A. THE STATUS AND BEHAVIOUR

A man is a social being. He cannot live without society. The newborn of human society take years to become self-sufficient, until such time they need society's help to survive.  Therefore, society is necessary for survival of human kind. All societies can be considered as made up of hierarchies. In a society where everybody is equal may be considered as a society of single hierarchy. It may be a very long horizontal stratum. The nearest of this kind of society was found in pre-agriculture communes. There was only one leader. Even the leader in such societies could not take independent decision because he was dependent on others.
One main factor to be considered is the natural desire of a man is to be superior to others. This has twofold opposite results. One is that a man always tries to be superior to others and the second is that the same desire forces him to negate the superiority of others. The first one leads to formation of hierarchy and the second leads in opposite direction. Equality is the position where there is no relative superiority or inferiority but the desire to be superior to others persists. It may manifest itself in the pursuit of excellence or in the destruction of enemies. It may be seen in the competitiveness of an individual. Those who are able to assert superiority are able to form hierarchy. But there are always people who oppose this hierarchy. From the point of view of an individual, superiority is desirable and inferiority is undesirable. The movement for women liberation can be seen in this light. There is hardly anybody who likes his natural or imposed inferiority. There are many ways of assertion of superiority but may vary from culture to culture
The general trend in history has been toward formation of hierarchies. At the same time this is disliked by the people at lower level. The two opposing forces are working at the same time. This may also explain the emergence of great movements against hierarchy that sometimes led to bloodbath.
  An egalitarian society, where there is no high or low, has been the ideal of many thinkers and philosophers for a long time but not been yet fully achieved. It has been very difficult to create such a society in a situation where the members of society are very large in number. The elements of equality have been embedded in varying degrees in the thinking of the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammad, Magna Carta writers, the French Revolutionaries, the American Lawmakers, Hobbes, Rousseau, Karl Marx etc., and everywhere it was present in its own way.  In fact, it has been an enduring theme of the history. The same idea of equality is supposed to have been provided by the democracy and the communism. There have been great religious and social movements in the quest of equality.  It is needless to say that the three great religious movements in this direction have been Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Hinduism has no concept of equality barring its incoherent mumblings about equality. In modern times, the French Revolution and the French Declaration of right of man, the American rights declaration and the American civil war have been great events in the quest for equality. In this, the aim of Russian revolution and Chinese revolution cannot be denied though their kind of equality could not be sustained.
Prior to the discovery of agriculture, the real technicians were the tool and weapon makers. These tools and weapons were made out of stones. This was a rudimentary technology which was easy to learn. The tribes were by and large homogeneous in nature. No basic difference prevailed among the members of tribes. All the members of the tribe were kith and kin. The ordering in such a society was simple. Everybody was equal since everybody possessed more or less similar skills of hunting or gathering. Everybody, including the leader, had to gather/hunt for food since even the leader was not sure whether others would bring enough food back for him. He could not take chance. He advanced to the level of not going to bring the food only when other could bring it for him. It was made possible by the discovery of agriculture.
With the discovery of agriculture the human society was able to produce regularly more than its immediate needs. It was no longer necessary to go every day for hunting or for food gathering to forests. The grains being dry in nature were not immediately perishable like fruits and meat. Thus, food could be stored for a longer period. The development of agriculture technology was, in fact, a revolutionary step of man toward the control of nature. Now the man was no longer chasing the nature in the form of the hunter and food gatherer; he could now control it. The food supply was no longer controlled by the unfathomable acts of nature. Man now could clear the forest, prepare the field, plant the seeds. When the crop matured, he could reap and store it. He could clear as much as forest as he needed. This led to a settled life. There was no longer any need to move from place to place in search of food. Now he could live near the land that provided him the food.
