Living In Pyramid Land (Part 2)

As the first real kingdoms came into existence, the final structure of later Pyramids Of Might was born. Most residents populate the basement, some live on the second floor, less on the third floor, a few on the fourth floor, a handfull on the fifth floor and just one sits on top of them all in the 6th floor. Since then, there were no huge changes, only some fine tuning of control mechanisms was applied to improve the efficiency of this construct. Today, Pyramids Of Might are highly optimised constructs with zillions of ways to control thinking and acting of their residents. Having this coarse skeleton in mind, we should populate it with real residents and bring it into live.

As mentioned, most residents of each Pyramid live in the bottom level. In general, they are born here, grow up, work here most time of their life, retire when they get too old to work and die here at the end of their life. It surely is possible to climb up the stairways to the next higher level, but 'bottomers' are not welcome on the second floor. Whoever wants to survive there has to be eager to stay and has to provide outstanding skills to be accepted as a new second floor member. Because most positions already are assigned to second floor residents, upstarts most times replace a former resident who held that position. If so, the replaced second floor resident probably will be downgraded to a 'bottomer' (a true exchange), depending on her/his overall status. However, upgrades are seldom and pertain to less than one per mille of all 'bottomers'.

Let us climb one segment up. On the second floor, most residents are busy with bookkeeping. Some gather raw data, some apply preset filters, some organise the filtered results for statistical and administrative purposes. Only a small part of second floor residents are trustworthy and skilled enough to be established as supervisors for a small group of 'bottomers' (workers) or second floor residents (clerks). Nevertheless, most second floor residents are entitled to apply general rules, capable to control important aspects of a bottomer's life directly - be it tax assessments, construction permits, payroll acountings or other notifications and permissions of any kind. Compared to the bottom, more might is concentrated in the second floor, even if it is populated with far less residents.

One level up, we can find two different types of residents. The predominant part are 'mental workers', specialised in areas of expertise. 'Mental workers' generally maintain and improve actual production processes, some of them are are capable to enhance existing or develop future products and technologies. The remaining residents occupy positions in the lower or medium management. Third floor residents are empowered with as much might as they need to keep all production processes seamlessly running and to guarantee a smooth and efficient administration of both lower levels. Because the third floor sits between the lower and upper parts of a Pyramid, its residents are exposed to pressure from the upper segments as well as to complaints and latent reluctance of the lower segments.

Up again. The entire fourth floor is reserved for the top level management. All private decisions are made somewhere in this segment. Depending on the type of the Pyramid, a lot of smaller Pyramids Of Might might be established inside. If private Pyramids are a legal option of a Pyramid's internal structure, the tips of these private Pyramids sit somewhere inside the fourth floor. Many common decisions are influenced by residents of the fourth floor, as well. Even if common decisions generally are made by resident of the remaining two levels above, residents of the fifth and sixth floor have no experience in many fields, so their decisions depend on the help offered by experts living on the fourth floor. Whether that help is reliable or not is a question of beliefs, not of facts. Either those experts are accepted as trustworthy or they are ignored.

Let us climb up to the fifth floor, where the Pyramid's government resides. Most common decisions are made here. But, as mentioned, many of these decisions are heavily influenced by experts living on the fourth floor. Depending on the Pyramid's type, residents of the fifth floor either are elected for a fixed period of time (so called democracies) or they are appointed to specific positions in hieratic administation structures (dictatureships, ???-ist countries, kingdoms). Anyway, the fifth floor's purpose is to administrate the underlying paramid. Like all other segments, the fifth floor is subdivided into hierarchical levels, as well. Most residents perform mundane tasks and use their votes to deny decisions or let them pass. Some residents (called ministers, generals, et cetera) have special rights and are able to influence the voting behaviour of all others.

Finally, we reach the sixth floor, populated with just one resident. This is the Center Of Might, where all powers are concentrated and controlled. Well, almost true. In reality, the person on top of the Pyramid just is a human like you and me. Firstly, a human brain has quite limited capabilities. Secondly, humans make mistakes. Thirdly, no human can know everything. Hence, the top level resident needs a staff. This staff is responsible for filtering incoming information and present the results to the person on top. In the other direction, many different options are evaluated and weighted against each other, until an optimised solution is found. The result then is drafted out as the 'decision' of the person on top. As a rule of thumb, the quality of a government heavily depends on the quality of the top level staff. The described mechanisms also bear possibilities to turn the person on top into the staff's marionette. And: Even a high quality staff has no chance to inact required decisions if fourth floor residents block them, because they collide with concurrent interests of private Pyramids.

To be continued...

