I might even have the audacity to say that artificial, societal order actually causes undertow chaos, contrary to belief or even intention.
I completely agree, and this is a much clearer statement than my “laziness” one above. The more self-sufficient a society is the less call there is for power-based hierarchies. Ignorance breeds dependence.
In fact, knowing quite a few people who were not raised under “traditional” (not necessarily religious) family values (which are very hierarchal), they are often bewildered at statements that power-hierarchies are necessary, because they’ve lived (and largely continue to live) without them in their personal life.
Myself, I have taken a job where no such power exists. Everyone employed here works for themselves and reports to no one. Perhaps many find it hard to believe, but I can assure you that here we’ve found it possible to have specialization without power. We also have a large spread of intellect, ranging from High School dimplomas to pHDs, and no value is placed on that apart from the value of specialization. We are truly equals here. (salary, admittedly, is probably different, though that is largely due to external influences and marketability of employees, not as a necessary compensation for work done).
I think the best proof that hierarchy is “unnatural” or artificially opposed to natural, is that it uses resources to prevent competition, not to improve itself over the competition (and succeeds despite the waste of potential recources via ignorance–or deception). Note: People willing choose a camouflaged trap, but that was not their true will, hence the misunderstanding of natural. Also, when people are forced or compelled to accept hierarchy, this contradicts instinct completely.
Well, but one of the good things about a hierarchy is that it prevents competition, and stress, because everybody knows what his position is. If hierarchy didn’t exist, my relationships with everybody else in the group would always be in flux, and never be predictable, and not very much would be done. I think one of the problems here is that, when we’re talking about hierarchy, we’re assuming a kind of hyper-rigidity, and a caste system. To take the example of my friends and I, though, friend A usually makes the plans because he’s good at it. He can usually pick a good movie that all of us will enjoy, he’s good at compromise, he’s great at scheduling, and, in general, the things he arranges turns out well. I get listened to during debates because I can lay out a logical, reasonable argument. Friend D doesn’t, because he usually makes broad statements without proving them and makes some pretty bad non sequiters. It’s not like friend A is standing over me with a whip, saying “You will obey me”. We construct hierarchies on this board too…while there’s an official one, with moderators, administrators, Ed, and Cecil up on high, we all create our own hierarchy of posters. You might say, “Oh, look, Captain Amazing opened a new thread…I’d better go read it, because I like what he has to say and makes sense.” Or, you might say, “Oh…it’s a thread by Captain Amazing. Let me print it out so I can line the bird cage with it.” That distinction is hierarchical too.
I do not know what we are trying to say, but I was trying to say the following:
There are a certain set of advantages to be gained in terms of specialisation and planning to be gained by group behaviour.
Diverse groups of individuals tend to confer the greatest advantage. That planning tasks require sacrifices in the present for no ‘immediate’ gain.
Large diverse groups of individuals perform more effectively if controlled by a limited number of individuals from with-in the group.
That history seems to show the inevitability of these individuals who control the efforts of the group conferring special advantages upon themselves as part of their decision making process.
Once there is an advantage to being in a particular sub-group these individuals seem reluctant to relinquish membership and tend to resist other members joining their advantaged group.
So is hierarchy is merely a term implying order, period? No.
Are hierarchies are useful adaptation for optimising group behaviour in large non-homogenous groups? Yes.
Do all hierarchies create order? No (Any failed company, where the group making the decisions did not know what they were doing will show this)
Are all groups that have order hierarchies? No. (Small homogenous groups can function with-in limited contexts, in an ordered manner, without a hierarchy being present).
Finally once a hierarchy is established within a group, it tends to be self-perpetuating.
So are hierarchies inevitable? No, but they are in a large number of circumstances advantageous.
Suppression of competition is just as ‘natural’ a mechanism for insuring success, if not more so than self-improvement. Self-improvement involves either long-term evolutionary changes or risk taking by predicting future conditions and making advantageous changes to your behaviour. Eliminating competition is always going to work, improvement only sometimes.
