The Archive of Free Thinking

​​There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Ernest Hemingway

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Hemingway’s perspective that there is ‘nothing noble in being superior’ challenges our devotion to hierarchy. He does not argue that there are no differences between men, but rather that the enforcement of these differences over others is not ‘noble’. There is something more true, more practical about the man who seeks his own development compared to the false idol of personal superiority. There is a human tendency towards hierarchy, apparent in the dangers of nationalism to the layers of superiority found even in small, niche groups. Sharon Traweek found hierarchies even in the culture of high-energy physicists, with theoretical physicists viewing themselves as more senior than experimental physicists, who in turn considered themselves more senior than data analytical scientists. This article argues that the existence of hierarchies in communities and groups can be harmful, resulting in judgmental behaviour, failure to listen and understand and a tendency to impose views. These issues of hierarchy are particularly damaging in social policy, including healthcare, housing and immigration, where they can result in ineffective programmes and the allocation of people to defined roles in society of either ‘giver’ or ‘recipient.’ The ‘givers’, the state, charities and ‘recipients’, groups or individuals, then become separated and stuck, repeating the same roles, with increasing dependence, loss of agency and disappointing outcomes. To address the issues resulting from these hierarchies, this article proposes a new approach, a ‘switching of hats’, whereby people deliberately and visibly move positions within the hierarchy, from ‘recipient’ to ‘giver’ or from ‘giver’ to ‘recipient’, to create greater empathy and understanding. This approach, over time, can break down the idea of hierarchy, superiority and separation. It offers the opportunity to transform the impact of social policies, the efficiency of government, the effectiveness of charities and the livelihood, the sense of worth and the ‘nobility’ of individuals. 

The negative impact of hierarchy, superiority, and judgmental behaviour is evident in many areas of social policy development. In healthcare, the treatment of obese patients is adversely affected by judgmental attitudes held by medical professionals. Many doctors view obesity as the result of a lack of willpower or laziness, resulting in a reluctance to intervene medically. Sean Phelan found that doctors reported less respect for patients with obesity compared with those without and spent less time educating patients with obesity about their health. These attitudes also lead to broader failures to address the other factors driving obesity, including the cost of nutritious food and the availability of harmful ultra-processed foods high in sugar, unhealthy fats and sodium. 

With the policies that shaped social housing in the UK over the last 40 years, there are similar concerns about the effect of hierarchy, superiority and judgmental attitudes. The architect Neave Brown, in 2017, stated, “We invented a new kind of class distinction, and that continues now. We have high buildings, particularly in the Midlands and the North, which are simply occupied by the poor and the unemployed.”  Patrick Dunleavy similarly described the development of high-rise flats as a symbol of “the inherent inefficiency, bureaucratic indifference, and the unresponsiveness of state intervention.” Jesse Meredith argued, following the collapse of the Ronan Point apartment block in 1968 (the result of poor design, weak enforcement of regulations and substandard construction), for a recognition of a “political ‘betrayal’ of ordinary people by state elites and planners in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Furthermore, in social policy, hierarchy and judgmental attitudes can result in ‘separation’. That is, the (incorrect) belief that there is something fundamentally different between those who provide support and those who receive. That only ‘bad’ people need to use services, or that using them will make you ‘bad’ and that it is ‘good’ people who provide services, and are made ‘good’ by the act of ‘giving.’ As a result, there is a view that, although we should help this group of ‘bad’ people, there is a blind spot over the idea of moving people from one position on the hierarchy to another. However, there is nothing inherent in a person that makes them immune to needing help or that anyone can provide real help and support to others.

Even institutions committed to social change can unintentionally undermine their efforts by falling victim to this feeling of superiority and limiting the movement of individuals to different roles and positions in the hierarchy. In a charity set up to help integrate immigrants into society, their focus was on providing information on how to get housing and welfare payments. However, when asked, immigrants said their principal need was help finding a job, which they saw as the best way to become an integral part of their new country. So despite all their efforts, the charity was effectively pigeonholing immigrants into a form of dependency rather than enabling them to change their role and become a contributor and ‘giver’ to society.  Further research found that the charity employed no immigrants. 

The existence of hierarchy, superiority and separation results in two problems. In specific situations, it can lead to a failure to listen to real needs, an inability to build relevant and effective solutions, and a tendency to impose ideas. More fundamentally, it leads to a fixed, two-tiered, stagnant society. The professional, the policy maker, and the charity position themselves as the source of solutions, change, and goodness. In their minds, the structure of change is gravitational; it flows downwards and the ‘giver’ is required learn nothing from the ‘receiver’.  This freezes hierarchy and places everyone in a predictable and self-reinforcing role. It limits the ‘receiver,’ the patient, council house tenant, the immigrant, to shape their lives, to have agency and power. The result is patten of reinforcing disappointment, ever-increasing social costs, frustration, failure and resentment.

