When people have to work together to do something necessary, hierarchies form organically and ego's are subdued - IF people are serious about achieving a goal. Part of the problem is the individualism of 'work' these days. All the best examples I can think of demand a range of skills and there is always respect for people who have skills that you haven't got but need to achieve something - such as building a house. I had organisational 'skills' but always respected and deferred to the plumbers and electricians and bricklayers and plasterers because I needed them and was mildly embarrassed when they patronised me as 'the guvenor'. The hierarchies changed every day depending on the stage of building. The best antidote to individualism is to do things that demand a collective effort.
Wonderful article as always Aurelian! Thinking of more skills we can deliberately cultivate, in addition to meditation (which has much of the power that the everyday practices of the Christian church seem to lack), and would love input from the commentariat of this blog. Two things that come to mind for me, perhaps on opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum are 1). learning a language and 2). Trying to grow some of your own food. Language learning requires attention and concentration and the ability to sit with discomfort (not being able to understand) and will be increasingly useful in a world that is not so dominated by Anglos. Growing your own food both puts you back into the rhythm of the outside world, that is independent of your ego, but also makes you realize how fragile this system is. It's not easy to grow food, and the only reason why we aren't all farmers is basically because of fossil fuels.
This is true. Growing food is not easy. It has made me respect farmers enormously. I understand that King Charles (in his youth) used to talk to his plants (in French). I doubt it made much different to the lettuces though....
I agree wholeheartedly with language learning as an activity. It is one area where modern technology is a blessing - and to be able to read articles like this, what incredible writing. Bravo Aurelian!
I grew up on a poultry farm where among other things I wish I could recall more clearly over a considerable span of years, was the literal meaning of a "pecking order." Chickens do hierarchy instinctually and lord help you if you are at the bottom. But it established order as a functional hierarchy does and, among chickens at least, promoted optimal reproductive success. I taught for many years in independent schools. All were hierarchical. All functioned best when the head of school was confident and decisive. It functioned best when the head would listen to the views of the more senior faculty, not ignoring any junior who spoke up, and then made a decision. Need I add that the reverse is uncomfortable as authority is fragmented as those who care most about the institution do their best to keep it on the rails. Veering about is all but certain.
What to do. Decide what is important. It is not you as an individual but you as a part of the whole. John Dunne had it right. Do not be like the young student who once confidently informed me that she was quite a special person. I was taken aback by her obvious sincerity and stunned that she was that unreflective and unrealistic. Focus down. I spend too much time trying to understand the world on a macro level. I cannot. This does not stop me from making the effort. As the article says, things are not getting better. The immediate future looks to be rocky. What can you to improve the odds for you, for family, for your close community? Do this and keep you humanity by remembering to give shelter to those who need it, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, and to visit the prisoners. You cannot save the world. You can help some. You can hold you head up. It need not be the war of all against all.
We, humans, we are verbal and we have mental and verbal tools to allow us to be independent of biology. Paraphrasing Thomas Hobbes, learning to throw stones and spears put man on an equal footing with man and gave means for anyone to deal with a bigger bully and kill it.
As such, the driving factor became, in a world where it was hard to become a leader, to have everyone being equal.
This recourse to biology, that Jordan Peterson is so enamoured of, with his lobsters, does not apply to humans.
I've been raising dairy goats since 1983. Goats are very competitive animals and the thing they compete for is higher status within the herd. Instead of a "pecking order" they have a "butting order".
Yeah, chickens, goats, lions etc. But the supposed advantage of being human is that we are able to use our sophisticated minds to rise above many of these instinctual habits.
While i appreciate the effort to provide some guidance about what can help us at an individual level to cope with the polycrisis and Metacrisis, I have some serious disagreements about the treatment of hierarchy and religion.
This statement got me off on the wrong foot quite early:
"For most of human history, the idea that some people had an inherent hierarchical superiority to others was so obvious it went without saying."
Unless we take "human history" as only the period that began with the keeping of written records, this is clearly not the case. The sorts of hierarchical structures intended to last beyond a particular project or time of crisis did not appear until certain prerequisites had been met. Some tie it to permanent settlements, others to agriculture and the caloric surpluses it enabled. The anarchist Murray Bookchin blames the rise of shaman. Graeber and Wengrow argue that societies chose whether of to adopt hierarchical structures. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael sees a split between Takers and Leavers in which the Takers established a hierarchy of humans, really male humans, over Nature and other humans.
Hierarchies are not inherent to human nature nor are they required by the cosmos in some way. They may arise by choice initially, but those that survived make the claim that they are TINA, whether that's because a god ordained such an order or because permanent hierarchical structures are necessary to undertake some great project like building pyramids or winning wars.
This is not to say that humans don't have different talents and skills that make some more adept at leading particular projects that the tribe or society wants to undertake. It also doesn't mean that tribes would not have a tradition of according elders a special status based on their experience and wisdom, but permanent hierarchies are different in that the exalted position remains and must be filled when its incumbent is no longer capable of doing the job. Edward II replaces Edward I. If leadership is ad noc and temporary, the leader can just be replaced if they're not successful as a leader in the judgment of her/her fellows.
When it comes to religion, the monotheistic religions, beginning with Judaism as established by Ezra and prefigured by Second Isaiah, created a god with human characteristics, more specifically, a human tyrant in the style common in the Ancient Near East: fickle; often cruel; occasionally merciful; demanding of complete loyalty. This worked to reinforce permanent hierarchies, even making them divinely ordained in the minds of subjects for thousands of years.
That religious backstop has lost its punch, and it's been replaced by credentialism. The right degree from the right university or the right job title confers a rank in the hierarchy that is supposed to be heeded by those not possessing such qualifications, but those supposedly exalted by a Masters from Harvard Business School have proven quite uninterested in serving the public good. Most even deny there is such a thing. So the deplorables, recognizing that their supposed betters don't give a damn about their welfare, reject the newly proffered basis for deference to authority. Mario Savio saw the problem nearly 60 years ago when he realized the California university system was a factory churning out products, i.e. graduates, who had gained little in wisdom as they traveled passively down the assembly line.
I won't deny that there are projects humans have undertaken that by their size and the time it takes to complete the project require some sort of extended hierarchy, but I cannot conceive of such a project that would not be folly in our current circumstances: more skyscrapers and stadiums that look like spaceships.; endless wars; Golden Domes; trips to Mars. A world where CO2 ppm exceeds 420 and is headed to 500 in short order is a world where small isn't just beautiful, it's mandatory.
And I'll concede that there's currently a big multipolar game problem as described by Daniel Schmachtenberger. Hierarchical societies are now likely to outcompete any non=hierarchical society in the absence of some kind of restraint, internal or external. Our primary hope may be that these hierarchies collapse under the weight of their own self-absorption. Even then, it will be quite a job for survivors to fend off the easy solution of hierarchy as humans unlearn reliance on hierarchy and regain competence in essential tasks that has been lost through the learned helplessness our love of comfort and convenience has opened us to.
As this system crashes, we had best be organizing new communities that can liberate us from permanent hierarchies and the scourge of Randian individualism while helping us re-learn what it means to live in harmony with the Earth and our fellow Life that shares the planet with us.
Nice expanded response. I would add the little detail that the two Davids point to as essential, and that David G mentiones in other work of his.
Hierarchy was and is maintained by force. From the moment when dedicated formations to enforce hierarchies were established, we were doomed. That was the moment when the "domestication" of humans began and we are so far down that path, I shudder to think. We are at such level of conditioning that we immediately look for a "leader". It is disgusting.