A settled life meant that he could no longer act or move in a random manner. Some kind of order was needed. To prevent two men fighting to cultivate the same piece of land, it was necessary to allot them separate pieces of  land. It was absolutely necessary to avoid the violence. The internal violence in small tribes was self destructive.  The random desire to cultivate any piece of land meant invitation to violence. In case of use of violence, the stronger men pushed the weaker men out of the prime land. It was necessary to identify a man with a given piece of land to maintain peace. The randomness was not going to work; some kind of order was needed; the agriculture itself required an organized way of operating. The continuous identification of a man with a specific piece of land led to the notion of belonging that developed in the notion of private property. Its precursor was the rule that the finder was the keeper. Some authority was needed to implement the order and thus a king like authority emerged which was strong enough to decide the people’s claim on the land. For this, the authority extracted some part of food surplus. This authority also needed warriors who could fight with the marauding tribes who still had not learnt the technology of agriculture. Or the society in question had to agree to give the plunderers a share of the crops whenever they came.
With the discovery of agriculture, the institution of private property came properly into existence. The hunting and food gathering stage required that the small tribes moved, from place to place, in search of food. There could exist only fuzzy territories controlled by any hunting tribes. The privately owned pieces of land could not exist in the hunting stage. This movement of people from one place to another place obviated any need or desire of a man to claim a piece of land as his own. It was not certain that the tribe was going to be back to that place in near future. There was no use of land as private property. The rationality required that no claim of ownership was needed. It yielded nothing that he could use directly. The yield of land was beyond his control. All the food he gathered was from the trees or shrubs that he did not know how to plant.  The nature planted them for him from place to place in a natural way. He could not claim any particular tree as his own; the tree belonged to the whole tribe. However, one trait was possibly there that prepared the ground for future private property institution. This was the idea that the finder was the keeper. Of course it could be violated by the strong individuals but most of the time finder/s could consume the food and bring the remaining food back for the tribe. The same can be said about the hunting. In hunting, the hunter was the keeper. Later it translated into private property where the first user of the land was usually the owner.
The people responsible for maintaining the order in the society obviously needed a part of surplus produced by the society. This power was a sign of superiority over others. It was also an indication the quest for relative superiority existed. They became the coercive power in society. It was possible since the cultivators were producing more than they required and they needed to live in peace.  Obviously, those who controlled people and defended the land were more powerful than the owner-cultivators were.  Or the one who had more land came to be more powerful. In a sense the hierarchy was developed.  At the top was the man who controlled the men not the land. Through these men he could control the land. With the warriors or soldiers under his control, he could change the ownership of the land. Then there were his courtiers and the owners of the land and then were the actual cultivators. The owner and cultivator could have been the same if the piece of land in question was small. However, if the land was large enough then the owners and cultivators could be different. The cultivators were having lower rankings; they moved according to the coercive powers existing in the society. Naturally, those who were low in ranking had low powers and those high in ranking had high powers. The power decided the ranking or status in the society.  Somebody’s power could be known by knowing his status or ranking in the society.
 Another powerful group of people, which came into existence, was the group of shamans or the later day priests. They represented the religious forces of those times. Later the religion grew to be an extremely important part of society. These people satisfied the curiosity in the society and supposedly had developed connections with the paranormal powers.
A man is not only a social being but he is also a curious and thinking animal. He nurtured a fear of unknown powerful natural things. He needs the reasons and the explanations for the events in nature – the best possible reasons – not necessarily the right one – even with elements of belief. The shamans and later religious people were able to convince the people of the supposedly higher live powers behind the natural events and also the existence of life after death. They could also ably convince the people about the causes behind natural events like lightening, rain and other thing by assigning these powers to supernatural entities like the gods. These terrifying natural powers were unknown. Therefore, these people (knowledgeable?) supposedly in contact with the gods and the spirits came to be powerful and thus acquired the authority. The supernatural things had a very important place in the life which was duly taken advantage of. The people who supposedly connected with supernatural powers came to acquire the supposed supernatural powers - the divinity rubbed on them. It was another group of influential people which extracted the surplus from the cultivators for saving them from divine retribution or natural calamities and diseases. Thus, people connected with temporal power and others connected with supernatural powers extracted their share and had the highest status in the society.
