As we sort through all the details of my parents’ estate, I’m very pleased and fortunate that my siblings are all easy going and deferential. There are no fights over things. Who gets what, how we handle this or that — it’s all been quite easy because none of want to argue over things. <\/p>\n
I’ve often wondered recently why we’re that way. The answer is (as always) some combination of nature and nurture, but it gets me thinking. <\/p>\n
Imagine two cultures with different approaches to being deferential or assertive. Imagine them however you like — men vs. women, Yale vs. Harvard, lawyers vs. businessmen, Englishmen vs. Germans, people who play sports vs. people who don’t …. It doesn’t matter. Whatever stew of nature and nurture created this, people in one group are generally more assertive than people in the other group. <\/p>\n
In a very short time, the more assertive culture would probably come to dominate certain aspects of society. They might be disproportionately represented in management, or small business ownership, or net worth. They might also have higher blood pressure and a shorter life expectancy. <\/p>\n
Is that a problem to be solved? <\/p>\n
I say that any attempt to solve such a “problem” would cause more harm than good. The cure would be worse than the disease. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we sort through all the details of my parents’ estate, I’m very pleased and fortunate that my siblings are all easy going and deferential. There are no fights over things. Who gets what, how we handle this or that — it’s all been quite easy because none of want to argue over things. I’ve … Continue reading “When it pays not to be deferential”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1405,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions\/1405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}