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”
Yes. There is an interesting theory in the book that the Mississippi Mound Building society failed because the 'serfs' just walked away (as they providentially had that choice).
It seems to me there is a difference between the kind of individualism expressed by American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his kind of Self-Reliance, and that of Henry David Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists, and what you point to as mere egoism. The tension between such a form of individuality, of a person finding and following their own destiny, the vision of their particular genius or daimon, and being in community is large and a question I've been stewing on.
I heartily agree that "it’s questionable whether conventional Christianity actually has the energy and the conviction left to give people an alternative, transcendent, framework for understanding the world." I think people can find community there, but it's not the only place... many of us will have to muddle on as whatever new forms of religion coming after Christianity are born. Good thing there are plenty of great options in the alternative spirituality scene.
The isolated suburban nuclear family, was essentially, a kind of blip made possible by cheap energy and industrialism. Likewise, Norman Rockwell's ideal family never existed except in the imagination. There were always gay uncles and lesbian sisters, and whatever else, and they can be included in an expanded definition of the family.
You also pointed to logging off social media and the like (without getting into it)... but I think as the internet becomes increasingly limiting and limited (as you also show at the beginning) people might go back to being involved in the kinds of clubs, interest groups and subcultures that were prevalent before the internet lent its energy towards the phenomenon of "bowling alone."
To flip Blaise Pascal, perhaps, if we can learn to sit quietly (as you show at the end through attention and stillness exercises), we might be able to at least weather some of the problems in the world. At least with the practice of meditation it helps us to be less attached to thoughts, and in turn this can help us be more poised in times of stress, more anchored, less likely to be carried away by every little breeze that blows. And when we do get carried away, the practice helps us recognize it and return.
In any case, a lot to chew on here. Thanks for writing the essay.
I recently asked Anthropic's AI, Claude, the following question:
How does Buddhist psychology challenge Carl Schmitt's concept of the political?
Claude's answer, in part, was the following:
"Buddhist psychology and Carl Schmitt's concept of the political operate from fundamentally opposing anthropological assumptions, creating a profound philosophical tension."
"Schmitt's political theory rests on the friend-enemy distinction as the essence of politics. He argues that political identity emerges through defining who belongs to "us" versus "them" and that this antagonistic relationship is not only inevitable but necessary for political existence. The political for Schmitt requires the ever-present possibility of conflict, even war, as the ultimate expression of this existential distinction.
"Buddhist psychology directly challenges this framework through several key concepts..." which Claude then presented in some detail.
At the end of Claude's response was the following:
"Schmitt might argue that Buddhist approaches to politics remain naive about power, violence, and the tragic necessities of political existence. The Buddhist emphasis on individual transformation could appear to sidestep the structural realities of political conflict that Schmitt insists are inescapable."
"The challenge runs deeper than just offering an alternative to conflict based politics.. Buddhist psychology questions whether the very experience of political urgency that Schmitt described--the sense that fundamental values are at stake requiring decisive action--might itself be a delusion rooted in attachment and the illusion of separate selfhood."
"This tension reveal a fundamental question: Can there be politics without enemies, or does the Buddhist dissolution of rigid boundaries ultimately transcend the political realm as Schmitt defines it entirely."
With respect to hierarchies, we should remember that history is about 1/50th of pre-history and evidence suggests that during that expansive time, what we seem to have had in place was inverse hierarchies...
Something to consider.
And Yes, merit based hierarchies are ultimately valid, as long as the merit is genuine. And it deserves Kudos (see "The Algebraist" by Iain M. Banks). But not more than that.
Definitely a well thought out article. This is why I’m so glad I found your column. It addresses the issue of the 500 pound ego in the middle of the room everyone bows to but no one addresses.
To touch on just one aspect of what you’ve brought up the issue of ego today seems to me to be exemplified well in the matter of victimization. Back in the 1960s it quickly morphed from Vietnam protests to “We want the world and we want it now” tantrums of a Jim Morrison. The 1969 Stonewall riots soon transformed into gay vs. lesbian vs. black vs. transgender vs. women, each of which considered themselves to be the ultimate victim of a repressive society and, in the process, becoming part of it by attempting to suppress the voices of the others within minorities.
The concept of the US Constitution was based in part on the rights of the minority over the majority so far as equality was concerned but today it’s been morphed into the dictatorship of the minority.
People today have discovered that being a victim, someone who has been abused or discriminated against in some way, originally in a de jure manner, can now be a source of unlimited power in both a de facto sense but, more importantly, in a more imaginative sense.
Some white men complain about reverse discrimination when in the majority of cases it’s actually a tantrum over their privilege. Some black individuals want to know where their forty acres and a mule are when they have no concept of tilling the soil. Some gay men want to be able to raise a family but also want to have multiple partners for sex. Some Christians want respect for their religious beliefs but have none for others. (I’m sure that by now I’ve offended almost everyone.)
The fact remains that being a victim is not a source of strength or power but a sign of weakness, a social stigma sapping what’s left of a nation’s vitality. When everyone is the victim nobody is at fault and everyone loses.
While I find your articles interesting and, at times, enlightening, I would characterize your view of religion as generally ignorant. I suppose the strongest influences you have are Protestant, with some Roman Catholic thrown in. But I do find you are correct that many, mainly Protestant, churches have simply abandoned Christianity and tend more towards Humanism (essentially atheism with a "Jesus" veneer, at times). However that is much less true outside of the Protestant "world" and there are many who still hold Church teaching to be "objectively true". This may be more difficult to see and understand in France as opposed to elsewhere; I don't know.
That said, there was an "option" presented within Christianity some time ago called "The Benedict Option". It was widely misunderstood by modern society (as the language of the Church more often than not is) as withdrawing from society. What it actually is/was is immersion in the life of the Church--notably in the local Parish--as a protection against the worst of society and a safe haven to retreat to when one becomes overwhelmed. Of course, the local parish has always had this function but The Bendict Option was a much more focused, perhaps monastic, application of it.
Part of the protection this view represents resides in the hierarchy of the Church (to bring this back to your essay). The structure of the parish presents this hierarchy and the community that resides there accepts it. The foundation of this is that the Authority of the Church is not like a worldly/societal authority. It is based in love and respect, not authoritarian power. Within this, families and individuals are able to abide, recognizing that, while the Priest may in fact expect them to do as he says in certain matters, his authority is based in love and his instructions must always reflect that. The consistency of this is very much found in Church teachings that emphasize humility and turn people away from the ego-centric life of which you speak.
The transcendent alternative you mention in passing does actually exist. Our society simply insists that it be hidden as much as possible, although the past several years have certainly showed us that societies efforts to denigrate and keep the Church underfoot and hidden have not at all been successful. We'll see where it goes from here. Managing the world is not our province; living in it is.
I live in the southeastern United States, the "Bible Belt", where religion is taken very seriously. My friends quote the Bible on social media. It's a little bizarre, having grown up in a northern state where people were mostly Protestant or Catholic, and their religion was confined to one hour per week. Up north (and basically everywhere else in the US), people don't talk about God. Down here, they do. It's rare to meet someone my age (46) who doesn't go to service on Sundays.
