Oxford definition:
- Higher in rank, status or quality.
- Having or showing an overly high opinion of oneself; conceited.
No defined limit existing between normal and “overly high”, both can only exist as subjective estimates which need to be determined within each context.
So to stay clear of unmanageable estimates, we need to work with the simplest of relative terms defining superiority: “higher”, which in a context of value would translate into “better”, and in a context of importance into “higher indispensability”. Since those are all relative terms, then they can only make sense and have a purpose in a collective: a clan.
A clan is a group of individuals cooperating for collective survival/prosperity in an environment of scarcity and constant conflict with other clans for the acquisition and the protection of property/scarcities.
In a clan, individuals have the imperative to be “good” to each other to survive and prosper as a clan, and “bad” to rival clans with which they always are in some form of active or passive conflict over scarcities.
Incidentally, Good and bad are but the subjective human designations for some of the behavioral consequences of scarcity, and naturally these designations are inversed in the opposed perspectives of rival clans.
Why be “superior”?
In a clan where individuals have the imperative to be “good” to each other, people need to acquire subtle, non-conflicting/non-violent means to “deserve” more prosperity hence acquire a higher priority of access to scarcities within the clan. “Superiority” does the trick.
So in an environment of scarcity, “superiority” would be a successful strategy of non-violent competition to acquire a higher degree of indulgence from the clan to personal desires including security and prosperity.
If, hypothetically, “superiority” was unsuccessful or had always implied the lowest degree of indulgence hence the lowest degree of security or prosperity in the clan, would it be nurtured through the eons and be transformed into a basic trait of behavior?
The logical evolution of this successful strategy of personal superiority deserving greater prosperity would be to expand and be transformed into a clan superiority to be used as a justification for any conquest which always is about acquisition hence for abundance, in spite of any pretext.
In between clans this auto-proclamation of “superiority” can go to extreme lengths in its quest for prosperity; slavery to create almost-free abundance or genocide to acquire the entire property of their victims.
But if humans can go to such lengths by an auto-proclamation of superiority, then no need to speculate upon the lengths they will consider going if this superiority becomes a divine pretext “revealed” by a certain mystical superior being, even if the “revelation” was repeated to three different groups at three different times and is always about the superiority of each one over the others.
For monotheists “superiority” is the only crucial issue: the superiority of their own doctrine comprised of the auto-presentation of their one God and His “revealed” system of demands and recompense over all the others. It starts with the Genesis making God think and apprehend not only humans but Himself as well in terms of “better than”, “the best”, “the most powerful” or the “only” and naturally this central apprehension of “superiority” becomes the central apprehension of all monotheisms and monotheists consequently creating their way of life and the perfect pretext for expansion, intolerance, and conflict.
In the east, the land of supposed “inferior” religions, when two strangers met, they used to ask in open, respectful acceptance: “To what sublime religion do you belong?”.
Humans will lower themselves to unfathomable depths of inhumanity in the name of an undefined yet considered as divine “righteousness” to destroy an undefined yet considered as anti-divine “unrighteousness”, both direct reflections of Good and bad, themselves simultaneous consequences programmed in human nature by eons of collective survival as clans in scarcity.
Scarcity is the only cause of every aspect of the consequence called “human nature”, including every behavior and sentiment.
Even if the intertwined hypothesis of superiority having its origin in a clan as a successful non-violent strategy for superior abundance needs layers of analysis and clarification due to its generalization to almost all domains of human organization (hierarchy), the clear cut “Theory of Clans in scarcity” is the one theory that simply and clearly explains all and every human behavior.
Everything would have been so simple to understand and consequently life would have been easier if the presented one God was not presented as an entity with such modest logical capacities as to confuse cause and consequence.
So the main, simple, primitive strategy of “better than”, “the best” and/or “the only” allowing easier access to scarcities within the clan could have developed through the eons to not only become the leitmotif of aggression/conquest, not only the divine design of creation, not only the apprehension of the monotheism presented one God of his supposed creation, not only the outlook of every monotheist to any other religion including other monotheisms, but to become the auto-apprehension of the one God Himself.
So before the infantile confusion between cause and consequence, the current monotheistic divine cause of everything (Good) including the reason of its own existence was simply the consequence of human clans evolving in scarcity.
Not knowing better, we still think and behave in terms of “better than” or “the best” and seek power or recognition, not realizing that these in fact divulge an instinctive, deep insecurity and a clear incapacity to evolve outside the realm of our fear or lacking, even while living in obscene abundance.
These make ALL of us the victims of our instinctive yet very logical fear of lacking.
We always were and still are the children of scarcity.
Will we be able to change our environment of scarcity and in doing so, eventually change ourselves as well?
But if men still think that mankind will always have an irrational side which will aggressively oppose even the most pertinent logic and basic rationality if it involves discarding their instinctive, intuitive fears and behaviors, then the following should be considered:
- Under the current conditions of existence man can definitively be seen as both rational and irrational, logical and instinctive but taking a few moments to think about any domain of his irrationality or instinct we realize that there was a long lost time when all of these behaviors currently apprehended as irrational/instinctive/intuitive were a must for survival and prosperity. If there was no need for them, they would never have existed. This makes these fears and behaviors extremely logical, the ultimate rationality for that time which lasted for a few hundred thousand years.
- Also, if these behaviors were elaborated/programmed in his nature for so long, then it is also the ultimate rationality not to let them go easily, even if we realize that they no more serve a purpose.
Mankind was, is, and always will be exclusively rational.
There is not a shred of irrationality in the thinking algorithms of men.
The thing is to have the real INFORMATION to which to apply his rational mental algorithms.
Man is the ultimate rational creature who craves understanding, even if sometimes in the absence of factual knowledge, he takes shortcuts to knowledge either by extrapolating the law of cause and effect into superstition by creating spirits to “understand” natural phenomenon, or by considering childish, extravagant stories as the “revelation” of the knowledge he craves.
There is no doubt in my mind that when mankind is communicated the real information about its new conditions of existence, as always it will behave rationally and very slowly but surely will do the logical thing even while enduring the soul-draining pain of gradually letting its “gut-felt” certitudes (and fears) go, if not “properly” frightened by “global” players for whom any change means losing their archaic strategy of domination to own everything existing.
In the game of Monopoly, someone owns everything at the end after forcing family and friends into bankruptcy.
What happens next?
In the game “The bank” is not allowed to play, very unlike our current planetary game of Monopoly where a consortium of the biggest banks is the only one playing and using representative democracy to force us to play along.
As hard as it is to imagine, in total, everlasting abundance any form of individual or clan superiority will be slowly but definitively replaced by a form of acceptance/respect, since superiority can no more serve a positive purpose but only irritate partners and endanger their vital support for a life of abundance and euphoria.