However, in ancient times, further labor specialization took place with advancement in technology. Many more occupations came into existence. These new professionals were carpenters, forgers, weavers and potters etc. These people got their share of produce in exchange of their services or goods. These were the lower ranking people similar to the cultivators.
Finally, with an increase in population the demand for agriculture increased which created additional demand for the cultivable land. This gave rise to many conflicts and many wars were fought over the land.
The multilayered society began to develop. There were ruling class, priestly class, cultivators and workers in descending order. However, the state and religion collided with each other, occasionally, but by and large reached to a tacit agreement with each other of mutual non-competition. The papal empire should be kept in mind while discounting the role of religion in the society. The history is full of hierarchical societies. This is the main trend of history.
 However, the French revolution broke the tacit agreement between political powers and religion and replaced it with the agreement of people in general on the basic equality of individuals. The medieval   group of nobles was decimated after which it never returned. The French revolution and the American rights declaration made people equal at least in case of political power. There, the religion was kept out of the sphere of decisively deciding the people’s lives. The religion in Europe and America is deliberately kept out of power. This trend was strengthened with progress on the scientific front. With development of science, the religious leaders were reduced to repeating the religious books and faith while spiritual philosophers were reduced to discussing nouns and pronouns. Such is the power of Science. 
 The Russian and the Chinese revolutions tried to make people economically equal on collective basis but failed in implementing it properly. The hierarchy developed there too. Economic equality does not seem to go hand in hand with political equality. The United States of America is an example of this. But the economic inequality can easily go hand in hand with the political inequality. The communism, as practiced, gave no political freedom to individuals, and also produced the real economic inequalities among people. There the movers of the resources became the effective owners.
Earlier we have defined all the societies as hierarchal societies. An equal society has hierarchy of degree one.  A society has as many degrees of hierarchy as many as strata it has. The pre-agriculture commune system would have a hierarchal degree of one. The caste system in India can be, broadly, said to have a hierarchal degree of five. Actually, it contains more degrees than five when you count the castes in a varna and the sub-castes in a caste.
In any society, a man has a given status. Here, we take the status to be axiomatic in its existence because the status may change with the cultural values of the society. In a changing society, the status may be changing but it is considered to be in existence. In a composite society, again we take the status to be in existence even if it is difficult to define it precisely. The existence of multiple cultures makes the status difficult to be defined in universal terms.
Axiomatically, a man has a given status that is always relative. Here the status is defined as the relative ability to move the resources in the society.  He is superior to some and inferior to some. At the top end, we have individual/s superior to everybody and at the bottom, we have individual/s inferior to everybody. The natural desire of a man to be superior to others is considered to be axiomatic. That is considered as his natural propensity. The desire to excel is indication of need to be superior or need to be not inferior. So is obtaining a degree from a prestigious university. As per the axiom of propensity to be superior, he has to raise his relative superiority, and reduce relative inferiority.  Thus, an individual has the task of minimizing his relative inferiority with respect to people above him and maximize his relative superiority with respect to people below him. He has a double task at the hand because only maximizing his superiority or only minimizing his inferiority may not give the desired result. If he only maximizes his superiority over the lower people then those above him may increase their superiority leaving him worse off. If he minimizes only his inferiority in relation to those above him then those below him may bypass him again leaving him worse off. One cannot have everything.  The forces generated through this process may be called the repulsive forces or the conflict forces or competitive forces.
The propensity to be superior led the kings to attack their neighbors to maximize their superiority which was measured by their wealth, and the area and men under their command. Some simply attacked others, simply, to loot the riches and then retreated to their own kingdoms. This asserted their superior status. They were undefeated. They fought for honor, glory and the riches. All are related to status – the ability to move resources including people.
