The Problem is Hierarchy

Hierarchical power only exists because it is imposed, because once concentrated power exists, it accumulates until collapse or heat death. It is the enemy of human freedom, turning conscious beings into thoughtless instruments, an engine for suffering, a thing slaked in blood and wielding the whip and the chain, coffins proceeding to its left and obedient automatons, once called humans, to its right.

— Daniel Baryon, "Power"

The source of most of society's ills is the desire and capacity to rule over each other. Instead of interacting with each other on our own terms, we become alienated from others and ourselves. Our desires and goals are ignored for the sake of wishes of the ruler. We become objects for the will of another rather than subjects of our own experiences.

Even more, this dependence keeps us dependent. As we learn to interact with each other solely through a higher power, we lose the ability connect in healthy ways. Instead, all of our desires must be filtered through the rulers. We are disempowered from living our own lives, so we don't learn the skills needed to do so.

Whenever we see a problem in the world, we are taught to think that is a problem of discipline. We are led to believe every unhoused person is a result of a lack of discipline to submit to wage slavery, that every teen pregnancy is a result of a lack of discipline in abstinence, and that crime is the result of a failure of that person to be disciplined as a child.

This is not true. The issue is not that people have not received enough discipline, but that people received too much. The approach many have taking to resolving the world's problems have instead exacerbated them. Worse, it has also sabotaged what is needed to solve them. We have forgotten and forced others to forget what enables us to make decisions collaboratively, in community. We can't live as equals because we were taught to live as rulers or ruled. This has made us fragile, antisocial, and collectively unable to pursue a better world.

If we want a better world we must build stronger connections with each other. To build stronger connections with each other we must change the ways we relate to each other. Even more, we must address the problem at its root. The problem is hierarchy, and one of its strongest roots can be found in the family.

The family is where most of us first encounter hierarchy. As kids most of us we were treated as mere potential adults, where anything was justified as long as it helped us to become a better adult. We were neither socially or legally full persons, but rather shadows of the adult to come. Our parents, our elders, and others in our lives were above us. All of our desires had to be filtered through them, who never fully understood us. With some restriction, their will was to be fulfilled through us.

When we viewed the ways people treated each other in the world, we eagerly soaked in knowledge about what we thought we could become as adults. We saw the rulers, owners, and successful, but we also saw the homeless, starving, and poor. We learned to assume this is the way things must be, either by necessity or because we felt helpless to change them. So we accepted the world as it is and adapted to our supposed place within it.

This is how hierarchy is carried across generations. This is how we foster the worst in humanity and sabotage our own attempts to make the world better.

The lie constantly whispered into our ears is that we can't change anything, that society has to be this way. This pernicious deceit is what keeps us impotent. I encourage you to suppress that lie as we proceed. Let yourself imagine things you were told were impossible. Use your critical thinking to consider reality for what it is rather than defending hierarchy.

We often hear people say they want to change the world, but what we need isn't change. Change happens all the time, but most of it is meaningless. What we need is connection, the growth of human potentiality, and to develop.¹

So far, I have been using the word "we" to describe the apathy that has been drilled into us as youth. But not all of us have given up. We are here, imagining better worlds and connecting with each other in order to create them.

We can do things differently. We are not helpless. We can change the world. It starts with us making a choice to do so. Will you join us?