2007 Clueless at the Top Awards

The Winter 2008 Clueless at the Top Award:
Goes to the American Power Boat Association (APBA). The Clueless at the Top awards honor those who effectively showcase typical top-of-the-hierarchy perspectives and behaviors to a significant audience.

The APBA is the sanctioning body of the 2008 Trex World Jet Boat Championship, a 61-mile race on the Willamette River in Oregon, USA. The organizers of the event promise competition, beautiful scenery, and good clean fun.

However, the proposed race occurs during the migration of threatened salmon. Also, the wakes from the event could disturb the nests of other threatened species.

The APBA illustrates a predictable top-of-the-hierarchy behavior: higher people can choose not to recognize or expect to mitigate problems they create, including the effects on communities and the environment.

In recent years, Oregon gas-motorboat enthusiasts have applied political pressure to allow gas motorboats on peaceful Waldo Lake – one of the three purest bodies of water on Earth – which now limits boats to those which are electric-motorized and human-powered. Even though there are many bodies of water accessible to gas-powered boats in Oregon, typical of people on top, they can never have enough.

For more information about the consistent and predictable roles of people in hierarchies (both top and bottom roles), go to 32 Characteristics of Hierarchies.

 • Winter 2008 : APBA
 • Fall 2007: Rudy Giuliani
 • Summer 2007: Pope Benedict XVI
 • Spring 2007: Dick Cheney

The Fall 2007 Clueless at the Top Award:
Goes to U.S. presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani for his statements that the United States has the “best health care system in the world” and that a man is twice as likely to die of prostate cancer in England than in the U.S.

Clueless at the Top awards honor those who effectively showcase typical top-of-the-hierarchy perspectives and behaviors to a significant audience. When Giuliani ignored the fact that many millions of people in the U.S. do not have access to health care, he clearly illustrated a predictable behavior of those on top of our hierarchies. People at the top know little about the people below.

Giuliani can see that people on his level and above have access to adequate health care, but, typical of higher people in any hierarchy, he has little incentive to learn about the true health care needs and lives of people in lower groups. He isolates himself from what is going on in the entire hierarchy.

If mortality rates from prostate cancer are roughly the same in the U.S. and Britain, why would Giuliani appear to twist the facts? In hierarchies, higher people operate with small amounts of true information about lower groups and a large amount of blame, self-interest, and fear required to maintain their hierarchies. Higher groups often go through elaborate contortions and rationalizations to support their false information.

Clueless statements of the top commonly appear as lies to lower groups and other people who can see the entire hierarchy. These same statements usually seem honest to higher people who live in the clueless dream world that hierarchies create for people on top.

Giuliani’s remarks illustrate that people at the top don’t see hierarchies. Two hierarchies that appear to be out of his line of sight are:

(1) U.S. wealth hierarchy that creates 47 million uninsured U.S. citizens

(2) “New World Order” that encourages some people to view the United States on top of a world hierarchy. They then assume that the United States is better at anything and everything than any other country, regardless of the facts.

 • Winter 2008 : APBA
 • Fall 2007: Rudy Giuliani
 • Summer 2007: Pope Benedict XVI
 • Spring 2007: Dick Cheney

The Summer 2007 Clueless at the Top Award:
Goes to Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks about the path to salvation.

Pope Benedict XVI has received a Clueless at the Top Award in recognition of his assertion that Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation and that other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches.

The pope's action illustrates an important hierarchical indicator: People at the top people assume that everyone wants and needs to be like them.

The pope was a strong contender earlier for a Clueless at the Top award for his statement that native populations of South America had been "silently longing" for the Christian faith to be brought by colonizers. When ignoring suffering and injustices inflicted by colonizers against indigenous populations, the pope demonstrated other hierarchical indicators: people at the top are not accountable for the effects on lower groups, and lower people need fixing.

People at the top assume that everyone wants and needs to be like them.
Discussion and further examples:

When people are in the top of their hierarchy, they feel they have personal traits or possessions that are superior to those of "lower" people. As a result, they think others would benefit if they were to value what top people value and work toward acquiring what top people have. If "lower" people do not aspire to be like the top, people on the top label them as flawed in some way.

People at the top often use their positions in hierarchies to justify forcing their "superior" values and ways of life on everyone else, while saying they are doing others a favor. People at the top often say that those in their lower ranks will ultimately learn to appreciate, accept, and benefit from the efforts of the top to help them (excerpted from the book, Clueless at the Top).

More examples of "People at the top assume that everyone wants and needs to be like them."

• American Indian and Aborigine children were forced into boarding schools with the goal of assimilating them into the dominant white culture.

• Stating that "God designed sexual relationships only for a union between one man and one woman in marriage," Focus on the Family is lobbying the American Psychological Association to support conversion therapy for lesbians and gays.

• While taking over the country by force, the United States government declares that Iraq will eventually learn to appreciate the American style of democracy and freedom.

 • Winter 2008 : APBA
 • Fall 2007: Rudy Giuliani
 • Summer 2007: Pope Benedict XVI
 • Spring 2007: Dick Cheney

The Spring 2007 Clueless at the Top Award:
Goes to Dick Cheney for his remarks about the executive branch.

Vice-President Dick Cheney is the winner of the Spring 2007 Clueless at the Top award. This recognition honors those who effectively showcase typical top-of-the-hierarchy perspectives and behaviors to a significant audience.

Mr. Cheney's statement that the office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch makes him appear to be confused, or clueless, about the actual organization of the United States government.

This action actually demonstrates Cheney's expertise in executing predicable roles of those who are at the top of hierarchies.

In order for a hierarchy to remain healthy, the top must not be held accountable for their actions. Instead, the top must pass any blame for problems to someone else - which in this case is Congress.

People at the top often appear clueless because (1) they need to say one thing and do something else to keep the support of people who have other choices, or (2) they need to make decisions themselves and to be isolated and secretive, which stops the flow of information to them.

Mr. Cheney's award-winning actions are effective in demonstrating the important role of accountability in a hierarchy. In the United States, a vice-president must appear to support the ideology that elected officials are accountable to the people. If a vice-president wants to build his own personal hierarchies, he may have to risk looking clueless to protect his need for non-accountability.

For more information about the consistent and predictable roles of people in hierarchies (both top and bottom roles), go to 32 Characteristics of Hierarchies.

 • Winter 2008 : APBA
 • Fall 2007: Rudy Giuliani
 • Summer 2007: Pope Benedict XVI
 • Spring 2007: Dick Cheney