Here’s an interesting bit of research: the human brain appears to have a serious bias toward hierarchical structures that makes issues of status and rank a distracting and destabilizing variable:

Human Brain Appears “Hard-Wired” for Hierarchy

Human imaging studies have for the first time identified brain circuitry associated with social status, according to researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health. They found that different brain areas are activated when a person moves up or down in a pecking order – or simply views perceived social superiors or inferiors. Circuitry activated by important events responded to a potential change in hierarchical status as much as it did to winning money.

“Our position in social hierarchies strongly influences motivation as well as physical and mental health,” said NIMH Director Thomas R Insel, M.D. “This first glimpse into how the brain processes that information advances our understanding of an important factor that can impact public health.”

… “The processing of hierarchical information seems to be hard-wired, occurring even outside of an explicitly competitive environment, underscoring how important it is for us,” said Zink. Key study findings included:

• The area that signals an event’s importance, called the ventral striatum, responded to the prospect of a rise or fall in rank as much as it did to the monetary reward, confirming the high value accorded social status.

• Just viewing a superior human “player,” as opposed to a perceived inferior one or a computer, activated an area near the front of the brain that appears to size people up – making interpersonal judgments and assessing social status. A circuit involving the mid-front part of the brain that processes the intentions and motives of others and emotion processing areas deep in the brain activated when the hierarchy became unstable, allowing for upward and downward mobility.

• Performing better than the superior “player” activated areas higher and toward the front of the brain controlling action planning, while performing worse than an inferior “player” activated areas lower in the brain associated with emotional pain and frustration.

• The more positive the mood experienced by participants while at the top of an unstable hierarchy, the stronger was activity in this emotional pain circuitry when they viewed an outcome that threatened to move them down in status.  In other words, people who felt more joy when they won also felt more pain when they lost.

“Such activation of emotional pain circuitry may underlie a heightened risk for stress-related health problems among competitive individuals,” suggested Meyer-Lindenberg. 

Read the rest here. 

With such a strong intrinsic reward system, the incentives for maintaining high status in an organization would outweigh those involved in carrying out the organization’s core mission – i.e. ” leaders” have a built-in drive to maintain the status quo at the expense of any possible nominal objective. The predisposition would also be present to look for hierarchical couterparts that do not exist in adversarial organizations that have a network structure and to ” sabotage” networked and “modular structures” on our own side in order to transform them into a hierarchy than can better fulfill the ego-needs of a “high status” individual.

Hat tip to fellow SWC member Bourbon for the following four star additions to the blogroll:

In Moscow’s Shadow ( Dr. Mark Galeotti)

Think Tank ( Steve Coll)

Steve Coll, is of course, the author of the critically acclaimed and justly praised Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Of all the book reviews I have done at Zenpundit, this one will be the shortest.

Prodded to read War Nerd by co-blogger Lexington Green, I found Gary Brecher’s writing is a weird fusion of Robert Young Pelton crossbred with Dave Barry, yielding some sort of one-man, Mad Magazine of modern warfare but without the cartoons by Don Martin and Sergio Aragones. Beneath Brecher’s crafted shtick, however, lies a genuine grasp of military history and an analytical shrewdness with which I found myself nodding in agreement all too frequently.

Buy this book.

My Chicago Boyz colleague James Bennett has a great op-ed piece on Gov. Sarah Palin in the UK Telegraph (hat tip Lexington Green). It’s one of the best concise pieces on Palin’s strengths – which most of the American press is desperately trying to ignore, either to help the Obama campaign with their scattergun negative personal attacks or in dumbing down their political coverage of Palin with warm-fuzzy topics to an intellectual level somewhere below that of People Magazine:

Sarah Palin is not such a Small Town Girl After All

…The first myth to slay is that she is a political neophyte who has come from nowhere. In fact, she and her husband have, for decades, run a company in the highly politicised commercial fishing industry, where holding on to a licence requires considerable nous and networking skills.

….Palin quickly realised that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics, a conviction that grew as the price of oil rose. Alaska had been in hock to oil companies since major production began in the mid-1970s.

As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table. Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state’s share of energy revenues.

This agenda, pursued throughout Palin’s commission tenure, culminated in her run for governor in 2006. By this time, she had already begun rooting out corruption and making enemies, but also establishing her bona fides as a reformer.

With this base, she surprised many by steamrollering first the Republican incumbent governor, and second, the Democratic former governor, in the election.Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.

Read the rest here.

Better late than never. Overwhelmed with papers and projects.

Top Billing! The New Atlanticist Policy and Analysis Blog has been rolled out by The Atlantic Council and features James Joyner as managing editor and Nick Gvosdev of the Naval War College as a contributor. With such talent and strong institutional backing, New Atlanticist could become a force to be reckoned with in the blogosopheric marketplace of ideas.

Hat tip to Dave Schuler.

Global Guerillas – RESILIENT COMMUNITY: Fabrication Networks

Threatswatch.org – Al-Qaeda’s Progression On Pakistan’s Demise

William Lind – On War #273: Defending the Baltics

CTLab Review – Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Franchisees

Interact – Chrome Review

Attention futurists, geeks and gamers: A Superstruct Bonnanza Follows…..

Open The Future – Heads Down, Thumbs Up

Discover – Forecasting the Future May Be a Matter of Fun and Games

Kent’s Imperative – Forecasting through games

Smartmobs – Superstruct: Alternate Reality Gaming Meets Future Forecasting

That’s it!