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Social Pyramid - flickr
Another election is upon us, wherein we choose who is to head the country. The overall outcome is generally the same. We live in a hierarchical system where those in charge have as their primary concern to maintain this hierarchy and keep those at the top – at the top. Call it what you wish but the general agenda is to maintain this structure. Representative democracy, parliamentary democracy, dictatorship, feudal society….whatever.
In October of 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union were willing to destroy most of the planet to keep their version of this from being conquered by those of the the other version. The other version of course putting different people on top. Generally those just below the top rarely – if ever – have those on or near the bottom truly considered for any place other than where they are.
So why do we insist on having a society set up in this manner? Well lets just see the characteristics of it.
- For one thing, it’s based on inequality. There can never be equality between any person and/or group since it is a hierarchy by definition. Not between genders, race, income, worth…etc. A worker will never be treated the same as his supervisor. A person with income A will never be treated the same as one with income 10xA. And on and on.
- Transactions – dealings between people – are mostly based on monetary exchange rather than cooperation and mutual aid. Most of the time if you want or need help or any article, you have to pay for it in some fashion.
- It promotes envy, greed, egotism, distrust, arrogance and various sociopathic traits and rewards them.
- Promotes competition for everything rather than cooperation.
- Most relationships are superficial and detached.
- It’s easy. Hierarchical systems require little mental excursion. Just follow the rules, and all will be well.
- Personal responsibility is not required. Just blame your problems on those below and/or above.
- Discourages social responsibility. The problems of those below and above are not your concern.
- With few exceptions, one’s place in this hierarchy is based on property. How much of it you own. Be it monetary or physical or both. Property is more important and living things unless those things are themselves property.
One might think that ditching this system is to be utopian. However there are are vast numbers of groups and societies that are non-hierarchical. In fact the first type of group outside our family that we become a part of is non-hierarchical and based on mutual aid cooperation. The kids we played with even when at school. Then there are the 12 Step groups – AA, OA, NA…etc. Native American tribes. In fact nearly all tribal cultures are based on this concept. A lot of clubs and other organization are set up this way.
So why do we as humans insist on organizing ourselves in this hierarchical manner? I think primarily because it is easy. It requires little mental effort and little if any commitment and little if any responsibility and little if any accountability. Which makes it comfortable and attractive.
But these kinds of social systems have another characteristic. They are inherently self destructive. Throughout history none have survived and most have laid waste to the planet in some way to maintain themselves. They are also very, very self centered.
42 Comments
Because it is, for the moment, the only dead horse we have?
Building a new society will take decades, but the good news is that we can start doing it now. Waiting for a revolution to throw the rascals out will only get us a new set of rascals. If we reclaim our governance (not quite the same as government) on our streets, neighborhoods and cities, though, they will be in place when this empire collapses. If we already have a history, structures and habit of cooperative decision-making and action on a local level, it should be simple to link them together for larger action, should that be needed.
Very true and revolutions just tend to get a different set of rascals.
Societies are networks of communication. Phenomena (and not just societies) that organize into networks simplify communications by establishing a hierarchy of communication nodes. There is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.
Given autonomy, the folks positioned at those communication nodes can use that position in the communication network to transform one kind of social power into another.
Any fundamental revolution will have to have checks and balances against these tendencies of self-organized hierarchies. And be able to do it at all scales up to a global scale.
The hierarchical organization of network nodes scales up easily to large networks but at the cost of increasing intranetwork communication far more rapidly than inputs and outputs. Large organizations lose touch with the world outside. And that is what comes back to bite them. Which is why hierarchies are self-destructive in proportion to the extent to which their autonomy becomes complete.
Umm, because the horse is not dead?
Hierarchies are not necessary, merely convenient. Regardless of how one communicates.
And those at the top always, always become oppressive to the underneath.
Here are a few things to consider as well.
h/t to my cousin for posting it on FB.
Thank you for posting this very thoughtful piece, CM. I must agree with Ludwig up there that the horse is not dead; in fact, I don’t think it will die as long as human beings are human beings and build communities and societies.
Once any group of people gets large enough, a need is created for someone or group of someones to make decisions for the whole group. There are many different ways of doing this, but all result in some form of hierarchy, be that chiefs and medicine men or tribal kings and priestesses, or elected representatives of different subgroups.
