You don’t want empathy between bosses and grunts. Folks on different ladders have less empathy than those at different rungs on the same ladder.
It is easier for a Level 2 Boss to order his Level 8 minions around than it would be for a Level 12 boss to order around his Level 10 minions. Similarly a General will wield his Soldiers more dispassionately than he will his Not-Yet-Generals. The reverse is also true. It is easier to have faith in THE COMMANDER than in a peer who has many more grades than you.
While there are certainly good reasons to maintain emotional distance between the people giving orders and the people going out and getting shot at, I strongly suspect that social separation does more of the work there than formal grade separation. The latter can be a means of enforcing the former, but there are other possibilities as well.
Western-style air forces or naval aviation are probably the best example: all the people doing the shooting are officers, but they’re getting orders from a significantly higher echelon of officers (who, in the Navy, might not even be on the same promotion track). Even in armies, though, there are significant jumps in danger and responsibility between company-grade officers and field-grade, or between field-grade and general officers.
As mentioned in the comment on fraternization , the dichotomy may well be a useful anti-empathy device, but only at one of many possible cut-off points.
You don’t want empathy between bosses and grunts. Folks on different ladders have less empathy than those at different rungs on the same ladder.
It is easier for a Level 2 Boss to order his Level 8 minions around than it would be for a Level 12 boss to order around his Level 10 minions. Similarly a General will wield his Soldiers more dispassionately than he will his Not-Yet-Generals. The reverse is also true. It is easier to have faith in THE COMMANDER than in a peer who has many more grades than you.
While there are certainly good reasons to maintain emotional distance between the people giving orders and the people going out and getting shot at, I strongly suspect that social separation does more of the work there than formal grade separation. The latter can be a means of enforcing the former, but there are other possibilities as well.
Western-style air forces or naval aviation are probably the best example: all the people doing the shooting are officers, but they’re getting orders from a significantly higher echelon of officers (who, in the Navy, might not even be on the same promotion track). Even in armies, though, there are significant jumps in danger and responsibility between company-grade officers and field-grade, or between field-grade and general officers.
As mentioned in the comment on fraternization , the dichotomy may well be a useful anti-empathy device, but only at one of many possible cut-off points.