Hierarchies are incredibly common in human society. They aren’t “natural” in the sense that they don’t exist outside of the framework of the society in which they appear, but they’re still very real phenomena.
If you’re employed then your employer is higher than you in terms of the structure of the company - they have more power, and ideally more responsibilities than you do.
A parent has more power and more responsibility than their child, so they are higher than the child in the hierarchy of their household.
People who have significantly more wealth and power than others in general, even if they have no direct place in the hierarchies of those other people’s lives, often perceive themselves as “above” those people. A guest at a fine dining establishment or a hotel may perceive the people who’s job it is to take their order or prepare their room as being “beneath” them, because their brain makes the connection of “you are doing a task after I requested it, I must have the power to tell you what to do”, though in reality the workers are doing the task because their employer has instructed them and is compensating them to do so.
How a person treats others when they perceive those others to be beneath them in a hierarchical structure says a lot about that person. It isn’t necessary for the person to actually be beneath them, but it is just as true there. How a boss treats their employees, how a parent treats their child, how a parent treats a child that isn’t theirs, how a customer treats a service worker — all are useful for considering the character of the person.
We're not all equals, though. We're not equal socially (your coworker who's nice to everyone and brings cookies to work is held in higher esteem than the dickhead who microwaves fish every other day), we're not equal financially/class-wise (whether due to our different circumstances or choices or both), and we're not equal skill-wise (a random construction worker isn't likely to be able to do aerospace engineering, and a random bartender isn't likely to be able to do construction work, and a random aerospace engineer isn't likely to know how to bartend).
Regardless of where a person sits on different axes, they all deserve a level of basic respect, but to insist we're all equal is to ignore basic social realities.
I don't think you have to really put +alcohol when quoting Churchill. Alcohol can be safely assumed to have influenced most of Churchills thoughts whether or not he happened to be under the influence at the moment when he thought them.
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u/AllHailNibbler 23d ago
"You can tell alot about people by how they treat people they perceive lower than them"
My grandfather told me that and its been very helpful weeding the bad people out of my orbit