Some people like to make decisions and are actually pretty good at it most of the time, others like to make them for the sake of power and are often bad at them, still others seem incapable of making decisions for a larger group. IOW, there’s always a need for decisionmakers in any human society that gets bigger than a few dozen or a few hundred; the question is how those decisionmakers can be selected in such a way that is good for the whole.
That is an age old question that goes back at least to the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, and has persisted through priesthoods, dynasties, democracies, oligarchies, tyrannies, dictatorships, republics, and empires. Plato’s solution was “philosopher-kings,” ie people like him. Aristotle taught that those who had a “natural” ability to lead should lead(his prize pupil, Alexander of Macedon, must have loved that), colonial American property owners thought that colonial American property owners should be in charge, and Communists taught that those who who actually do the work should be(though that morphed into something else real quick under the pressures of revolution and civil war).
Hierarchies rise and fall. Most at least sort of work for awhile, then they quit working and they collapse in spite of the best efforts of those at the top of the heap to stay there. In some ways, the old childhood game of “King of the Mountain” is a pretty good illustration of this pattern.
I don’t think we can ever get rid of hierarchies. But we can certainly do better than the one we have now, which is very much alive and kicking.
Recc’d, of course.
Brilliant – thank your cousin for posting. Transition Towns started in England and the concept spread; Vermont and Massachusetts have joined in the Transition Town movement with enthusiasm, including my town. It’s an optimistic response to Peak Oil, Economic Disruption, and Climate Change – get local. Make a cooperative network. Teach the old skills, like canning, root cellaring, knitting. I have even ripped out my fossil-fuel burning system and put in a masonry heater and stove.
They also have a tendency to split into two (or more) groups. Southern Baptists are notorious for this.
But there are numerous groups where the “leader” does not lead in a singular fashion. IE the group makes the decision, they leader simply helps direct this process.
The Twelve Traditions
One—Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
Two—For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
Three—The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
Four—Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
Five—Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
Six—An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
Seven—Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Eight—Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
Nine—A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Ten—Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
Eleven—Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.
Twelve—Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities
Using this as a model I think would be a good start. Taking what would apply and building on it.
If only we could get recovering infotainment addicts into a twelve step program…there could yet be hope for the whiteysphere…
IAA.
But who will be our God? Pepe Escobar? The Angry Arab? RT?
As every drunk knows, a spiritual presence, however you wish to define It, is a required for the recovery process.
Hic@
[:o)
Are you still sticking with your literal, 19th century definition of “Utopian Socialism” while continuing to mock my notation of the 21st Century addition in the face of the direct evidence, O’LudicrousWhig?
Hummm….the Whigs were about as anti-socialist as you could get, if memory serves me.
The only problem with this is that most people have a very narrow view or definition of spirituality. But if most agree on a definition that fits, it would work.
What a great link – thanks to your cousin and to you for sharing it.
Though familiar with permaculture, the “transition towns” and what they are doing were new to me.
That particular part leaped out at me, for does not all adversity also provide opportunity, if we but open our point of view to “see” it?
I am of the personal opinion that whether one in stage 5 chooses an outward or an inward “path”, both are viably working towards a different, hopefully, better future. Thanks for this diary.
rec’d.
Sure, it’s possible to have a leader who simply directs the process, whatever the process happens to be, and who doesn’t try to control it.
When it comes to matters of REAL power, though, not simply personal empowerment over one’s own life as in AA, those people become hard to find pretty quickly. Seven deadly sins and all that.
Right – by shifting our mind-set…. It occurred to me that the way to bring down destructive corporations is to boycott them. Turn our backs on them and don’t give them our money. Find a local source for your eggs, find a farm near you that works with the earth. Hire local craftspeople. We can do this. It won’t be convenient, but it will be very good.
Scientists believe that hierarchies are set up primarily by males as a result of our ape ancestry and they lead to heart disease. Leadership theorists believe that hierarchies are useful in emergency situations. For example, in the operating room you need to have someone in charge. In other situations, it’s not such a good idea s the author notes because instead of solving the problem we compete against ourselves.
