HIERARCHY REVISITED - Dissecting the Concept

Introduction
While I’ve written previously on the subject of hierarchy, my recent exposure
to the ideas of Jordan Peterson has inspired me to share some thoughts that
seem to me complementary to his, coming to the subject from a somewhat
different direction. Serious students of applied ethics will probably note that
my analysis, while not as detailed and multi-dimensional as Mr. Peterson’s, is
intentionally truncated in certain ways in order to “spotlight” those analytical
features most useful in the practical application of my formulation.
Most of my comments below are demonstrably “factual”, but the subject-
matter requires me to also include certain “opinions” that I hold – by which I
refer to beliefs that I have reason to believe are true, but which I have, as yet,
not “proven” in the strict scientific sense of the word, such proof being
beyond the scope of the resources that I have available.

Let us begin this discussion by outlining some basic definitions, so we are
literally talking the same language. A useful start being consideration of the
word, “hierarchy”. While it appears to be a noun, it obviously doesn’t
represent a person, place, or thing. You can’t carry one in a wheelbarrow, no
matter how big the barrow. It is, rather, what John Grinder calls a
“nominalization”, which upon examination actually can be seen as a
symbolic representation of a complex combination of events, actions,
processes, and their relationships to one another under various perceptual
modalities.

The most general definition of “hierarchy” of which I’m aware is the simple
mathematical notion that a hierarchy is an “ordered set” of physical objects
or ideas within which comparisons can be made, and rules discerned
concerning how the elements comprising the set relate to one another and
how they can be combined. So, for instance, the set of “prime numbers” is a
subset of the set of “integers”, which is a subset of “rational numbers”, which
1is a subset of “real numbers”, which is a subset of “complex numbers”, which
is a subset of “vectorial numbers”, which is a subset of “tensors”. And
operations on each of these conceptual groupings are defined by rules that go
by names like arithmetic, geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, topology
and so forth.

Someone wishing to provide the “highest resolution” theory of hierarchies
might do well to use the mathematics of set and group theories as a starting
point. My point in writing this is to call to your attention that within any set
comparisons require the definition of a dimensionality or of one or more
“axes” along which comparisons are to be made. So one might say, for
example, that the integers, 1, 2, 3, 4, ...etc. can be “arranged” in a sequence
from “smaller” to “larger” - their “size” being the basis of comparison.

Similarly we can distinguish the set called “life” as comprised of the subsets,
“plants” and “animals”, and we can make comparisons of such features as
complexity, awareness, mobility, intelligence, and creativity. I doubt anyone
will challenge the usefulness of hierarchy as a means of categorization.
When it comes to the analysis of hierarchies comprised of humans, there is
literally no end to the number of dimensions along which they can be
compared. This is, as far as I can see, the reason the “political arena” is so
effective at the “divide and conquer” game that results in so much suffering
and death.

On the other hand, there are three specific axes of comparison that I see as
especially germane and relevant to human hierarchies. They are the
dimensions of Competence, Power, and Ethics. Mr. Peterson makes a
compelling argument that human hierarchies are inevitable and necessary,
because it is an evolutionary advantage for humans to value competence, and
that this awareness is actually encoded in our genetic makeup. As far as I’ve
been able to see, Mr. Peterson seems to think that the necessity of the
competence hierarchy implies the simultaneous necessity of the Power
hierarchy, which he admits is at odds with the Ethics hierarchy. It is at
precisely this point that my view differs somewhat from his.

An Alternative Viewpoint
In 1950 the words, “Made in Japan” had a very specific meaning in most of
the world. And that was: “cheap poorly-made knock-off of a product
available elsewhere.” So at that time the Japanese industrialists had little to
lose by adopting 25 suggestions offered them by William Edwards Deming –
suggestions that he collectively labeled, “Statistical Quality Control”. Just 15
years later, Japanese industry was arguably the most effective, efficient, and
successful in the world. What few seem to realize is that, whether by design
or by luck, the outcome made Japanese industries more ethical. And it did
this by leaving the power hierarchies intact while simultaneously amplifying
the influence of the competence hierarchies operating within the industries.

By persuading corporate administrators and executives to act favorably on
suggestions by those in the lower levels of the power hierarchies, Deming’s
suggestions (i) reduced the influence of the power hierarchy while amplifying
the decision-making influence of the competence hierarchies. This provided a
much-needed feedback mechanism that ameliorated the prior bureaucrati-
zation that characterizes most power hierarchies. The fact that this happened
appears to me proof-positive that the the necessity of a competence hierarchy
does not require the acceptance of a dictatorial power hierarchy – with its
admitted susceptibility to corruption.