The holy violence can also be used to increase the relative superiority as is seen in case of Jihads, Crusades and the atrocities on the untouchables in India.
A situation might develop where competitive people keep on shifting the goals because everybody keeps on moving. It is a characteristic of a dynamic society. On the other hand, there are societies where nothing moves. In a static society or stable society, people are born with their stable and inert lives and then they die – nothing much changes. In between there are societies where dynamism in one section and inertness in the rest; here most of the time the dynamism is found only in the top section of the society while the bottom remains poor and peaceful. Sometimes the bottom may be more dynamic and this may result in a change or a revolution.
Another possibility is that the whole society may move up but the relative position of everybody may remain as it was before the movement. The status quo is maintained. Sometimes, it is done in the name of great cultural heritage, the heritage that actually benefits a few.  The ancestors of top few cannot be wrong therefore everybody has to accept the traditionally inferior position except the top few - the inheritance prevails.
For our purpose, we will consider an extremely simple case where the cultural values throughout the society are the same. There, one can easily identify the status of a man. Thus, we can have a relatively simple analysis.  In our simple world, the man at the top has to maximize his superiority only since he has no inferiority. The man at the bottom has to minimize his inferiority only since he has no superiority. Raising the status of man is not a simple matter, because it would be opposed by those who are superior to him because it would reduce their superiority. In addition, it would be opposed by those who are inferior to him because it would increase their inferiority.  We are not assuming a simple world where everybody goes around happily minding his own business; here we depart from Adam Smith. This relative situation is likely to exist anywhere. The relative situations may be in societies, business organizations, bureaucracies, armies, police etc. It may depend on many factors which we assume to be constants. The status of a man may depend on the cultural, social, economic, political factors. In India, the birth factors are more important than other factors. In America, the economic factor is more important. In China, the hierarchy within communist party is more important. The acquisition of education, wealth, political power and bureaucratic position are some of the ways of reducing the inferiority and increasing the superiority – all it means a relative increase in the ability to move the resources. A relative lack of them works backwards in loss of status or increased relative inferiority.
However, in a dynamic society, where everybody is mobile it becomes a strange kind of world. This is the world where everyone has to keep running to stay in the same relative place though the absolute increase in the position has taken place. In such a situation, maintaining the status or improving it can be quite a complex task. The people, who are engaged in any warfare, where luck changes every day and situation is extremely flexible. They face a very complex and dangerous task of improving status. In a growing economy, one has to keep increasing his income if he wishes to remain in the same place on the ladder of society. Otherwise, those below him would move past him, and become superior, making him feel uneasy. Additionally, among other factors, enjoying any socially valuable facilities increases the welfare of a man, and thus his status. For example in any office, larger benefits given to the juniors would be resented by the seniors because such a thing would compromise their superiority. A superior is supposed to enjoy better facilities including benefits. An increase in benefits of an individual increases his superiority and reduces his inferiority. At the same time, it reduces the superiority of his seniors and increases the inferiority of his juniors. This double effect may make those who are above and below him, feel like taking some action if they have to maintain their positions or remain in the same place and most of the time they take whatever action is feasible. It may have all round effect; the reaction of other people may depend upon the possible ways and means available to them.
There are various means of increasing superiority. One way out is networking with people of higher status or his own status. Any association with socially, politically, intellectually and economically eminent people, also, increases the status. If one cannot be a king, be his lieutenant, which is safe also. This is networking way of increasing status. The acquisition of skills and education is another. Taking birth in an eminent family is another; it is a time-tested feature of any society. Getting any kind of power is another way of increasing the status. In addition, this status many times can be converted into cash or wealth.
A top player of a popular sport or top software professional enjoys considerably better status than most people and sometimes enough to catapult him into exalted circles.  
