It's not so much deference, as respect. If there is a pecking order and you don't respect those under you, expect a sudden fall, when you appear weak.

The irony of individualism as an ideology, is it leaves everyone socially isolated and therefore more dependent on the institutions, government, banking, religion, etc. Almost like it was planned.

We are nodes in a network and the more we internalize it, the healthy both are.

Life is like a sentence. The end is just punctuation. What matters is how well you tie the rest of the story together.

We can't all be the punchline.

Think of ourselves as bricks. If it's just a pile, no one notices the individual bricks, more or less, but if it's a wall and one is missing....