Agrarian societies like the Amish and the Mennonites rely on God as the ultimate authority. Next is the elders. Then the average members of their society. The small farmers ( I call them "The Last of the Agrarians" excepting the Amish and Mennonites ) that I was around when I was young sometimes chose God as the ultimate authority or subscribed to Judeo-Christian ethics if they weren't religious. All Agrarian societes depend on competence and responsibility as the ultimate authority after God. They don't need the Anglo-Saxon version of hierarchy ( Kings 'Queens, and so called "Elites" ) to live day by day. They learn their farming abilities and responsibilities from their culture (social group). They build their world with their own hands instead of exploiting someone else to build it for them. The problem with Anglo-Saxon hierarchy is that it is based on a culture of exploitation of others ( as all other cultural hierachies are except for successful Hunter-Gatherer and Agrarian cultures ). Soon even seemingly legitimate hierarchies become exploitation machines driven by staus seeking and money grubbing( I call it institutional rot ).They are filled with unearned wealth and power. This is where we are today. Todays "Elites" are Incompetents, Mediocrities, and Sociopaths . Their just walking, talking piles of BS.
Rediscovering the crucial importance of *doing things in good faith* - of what it means for everyone, individually, and for the society at large - would be the first step towards mending things.
Intuitively, instinctively, people always know when they misrepresent reality - whether to others, or to themselves. They know words don't really hurt people as much as they pretend, just like they know their Ego is not the fragile center of the universe.
They also know the Tragedy of the Commons is real, that its dark shadow has been lurking at the edge of their busy existence for quite a while now, causing them to break out in cold sweat when they wake up in terror at 3 in the morning; they know they've been choosing the wrong square playing Prisoners Dilemma far too long, and so has nearly everyone they know.
They - us - just hope it will somehow, magically, turn out to be ok, because it has so far, sort of, has it not?
Something needs to happen to snap us out of this false hope - and it will.
If we are lucky, we'll have just enough time to readjust before it all comes crashing down.
It's tempting to act in bad faith when it seems that everyone visible in government/business* acts in bad faith. Social media promotes bad faith actions.
*I'm in the US where big money completely owns our government. Not a single federally elected representative of the people is beholden to the people. They absolutely do not give a ___ how badly they look, too. That's the stunning part. They do bad actions while saying they're doing the opposite. Some people still believe the words and ignore the actions. Of course, knowing the actions requires time to investigate, and Americans work more hours than ever for less money than ever, and got a horrible education, so it's no surprise that the majority is ignorant.
Anthropology suggests otherwise. Every society has a chief, shiekh, big man, war lord and so on. And yes, shamans were among the top men. They acted as spiritual leaders, emphasis on leader.
Now if you want to discuss the difference between leaders and rulers...
There is archeological AND antropological evidence suggesting otherwise.
Check Darrin Mc. Mahon's "Equality: The History of an elusive idea" or even better, David Graeber & David Wengrow "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity"
I wouldn't be citing Graeber and Wengrow. There seem to be some issues with their scholarship. And this isn't the only issue I have with Graeber. (Personally, he has never impressed me.)
‘The Dawn of Everything’ and the Politics of Human Prehistory
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s tendentious assault on the Enlightenment and its modern defenders is a bust.
"Humans are social animals and all social animals form hierarchies. Every herd, pack and flock has its alpha."
But the Junk (author's name) piece you cite to attack Graeber and Wengrow begins its assault by defending Boehm's views, which the article quotes:
I"n the introduction to his book Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, Boehm writes, 'I make the major assumption that humans were egalitarian for thousands of generations before hierarchical societies began to appear.'"
So do you have a fundamental disagreement with Junk?
Junk goes on to make a spirited defense of Steven Pinker, Harvard's very own Pangloss peering out from his perch in William James.
As I replied to Kouros, egalitarian does not mean leaderless. Where there are leaders there will be followers. That is a hierarchy. It doesn't matter if those rankings weren't formalized. They still exist.
Also, consider the family structure, including the structure of the clan which is the basis for the tribe or band. That structure is also hierarchical.
And by the way, Junk was quoting Boehm. And yes, I do question Boehm's definition of hierarchy which seems to be shaded by his own biases rather than what might have been observed on the ground.
First, I wasn't citing Quillette. I was citing the author, David J. Junk, who has degrees in anthropology, psychology and literature. I suggest that you read what he has to say, which is more about the shoddy scholarship of Graeber and Wengrow than it is about the Enlightenment.
Second, yes, opinions can change when researchers are allowed to publish freely. For example, there do seem to be credible revisions of the the so-called Holocaust that may be closer to the truth than the official narrative. That doesn't mean all revisionist histories are credible. Howard Zinn, for example, also seems to be a purveyor of shoddy scholarship.
That said, I suspect that we may be using different definitions of "hierarchy". Perhaps you are equating egalitarian with leaderless, yet even the most egalitarian societies have leaders, and where there are leaders there will be followers. That is the basis for a hierarchy. Just because the rankings may not be formalized doesn't mean they don't exist.
Graeber has an essay about how "hierarchy" went from a rarely used term in anthropology to a dominant concept via Dumont:
"The moment one labels power relations 'hierarchy', one is already claiming that they are considered legitimate. This is because hierarchical arrangements are themselves viewed as the criteria for legitimacy. In fact, I think one could go so far as to say that, given the way we have come to organize our theoretical terms, it is well-nigh impossible nowadays to write an anthropological work that is genuinely critical of relations of what used to be called 'social stratification', because imagining a world without them would be very close to inconceivable. "
Yes, I've read that essay. The problem with Graeber is that he is more interested in pushing an ideology (anarchy) than he is in scholarship, which was the point of Professor Junk's critique. He does a fair amount of cherry picking to support his opinion, which is what he does in that essay. That is fine for a politician or a lawyer, but he is supposed to be a scientist.
Quillette ends by saying: "This profound antipathy toward inequality and concentrated political power gels nicely with the strong anti-Western bias prevalent across academia, which is especially pronounced in the humanities and the social sciences."
Which leads me to believe that he a) dislikes such antipathy, and b) disapproves of 'anti-western' sentiment. This is enough to disqualify his article from being taken seriously by anyone who has a contrary view to his, as he himself is clearly displaying 'bias'.
Anyone who disqualifies others based on a different of opinion is a biased fool. One should judge an argument based on evidence and the ability of the person to make his case, regardless of whether you agree with it. What you shouldn't do is side with those who use shoddy scholarship to back up an opinion that is more to your liking. This is why I don't identify with any particular ideology, philosophical movement or political party. Doing so often leads to people embracing bad ideas because it comes from their side while rejecting good ideas because it comes from the other side.
Every action has a reaction. If you disagree with the conclusions you probably want to throw out the bathwater and the included baby, but that would be a big mistake.
2500 years ago, Confucius recommended appointing government officials based on their intellectual capacity, beginning with a series of increasingly difficult written examinations.
A mere 1000 years later–over the bitter remonstrations of hereditary officeholders, the system was introduced and, two centuries later, peasants' sons were taking the Imperial Examination.
Today you need a 140 IQ and a track record (at age 23!) of sincerity and good deeds just to reach the interview stage.
If you succeed and choose the leadership track (most do research, etc.) you will be sent to the poorest village in the country where you will live alone while striving to raise the villagers' incomes by 50% ("For only when the granary is full can virtuous behavior be expected").
Successful young hierarchs repeat their performance at the district level and so on.
Xi Jinping's father began his rise as a high schooler, was a general at 17 and provincial governor at 23 (those were turbulent times). His son started at 19 and doubled the incomes of everyone he governed–including the entire population of China except for pensioners–whose incomes he lifted by 600%.