Thesis
It is my contention that a group of individuals wishing to form an ethical
society, for any ethical purpose, can successfully divorce the need for a
competence hierarchy from the acceptance of a power hierarchy – thereby
eliminating completely the presence of a power hierarchy within the
organization thus formed. And I further claim that this possibility offers our
species the opportunity to solve what I believe to be humanity’s “Big
Problem” - the fact that our dominant institutions consistently make unethical
decisions.

Meanwhile I’m of the opinion that our species is in a very dangerous unstable
circumstance much like that of Japanese industrialists in 1950. If we don’t do
something significantly different from what we’ve done in the past, we are
likely to become extinct. To me this means we have little or nothing to lose
by experimenting with a real alternative – one which Deming would have
recognized as going beyond the realm of “tinkering” with the existing system
– a practice that he deplored when advising the Japanese. To this end, let’s
take a closer look at the hierarchic dimensions of Categorization,
Competence, Ethics, and Power.

The Utility of Categorization
Since all the information any of us has about the world around us comes to us
via the senses, it is an important feature of our evolution that we are able to
sort our perceptions into manageable categories. In doing so, of course, we
are creating categorical hierarchies that are very useful. This capability,
which we largely exercise subconsciously, provides an enhanced means of
focusing our attention at the conscious level. In doing so it amplifies our
ability to discern similarities and differences between the elements of the sets
that we observe, or to identify comparabilities and isomorphisms. This in turn
gives us the ability to observe the “time” dimension of our experience and to
formulate the concepts of “cause and effect”.

In short, our capacity for discerning categorization hierarchies is a
foundational component of “science”, the best method we have to date of
distinguishing true information from false information – which is factually
the sole purpose of science.

The Value of Competence
When you are a member of a group of people who agree on the desirability of
finding a solution to a perceived problem affecting everyone in the group,
whose ideas on the subject are you most interested in hearing? I maintain that
there are 3 levels of awareness that we look for in answering this question –
and they all have bearing on the nature of competence and trust.

1. Knowledge – Your knowledge is the totality of information that you
believe to be true – whether it is or not. I think it self-evident that
people seek the counsel of those with more knowledge, rather than less.
This is why so many cultures revere their elders – because they’ve been
accumulating knowledge longer than the younger folk available. But
knowledge alone, while necessary to establish competence, is
insufficient for that purpose.

2. Understanding – Your understanding is mostly discernment of the
cause and effect relationships between the items of information that
make up your knowledge. Logic, reason, intuition, and imagination are
all involved in this capability. Its primary value stems from its
enhancement of your intelligence – your ability to predict and control
events in the “real world”.

3. Wisdom – Is awareness of the meaning or significance of one’s
understandings. The best “lens” of which I am aware, for recognizing
wisdom, is the ethics, which I discuss below.

It is my contention that these three characteristics together form the basis of
the hierarchy of competence sought by those seen as leaders in creative group
endeavors.

Power Hierarchies
Most societal institutions, such as governments, their agencies and
departments, corporations, cartels, charities, schools, and so forth, are
organized as power hierarchies. In fact when most people use the word
“hierarchy”, it is the hierarchy of power to which they refer. So what is it?
Power hierarchies, usually described as pyramidal in form, are comprised of
a set of people who, at each “level”, claim the “authority” to impose rewards
and punishments upon those at lower levels, while submitting to the
imposition of rewards and punishments by those at still higher levels. For
those at or near the apex of the pyramid, this provides certain efficiencies and
advantages; but for most of the members of the set it is highly disadvan-
tageous. Except for the topmost, everyone in such an organization has to
endure the potentially tyrannical expectations of their “boss”, who typically
takes credit for their underlings’ successes while simultaneously blaming
those underlings for their own failures.

In this environment, corrective feedback that could flow “upward”, from
those who do the work to those who make the decisions, is severely impaired
– the attitude of the decision makers often being, “If I wanted you to have an
opinion, I’d provide you with one.” This systematic elimination, destruction
and avoidance of corrective feedback is the definitive hallmark of
“bureaucracy”. In its presence, creativity and innovation, the key ingredients
in lasting success, are stifled, and the future of the organization is doomed.

This danger is further amplified by the fact that psychopaths and their
sociopathic imitators are characterologically drawn to circumstances that
enable them to control and dominate others – and they do so with no regard
for the well-being of anyone but themselves. So power hierarchies become
ever-expanding centers of societal influence – most of it self-serving, evil and
entropic.