The problem is hierarchies may be instinctual. Even in the absence of strict lines of authority research has found that social-emotional and decision leaders emerge. People also naturally form into to groups that are defined as the haves and have-nots, even when the group as a whole has very little.
If it’s our instincts then we either have to put women in charge which have less of the instinct or we need to very carefully great flat organizational structures that are designed to discourage hierarchies even though initially we may feel very uncomfortable with such structures.
In relaxed organizations, where the structure depends on cooperation the evils of hierarchy are less. The Jigsaw cooperative teaching method works better and should be used by teachers but it never is. Mr. Aronson who invented the method found that after demonstrating it’s superiority in field test to administrations it was never adopted in any American schools. Other countries with better educational systems and more peaceful cultures use it. We argue about how to improve education and here is the answer. It’s not focusing on more science and math in order to achieve the goals of Microsoft and Exxon. Not it’s cooperative learning that is used in better school systems such as New Zealand’s.
Would it solve the U.S. violent culture? Probably but no hierarchical alpha male chimp corporations that celebrate our ape ancestry will support such structures even though they realize that true professionalism and success at work is cooperative.
The goal of a hierarchy is inequality.
For example, Steve Jobs didn’t create or succeed at anything. His ape-like browbeating of his subordinates who did succeed in creating valuable products were most likely annoyed but tolerant of his counterproductive ravings. Yet, our culture celebrates him as opposed to the creative people who actually solved the problems he dimly understood.
In a system that rewards taking as opposed to creating and bullying as opposed to caring, it’s no wonder the U.S. is so violent.
My apologies for the lecture. Recovering ex-professor.
Even in simian societies any hierarchy that does exist is fairly lose and mainly for breeding purposes. I think Jane Goodall figured this out.
Professors Anonymous (PA) ?
How much hierarchy is enough, comrade Barbarian, after the fossil fuel genocide?
Less hierarchy, more equity economically is achievable by the following:
Like the Greenback, money that is not debt:
http://www.monetary.org/
http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ChicagoPlanRevisited.pdf
The historic 8th Annual AMI Monetary Reform Conference is now in the history books. Everyone, it seemed, loved it! What was historic about it? For starters, the deputy head of Research at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), presented his paper,
“The Chicago Plan Revisited.”
The Chicago Plan had been proposed to get the country out of the Great Depression. Believe it or not, with all the advances in computer technology and modeling programs, it was only 2 months ago that an important economist, Dr. Michael Kumhof of the IMF, put the old Chicago Plan proposal of the 1930s, to the test through computerized simulation. He found that the plan exceeded Irving Fisher’s best expectations. Dr. Kunhof’s presentation and a panel discussing it are of course in the video collection of the conference.
Folks, do see http://www.monetary.org/2012conferencevideos for a description of the videos and how you get the whole conference for only $144.
One powerful conclusion of Dr. Kumhof’s study, is that the potential for inflation is much much smaller when money is created by the government instead of by the banks. This confirms Professor Yamaguchi’s study of the HR 2990,which concluded that it pays off the national debt as it comes due, provides the funding for infrastructure (thereby solving the unemployment problem) and does so without inflation.
People – this confirmation by the two different studies, is really dynamite!
…
and more equity in democracy is achievable by:
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2012/09/paper-ballots-only-this-election-day-emergency-petition/
PAPER BALLOTS ONLY THIS ELECTION DAY! (emergency petition)
Petition for immediate emergency action to withdraw all electronic voting technology and replace with paper ballots for the November 6, 2012 election
Sign the petition: http://signon.org/sign/petition-for-immediate?source=s.icn.tw&r_by=5568825
To help equity by way of a greater Democracy:
Monday Emergency Forum: “Will the 2012 Election Be Stolen?”
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Emergency-Forum–Will-the-by-Bob-Fitrakis-121021-666.html
Emergency Forum: “Will the 2012 Election Be Stolen?”
By Bob Fitrakis
opednews.com
Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism
MEDIA ADVISORY
Does Your E-Vote Now Belong to the Romney Family?
Event: Emergency Forum: “Will the 2012 Election be Stolen?”
