarantee it, is a bitter pill to swallow.

The damage caused by the exaggerated pursuit of dominance mimicry can be enormous. It not only leads to a condition of depressing disillusionment for the less successful status seekers, it also demands such great efforts of the supertribesman that he may have little time or energy for anything else.

The male status seeker who indulges in an excess of dominance mimicry is driven to neglect his family. This forces his mate to take over the masculine parental role in the home. Taking such a step provides a psychologically damaging atmosphere for the children, which can easily warp their own sexual identities when they mature. All that the young child will see is that its father has lost his leading role inside the family. The fact that he has sacrificed it to a struggle for dominance outside, in the larger sphere of the supertribe, will mean little or nothing in the child's brain. If it matures with anything remotely approaching a state of mental health, it will be surprising. Even the older child, who comes to understand the supertribal status race and boasts about his father's status achievements, will find them small compensation for the absence of an active paternal influence. Despite his mounting status in the outside world, the father can become a family joke.

It is very bewildering for our struggling supertribesman. He has obeyed all the rules, but something has gone wrong. The superstatus demands of the human zoo are cruel, indeed. Either he fails and becomes disillusioned, or he succeeds and loses control of his family. Worse yet, he can work so hard that he loses control of his family and still fail.

This brings us to another and more violent way in which certain members of the supertribe can react to the frustrations of the dominance struggle. Students of animal behavior refer to it as the redirection of aggression. At the best of times, it is an unpleasant phenomenon; at worst, it is literally lethal. One can see it very clearly when two rival animals meet. Each wants to attack the other and each is afraid to do so. If the aroused aggression cannot find an outlet against the frightening opponent who caused it, then it will find expression elsewhere. A scapegoat is sought—a milder, less intimidating individual, and the pent up anger is vented in his direction. He has done nothing to warrant it. His only crime was to be weaker and less frightening than the original opponent.

In the status race, it frequently occurs that a subordinate dare not express his anger openly toward a dominant. Too much is at stake. He has to redirect it elsewhere. It may land on his unfortunate children, his wife or his dog. In former times, the flanks of his horse also suffered; today, it is the gearbox of his car. He may have the luxury of staff subordinates of his own that he can lash with his tongue. If he has inhibitions in all these directions, there is always one person left: himself. He can give himself ulcers.

In extreme cases, when everything seems utterly hopeless, he can increase his self-inflicted aggression to the maximum: He can kill himself. (Zoo animals have been known to inflict serious mutilations on themselves, biting their flesh to the bone when unable to get at their enemies through the bars, but suicide seems to be a uniquely human activity.) Views concerning the main causes of suicide have differed widely, but hardly anyone denies that redirected aggression is a major factor. One authority went as far as to claim that: "Nobody kills himself unless he also wants to kill others or at least wishes some other person to die." This is, perhaps, slightly overstating the case. A man who kills himself because of the pain of an incurable disease scarcely falls into this category. It would be fanciful to suggest that he wants to kill the doctor who has failed to cure him. What he wants is release from pain. But redirection of aggression does seem to account for a large number of cases. Here are some of the facts that support this idea:

There is a higher suicide rate in big towns and cities than in rural areas. In other words, where the status race is hottest, the suicide rate is highest. There are more male suicides than female suicides, but the females are catching up fast. In other words, the sex that is most involved in the status race has the highest suicide rate; and now that females are becoming increasingly emancipated and joining in the race more, they are sharing its hazards. There is a higher rate of suicide during periods of economic crisis. In other words, when the status race gets into difficulties at the top, there is an increase of redirected aggression down the hierarchy, with disastrous results.

There is a lower rate of suicide during times of war. The suicide curves for the present century show two huge dips during the periods of the two world wars. In other words, why kill yourself if you can kill someone else? It is the inhibitions about killing the people who are dominating and frustrating the potential suicide that force him to redirect his violence. He has the choice of killing a less daunting scapegoat, or himself. In peacetime, inhibitions about killing make him turn most often toward himself; but during wartime, he is ordered to kill and the suicide rate goes down.

The relationship between suicide and murder is a close one. To a certain extent, they are two sides of the same coin. Countries with a high murder rate tend to have a low suicide rate and vice versa. It is as if there is just so much intense aggression to be let loose, and if it does not take the one form, it will take the other. Which way it goes will depend on how inhibited a particular community is about committing murder. If the inhibitions are weak, then the suicide rate goes down. It is similar to the wartime situation, wherein inhibitions against killing are actively and purposely reduced.