To address these issues of hierarchy, superiority and separation requires the ability to engineer situations where individuals can change their positions; they ‘switch hats,’ ‘Recipients’ can become ‘givers’ and ‘givers’ can become ‘recipients.’ Research suggests two approaches to generating this mobility.

In the short term, this can be achieved by changing the approach to designing and delivering social policy. This includes using management simulations and scenario training to enable participants to ‘switch hats.’ In design sessions, recipients become ‘givers,’ ‘givers’ become ‘recipients,’ or ‘facilitators’ (like charities), become ‘recipients.’ The approach reduces hierarchical thinking, increases empathy, accelerates learning, and results in innovative solutions based on ‘switching of hats’ in delivery. As part of the approach, the changes in the mindset of the participants are assessed on an equal level to quantitative outputs. Successful sessions result in effective policies, more empathetic and responsive to local needs and lead to changes in the mindset of participants. This approach, when implemented over time, can result in new skills, greater collaboration and a shared sense of purpose.

The benefits of ‘switching hats’ can be seen in the use of a technique known as ‘positive deviant’ behaviour to design social programmes. This involves identifying individuals in communities who solve social challenges more effectively than their peers or externally engineered solutions and then working together with these individuals and their communities to share, advise and implement these behaviours more widely. In one example, a study in Vietnam found that a group of families with well-nourished children fed them small, frequent meals and included nutrient-rich sweet potato leaves, shrimp, and crabs, which were usually discarded or considered unsuitable. Looking for local knowledge and positive deviation resulted in an effective and credible approach to improving nutrition, which has now been rolled out to over forty countries. The approach worked because it recognised the community as a source of solutions, not just a producer of problems. The story shows the power of ‘switching hats’. In the initial phase, the group of Vietnamese moved from being ‘recipients’ to becoming ‘givers’ of new ideas, while the researchers moved from being ‘givers’ of new policies to ‘recipients.’ Then, during rollout, the group of Vietnamese families and the researchers both became ‘givers,’ creating a credible programme. 

‘Switching hats’ can also lead to new ideas in organisational design for service delivery. In Holland, the government, facing problems providing services to older people and struggling to give retired people a sense of identity, set up Green Care Farms. In these institutions, residents moved from being ‘recipients’ to becoming ‘givers’ by taking on responsibility for running daily activities, including cooking for their fellow residents. The ‘move’ improved the quality of meals, gave retirees an important role and reinforced the sense of community. The foundation, Oma’s Soep (Grandma’s Soup), also based in Holland, has taken a similar approach where seniors become ‘givers’ cooking and delivering soup to elderly residents in their neighbourhoods.

In the longer term, to address the second problem of dismantling hierarchies and creating continual movement between ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’ requires changing the mindset in policy makers, charities and individuals. This will require leveraging institutions which encourage ‘switching hats’, including the Settlement Movement. The Settlement Movement was established in the late 19th century in the UK and the US, to create opportunities for social reformers, graduate or middle-class volunteers (“settlers”) to live in poor urban areas to provide education, healthcare, and community support and to learn from the communities’ new skills and attitudes. This approach enabled settlers to ‘switch hats’ to learn from local communities to be ‘recipients’ as well as ‘givers.’ This resulted in the emergence of pioneering reformers who changed social policy and legislation to create juvenile courts, mothers’ pensions, workers’ compensation and factory regulations. The reformers also led campaigns to drive the ‘Depauperizing’ of policy thinking and the use of evidence to create a more practical, less hierarchical and moralistic approach to social policy development. Although the Settlement Movement is less influential than in the past, there are opportunities to use their approach and create more ‘settlers’ in government, think-tanks, and charities and to increase the role of individual citizens in reshaping policy development.

Hemingway’s quote points the way to a new approach to social change, emphasising the importance of moving away from hierarchy, superiority and separation and focusing on the ‘switching of hats,’ on building common understanding, and joint development of social policies. It also points to the dismantling of the hierarchies themselves and the continual movement from ‘giver’ to ‘recipient’, from ‘facilitator’ to ‘recipient.’ In practical terms, this would lead to the creation of communities able to generate more innovative ideas, build greater buy-in and implement more effectively. It also creates the opportunity for self-reflection and change, and the chance and nobility to be ‘superior to your former self.’ 

Given the increasing social tensions as economic productivity fails to maintain living standards and given the underperformance of many aspects of social policy in the UK, ‘switching hats’ offers a new and effective approach to social policy development and implementation.