Daniel Bell, briefly a Chinese official himself, calls is a 'just hierarchy'.
One important thing to consider is that epistemic hierarchies (or, indeed, pretty much sociocultural groups) are defined by what Kuhn would called "paradigms." (What I'm calling paradigms are a bit more expansive than Kuhn's, however).
So, to take an example, people who are "physics literate" at various levels are defined by accepting as given ever more increasingly esoteric layers of physics: ranging from Newtonian mechanics to quantum mechanics and special relativity to String Theory and general relativity and so on. Different layers are not necessarily in contradiction to each other, but deeper the layer, the more complciated it gets (that produces the more general application as a more specialized case of the theory, and increasingly harder to test against the reality. Advancement within the hierarchy, in terms of gaining greater prestige and acceptance among the higher ups (and indeed, joining the higher ups) however requires coming up with new ideas that are consistent with the paradigms that the higher-ups subscribe to. The "new" ideas part is important: in a lot of social groupings, there is an implicit understanding that their understanding of the world is somehow imperfect, that there is always something left to do. However, the path to finding that answer is increasingly narrower the more "mature" that hierarchy is.
"Sciences," at least make the pretense of being subject to the empirical laws, that they are only as good as what the evidence from the real life tells them. This is, for higher levels of the epistemic hierarchy, increasingly difficult--the requirement is that new ideas still have to fit the paradigms while pointing to something new. In practice, the more esoteric the theories are, the harder it is find new evidence one way or another. So the paradigms at the "higher" levels stand on foundations of sand--the empiri9cal evidence for them are pretty weak: we just don't have enough "evidence" one way or another. However, they are the logical theoretical extensions of the paradigms at the lower levels and, at best, the contrary empirical evidence is not strong enough to say otherwise (this has been repeatedly pointed out about, say, the String Theory in physics.) For the more thoughtful, this makes for a very uneasy intellectual balance: you just know that the higher paradigms are just wrong. You just don't know how wrong it is or why it's wrong exactly due to the lack of evidence. The story aobut Galileo, once you actually go far illustrating this problem: people often forget that the reason Galileo was so famous to begin with was because the more thoughtful "scientists" of the era were already uneasy with the existing heliocentric paradigm and were eager to find ways out of it. Galileo was quite successful selling new ideas and made many friends among them. But the problems arose when he was too open challenging the basic paradigms without offering a replacement that still fit the existing premises and got out of line--he was an insufferable know it all who made things personal. So the episode was not so much about the "wrong ideas" knowingly putting away the "right ideas," but people who were aware that the paradigms were wrong, but were eager to keep them in place for "sociocultural" reasons because of a lack of alternative paths who got tired of an insufferable genius who was also a "sociocultural" rebel.
Other paradigms are less keen about how to assimilate new ideas: acceptance of the empirical perspective is peculiar to the sciences, and hard sciences in particular. Often, paradigms become scloretic: it's easy enough to think that "politics" are defind along the Left-Right continuum (although, we also "know" that this is not true." However, the paradigms in certain subsets of social sciences are premised on taking this logic to logical extension: that politics also obeys laws of Euclidean geometry and can be treated as problems of mathematics. Even the laypeople, who are part of at most lowest rung of the epistemic hierarchy, "know" that this is not true if they think about real life politics for any length of time, if only because the Left-Right continuum (and its equivalents in other "ideological" dimensions) is only approximately true to begin with. Yet, combination of the intellectual "convenience" combined, pathologically, with the broad (and not unreasonable) acceptance that empirical evidence in social sciences are "dirty," messy, and imprecise, makes it difficult to force the existing paradigms off the pedestal and makes the higher ups, ironically, more confident in their rightness: finding empirical evidence that would convince them otherwise is just hard.
Once we get to more mundane hierarchies, the accepted rules of defining "rightness" are murkier still: "empirical" rightness get muddled together with "moral" rightness, for example, in many groups. Displacing the paradigms become difficult still, while playing within the rules within the group and perhaps it's not even worth it, in interests of advancing the "understanding." It just becomes people learning the "magic lingo" of the group and saying the "right things." Assuming that the hierachies stay intact, that is.
One thing to note, though, is that, in many hierarchies, there is a widespread understanding that the premises are often "wrong," ironically, especially among the lower rungs: if only because they are less invested in the particulars of the paradigms. One way to gain influence within the hierarchy without going by the "rules" is to make an appeal to the lower rungs and force the way upward by inciting conflicts. This, after all, is not all that new either: every religious "heresy" began this way, although they generally did not end in the insurgents successfully capturing the hierachy and "reforming" it. (Or, perhaps, it was more common than we think, were history not been "corrected" retrospectively). It has long been recognized that technological changes are conducive to such insurgencies--the linkage between the printing press and the Reformation (and the Counter-Reformation--which, in a way, was a successful insurgency that stayed within the Catholic Church in face of the insurgency that got kicked out of the Church.)
I had recently written about politics of "fine prints" and "headlines" (https://substack.com/home/post/p-164094663 : not terribly well--writing long form is hard, after having been away from it for so long) To a degree, the arguments by Schattschneider and his successors apply to the epistemic hierarchies, too: higher up the hiearchy, the more fine grained paradigms get, and the the important the "details" (i.e. "fine prints") are. The lower epistemic rungs don't care about the fine print--they are interested only in the broad strokes: the precise charge of the electron is not very important if you are only interested in the motion of the large bodies, for example. When the "insurgents" bring the fight from the penthouse, where the elites are fighting over the number of proverbial angels on the pinhead (or the precise configuration of the epicycles to fit the observed data about the solar, or, eh, terran system), to whether there are angels (or pins) exist or whether the earth is the center of the universe at all, that fits the difference in coalition politics over "headlines" and "fine prints" as well....
As Donella Meadows pointed out, the paradigm is the maximum leverage point in changing a system, even higher than changing the system's goal. Alas, it is also the hardest thing to change as you've pointed out. We live in a society whose goal, based on what the system is actually doing, is to maximize return on capital for a few thousand households. Bizarre as that goal seems, especially when it entails rendering the Earth incapable of supporting a complex civilization, that's not going to change unless the paradigm that produced it is changed. That's no mean feat, especially when that paradigm is the ocean in which we two-legged "fish" swim. I recommend Daniel Quinn's Ishmael for a two-afternoon read that will make the most immersed recognize what it is that they've been swimming in.
Tribal membership is one thing (I'm particularly bad at that), and being a functioning member of a competence hierarchy is yet another. I quite appreciated your discussion here and how meditation and emptiness work. I've observed many of the same results of meditation you describe, and my own approaches to the topic of emptiness produce similar understandings. It's nice to see accuracy on these topics happening.
When people have to work together to do something necessary, hierarchies form organically and ego's are subdued - IF people are serious about achieving a goal. Part of the problem is the individualism of 'work' these days. All the best examples I can think of demand a range of skills and there is always respect for people who have skills that you haven't got but need to achieve something - such as building a house. I had organisational 'skills' but always respected and deferred to the plumbers and electricians and bricklayers and plasterers because I needed them and was mildly embarrassed when they patronised me as 'the guvenor'. The hierarchies changed every day depending on the stage of building. The best antidote to individualism is to do things that demand a collective effort.