Living In Pyramid Land (Part 1)

Every existing political system is organised as a Pyramid. Be it a so called communist country, a so called democracy, one of the many dictatureships, remains of kingdoms or whatever else - they all share the same internal structures and hierarchies. Pyramid Land spans the globe from East to West as well as from North to South. Wherever we go, we will find Pyramids with identical shape, but different sizes. The only real difference between any two Pyramids are the actors living inside those Pyramids. However, even the residents of any two Pyramids were exchangable if different languages and different Pyramid volumes were no insuperable obstacles.

Let us have a look at the skeleton of each Pyramid. A pyramid is a solid figure with polygonal base and triangular faces meeting at a common point. To keep Pyramid Land simple, we assume a square base sitting on the ground, culminating towards a small tip touching the sky. Each Pyramid is built with elements. To get a better picture: Each element is comparable to a single stone block used to built one of those famous Egypt pyramids. In modern Pyramids, each element represents one resident with an equal share of might. The most important property of might is that it can be given away intentional, but also can be taken away by force. Groups of layers close to each other belong to larger units called segments. Each segment represents a social class with many nuances, depending on the layer an element really belongs to.

With these premises in mind, we have a construct representing segments of social stratum on top of each other, getting smaller and smaller with increasing distance from the base. Opposite to an ancient pyramid, built with millions of stoneblocks, elements in sociopolitical Pyramids can move horizontally as well as vertically. While horizontal mobility, also known as 'flexibility', is a common property, vertical moves are quite limited and mean a downgrade in most cases.

The paragraphs above describe the prototype of a sociopolitical construct named Pyramid Of Might (I dislike abbreviations, so I save you from remembering something like POM for the remaining text). Reading through all paragraphs, one question was not answered at all:

"What has this to do with reality?"

To answer this question, we have to go back to the beginnings of the Human 'Race' (I dislike the term 'Race' - it was abused too often). Stone Age tribes were organised similar to now, but the distribution of might was not concentrated in a few hands. Even if there were four segments - a leader, his/her staff, the hunters of the tribe (also acting as warriors if required) and the remaining tribe (children, women and old ones) - might was equally distributed between all segments. If the leader made a wrong decision, s/he had to be aware that the tribe might not follow her/his command any longer. This system resembled something like real democracy, where all members were free to influence any decision directly (each voice counted equally).

With growing population, sparsely scattered tribes had to look for more supplies to provide sufficient food for all of their members. Under changing environmental conditions, it was just a matter of time that tribes expanded their territory until they hit the territory of another tribe. Few tribes found a peaceful solution and merged to a larger tribe. Most times, the typical human lack of reason took over and a war reduced members of both sides, until there was no one left on the losers side. Whoever won a war had no reason to be satisfied with its results. As a side effect, bloody annexations introduced the first step towards inequality. Members of the conquered tribe neither had any might (it was taken by force) nor had they a right to partake in making any decision.

In the next few thousand years, peaceful merging of tribes and less peaceful annexions led to an unavoidable concentration of might in the hands of a few lords, who claimed all rights to make decisions for themselves. At the bottom, conquered tribes got the state of slaves. They were property of regular members of the Pyramid with absolutely no rights, not even a right to live existed - if the owner was in the mood, he could kill a slave like a sheep. Together with the concentration of might, the male gender became dominant, while women lost most of their rights as well as their might.

To be continued...

Bernhard Schornak

Introduction

Hi out there!

The Pool Of Humanity (TPOH) is a project started in 2004. It is thought to develop future concepts for a united world without borders, violence, wars, repression or poverty. Humanity cannot walk along its current path without destroying most life on this planet. What we have done to Nature until now was sufficient to kill many lifeforms. If we continue to waste unique resources, pollute our unique athmosphere and ignore the poverty of other humans (who, unfortunately, were not born as children of wealthy parents), we sooner or later are confronted with a dead planet, filled with angry people who want to get their share of whatever was left to survive.

Looking at the current situation, we observe political and economic decision-makers who still are preaching the same credo - the universal principle of inequality (same as it ever was). How inacceptable and unpopular such a principle might be, it is the fundament all political systems are based upon. If there was real equality, there were no starving people, no wars, no polluted air. Living in Pyramid Land, we all have to find our individual way to survive. Whoever is poor has nothing to share, whoever is wealthy does not share, but tries to grab more (and more and even more). No one asks if our behaviour is reasonable or insane. We all follow the main stream and try to get more than we give. The few who kept a minimum of reason and diligence are treated as fools.

That much for the introduction. The next post describes what is meant if I speak of Pyramid Land.

Bernhard Schornak