Picture a group of humans, one of which is wearing headphones. Because the human with headphones is not as tightly integrated into the rest of the group, he is placed lower on the hierarchy than the rest. In other words, he is not "up to date" on the current events of the group, because he is in his own world and cannot hear what the rest of the group is doing.
Now that two particular cases of social hierarchy idiosyncrasies have been observed, I will now try to draw some generalities out of the two.
It seems that in both cases, the driving force for the hierarchy placement is found in the difference of knowledge between the two humans. In the first example, the sleeping human feels inferior to the human that is awake mainly because the human that is awake is more closely integrated into the human network at that point in time. He is more knowledgeable about the daily events and therefor is in a better position to be the leader of the two humans because any decisions that are made regarding something that has occurred that day should be up to him. This doesn't mean that if a leader wakes up second, the first human is the new leader, because leadership is based off of thousands of interactions between the two. Still, the human who wakes first does get leadership points for being the most informed about the events that day.
In the second example, the human wearing headphones is missing out on information that is being created as the group of humans passes the time. It is a sense of being "out of the loop" that lowers social status.
So why is it that we all tend to hate the people that are the most deeply integrated and obsessed with this idea of the "human network", or the knowledge that was being talked about in earlier paragraphs? According to the conclusions just reached above, wouldn't these people be the beloved leaders?
Absolutely not. Leadership quality is not simply a measurement of the level of immersion into the human knowledge network, but rather is based on charisma and the ability to inspire and act. The power of a leader comes from the people that follow him/her, whether it be the citizens of a government, or the loyalty of the military to a tyrant. Some tyrants in the past have been known to be very disconnected from what is going with their people. The great and beloved leaders in human history, however, have certainly been very entrenched in the human knowledge network.
What makes a great leader? I believe that, excluding the leadership qualities mentioned earlier which they must possess, it is the ability to understand the problems of their people, the ability to come up with effective solutions to these problems, the ability to communicate these problems and solutions to the public, and lastly and most importantly, the ability to deliver on the solutions. In order for this to be possible, the leader must either himself be deeply involved in the human knowledge network (to be able to identify and solve the problems), or have a handful of advisers how do the job for him/her.
There is no doubt however that the people most disconnected from the human knowledge network are not taken seriously. For example, in the film Shaun of the dead, the main character portrayed by Simon Pegg, does not realize that he is in the midst of zombie holocaust even though it is all over the news and even literally right in front of his eyes at some points. We find this humorous and some of us identify with this character and see his being disconnected as a reflection of our own disconnectedness from worldly events. Shaun, however hilarious, does not place very high on the human hierarchy because of this disconnectedness.
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