Date/Time/ Location:
Monday, October 22, from noon to 2pm
@ The Open Center, 22 East 30th Street, NY, NY (betw. Madison and Fifth Avenues)
(open to the public)
Speakers : Mark Crispin Miller (Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform); Attorney, election reform activist, and former GOP political operative Jill Simpson ; Lori Grace, Founder, Institute for Democracy and Election Integrity; Jim March , BlackBoxVoting; Moderated by Bob Fitrakis, attorney/author, election reform activist, Executive Director, Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism and Harvey Wasserman , author, democracy activist, Senior Editor, Columbus Free Press
Contact: Linda Cronin-Gross, LCG Communications: 718.853.5568; 917.767.1141, linda@lcgcommunications.com
This November, voters in Ohio and other swing states will vote on machines owned by friends and business associates of the Romney family. Former GOP operative and current Alabama corruption fighter Jill Simpson will join election reform/protection activists at an emergency forum to discuss the possibility of continued voter disenfranchisement and fraud in the upcoming Presidential election @ a forum in NYC on Monday, October 22 @ Noon @ The Open Center, 22 E. 30th Street.
Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis of the Free Press ( freepress.org ) will present shocking new information on the Bain Capital part ownership of one of America’s chief voting machine companies, Hart InterCivic, that counts many votes around the US. (Bain Capital is a private equity firm started by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.) Additionally, Jill Simpson and Jim March will present on the wireless empire of Karl Rove and associates for possible election manipulation. Both presentations will be part of a panel which also includes NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller and election activist Lori Grace on other possible upcoming election manipulations in the November 2012 elections nationwide.
A special two-hour radio broadcast will follow at the Progressive Radio Network: “WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA’S 2012 ELECTION?” will be heard on Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show as a special live broadcast @ www.prn.fm from 3-4pm following the forum. Harvey will co-host with Bob Fitrakis. Among his guests will be panelists Mark Crispin Miller and Jim March, as well as Craig Unger, contributing editor of Vanity Fair Magazine and author of Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power.
Read a more extensive article by Fitrakis and Wasserman here http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4748 .
snip
Your coverage is welcome.
Good on your cousin; it’s very nice, and beautiful art besides. ;o)
Oh my goodness! The IMF wants to sell me a solution! Hallelujah!!
Money created by governments is less inflationary than by banks! OMG! Fascists can do almost anything!
The hierarchies are external — read your Thoreau and look inward. Re-organizing society is hopeless; re-organizing one’s mind is hopeful.
Thoreau:
#How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
#Must the citizen, ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
#If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
#Direct your eye right inward,
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography.
MY FIRST thought upon reading the title,”WHY do we keep beating the same dead horse?”
“It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken. Then the doc says, why don’t you turn him in?
Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that’s how I feel about relationships. They’re totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”
― Woody Allen, Annie Hall
NOTE: I guess we need the fertilizer?
What does Steve Jobs have to do with this? He created something – Wall Street and Jamie Dimon create nothing. Did you know Jobs or work with him? Did he beat you into submission? I don’t get this hatred of Steve Jobs.
Hey Bev@20,the IMF are the loan sharking enforcers of international banksters that is run out of the Treasury Debt.We are on the brink of hyper-inflation,via the banking cartel ,at this moment .Bernanke announced 3 days ago in Japan that he would create a soft dollar by keystroking trillions via QE until the weak dollar was equilibrated with other currencies.If you want to know something really profound ,public debt is a self-imposed construct that could avert inflation even if we had full employment .We never need to compete with the private sector for capital and fear higher rates.That is all bullshit .
So are you going to believe ol’foggy ,conform to the mind-manipulation of hierarchy or as,cmaukonen’s excellent blog suggested ,quit being lazy and think for yourself .
n
i just wasted a lot of time tracking down passwords and suchlike because i really can’t stand that assertion and i feel the need to add an opposing voice to it.
for one thing, there are “atheist AA” groups out there. for another, there are plenty of not-AA recovery programs that have nothing to do with “spirituality” (and that have a higher recovery rate, even) and everything to do with medicine and science.
i get so annoyed with AA fanatics who can’t help but act like xtian fundamentalists as they make their equally limiting claim that “spirit” has something to do with sobriety, couching it in terms liberals will accept “however you define it.” it’s like saying “just so long as you believe in a god, you can get help. but you can’t unless you do, so just pick the name for [god] you like best.” there are millions of sober and recovering folks out there who don’t want or need the help of invisible nonentities to maintain sobriety. you insult them, and the medical communities that have proven there are many paths to sobriety, including those that don’t rely on constant appeals and apologies to a supernatural entity.
we don’t tell cancer victims and diabetics that if they pray hard enough, they can be cured. indeed, we mock and reject people who employ that false logic. alcoholism is a disease, like any other, and asserting that prayer is required to cure it is backwards and ridiculous.
