Hierarchies Aren’t The Problem
The right kind is both the way of the past and the wave of the future
Jordan Peterson is a vocal proponent of the naturalness and therefore the rightness of hierarchies. A hierarchy is a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority. There are several different kinds, and they are all different.
Not all hierarchies are bad. In fact, we wouldn’t get much done if we didn’t have them, but Peterson confuses merit-based hierarchies with those based in traditional power or domination and mistakenly gives them credit where little is due. It’s a mistake that many people make because we live squarely in a social system that is based in a dominance hierarchy and we’ve been heavily indoctrinated into the belief that might makes right.
But gaining and holding on to power through ruthlessness is not the same thing as earning it. Ideas like manifest destiny, the 19th-century belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable, came out of this belief. Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest” at around this same time and it so appealed to Charles Darwin that he adopted it as a part of his theory of evolution.
But in truth, organisms with the greatest reproductive success, meaning that their offspring go on to themselves reproduce, are the ones that cooperate.
Indeed, the research, from Darwin onwards, is overwhelming that we survived and thrived as a species because our biological and social propensity to live in connection and close cooperation with others is vastly stronger than any propensity to kill or harm each other.
An example of an actual merit-based hierarchy is the seed for a sports team in a tournament. The teams that have won are ranked higher than the teams who have lost. There is no way, short of bribing the refs or otherwise cheating, to manipulate the hierarchy and just because you had high ranking in the past has no bearing on your ranking today. Unlike a dominance hierarchy, bullying or coercive behavior will not improve your ranking. In fact, it might get you ejected from the tournament instead.
Another type of hierarchy is one of actualization. This is an organizational structure where the leaders not only expect support and respect from those whom they have authority over, but they also give it back reciprocally. Organizational goals get achieved through collaboration and relatedness, rather than paternalism or threats.
A leader in this type of hierarchy is someone who recognizes people’s potential and develops it in alignment with the greater goals of the organization. Special ops groups such as the Navy Seals use this type of hierarchy because it is much more agile than a more paternalistic style in which every move has to be approved from above.
One of the ways to distinguish a hierarchy of actualization from a dominance hierarchy is that rather than being based in power over, it is based in power to or power with. Increasingly, businesses are embracing this model for the same reason that the Navy Seals do — it’s a lot more agile to let the people closest to the work make most of the relevant decisions.
Not everyone has the same level of authority, but those with more use that power to make sure that the people in their charge have what they need to fulfill the mission. They are the coordinators, the facilitators, the monitors who make sure that things are on task and they do that by engaging with their team, not by managing from above.
“In some of the most successful start-ups and even large organizations that have evolved, you can visibly see greater levels of delegation and decision making at all levels. Leaders focus on guiding and communicating the vision, leading large client projects and finding new ways to develop their staff. Managers are taking on more leadership responsibilities and pass increasing amounts of responsibility to junior employees.” Forbes
Dominance hierarchies, which are the more traditional model, tend to have a dog-eat-dog organizational style, where you may well expect to threaten or bully the person down the pecking order from you in order to get a result that helps you to avoid getting abused by the person above you who has more power. This is an organizational style full of big-ego bosses and petty dictators. It’s why so many CEOs are sociopaths, because in a dominance hierarchy, that kind of behavior reads as leadership, even though it’s largely ineffective and demoralizing, negatively affecting the bottom line.
The social system of the United States was a patriarchal dominance hierarchy right from its inception. It was established from the get-go who the elites were and who was lower down the pecking order. Initially, only white men who owned property had the right to vote.
In a dominance hierarchy, the structure is authoritarian and this takes place in both the family and society. The goal of nearly everyone is to maintain their ranking or to achieve a higher one by forcing someone else into a position lower than they are. This is typically done by creating fear, or threatening violence. Everyone from mean girls to workplace sexual harassers is trying to establish their dominance by making you aware of your inferiority so that they can control you.
Bringing in more hierarchies of actualization and greater egalitarianism into our culture is not about making everyone the same or even having equal authority. A pure democracy of millions would be really cumbersome. But rather than everyone being out for themselves at the expense of anyone who gets in their way as in a dominance hierarchy, a more egalitarian culture would favor greater teamwork and cooperation for the good of the greater entity, whether that be a business or a community — which in turn, benefits the individuals who make it up.
Instead of zero-sum win/lose it’s seeking for ways to have more win/win. This is how we thrive as individuals and as a society. Anthropologist and primatologist Christopher Boehm theorizes that suppressing our primate ancestors’ dominance hierarchies by enforcing the egalitarian norms of our ancient ancestors was a central adaptation of human evolution.
A Stanford University study determined that patriarchal dominance hierarchies which spread about 6–9 thousand years ago and overtook egalitarian communities did so not because they were a more efficient system, but because they caused so much societal disruption.
“In other words, inequality did not spread from group to group because it is an inherently better system for survival, but because it creates demographic instability, which drives migration and conflict and leads to the cultural — or physical — extinction of egalitarian societies.” New Scientist
Despite how ubiquitous they feel to many of us, dominance-based hierarchies aren’t the only type of hierarchies and they aren’t the ones that we’ve had for most of human history. They have little to do with merit and instead are about grabbing and holding onto power through bullying and ruthlessness.
Movements towards hierarchies of actualization are beginning to take hold in the business world, particularly in highly competitive environments, not because they are nicer settings, but because they allow the work to be done more efficiently. Denmark teaches principles of this way of relating to other people in its schools. Students learn to compete primarily against themselves and to help other students who are struggling as a way to improve their own skills. This approach reduces bullying and helps to build a stronger sense of community, but it also teaches the relational skills necessary for successful management and entrepreneurship.
The problem isn’t hierarchies, although it most certainly is dominance based ones. The patriarchal society that we live in is the root cause of just about all of our social ills, from racism to sexism, to homophobia and bullying. Maintaining rankings that have nothing to do with merit such as gender, sexuality or race and aggressively policing them to keep everyone in their slot doesn’t benefit the society, and it doesn’t even really benefit those who rabidly maintain these rankings because it creates social isolation and robs them of a piece of their humanity.
Human beings are hardwired for connection and cooperation. Community feels good to us and isolation feels as painful as physical wounds. “Research has linked social isolation and loneliness to higher risks for a variety of physical and mental conditions: high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease, and even death.”
Partnership style organization, which is another name for hierarchies of actualization, rejects the paternalism of dominance-based structures in favor of trust and real accountability.
Patriarchal governance creates the social distance and vulnerability that cause us to work so hard to avoid the truth. Patriarchy creates a parent-child relationship between bosses and workers, and parents and children don’t expect to tell the truth to each other. In a partnership, not telling the truth to each other is an act of betrayal. One of the benefits of redistributing power is that people feel less vulnerable and are more honest.
Block, Peter. Stewardship (p. 41). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Self-determination theory says that human beings need three basic things in order to be motivated and content: they need to feel competent at what they do, they need to feel authentic in their lives, and they need to feel connected to others. These qualities are considered “intrinsic” to human happiness and far outweigh “extrinsic” qualities such as beauty, money, and status.
The United States and many other western countries are currently experiencing a crisis of loneliness and social isolation. The cure for that is not more cutthroat competition and social stratification based in arbitrary factors. Both economic and social abundance has the potential to arise from further development of hierarchies of actualization and merit-based rankings, not from hierarchies of domination.