There is also a difference between internal competition with-in the hierarchy and external competition from force outside of it. Both are important to the individuals in the group, and the balancing of resource used in one or the other is a very complicated equation to solve.
(Sorry if this double posts but it has been an hour since I submitted the last one.)
Would it be safe to say that in a hierarchy, there are superiors and subordinates? The relationship between the superior and the subordinate is based on recognition of authority…what form of authority depends.
Fear…regognition of the ability to cause harm.
Hope…regognition of the ability to cause success.
Sometimes there is just the recognition of superior skill, knowledge, ability,…any kind of stuff that puts one over the other.
Of course, one can argue hierarchy is universal, not just biological or psychological.
Moons orbit planets.
Planets orbit Stars.
Stars orbit the Galactic Center.
Etc,etc.
Isn’t that a hierarchy?
There is a definition of hierarchy given above, in a social context they are generally defined by having a group in which a limited set of individuals has the ability to control or impose order to the behaviour of the group as a whole (usually through control of the other individuals within it). In some contexts this involves superiors and subordinates, however these terms have emotive and contextual connotations that may not be appropriate in the context of the hierarchy.
Well the hierarchy does depend on the fact that the benefits conferred by the hierarchy out way any disadvantages that it imposes.
It is ranking that becomes disputable in this case. Ranking in a hierarchy is usually measured by control that the individual has over the behaviour of the group. In this case the collective group influences the individual members more than the other way around.
Yes, but we are talking within the same species and suppressing the entire species, which would imply that hierarchy, by wasting resources, weakens humanity like a aging immune deficiency, hence hierarchs mostly exist in weaker places with suppressed creative will. Also, hierarchy relies on the suppression of humanity to stay in power, like a parasite. The despot/democracy equation features one person actively fighting many other similar individuals (as well as fighting humanity as elitism), versus the majority of individuals passively struggling to suppress a few wealthy despots. The historical trick to hierarchy, once powerful by wealth, seems to be to atomize the populace with a personal God and eclipse the divine realm, posing as a divinely appointed king, an effective form of camouflage. It worked swell in Europe at one time during the dark ages until people eventually disbelieved that despots were divinely inspired (that’s why Popes always stayed in the far background–to avoid overthrow of the religion).
Hierarchies in the sense you probably mean them – hierarchies of people over other people in an array of authority – are not only not inevitable, their demise is inevitable (or failing that, ours is).
I’ve posted on this subject in 3-4 previous threads with the word “anarchy” prominently featured in the thread title. (Given sufficient cause, though, I suppose I could re-post the same concepts here anyhow).
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Brian Bunnyhurt *
**
A just because two groups are members of the same species does not mean that they are part of the same hierarchy. Even when they are there is an advantage established by certain roles in the hierarchy, which leads to an internal competition for position to take place. Recourse used in internal competition must be balanced between improving the hierarchy by promoting more fit individuals to the roles verse the cost incurred by such activity.
Hierarchies do not do anything they are structures individuals with-in privileged positions established by the hierarchy may use this structure in a destructive manner, however once the over-all cost/benefit of the hierarchy fails for the majority they hierarchy will ultimately prove unstable.
This can lead to short term inequities but in the long term these should be self-correcting.
Hierarchies do not rely on suppression they may often lead to such situation, can easily be manipulated to create such situations, where the needs of an individual are able to dominate the needs of the group, but this these inequities are either justified for the common good or self correcting. This may take time and the cost benefits may be hard to justify sometimes but in general through out history, the more equalitarian the structure the greater its stability has proven to be.
Please note that religion and the possible equality gained outside of the physical life reference frame can distort the perception of the benefits conferred by a hierarchy, but that is leading towards a debate on the place of religion in human society and he power verse faith argument that in a historical context is not readily verifiable.
Hierachies exist in virtualy all large or diverse groupings of indivduals with a common goal regardless of species or any other factors. The nature, structure and overall benifits/costs they bring to the group are of course dependent on the group and the context.