The status can be acquired by acquiring socially valuable and acceptable things. These valued things are culture specific. Once we have defined the culture we get to know the cultural values and welfare function. In such a situation, a man may have to follow his superiors and their way of living. He has to follow their life style and their philosophy about life so that it reduces the gap between him and the people superior to him. Or he has to get himself under their umbrella. Following a superior way of life increases the possibility of acceptance/approval among higher people and thus reduces his inferiority. There is old money and there is new money. Those superior to him would  try to increase their status further by acquiring additional social, economic and political power or knowledge power or they would try to stop this man from acquiring such things so that he remains where he was. Only when they have failed in either increasing their own superiority further or preventing this man from increasing his superiority then they will accept him as their equal. They will fail only when they have exhausted their resources and cannot make additional resources available for such a purpose.
If one cannot be equal to either royalty or monks then one can be near to them. To be equal to monks, one has to become a monk. And the question of becoming equal to royalty does not arise since royalty cannot be acquired through any worldly means; it can be acquired through birth only. However, if a common man in a kingdom is desirous of increasing his status then he can do so by linking himself to the royalty or patronizing the monks if they allow it. If the teachings of monks are followed closely by the man then, he as a true believer might get a higher status among the common men.
 However, it is not necessary to follow the superiors meekly. In the French revolution, the third estate and people below them reduced their inferiority by violently overthrowing the king and the nobles. In France, the first and second estates were not ready to cede some equality to the third estate before the revolution though it had acquired substantial economic means. This caused the third estate to combine with the fourth stratum and bring forth the revolution. Thus, in the absence of the royals and the nobility the revolutionaries achieved equality, getting rid of their inferiority. Prior to American civil war, the whites in southern American states maximized their superiority over blacks through violent means. Thus, the violence is also a mean to either maximize superiority or minimize inferiority. The whites in northern American states felt it to be socially demeaning to indulge in the practice of slavery while the whites in southern states thought it to be contrary. These contrasting attitudes culminated in the American civil war – though there were other factors. Everybody in this civil war fought for the cause dear to him, one side for equality and the other for inequality. In South African apartheid, the whites maintained their superiority over blacks through coercive means. In Russia and China, also the people reduced their inferiority to zero through violent means.
The Samurais in Japan willingly gave up their privileged position and emerged as industrialists.  This willing surrender of superiority, in the Meiji restoration, is surprising but actually it was done to reduce the inferiority of Japan in relation to superiority of industrialized western countries like Britain and France. The old structure of Samaurais was thought to be the reason behind this inferiority. To achieve parity it was necessary for Japan to industrialize itself for which the sword wielding samurai class was a hindrance.  Therefore, to reduce the international inferiority the country level superiority was sacrificed.  Similarly, the serfs were freed in Germany to enable it to industrialize to achieve industrial parity with Britain and France. Here again the local superiority (or the inferiority of serfs was reduced by making them free) was conceded to a certain extent for gaining the international status. The emergence of nation states as entities and maximization of their superiority and minimizing inferiority led to the two world wars. The superior status of nation state in Europe was determined by the colonies under it.  The raging patriotic disputes over the colonies caused these wars. However, these were not the only reasons. Moreover, there are too many reasons to be enumerated here. Somewhat the same thing is happening in China where internal superiority is being surrendered to increase economic status at the international level. The capitalism is being encouraged which increases the status of the capitalists, the supposed arch enemies.
The conditions before the First World War were also contributed by the question of status of European nations that was measured by the colonies under each of them. Thus, we see that use of force may not always be for maintaining the law and order conditions.
The dangerous conditions in Germany prior to the Second World War were created in some measures by feelings of inferiority (or humiliation) imposed by the treaty of Versailles. Sometimes preemptive actions are taken to prevent the potential threat to superiority. Hitler, by neutralizing his opponents, maximized his superiority; but he was only temporarily successful.
In our model, there will be a normal tendency for increasing the inequalities. The income inequalities may increase. The rich may become richer and poor may become poorer. In Hindu society, such rational behavior led to the development of untouchability through insistence on the purity paradigm which became a yardstick for higher status and which enabled the pure people to move the resources in society. This naturally led to increasing purity at one end and increasing impurity at the other end.
