Ajax, on Dec 28 2007, 11:17 PM, said:
I have struggled to explain what you just did given that everyone else seems to think that because of Se values ISTjs are into heirarchy and ESTjs are not. However, I know from experience that a lot of ESTjs are very into heirarchy and class, wealth and have status anxiety. They mostly do not like mingling with the great unwashed so to speak and I have wondered how they are ever going to be attracted to INFjs who can look so low and humble. I never really linked these tendencies of theirs' to the aristocratic dichotomy but I think that is very likely the cause of it.
TBH, I think that ESTjs/Delta are more hierarchical than Beta. Here's why:
The difference is that Delta hierarchies are much more formal and explicit than Beta hierarchies. There will be very clear chains of command and designated titles. And clear procedures for delegations of roles, awarding of rank/status, and transfers of power. That has the effect of abstracting the hierarchy and making it into something that people regard as objective and independent, something that stands apart from the people that are involved in it. Your ability to move through the hierarchy and even to get into it all, is determined by the rules/guidelines laid down by the hierarchy. If you don't play by Delta's rules, you get no ticket in at all. A pretense will exist that these rules are "fair" - but in reality they are only self-serving to the interest of the Delta hierarchy. And everyone is warped and manufactured to serve it's ends.
In Beta, the rank and status within the hierarchy will often be much more implied and based on more intrinsic characteristics of the individuals involved. This can make things a bit more fluid and less rigid. Everyone has a sense of who has what power and how much of it, what they can do, and who's connected to who and how. You rise and fall within the hierarchy based on your own "personal power." Your charm, strength, insight, vision, capability, etc. Everyone gets sized up and gauged for what sort of potential they possess, what their attributes are, what they are or would be good at - ENFjs are most often the determiners of this. Reputation is a big factor too. If someone is deemed wise, everyone knows to respect that person and go to them for advice. Standard operating procedures for moving up and down the hierarchy will be largely non-existent, serving more of a ceremonial role only, more for facilitating a mythology and giving people something to believe in.
“Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centered army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.” —T.E. Lawrence