I think traditional and modern hierarchy is a language/legal device, like a law, canon or scripture, so it needn’t be insisted upon as existing naturally without such a device. If hierarchy is scriptural, it is not automatically natural or instinctive. You say that if a group assembles, there is a hierarchy. Fine, but can you describe it afterwards or predict it beforehand, and does this hierarchy really need to exist to conceive of the group? I am more curious as to why some people insist that hierarchies must exist. This is seems to be a psychological demand. When a group comes together, there doesn’t have to be cooperation, let alone a standing hierarchy. In fact, cooperation usually takes place without one when the medium of power is not authority but currency. If the hierarchy is coin or currency, fine, but nobody said so.
They do not need to exist they mealy confer advantages to the group that they could otherwise not achieve. The key to understanding such structures is to remove them from you own perspective and view them as an abstract structures that a groupings can either use or not. It is also important to realise that they exist outside of human groups and outside of class/wealth power structures. A mother with her child constitutes an important hierarchy that very few would argue is generally productive for all members of the group.
If you mean that the Western power/class structures and the male dominant hierarchies they established are no longer productive, then you have a much more specific and completely different debate than whether hierarchies in general are inevitable.
That should read, it is very probable that, in a voting process with more than two choices, no choice will actually be backed by a majority vote.
It was off of me to assume that democracy need be represented through majority voting. It was also off of me to assume that it was impossible, rather, just unlikely.
Hierarchies provide structures and mechanisms for groups of specialists to work towards a common goal.
It is possible to have specialisation without hierarchies however the larger the group and the more specialised the individuals the greater the benefits for the individuals with-in the group. The greater the size and diversity of the group the greater the benefit provided by a hierarchy…
Perhaps I’m missing how valuations(priorities, class structures, etc) on the order present provide such mechanisms.
I suppose I’m an idealist (suppose? Ok, I am) who believes that an egalitarian society is possible.
Valuations provide the mechanism for deciding between two possible goals tat a group may have. Given a limited amount of resources and sometimes non-compatible goals. The needs of all individuals are not always meet.
How successful a particular structure or hierarchy is in maximising the outcomes for the individuals with-in the group as an aggregate, can and is argued, as are the optimal hierarchies that that should b used in different contexts. Have we managed to develop an optimised hierarchy for all situations? Almost certainly not. Are such optimised structures possible? I do not know. Are ‘competitive’ groups possible without hierarchies developing with-in them? Perhaps but usually only in small groups and limited contexts.
Are hierarchies and egalitarianism necessarily contradictory? I do not believe so, however there are self-propagation problems to be solved not to mention the balance between individual and group goals.
Does the mass murderer have as much say in the goals and aims of society? Should they? If not is this ‘egalitarian’?
I have avoided trying to judge hierarchies either in general or in specifics, as this is irrelevant to the OP.
As to the OP I will state again that hierarchies are not inevitable but are often advantageous. Learning where to use them and optimising their structures is still in progress.
As stated before do not confuse hierarchies as being limited to the traditional Western class/power structures.
As far as I noticed, we were discussing that hierarcies in the power structure/human valuation sense were unneccesary.
And that’s where my beef was.
The mechanisms you explain, when applied to class structure hierarchies, serve to turn people into objects, tools, and so on. As brian pointed out, such hierarchies are wasteful with respect to resources (both regular resources and the now-objectified people).
I don’t agree that forming a hierarchy of consciousnesses is necessarily, or even very likely, to have as strong of an effect as equality of position.
I guess what I don’t understand is, lets say you and I are working together on something, maybe with some other people, and we have a disagreement over the best way to proceed. We both have reasons for wanting to do it the way we do, and neither of us are willing to be swayed by the other’s arguments. How do we decide what to do? I suppose we could take a vote on it, but that wouldn’t be feasable if there’s a bunch of team members, and it would take up a lot of time to vote on every disagreement two members of the team had.