It seems clear to me that every worthwhile organization on the planet would
do well to find a way of benefiting from its competence hierarchy while
deleting the ill effects of its power hierarchy – if not the power hierarchy
itself. In such an organization there would exist mechanisms that
appropriately acknowledge individual members’ skills, talents, awareness,
productivity, creativity, and other competencies while not permitting anyone
in the organization to have any substantive punitive power over any other. To
most, I expect, how to accomplish this must seem like an insoluble puzzle.
Still, I wish to propose a solution.

Solving the Puzzle
In order to suggest a solution to the puzzle to which I’ve alluded above, it is
necessary to define the puzzle in terms that are compatible with the problem-
solving task. The first step in this process is to provide a sensory-based
description of the solution as an “outcome”. In other words, what directly
discernible evidence will we observe that verifies the manifestation of a valid
solution?

To find an adequate answer to this question, I begin by making a moral
commitment to live, to the best of my ability, by the objectively valid
Evolutionary Ethic ii that states simply:

An act is ethical if it increases truth, awareness, love, and/or creativity for at least one person, including the person acting, without limiting or diminishing any of these resources for anyone.

Now I switch into what I call “Oracle Mode”, by saying what I expect to
observe in the future as others join with me in ever-expanding communities
of ethical societies, comprised of similarly committed individuals.

• By any sensory-based metric I choose, it will be evident that the world
is becoming a place of peace, prosperity, and freedom – literally for all.

• Public discussion of ethics will be commonplace and most will
understand the values of truth, awareness, love, and creativity.

• The traumatization of children as infants, toddlers, and school-agers
will finally have come to an end, thanks to a large degree to the work of
Dayna Martin.

• Child indoctrination centers will no longer exist, though multi-familial
facilities will emerge to assist unschooling parents in helping each other
in the face of the need to balance child inspiration with adult financial
responsibilities.

• Most social environments will feel “safe” and present themselves as
easily trusted.

• Most people will experience a strong sense of “belonging” in the
society that surrounds them. Gone will be the feelings of isolation and
alienation that so many experience in today’s world.

• War, severe poverty, widespread crime, and drug addiction will be
largely artifacts of a bygone past.

• Preeminent institutions will make consistently ethical decisions – the
extreme opposite of what we see today.

• The most important and effectively pervasive decisions will be made
initially in small gender-balanced groups – typically of 7 to 10 people.
In these groups (that I choose to call “Octologues”):

◦ The Evolutionary Ethic, or one logically equivalent to it, will be
thoroughly understood and widely adopted.

◦ The agreed purpose of the group will be ethical.

◦ All group decisions will be unanimous.

◦ Members will be trusted to give and receive honest feedback to and
from one another.

◦ Adequate and effective mechanisms will be in place to amplify the
individual and collective creativity of the group members and to
facilitate resolution of conflicts, whether they be internal to an
individual or operating between individuals.

Because critical decision-making is decentralized and distributed in the
culture described above, I call the culture “Socio-Polycentric Stewardship”
Let’s take a closer look at the mechanism by which this new culture will
emerge.

The HoloMat – The Blockchain of People
The HoloMat iii is an organizational protocol that does for personal
relationships, in all settings, what the blockchain does for financial and
contractual relationships. Just as the blockchain is not an artifact of power,
neither is the HoloMat. Just as the blockchain eliminates the need for trust in
8various centralized “authorities”, so the HoloMat spreads authority out to the
limit – the individual conscience. It is, in a very fundamental way, the very
antithesis of authoritarian power... the ultimate power equalizer, distributor
and decentralizer.

In the preceding sections, you’ve read a full description of the personal
grouping that I call the Octologue. Now imagine a group of Octologues that
wish to cooperate in some way – perhaps in the formation of a business, a
social cooperative, the development of some intellectual resource, and so on.
Such Octologues can associate and affiliate with one another in a number of
ways, the best ones by way of an ethical contract. Here are the best
parameters that I know of for the articulation of such a contract.

The Ethical Contract
There are many laws on the books that set out to define a valid contract – some are well written – others are not. The best ones contain the following basic elements and provisions:

1. The parties to the contract are clearly identified.

2. The purpose of the contract is clearly defined.

3. What each party to the contract contributes to the group participating is
   specified.

4. The liability that each participant undertakes – and the limitations thereto –
   is defined.

5. What each party to the contract is to receive in exchange for his/her
   participation and contribution is clearly set forth (the quid pro quo).

6. The duration of the agreement is specified together with the means by which
   the contract may be terminated.

7. The right of any participant to withdraw from the contract is affirmed; and
   the legal and financial consequences of such withdrawal are specified.