Wonderful article as always Aurelian! Thinking of more skills we can deliberately cultivate, in addition to meditation (which has much of the power that the everyday practices of the Christian church seem to lack), and would love input from the commentariat of this blog. Two things that come to mind for me, perhaps on opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum are 1). learning a language and 2). Trying to grow some of your own food. Language learning requires attention and concentration and the ability to sit with discomfort (not being able to understand) and will be increasingly useful in a world that is not so dominated by Anglos. Growing your own food both puts you back into the rhythm of the outside world, that is independent of your ego, but also makes you realize how fragile this system is. It's not easy to grow food, and the only reason why we aren't all farmers is basically because of fossil fuels.
This is true. Growing food is not easy. It has made me respect farmers enormously. I understand that King Charles (in his youth) used to talk to his plants (in French). I doubt it made much different to the lettuces though....
I agree wholeheartedly with language learning as an activity. It is one area where modern technology is a blessing - and to be able to read articles like this, what incredible writing. Bravo Aurelian!
I grew up on a poultry farm where among other things I wish I could recall more clearly over a considerable span of years, was the literal meaning of a "pecking order." Chickens do hierarchy instinctually and lord help you if you are at the bottom. But it established order as a functional hierarchy does and, among chickens at least, promoted optimal reproductive success. I taught for many years in independent schools. All were hierarchical. All functioned best when the head of school was confident and decisive. It functioned best when the head would listen to the views of the more senior faculty, not ignoring any junior who spoke up, and then made a decision. Need I add that the reverse is uncomfortable as authority is fragmented as those who care most about the institution do their best to keep it on the rails. Veering about is all but certain.
What to do. Decide what is important. It is not you as an individual but you as a part of the whole. John Dunne had it right. Do not be like the young student who once confidently informed me that she was quite a special person. I was taken aback by her obvious sincerity and stunned that she was that unreflective and unrealistic. Focus down. I spend too much time trying to understand the world on a macro level. I cannot. This does not stop me from making the effort. As the article says, things are not getting better. The immediate future looks to be rocky. What can you to improve the odds for you, for family, for your close community? Do this and keep you humanity by remembering to give shelter to those who need it, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, and to visit the prisoners. You cannot save the world. You can help some. You can hold you head up. It need not be the war of all against all.
We, humans, we are verbal and we have mental and verbal tools to allow us to be independent of biology. Paraphrasing Thomas Hobbes, learning to throw stones and spears put man on an equal footing with man and gave means for anyone to deal with a bigger bully and kill it.
As such, the driving factor became, in a world where it was hard to become a leader, to have everyone being equal.
This recourse to biology, that Jordan Peterson is so enamoured of, with his lobsters, does not apply to humans.
I've been raising dairy goats since 1983. Goats are very competitive animals and the thing they compete for is higher status within the herd. Instead of a "pecking order" they have a "butting order".
Yeah, chickens, goats, lions etc. But the supposed advantage of being human is that we are able to use our sophisticated minds to rise above many of these instinctual habits.
...and dogs... sometimes it's hilarious to watch
Key word... supposed.
While i appreciate the effort to provide some guidance about what can help us at an individual level to cope with the polycrisis and Metacrisis, I have some serious disagreements about the treatment of hierarchy and religion.
This statement got me off on the wrong foot quite early:
"For most of human history, the idea that some people had an inherent hierarchical superiority to others was so obvious it went without saying."
Unless we take "human history" as only the period that began with the keeping of written records, this is clearly not the case. The sorts of hierarchical structures intended to last beyond a particular project or time of crisis did not appear until certain prerequisites had been met. Some tie it to permanent settlements, others to agriculture and the caloric surpluses it enabled. The anarchist Murray Bookchin blames the rise of shaman. Graeber and Wengrow argue that societies chose whether of to adopt hierarchical structures. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael sees a split between Takers and Leavers in which the Takers established a hierarchy of humans, really male humans, over Nature and other humans.
Hierarchies are not inherent to human nature nor are they required by the cosmos in some way. They may arise by choice initially, but those that survived make the claim that they are TINA, whether that's because a god ordained such an order or because permanent hierarchical structures are necessary to undertake some great project like building pyramids or winning wars.
This is not to say that humans don't have different talents and skills that make some more adept at leading particular projects that the tribe or society wants to undertake. It also doesn't mean that tribes would not have a tradition of according elders a special status based on their experience and wisdom, but permanent hierarchies are different in that the exalted position remains and must be filled when its incumbent is no longer capable of doing the job. Edward II replaces Edward I. If leadership is ad noc and temporary, the leader can just be replaced if they're not successful as a leader in the judgment of her/her fellows.
When it comes to religion, the monotheistic religions, beginning with Judaism as established by Ezra and prefigured by Second Isaiah, created a god with human characteristics, more specifically, a human tyrant in the style common in the Ancient Near East: fickle; often cruel; occasionally merciful; demanding of complete loyalty. This worked to reinforce permanent hierarchies, even making them divinely ordained in the minds of subjects for thousands of years.
That religious backstop has lost its punch, and it's been replaced by credentialism. The right degree from the right university or the right job title confers a rank in the hierarchy that is supposed to be heeded by those not possessing such qualifications, but those supposedly exalted by a Masters from Harvard Business School have proven quite uninterested in serving the public good. Most even deny there is such a thing. So the deplorables, recognizing that their supposed betters don't give a damn about their welfare, reject the newly proffered basis for deference to authority. Mario Savio saw the problem nearly 60 years ago when he realized the California university system was a factory churning out products, i.e. graduates, who had gained little in wisdom as they traveled passively down the assembly line.
I won't deny that there are projects humans have undertaken that by their size and the time it takes to complete the project require some sort of extended hierarchy, but I cannot conceive of such a project that would not be folly in our current circumstances: more skyscrapers and stadiums that look like spaceships.; endless wars; Golden Domes; trips to Mars. A world where CO2 ppm exceeds 420 and is headed to 500 in short order is a world where small isn't just beautiful, it's mandatory.
And I'll concede that there's currently a big multipolar game problem as described by Daniel Schmachtenberger. Hierarchical societies are now likely to outcompete any non=hierarchical society in the absence of some kind of restraint, internal or external. Our primary hope may be that these hierarchies collapse under the weight of their own self-absorption. Even then, it will be quite a job for survivors to fend off the easy solution of hierarchy as humans unlearn reliance on hierarchy and regain competence in essential tasks that has been lost through the learned helplessness our love of comfort and convenience has opened us to.
As this system crashes, we had best be organizing new communities that can liberate us from permanent hierarchies and the scourge of Randian individualism while helping us re-learn what it means to live in harmony with the Earth and our fellow Life that shares the planet with us.
HMP
Nice expanded response. I would add the little detail that the two Davids point to as essential, and that David G mentiones in other work of his.
Hierarchy was and is maintained by force. From the moment when dedicated formations to enforce hierarchies were established, we were doomed. That was the moment when the "domestication" of humans began and we are so far down that path, I shudder to think. We are at such level of conditioning that we immediately look for a "leader". It is disgusting.
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
Yes. There is an interesting theory in the book that the Mississippi Mound Building society failed because the 'serfs' just walked away (as they providentially had that choice).
Chaco Canyon is similar.
It seems to me there is a difference between the kind of individualism expressed by American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his kind of Self-Reliance, and that of Henry David Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists, and what you point to as mere egoism. The tension between such a form of individuality, of a person finding and following their own destiny, the vision of their particular genius or daimon, and being in community is large and a question I've been stewing on.