By and large, however, our modern supertribes are remarkably inhibited where acts of murder are concerned. It is difficult for the majority of us who have never had to toss the murder/suicide coin to appreciate the conflict, although in theory, it seems biologically more unnatural to kill oneself rather than someone else. Despite this, the figures go the other way. In Britain during recent times, the yearly suicide figures have hovered around the 5000 mark, while the yearly (detected) murders have kept below the 200 level. What is more, if we look at these murders, we find something unexpected. Most of us gain our ideas about murder from newspaper reports and detective novels, but newspapers and thriller writers tend to concentrate on murders that will sell copies of papers and books. In reality, the most common form of homicide is an unglamorous and squalid little family affair in which the victim is a close relative. There were 172 murders in Britain in 1967 and 81 of these were of this type. Furthermore, in 51 cases, the murderer followed his act of homicide by committing suicide. Many of these latter cases are of the kind where a man, driven to turn his frustrated aggression onto himself, first kills his loved ones and then himself. Often, it appears that he cannot bear to leave them behind to suffer from the mess he has made, and so dispatches them first. Students of murder have discovered that an interesting change may then come over the killer. If he does not finish the job off and add his own corpse quickly to the rest, he is likely to experience such an enormous relief from tension that he suddenly finds he no longer wants to kill himself. Society dominated and frustrated him to the point where he was ready to take his own life, but now the slaying of his family consummates his revenge on society so effectively that his depression lifts and he feels released. This leaves him in a difficult situation. There are bodies lying about and all the signs that he has committed a multiple murder, when, in fact, it was only part of a desperate suicide. Such are the nightmare extremes of redirected aggression.

Most of us, happily, do not reach such extremes. Our families may experience nothing more than our arrival home occasionally in a disgruntled mood. Many supertribesmen can find an outlet by watching other people kill villains on television or at the cinema. It is significant that in strongly subordinated or suppressed communities, the local cinemas show a remarkably high proportion of films of violence. In fact, it can be argued that the thrills of fictional violence have an appeal that is directly proportional to the degree of dominance frustration that is being experienced in real life.

Since all the large supertribes, by their very size, involve extensive dominance frustration, the prevalence of fictional violence is widespread. To prove the point, it is only necessary to compare the international sales of books by authors of violent fiction with those of other writers. In a recent survey of the all-time best sellers in the world of fiction, the name of one author who specializes in extremes of violence appeared seven times in the top 20, with a total score of over 34,000,000 copies sold. In the world of television, the picture is much the same. A detailed analysis of transmissions in the New York area in 1954 revealed that there were no less than 6800 aggressive incidents in a single week.

Clearly, there is a powerful urge to watch other people being subjected to the most extreme forms of domination. Whether this acts as a valuable and harmless outlet for suppressed aggression is a hotly debated point. As with dominance mimicry, the cause of violence watching is obvious, but the value is open to question.

The action of redirecting aggression has often been referred to as the "... and the office boy kicked the cat" phenomenon. This implies that only the lowest members of a hierarchy will turn their blocked anger onto an animal. Unhappily for animals, this is not the case; and animal-protection societies have the figures to prove it. Cruelty to animals has provided a major outlet for redirected aggression from the times of the earliest civilizations right up to the present day; and it has not been confined to the lowest levels in the social hierarchy. From the slaughters of the Roman amphitheaters to the bearbaiting of the Middle Ages and the bullfighting of modern times, the infliction of pain and death on animals has undeniably had a mass appeal for members of supertribal communities. It is true that ever since our early ancestors turned to hunting as a method of survival, man has inflicted pain and death on other animal species; but the motives were different in prehistoric times. In the strict sense, there was no cruelty then, the definition of cruelty being "taking delight in another's pain."

In supertribal times we have killed animals for four reasons: to obtain food, clothing and other materials; to exterminate pests and vermin; to further scientific knowledge; and to experience the pleasure of killing. The first and second of these reasons we share with our early hunting ancestors, the third and fourth are novelties of the supertribal condition. It is the fourth that concerns us here. The others may, of course, involve elements of cruelty, but it is not their primary function.

