Comments on: Hierarchy Is Not the Problem… It’s the Power Dynamics

By: Jack R

Jack R — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 11:38:19 +0000

Thank you Simon & Karl for saving others the trouble of critiquing and criticising the basic flaws in this article, despite it’s author presenting them as facts rather than ill-considered opinion.

The root and meaning of all of our ‘arkhon’ words; hierarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy etc, is a description of power within that structure or culture. To say that they are merely shapes is surely nonsense.

By: Karl Robillard

Karl Robillard — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 16:56:54 +0000

Yes, hierarchy is a shape. It’s a diagrammatic representation of a
social power structure where power is concentrated in a tiny minority. If you
are interested in democratic outcomes then the more exclusive the control, the
more limited the domain under consideration must be. That’s not how
a decision making hierarchy works, by definition. The control of the top node
in the graph overrides all other nodes.

Richard, you claim this isn’t just a semantic argument, but I fail to see how.
As you describe, the use of a word (e.g. non-hierarchical) can be irrelevant to
outcomes of the actual social structure. The proper course of action is to use
words that accurately describe the environment, not discard words because we
aren’t using them correctly or don’t understand their context.

If you insist on a crude plant based analogy, talking about the cells that make
up its parts might be a better way to speak about people in a larger community. The organism is a wholistic system and each cell has only a little influence on
its overall viability. Each cell is sustained by the system and will normally
only suffer due to environmental factors rather than the activity of other cells. This is the opposite of a human decision making hierarchy where the root dictates all and subnodes can be eliminated at whim.

By: Simon Grant

Simon Grant — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:37:42 +0000

OK, but (as you’ve admitted Rich) you’re bending common usage here. For me it would be easier and less troublesome to make the very simple and clear change to “The shape of hierarchy is not the problem — it’s the power dynamics”, and I would wholeheartedly agree.

Put it another way. Hierarchy – as commonly understood – combines a tree structure with power dynamics. It’s not the (inverted) tree-shaped structure by itself that is the problem. There are many legitimate, helpful, fruitful applications of tree-shaped structures in life, including trees. And it’s possible to have power dynamic problems that don’t have a tree shape — for example, as in prejudice or oppression, where a whole group of people assume superiority over another whole group.

But on reflection, a centralised power dynamic has a tendency to create a tree structure to go with it. When power is centralised, inevitably the way that power dissipates takes the form of an inverted tree. And when there is that shape of (social) structure, it is more liable than a network structure to be hijacked — a good example of this is the Internet itself. It’s a network structure, not a tree, and therefore much more difficult to hijack.

In the end, I just think that phrasing it the way you do is unfortunate, and risks generating more heat than light.