I heartily agree that "it’s questionable whether conventional Christianity actually has the energy and the conviction left to give people an alternative, transcendent, framework for understanding the world." I think people can find community there, but it's not the only place... many of us will have to muddle on as whatever new forms of religion coming after Christianity are born. Good thing there are plenty of great options in the alternative spirituality scene.
I think that getting back to some form of extended family can also help, something I wrote about here: https://www.sothismedias.com/home/stew-pot-families-in-a-stew-pot-nation
The isolated suburban nuclear family, was essentially, a kind of blip made possible by cheap energy and industrialism. Likewise, Norman Rockwell's ideal family never existed except in the imagination. There were always gay uncles and lesbian sisters, and whatever else, and they can be included in an expanded definition of the family.
You also pointed to logging off social media and the like (without getting into it)... but I think as the internet becomes increasingly limiting and limited (as you also show at the beginning) people might go back to being involved in the kinds of clubs, interest groups and subcultures that were prevalent before the internet lent its energy towards the phenomenon of "bowling alone."
To flip Blaise Pascal, perhaps, if we can learn to sit quietly (as you show at the end through attention and stillness exercises), we might be able to at least weather some of the problems in the world. At least with the practice of meditation it helps us to be less attached to thoughts, and in turn this can help us be more poised in times of stress, more anchored, less likely to be carried away by every little breeze that blows. And when we do get carried away, the practice helps us recognize it and return.
In any case, a lot to chew on here. Thanks for writing the essay.
I recently asked Anthropic's AI, Claude, the following question:
How does Buddhist psychology challenge Carl Schmitt's concept of the political?
Claude's answer, in part, was the following:
"Buddhist psychology and Carl Schmitt's concept of the political operate from fundamentally opposing anthropological assumptions, creating a profound philosophical tension."
"Schmitt's political theory rests on the friend-enemy distinction as the essence of politics. He argues that political identity emerges through defining who belongs to "us" versus "them" and that this antagonistic relationship is not only inevitable but necessary for political existence. The political for Schmitt requires the ever-present possibility of conflict, even war, as the ultimate expression of this existential distinction.
"Buddhist psychology directly challenges this framework through several key concepts..." which Claude then presented in some detail.
At the end of Claude's response was the following:
"Schmitt might argue that Buddhist approaches to politics remain naive about power, violence, and the tragic necessities of political existence. The Buddhist emphasis on individual transformation could appear to sidestep the structural realities of political conflict that Schmitt insists are inescapable."
"The challenge runs deeper than just offering an alternative to conflict based politics.. Buddhist psychology questions whether the very experience of political urgency that Schmitt described--the sense that fundamental values are at stake requiring decisive action--might itself be a delusion rooted in attachment and the illusion of separate selfhood."
"This tension reveal a fundamental question: Can there be politics without enemies, or does the Buddhist dissolution of rigid boundaries ultimately transcend the political realm as Schmitt defines it entirely."
Nice one.
With respect to hierarchies, we should remember that history is about 1/50th of pre-history and evidence suggests that during that expansive time, what we seem to have had in place was inverse hierarchies...
Something to consider.
And Yes, merit based hierarchies are ultimately valid, as long as the merit is genuine. And it deserves Kudos (see "The Algebraist" by Iain M. Banks). But not more than that.
In the distant past, if people wanted more than Kudos (they would not even get that) it is likely they got a public execution: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figura-6-Execucio-amb-escamot-de-Cova-Remigia-Ares-del-Maestrat-Castello-foto-A_fig3_339446811
At baseline, we are all equal. That should also help styfling and quieting the pesky Ego...
Definitely a well thought out article. This is why I’m so glad I found your column. It addresses the issue of the 500 pound ego in the middle of the room everyone bows to but no one addresses.
To touch on just one aspect of what you’ve brought up the issue of ego today seems to me to be exemplified well in the matter of victimization. Back in the 1960s it quickly morphed from Vietnam protests to “We want the world and we want it now” tantrums of a Jim Morrison. The 1969 Stonewall riots soon transformed into gay vs. lesbian vs. black vs. transgender vs. women, each of which considered themselves to be the ultimate victim of a repressive society and, in the process, becoming part of it by attempting to suppress the voices of the others within minorities.
The concept of the US Constitution was based in part on the rights of the minority over the majority so far as equality was concerned but today it’s been morphed into the dictatorship of the minority.
People today have discovered that being a victim, someone who has been abused or discriminated against in some way, originally in a de jure manner, can now be a source of unlimited power in both a de facto sense but, more importantly, in a more imaginative sense.
Some white men complain about reverse discrimination when in the majority of cases it’s actually a tantrum over their privilege. Some black individuals want to know where their forty acres and a mule are when they have no concept of tilling the soil. Some gay men want to be able to raise a family but also want to have multiple partners for sex. Some Christians want respect for their religious beliefs but have none for others. (I’m sure that by now I’ve offended almost everyone.)
The fact remains that being a victim is not a source of strength or power but a sign of weakness, a social stigma sapping what’s left of a nation’s vitality. When everyone is the victim nobody is at fault and everyone loses.
While I find your articles interesting and, at times, enlightening, I would characterize your view of religion as generally ignorant. I suppose the strongest influences you have are Protestant, with some Roman Catholic thrown in. But I do find you are correct that many, mainly Protestant, churches have simply abandoned Christianity and tend more towards Humanism (essentially atheism with a "Jesus" veneer, at times). However that is much less true outside of the Protestant "world" and there are many who still hold Church teaching to be "objectively true". This may be more difficult to see and understand in France as opposed to elsewhere; I don't know.
That said, there was an "option" presented within Christianity some time ago called "The Benedict Option". It was widely misunderstood by modern society (as the language of the Church more often than not is) as withdrawing from society. What it actually is/was is immersion in the life of the Church--notably in the local Parish--as a protection against the worst of society and a safe haven to retreat to when one becomes overwhelmed. Of course, the local parish has always had this function but The Bendict Option was a much more focused, perhaps monastic, application of it.
Part of the protection this view represents resides in the hierarchy of the Church (to bring this back to your essay). The structure of the parish presents this hierarchy and the community that resides there accepts it. The foundation of this is that the Authority of the Church is not like a worldly/societal authority. It is based in love and respect, not authoritarian power. Within this, families and individuals are able to abide, recognizing that, while the Priest may in fact expect them to do as he says in certain matters, his authority is based in love and his instructions must always reflect that. The consistency of this is very much found in Church teachings that emphasize humility and turn people away from the ego-centric life of which you speak.
The transcendent alternative you mention in passing does actually exist. Our society simply insists that it be hidden as much as possible, although the past several years have certainly showed us that societies efforts to denigrate and keep the Church underfoot and hidden have not at all been successful. We'll see where it goes from here. Managing the world is not our province; living in it is.
I live in the southeastern United States, the "Bible Belt", where religion is taken very seriously. My friends quote the Bible on social media. It's a little bizarre, having grown up in a northern state where people were mostly Protestant or Catholic, and their religion was confined to one hour per week. Up north (and basically everywhere else in the US), people don't talk about God. Down here, they do. It's rare to meet someone my age (46) who doesn't go to service on Sundays.