/end rant
sorry, i’m the militant sort of atheist and i just had to chime in.
Allow me to re-pose the original question: “Why do we keep re-creating hierarchic relations in our society?” I pose it this way, because the every day we get up and have the choice to go along with everything or to act differently. Every person that is here now as a part of society wasn’t here at some point in the past, so the actual hierarchical structures of society have been replaced with new structures — social relationships between different people — that are every bit as hierarchical as those that came before.
I believe the answer lies in the artificial distinction between the sphere of “politics” and everything else. People who do not experience, and practice, power-sharing on a regular basis are ill-equipped to engage in civic power sharing every 2 – 4 years. In other words, The practice of Democracy that most people understand is really just an extension of something more familiar to them, like rooting for a sports team, of which they have an ongoing experience.
The only way I can imagine that people will be prepared to participate in a Democratic process is by practicing democracy regularly. That means changing our experiences of work, where big decisions are made on an ongoing basis. If people participated in decision-making on a regular basis, they would be much better equipped to either directly make decisions (e.g. through serving as a representative, or through ballot initiative), or to participate responsibly while selecting someone as a delegate to represent them.
chicago dyke
glad you took the time and trouble to sign in — it’s a good rant.
thanks!
Yes, well ranted.
Chime in at will.
In my even more naive youth, I held to the maxim ‘believe whatever fairy tales get you through your personal night, because its certainly none of my business’.
That was before the full out assault by the fundies on science, basic education, morality, politics, and simple common decency, that has done so much to hobble humanity at this moment in history when the slightest tick, negative or positive, has real life real time consequences for real people, of magnitudes we’ve never seen before
due to technology and economic interdependency.
My youthful error at bottom, was in the belief in rational progress. A different kind of faith, but still just another stupid head in the sand faith.
Humanity, given what we are, is always starting out from square one.
Rock on, Chicago Dyke, and never apologize to anyone.
They neither threatened to pick your pocket or break your leg?
Ah, but they did somebodies’. Your youthful error was, at best, a left-behind enlightenment sophistry denied the knowledge of the bourgeois apocalypse.
An excellent comment.
And just for the record, I have always considered myself assertive..not necessarily aggressive…there IS a difference.
If we don’t stand for(and up) to something, we’ll fall for anything!
Hey, it was just some O’Donkeytale bullshite.
The tail(or tale) of an ass?
Who apparently once liked his barley fermented.
‘…denied the knowledge of the bourgeois apocalypse.’
In 9/8?
Yes Git @34 ,there is a difference .but when aggressive is good ,it can be great.
No. The primary harbinger being Limits to Growth. Overlain with conservative reaction to “hippie communists” for deflection, the death of the A-merkan bourgeois began almost two generations prior.
I think there is a misunderstanding where the hierarchy comes from. It’s not that we all mutually agree on the structure. What is happening is that the alpha humans, those who are inherently aggressive, dominant, and selfish, take charge – and they make sure that it’s next to impossible for people with more humanist tendencies to become leaders.
What is really interesting about human dominance is that it is not anything that has been studied. There are some rudimentary studies on body language, for instance, but zero acknowledgement that there are some very basic “jungle rules” going on between humans.
Our biggest hurdle is that the human who is alpha – and who has also managed not to develop a conscience (no empathy, no guilt, usually low impulse control) – is a very, very dangerous person. But in most cases, we fail to recognize this for what it is. There’s a bigger percentage of CEOs with psychopathy than there are in population of people in prison. But the CEO wears thousand-dollar suits and a very cunning manner, so we don’t suspect what they really are. The catch is that only people of good character can see the psychopath for who they are – and those people are usually far, far down on the power scale.
Brilliant!