We define the inductive behavior as a behavior which is induced from the societal environment. The inductive behavior may also be induced by conditions/culture within group without active teaching or the without active learning. In this, rewards and penalties are not obviously involved. The inductive behavior presupposes the reasons. Somebody is doing something because everyone is doing it. One is inductively silent upon entering a room of people who are silent.  Suppose a child, out of curiosity, joins the line of elders where everybody touches the feet of a guru, in sequence. When the turn of a child comes, he also automatically/inductively touches the feet of guru.  Inductively it is wrong to do a specific thing because everybody considers it to be wrong. It becomes an issue of acceptability. Sometimes it is forced through traditions and coercive powers. It is right to do something because everybody considers it to be right in his group. Whether the actions are rights or wrongs, is actually another matter. Slowly, slowly he absorbs the inductive behavior by presupposing the reasons and behaves in required way which induces the junior generations to act according to senior generations. Only when one grows up he comes to know to reasons behind such behavior. This may also include the cultural training of children. At that time, he may understand the conditions under which his ancestors lived and followed some kind of unwritten rules and some unfathomable rules in fear of some penalties or in expectation of some reward. Now he knows them and still behaves as he was behaving in the childhood because now it is a rational decision. He needs to survive. This common behavior develops in each fraternity group and is handed down to coming generations.  The reason for this may be many, like the lack of resources and need for law and order as decided by the wise men of the society.
Equilibrium is reached in the society when any action plan by any person/group which results in any increase in his/group’s status invites a reaction from others which reduces his/group‘s status gain to zero; and a reversal to earlier position, takes place. A status quo is maintained in the society. Consider a case of a border between two countries. Any encroachment by one side on the other results in a reaction by the other side resulting in restoring the earlier position. It may be pushing back the encroacher or encroaching upon some other areas of the offender. Thus, it is not possible to gain any relative increase in status by any kind of actions and status quo persists.
We may now consider the social place in the society. Here any action by any agent which results in any increase in his social space will be matched by a reaction which would nullify his gains and thus reverting to the original situation. This reaction need not necessarily be in the opposite direction to his recently gained space but somewhere else where it is equally harmful. An increase in social space in one direction may be opposed by other/s by an increase in social space in other direction. For equilibrium, the average pressures from both sides should be equal. This we will see later.
Likewise, in the economic space and the political space the equilibrium is maintained when there is an automatic reversal to the original situation. In equilibrium, there are no alternative courses available to anybody which can result in any relative gains in his status.  Another kind of equilibrium can be seen in the situation where both the sides possess the abilities to inflict equally serious damages on each other as in the case of nuclear deterrent. The aggressor is kept in check by the possibility of equally damaging reaction.
In hierarchal societies, a layered equilibrium is attained where each layer is in equilibrium with other layers. No layer has any option or strategy left unused which can increase its status. To maintain stability and harmony in society it is necessary that lower layers have lesser and lesser command over resources. This would stop them from having the capabilities of improving their relative welfare and also prevent them from antagonizing the higher layers.  Again, for equilibrium the average pressure from all the layers should be equal.
In such societies, the movement is found mainly among the top layers not in the lowest layers. The lowest layers do not have enough options left with them to be exercised to increase their status. All the options are available to top layers only. Thus, by and large the dynamic movements take place at the upper end of the society. The available options keep on reducing in number as one goes down the hierarchy. 
When the classes were developed, the inductive behavior also passed down from generation to generation, the inductive behavior helped in maintaining the law and order in the society, generally in favor of powerful strata of the society because everybody inductively knew his place; the use of force was not always necessary.
In a stable society all changes are brought about by forces external to the existing system.  All the existing forces have been nullified.  All relative status spaces add up to total status space in the set.
The equilibrium is established – the powerful ruling over the others. For others there were religion and faith. These others were actually living at the mercy of ruling class and not that of God.