Agrarian societies like the Amish and the Mennonites rely on God as the ultimate authority. Next is the elders. Then the average members of their society. The small farmers ( I call them "The Last of the Agrarians" excepting the Amish and Mennonites ) that I was around when I was young sometimes chose God as the ultimate authority or subscribed to Judeo-Christian ethics if they weren't religious. All Agrarian societes depend on competence and responsibility as the ultimate authority after God. They don't need the Anglo-Saxon version of hierarchy ( Kings 'Queens, and so called "Elites" ) to live day by day. They learn their farming abilities and responsibilities from their culture (social group). They build their world with their own hands instead of exploiting someone else to build it for them. The problem with Anglo-Saxon hierarchy is that it is based on a culture of exploitation of others ( as all other cultural hierachies are except for successful Hunter-Gatherer and Agrarian cultures ). Soon even seemingly legitimate hierarchies become exploitation machines driven by staus seeking and money grubbing( I call it institutional rot ).They are filled with unearned wealth and power. This is where we are today. Todays "Elites" are Incompetents, Mediocrities, and Sociopaths . Their just walking, talking piles of BS.
Once again a remarkable essay, many thanks for taking the time and effort to create this website.
Rediscovering the crucial importance of *doing things in good faith* - of what it means for everyone, individually, and for the society at large - would be the first step towards mending things.
Intuitively, instinctively, people always know when they misrepresent reality - whether to others, or to themselves. They know words don't really hurt people as much as they pretend, just like they know their Ego is not the fragile center of the universe.
They also know the Tragedy of the Commons is real, that its dark shadow has been lurking at the edge of their busy existence for quite a while now, causing them to break out in cold sweat when they wake up in terror at 3 in the morning; they know they've been choosing the wrong square playing Prisoners Dilemma far too long, and so has nearly everyone they know.
They - us - just hope it will somehow, magically, turn out to be ok, because it has so far, sort of, has it not?
Something needs to happen to snap us out of this false hope - and it will.
If we are lucky, we'll have just enough time to readjust before it all comes crashing down.
It's tempting to act in bad faith when it seems that everyone visible in government/business* acts in bad faith. Social media promotes bad faith actions.
*I'm in the US where big money completely owns our government. Not a single federally elected representative of the people is beholden to the people. They absolutely do not give a ___ how badly they look, too. That's the stunning part. They do bad actions while saying they're doing the opposite. Some people still believe the words and ignore the actions. Of course, knowing the actions requires time to investigate, and Americans work more hours than ever for less money than ever, and got a horrible education, so it's no surprise that the majority is ignorant.
Humans are social animals and all social animals form hierarchies. Every herd, pack and flock has its alpha.
It appears that most of the pre-history, human groups have used one form or another of reverse hierarchy. Little dirty secret...
Anthropology suggests otherwise. Every society has a chief, shiekh, big man, war lord and so on. And yes, shamans were among the top men. They acted as spiritual leaders, emphasis on leader.
Now if you want to discuss the difference between leaders and rulers...
There is archeological AND antropological evidence suggesting otherwise.
Check Darrin Mc. Mahon's "Equality: The History of an elusive idea" or even better, David Graeber & David Wengrow "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity"
I wouldn't be citing Graeber and Wengrow. There seem to be some issues with their scholarship. And this isn't the only issue I have with Graeber. (Personally, he has never impressed me.)
‘The Dawn of Everything’ and the Politics of Human Prehistory
David Graeber and David Wengrow’s tendentious assault on the Enlightenment and its modern defenders is a bust.
https://quillette.com/2022/10/22/the-dawn-of-everything-and-the-politics-of-human-prehistory/
Further up the thread, you write:
"Humans are social animals and all social animals form hierarchies. Every herd, pack and flock has its alpha."
But the Junk (author's name) piece you cite to attack Graeber and Wengrow begins its assault by defending Boehm's views, which the article quotes:
I"n the introduction to his book Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, Boehm writes, 'I make the major assumption that humans were egalitarian for thousands of generations before hierarchical societies began to appear.'"
So do you have a fundamental disagreement with Junk?
Junk goes on to make a spirited defense of Steven Pinker, Harvard's very own Pangloss peering out from his perch in William James.
As I replied to Kouros, egalitarian does not mean leaderless. Where there are leaders there will be followers. That is a hierarchy. It doesn't matter if those rankings weren't formalized. They still exist.
Also, consider the family structure, including the structure of the clan which is the basis for the tribe or band. That structure is also hierarchical.
And by the way, Junk was quoting Boehm. And yes, I do question Boehm's definition of hierarchy which seems to be shaded by his own biases rather than what might have been observed on the ground.
And I wouldn't cite Quillette either.
As for the assault on Enlightment I won't debate that at all, but just consider as a parallel the change in opinion on allies contribution to defending nazi Germany in WWII: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bxe58t/poll_in_france_which_country_contributed_the_most/
Food for thought.
First, I wasn't citing Quillette. I was citing the author, David J. Junk, who has degrees in anthropology, psychology and literature. I suggest that you read what he has to say, which is more about the shoddy scholarship of Graeber and Wengrow than it is about the Enlightenment.
Second, yes, opinions can change when researchers are allowed to publish freely. For example, there do seem to be credible revisions of the the so-called Holocaust that may be closer to the truth than the official narrative. That doesn't mean all revisionist histories are credible. Howard Zinn, for example, also seems to be a purveyor of shoddy scholarship.
That said, I suspect that we may be using different definitions of "hierarchy". Perhaps you are equating egalitarian with leaderless, yet even the most egalitarian societies have leaders, and where there are leaders there will be followers. That is the basis for a hierarchy. Just because the rankings may not be formalized doesn't mean they don't exist.
Graeber has an essay about how "hierarchy" went from a rarely used term in anthropology to a dominant concept via Dumont:
"The moment one labels power relations 'hierarchy', one is already claiming that they are considered legitimate. This is because hierarchical arrangements are themselves viewed as the criteria for legitimacy. In fact, I think one could go so far as to say that, given the way we have come to organize our theoretical terms, it is well-nigh impossible nowadays to write an anthropological work that is genuinely critical of relations of what used to be called 'social stratification', because imagining a world without them would be very close to inconceivable. "
Link: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-the-rise-of-hierarchy?v=1675623179
Yes, I've read that essay. The problem with Graeber is that he is more interested in pushing an ideology (anarchy) than he is in scholarship, which was the point of Professor Junk's critique. He does a fair amount of cherry picking to support his opinion, which is what he does in that essay. That is fine for a politician or a lawyer, but he is supposed to be a scientist.
Quillette ends by saying: "This profound antipathy toward inequality and concentrated political power gels nicely with the strong anti-Western bias prevalent across academia, which is especially pronounced in the humanities and the social sciences."
Which leads me to believe that he a) dislikes such antipathy, and b) disapproves of 'anti-western' sentiment. This is enough to disqualify his article from being taken seriously by anyone who has a contrary view to his, as he himself is clearly displaying 'bias'.
Anyone who disqualifies others based on a different of opinion is a biased fool. One should judge an argument based on evidence and the ability of the person to make his case, regardless of whether you agree with it. What you shouldn't do is side with those who use shoddy scholarship to back up an opinion that is more to your liking. This is why I don't identify with any particular ideology, philosophical movement or political party. Doing so often leads to people embracing bad ideas because it comes from their side while rejecting good ideas because it comes from the other side.
'Quillette' - should be 'Junk' - metaphorically too.
Every action has a reaction. If you disagree with the conclusions you probably want to throw out the bathwater and the included baby, but that would be a big mistake.
Maybe you should take your own advice.
2500 years ago, Confucius recommended appointing government officials based on their intellectual capacity, beginning with a series of increasingly difficult written examinations.
