When looking at the pre-1914 world, it's amazing how much they tried to introduce (propagate?) artificial total orders: if you have a bishop and a baron over for dinner, who gets served first, that sort of thing.
Not just hierarchy but to create a common ground for everyone involved. Very helpful. If you’ve ever felt awkward at an event because you didn’t know the customs — this is to avoid that.
EDIT: here is another example, UN protocol in Geneva https://www.eda.admin.ch/dam/mission-onu-omc-aele-geneve/en/...
I also noted with amusement this extract from the USA's Office of the Chief of Protocol website:
> Formal invitations... ...preferred lettering style is script and all wording is spelled out without the use of acronyms.
Répondez s'il vous plaît?
Diplomats are used to this.
Hierarchies are great for govt, militaries, and companies, but only when kept to a minimum. The US was successful in WWII because the commanders set the goals and then let their sub-leaders get on with their jobs, allowing for creative, adaptive improvisation. Korean Airlines' cultural hierarchies almost got them delisted from Canada's airspace.
Spiritual folks within their orgs each have different levels of development, but if someone believes they are "better" than another person, that's the ego.
An enlightened individual is kind and respectful to everyone. At the same time, they always bear the truth without regard to people's ego-bruises and supposed slights. Those are what they are and are solely that person's responsibility to level-up from.
The structure is great for those people because then they can get their needs met without having to deal with ideas they do not understand like trust and mutual reciprocation or long-term relationships the structure is easy to exploit with no morals so we end up disproportionately rewarding these people
That's why you can't just expect everyone to be respectful and for it to work
For the vast majority of those of us who have the power to think and consult one's conscience, we can and do choose the course of our action. Over time, we can also choose to escape our ignorance and learn the ideals that facilitate humanity in our mostly mammalian body, and then choose to learn how to be better and then actualize being better.
Very few of us have anything but a lame-ass excuse, usually falling back on one's cultural upbringing to make excuses for our deliberate, if unthinking, choices.
The best "structure", as you put it, is to make empathy a major part of childhood education, teaching that we are all human beings, each differently endowed but worthy of respect to some degree. As well, we have to teach that we have to resist the inner urgings towards selfishness and ignorance in favor of willful action that will the benefit of the whole.
But, no, I do not agree that most people cannot learn such a moral framework, and the proof is the simple fact that we are all living in groups, none of us being completely self-sufficient for all our human survival needs, not to mention those things that bring us entertainment and relaxation.
And another big % that purposefully surpress empathetic instincts because of other beliefs.
Such evil is always worse under the guise of religion, because religion is ONLY supposed to lead us to greater compassion for all our neighbors, especially those who are on different paths. We are to light the way forward for others by our own selfless, loving, generous, and kind compassion for others.
A particularly tricky bit is that the Paradox of Tolerance requires us to "love" the oppressed differently than their oppressors, which may require what Holmes called "vigorous action" in the defense of the innocent. And it doesn't matter what the oppressor calls themself, because the beliefs and claims of the destructively self-deluded hypocrites carries no weight in the universe's court of truth, which is all there is.
Protocol is what is needed in an imperfect real world in which people do feel awkward and insecure during social events.
You might think “just have respect” but what seems innocuous to you might be the equivalent of spitting in someone’s face in a different culture.
Every culture has a moral compass, because each is a sum-total amalgam of its free-will-endowed human members, and some cultures just need to be stripped of their power to callously and cruelly oppress innocents.
The Abrahamic books do not mince words about oppressors. Life is meant to be joyous, free from stress, with enough for all of us, in a pristine environment purpose-built for our physiology. But we must choose that Path of Peace and Love, each of us. And, as always, the Paradox of Tolerance must be contemplated and honored. Love's dictate is that no one is compelled to help anyone, but no one should be permitted to harm innocents.
"Know your enemy." --RATM
Some people are not worthy of this
If you have me at a table with someone who volunteers at an orphanage and another who has ordered genocide, one of those people is getting more of my respect and kindness
There is nothing enlightened about treating both of these people as equivalent
Yes, there may be a baseline level of respect for someone being human, fundamental rights and freedoms
Most of the time when people talk about respect, they are talking about extra respect above the absolute baseline
This ability is called discernment, and is a given gift that must then be developed further within and by the journeyer on the Path of Love.
For those not deliberately evil-minded and -hearted -- for the merely confused and noncommittal -- respect for their being a human being with a mother, wants, and needs, successes and failures, is a necessary act of loving kindness for the student of love. It is indeed a primary purpose of the Path of Love for we are information processors who rely upon verbal teachings to absorb and communicate ideas.
Once we begin becoming embued with such a love, we are spurred on to help others choose the better path for both their and others' happinesss, due to our growing gratitude for the universe's blessings of Wisdom and the happiness accompanying it. Discernment then helps keep us from wasting too much time on the bitter, selfish fools of this troubled world.
Another perspective is that the evil-minded and -hearted people will not want to sit at the Guru's table, even if they were invited. They become allergic to such lovingkindness, for their inner master is loathe to let them be reminded of what they could be should they exercise their free will and instead choose the Way.
>These well-established and time-honoured rules allow nations and peoples from a wide range of cultures and values to conduct their activities with dignity in an environment devoid of frictions. Such animosity can easily arise when one of the parties concerned does not feel treated with respect.
>...
>Current protocol practices are rooted in history but evolve continuously. There is always a legitimate reason behind a protocol rule or practice.
Makes a lot of sense to me. Training your diplomats in protocol is very cheap compared with going to war.
It's true that any arbitrary ordering would suffice (for example, Olympic parades are in alphabetical order), and that the orders chosen are basically the agreed upon overall social/political order, it still serve similar utility.
This is just a nonsense excuse for cowards to hide behind.
I think it's funny how hierarchies proliferate in people's imaginations, for instance in Chinese mythology they believe fox spirits form a hierarchy under
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxian
I guess the one-tail foxes follow the two-tail foxes and so forth. Maybe it is just my fox affinity but I like my vision of that.
The difference is that we hear the voices of people who don't run in the same circles as bishops and barons...or to put it another way, bishops and barons still exist with all that their existence implies.
* then again, our local bishop has fallen on hard times: the bishopric used to wield both spiritual and temporal power, but these days is pretty much restricted to the former.
https://people.com/queen-camilla-attempts-to-break-royal-pro...
Common wealth navies still have ceremonial dinners which cater to the attendance of the Queen (or King now). There is a whole lot of intricacies that goes on there.