Credentials are the pheromones we secrete to professionally attract third parties. They are representative signals that we emit for others to pick up on and form a positive professional opinion about us. Did you study Engineering at a public university? You are diligent and adept with numbers. Did you create a successful company from scratch? You are hardworking and intelligent. Did you excel in financial economics? You are motivated by the mundane.
Credentials serve as a useful heuristic. With little information, one can form an impression of the person in front of them. This is important because humans have a strong instinct to form opinions about others. It makes sense. The advent of speech imposed specific power dynamics on humans. In a wolf pack, the alpha male leads, and other members submit to his strength. In a tribe of people, it’s not the strongest who leads, but the one who inspires loyalty, as an omega male (or female) and two weaker individuals can conspire, set a trap, and kill the alpha male. Gossip and conspiracy could spell the end for the strongest. This is something that cannot happen in the animal kingdom. Thus, those who cared about having a good reputation to avoid being ousted or expelled survived and reproduced more, and we are their descendants today. That’s why reputation obsesses us all a little.
Every historical moment has its codes and credentials. In 19th-century UK, the ultimate credential was serving with Wellington or Nelson, and in Spain during the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, being a former minister was prestigious. Credentials also vary by location; in the Barcelona of my youth, nobody knew what Icade was, a highly valued degree in the financial circles of Madrid, and today in Madrid, nobody knows what Clúster was, a high-voltage credential in the technological Barcelona.
Everything points to the fact that the Houthi attacks follow instructions from a third country.
Thus, people try to build good credentials. This influences what we study, what jobs we accept, and what parts of our lives we explain. It also encourages the self-serving and even fraudulent use of credentials: taking a 15-day course at an American university and presenting it as a master’s or using a company’s brands as a police badge, even if you were just an intern. One must also be aware that people hide their anticredentials, toxic facts. No one puts on their CV “habitual liar and opportunistic thief.”
Moreover, one should not confuse lighthouses with the coast or credentials with capacity. Nor should one assume, in the case of anticredentials, that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. To form a serious opinion about someone, one must know what their credentials truly represent; try to avoid impostors, that mold that wants to infest everything; seek references from reliable sources and not rush with opinions.
Something very similar happens with countries. They use credentials and avoid anticredentials. We have, for example, the Houthi rebels trying to sink peaceful merchant ships and kill their sailors. Today, a country would never want such an anticredential. It is known that the Houthis use technology from a third party since the doctrine and ballistic land-to-sea technology require knowledge that Yemen does not have. Everything points to the fact that, in addition, they follow instructions from that third party with whom they have a reciprocal relationship. If so, it would be a case of an omega male manipulating another cunningly to avoid an anticredential, a very human maneuver. Let’s be aware of it.
Article written by Marc Murtra and published in La Vanguardia: ¿Es Yemen un macho omega?