8. The means by which the contract can, and may be, amended are detailed.

9. Violations of the contract are defined, together with the various
   consequences of such violations – including various penalties to which
   violators may be subject.

10. The separability of the terms of the contract is affirmed – assuring that if
    some portion of the contract is later deemed invalid that the remainder of the
    contract shall remain in effect.

11. The means by which disputes concerning the contract and other matters are
    to be resolved is specified.

12. The court having jurisdiction (if any) over disputes concerning the contract
    is specified.

13. Affirmation that each person signing the contract has read it, understands it,
    and has received adequate legal or ethical advice to understand all the
    possible legal consequences that may result from becoming a party to it.

14. Affirmation that each person signing the contract does so of their own free
    will.

15. Signatures of the parties and (where applicable) signatures of witnesses.

Concerning “Equality”
I’m not sure I completely understand Jordan Peterson’s thinking (iv) on the
subject, but I’m of the impression, from a number of things he has said, that
he thinks that the poor, whom he refers to as “the left”, play a critical role in
maintaining the tension that limits the proclivity of the psychopathic well-to-
do to run roughshod over everyone. Where my opinion differs is that I see the
plight of the poor as a macroscopic manifestation of what he might call “the
unresolved completion of the oral stage of infant development” - brought on,
I would hazard a guess, by parental neglect in the first year of infancy. That is
something I think will diminish drastically over time as “peaceful parenting v ”
and “radical unschooling (vi) ” knowledge spreads.

Meanwhile, for those of you wishing for more equality among people, the
HoloMat protocol (vii) provides every participating individual as much equality
with the others as is humanly possible without violating fundamental ethics.
Any organizational paradigm that makes people more equal than this,
necessarily results in unethical outcomes, and human suffering and death
on an industrial scale.

For those afflicted with Socialism or Communism, the bright side of this
equation is that adoption of this protocol in your own life brings all the
rewards that you yearn for – specifically “material well-being” for all who
participate. This was the value sought by those who comprised the Soviet
Union. The associated belief system was that more such well-being could be
attained under the direction of a tyrannical communist regime. That false
belief led to the near-universal poverty of the Soviet people.

The downside of this circumstance is the fact that fruitful participation in the
HoloMat Protocol requires that you put in the necessary effort – the typical
education period required for the recovery from the “socialism” affliction is
about 6 months if done intensively.

Conclusion
When Nature makes laws they are never broken by humans. No one has ever
broken the Laws of Thermodynamics, the Law of Gravity, or the Laws of
Supply and Demand.

Legislative laws, on the other hand, are of an entirely different sort.

• They are all presented as serving the purpose of protecting the public
from the unethical violence of various evil-doers – while their
corruption enacts vastly more violence than that which they claim to
prevent – in spite of the fact that the claims of their proponents are
greatly exaggerated.

• Protecting the public has never been the actual purpose behind the
formation of the world’s legal systems. From the Declaration of
Independence to the issuance of the speeding ticket, the whole system is
a giant scam – the selling of a product that never existed in the real
world. The real purpose of man-made laws has been the plunder of the
many by the few viii . And for that purpose, the legal system has been
very successful.

For this reason I see the differences between the “left” and the “right” as
mere window-dressings for betrayal, deceit, and mass murder. This is a huge
problem, but if there is to be a solution, it cannot be a political solution,
because the political system is a fundamentally unethical “tool” (ix) no matter
who wields it. Like Tolkien’s Ring of Power, it serves only its makers and
corrupts everything it touches. More prosaically expressed, “Ethical ends can
only be attained by ethical means.” (x)

Finally
I invite the better-informed readers to pass the word on to others to the effect
that the trail to a world of peace, prosperity, and freedom has been blazed,
and that the anticipated increase in traffic along that trail will turn it into a
gentle pathway – then into a primitive road – then a paved road – and then a
highway. Eventually the way will be a superhighway along which travel will
be easy and comfortable instead of fraught with challenges as it is for today’s
pioneers.

i https://www.titanians.org/dr-demings-admonitions/
ii https://www.titanians.org/ethics-law-government
iii https://www.titanians.org/holomats-octologues/
iv

v

vi https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Unschooling-Revolution-Has-Begun-Revised/dp/1460939980/ref=sr_1_3?
ie=UTF8&qid=1534956748&sr=8-3&keywords=dayna+martin
vii https://www.titanians.org/holomats-octologues/
viii https://steemit.com/podolsky/@borisheir/introducing-the-plunder-state
ix https://www.titanians.org/government-the-borg-robot/
x https://www.titanians.org/ethical-means-and-ethical-ends/