The history of deliberate cruelty to other species has taken a strange course. The early hunter had a kinship with animals. He respected them. So, rather naturally, did the early farming peoples. But the moment that urban populations began to develop, large groups of human beings became cut off from direct contact with animals and the respect was lost. As civilizations grew, so did man's arrogance. He shut his eyes to the fact that he was just as much an animal as any other species. A great gulf appeared: Now only he had a soul and other animals did not. They were no more than brute beasts put on earth for his pleasure. With the spreading influence of the Christian religion, animals were in for a rough passage. We need not go into the details, but it is worth noting that as late as the middle of the 19th Century, Pope Pius IX refused permission for the opening of an animal-protection office in Rome on the grounds that man owed duties to his fellow men but none to the lower animals. Later in the same century, a Jesuit lecturer wrote: "Brute beasts, not having understanding and therefore not being persons, cannot have any rights.... We have, then, no duties of charity nor duties of any kind to the lower animals, as neither to sticks and stones."

Many Christians were beginning to have doubts about this attitude, but it was not until Darwin's theory of evolution began to have a major impact on human thought that man and the animals came closer together again. The reacceptance of man's affinity with animals, that had been so natural to the early hunters, led to a second era of respect. As a result, our attitude toward deliberate cruelty to animals has been changing rapidly during the past hundred years; but despite increasingly powerful disapproval, the phenomenon is still very much with us. Public displays are rare, but private savageries persist. We may respect animals today, but they are still our subordinates and, as such, are highly vulnerable objects for the unloading of redirected aggression.

Next to animals, children are the most vulnerable subordinates and, despite greater inhibitions here, they too are subjected to a great deal of redirected violence. The viciousness with which animals, children and other helpless subordinates are subjected to persecution is a measure of the weight of the dominance pressures imposed on the persecutors.

Even in war, where killing is glorified, this mechanism can be seen in operation. Sergeants and other N. C. O.s frequently dominate their men with extreme ruthlessness, not merely to produce discipline but also to arouse hatred, with the deliberate intention of seeing this hatred redirected at the enemy in battle.

Looking back, we can see now how the unnaturally heavy weight of dominance from above, that is an inevitable characteristic of the supertribal condition, has taken its toll. The abnormality of the situation for the human animal, who only a few thousand years ago was a simple tribal hunter, has produced patterns of behavior that, by animal standards, are also abnormal: the exaggerated preoccupation with dominance mimicry; the excitement of watching acts of violence; the deliberate cruelty toward animals, children and other extreme subordinates; the acts of murder and, if all else fails, the acts of self-cruelty and self-destruction. Our supertribesman, neglecting his family to drag himself one more rung up the social ladder, gloating over the brutalities in his books and films, kicking his dogs, beating his children, persecuting his underlings, torturing his victims, killing his enemies, giving himself stress diseases and blowing his brains out, is not a pretty sight. He has often boasted about being unique in the animal world and, on this score, he certainly is.

It is true that other species also indulge in intense status struggles, and that the attaining of dominance is often a time-consuming element in their social lives. In their natural habitats, however, wild animals never carry such behavior to the extreme limits observable in the modern human condition. As I said at the outset, only in the cramped quarters of zoo cages do we find anything approaching the human state. If, in captivity, a group of animals is assembled that is too numerous for the species concerned and they are packed too tightly together, then, with an inadequate cage environment, serious trouble will develop. Persecutions, mutilations and killings will occur. Neuroses will appear. Parents will cannibalize their young. But even the most ignorant and stupid of zoo directors would never contemplate crowding and cramping a group of animals to the extent that man has crowded and cramped himself in his modern cities and towns. That level of abnormal grouping, the director would predict with confidence, would cause a complete fragmentation and collapse of the normal social pattern of the animal species concerned. He would be astonished at the folly of suggesting that he should attempt such an arrangement with, say, his monkeys, his carnivores or his rodents. Vet mankind does this willingly to himself; he struggles under just these conditions and somehow manages to survive. By all the rules, the human zoo should be a screaming madhouse by now, disintegrating into complete social confusion. Cynics might argue that this is, indeed, the case, but plainly it is not. The trend toward denser living, far from abating, is ever gaining momentum. The various kinds of behavior disorders I have outlined are startling, not so much for their existence as for their rarity in relation to the population sizes involved. Remarkably few of the struggling supertribesmen succumb to the extreme forms of action I have discussed. For every desperate status seeker, home wrecker, murderer, suicide, persecutor or ulcer nurser, there are hundreds of men and women who not only survive but thrive under the extraordinary conditions of the supertribal assemblages. This, more than anything else, is the truly astonishing testimony to the enormous tenacity, resilience and ingenuity of our species.