A mere 1000 years later–over the bitter remonstrations of hereditary officeholders, the system was introduced and, two centuries later, peasants' sons were taking the Imperial Examination.
Today you need a 140 IQ and a track record (at age 23!) of sincerity and good deeds just to reach the interview stage.
If you succeed and choose the leadership track (most do research, etc.) you will be sent to the poorest village in the country where you will live alone while striving to raise the villagers' incomes by 50% ("For only when the granary is full can virtuous behavior be expected").
Successful young hierarchs repeat their performance at the district level and so on.
Xi Jinping's father began his rise as a high schooler, was a general at 17 and provincial governor at 23 (those were turbulent times). His son started at 19 and doubled the incomes of everyone he governed–including the entire population of China except for pensioners–whose incomes he lifted by 600%.
Daniel Bell, briefly a Chinese official himself, calls is a 'just hierarchy'.
One important thing to consider is that epistemic hierarchies (or, indeed, pretty much sociocultural groups) are defined by what Kuhn would called "paradigms." (What I'm calling paradigms are a bit more expansive than Kuhn's, however).
So, to take an example, people who are "physics literate" at various levels are defined by accepting as given ever more increasingly esoteric layers of physics: ranging from Newtonian mechanics to quantum mechanics and special relativity to String Theory and general relativity and so on. Different layers are not necessarily in contradiction to each other, but deeper the layer, the more complciated it gets (that produces the more general application as a more specialized case of the theory, and increasingly harder to test against the reality. Advancement within the hierarchy, in terms of gaining greater prestige and acceptance among the higher ups (and indeed, joining the higher ups) however requires coming up with new ideas that are consistent with the paradigms that the higher-ups subscribe to. The "new" ideas part is important: in a lot of social groupings, there is an implicit understanding that their understanding of the world is somehow imperfect, that there is always something left to do. However, the path to finding that answer is increasingly narrower the more "mature" that hierarchy is.
"Sciences," at least make the pretense of being subject to the empirical laws, that they are only as good as what the evidence from the real life tells them. This is, for higher levels of the epistemic hierarchy, increasingly difficult--the requirement is that new ideas still have to fit the paradigms while pointing to something new. In practice, the more esoteric the theories are, the harder it is find new evidence one way or another. So the paradigms at the "higher" levels stand on foundations of sand--the empiri9cal evidence for them are pretty weak: we just don't have enough "evidence" one way or another. However, they are the logical theoretical extensions of the paradigms at the lower levels and, at best, the contrary empirical evidence is not strong enough to say otherwise (this has been repeatedly pointed out about, say, the String Theory in physics.) For the more thoughtful, this makes for a very uneasy intellectual balance: you just know that the higher paradigms are just wrong. You just don't know how wrong it is or why it's wrong exactly due to the lack of evidence. The story aobut Galileo, once you actually go far illustrating this problem: people often forget that the reason Galileo was so famous to begin with was because the more thoughtful "scientists" of the era were already uneasy with the existing heliocentric paradigm and were eager to find ways out of it. Galileo was quite successful selling new ideas and made many friends among them. But the problems arose when he was too open challenging the basic paradigms without offering a replacement that still fit the existing premises and got out of line--he was an insufferable know it all who made things personal. So the episode was not so much about the "wrong ideas" knowingly putting away the "right ideas," but people who were aware that the paradigms were wrong, but were eager to keep them in place for "sociocultural" reasons because of a lack of alternative paths who got tired of an insufferable genius who was also a "sociocultural" rebel.
Other paradigms are less keen about how to assimilate new ideas: acceptance of the empirical perspective is peculiar to the sciences, and hard sciences in particular. Often, paradigms become scloretic: it's easy enough to think that "politics" are defind along the Left-Right continuum (although, we also "know" that this is not true." However, the paradigms in certain subsets of social sciences are premised on taking this logic to logical extension: that politics also obeys laws of Euclidean geometry and can be treated as problems of mathematics. Even the laypeople, who are part of at most lowest rung of the epistemic hierarchy, "know" that this is not true if they think about real life politics for any length of time, if only because the Left-Right continuum (and its equivalents in other "ideological" dimensions) is only approximately true to begin with. Yet, combination of the intellectual "convenience" combined, pathologically, with the broad (and not unreasonable) acceptance that empirical evidence in social sciences are "dirty," messy, and imprecise, makes it difficult to force the existing paradigms off the pedestal and makes the higher ups, ironically, more confident in their rightness: finding empirical evidence that would convince them otherwise is just hard.
Once we get to more mundane hierarchies, the accepted rules of defining "rightness" are murkier still: "empirical" rightness get muddled together with "moral" rightness, for example, in many groups. Displacing the paradigms become difficult still, while playing within the rules within the group and perhaps it's not even worth it, in interests of advancing the "understanding." It just becomes people learning the "magic lingo" of the group and saying the "right things." Assuming that the hierachies stay intact, that is.
One thing to note, though, is that, in many hierarchies, there is a widespread understanding that the premises are often "wrong," ironically, especially among the lower rungs: if only because they are less invested in the particulars of the paradigms. One way to gain influence within the hierarchy without going by the "rules" is to make an appeal to the lower rungs and force the way upward by inciting conflicts. This, after all, is not all that new either: every religious "heresy" began this way, although they generally did not end in the insurgents successfully capturing the hierachy and "reforming" it. (Or, perhaps, it was more common than we think, were history not been "corrected" retrospectively). It has long been recognized that technological changes are conducive to such insurgencies--the linkage between the printing press and the Reformation (and the Counter-Reformation--which, in a way, was a successful insurgency that stayed within the Catholic Church in face of the insurgency that got kicked out of the Church.)
I had recently written about politics of "fine prints" and "headlines" (https://substack.com/home/post/p-164094663 : not terribly well--writing long form is hard, after having been away from it for so long) To a degree, the arguments by Schattschneider and his successors apply to the epistemic hierarchies, too: higher up the hiearchy, the more fine grained paradigms get, and the the important the "details" (i.e. "fine prints") are. The lower epistemic rungs don't care about the fine print--they are interested only in the broad strokes: the precise charge of the electron is not very important if you are only interested in the motion of the large bodies, for example. When the "insurgents" bring the fight from the penthouse, where the elites are fighting over the number of proverbial angels on the pinhead (or the precise configuration of the epicycles to fit the observed data about the solar, or, eh, terran system), to whether there are angels (or pins) exist or whether the earth is the center of the universe at all, that fits the difference in coalition politics over "headlines" and "fine prints" as well....
As Donella Meadows pointed out, the paradigm is the maximum leverage point in changing a system, even higher than changing the system's goal. Alas, it is also the hardest thing to change as you've pointed out. We live in a society whose goal, based on what the system is actually doing, is to maximize return on capital for a few thousand households. Bizarre as that goal seems, especially when it entails rendering the Earth incapable of supporting a complex civilization, that's not going to change unless the paradigm that produced it is changed. That's no mean feat, especially when that paradigm is the ocean in which we two-legged "fish" swim. I recommend Daniel Quinn's Ishmael for a two-afternoon read that will make the most immersed recognize what it is that they've been swimming in.
Tribal membership is one thing (I'm particularly bad at that), and being a functioning member of a competence hierarchy is yet another. I quite appreciated your discussion here and how meditation and emptiness work. I've observed many of the same results of meditation you describe, and my own approaches to the topic of emptiness produce similar understandings. It's nice to see accuracy on these topics happening.