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Are human social groups inherantly hierarchical?
There's a natural tendency towards heirarchies, but "natural" doesn't mean "necessary" and it definitely doesn't mean "desirable". To create and maintain a better world takes work, and part of that is dismantling "natural", but harmful, heirarchies (eg. the physically strong dominating the physically weak).
If humans are hardwired to create hierarchies and seek status would a complete lack of hierarchy be possible on a large scale?
This is surely how they argued in the Middle Ages when it came to justifying the different estates.
I don't believe that hierarchies are something inherently human. You don't seek out hierarchies in your normal environment. Very few people do. And those who do are usually not very popular. You don't want to subordinate yourself or dominate others. We are all only human, after all. It's just that we live in a society that is hierarchical, and therefore it seems normal to us. In fact, however, this order can and is only maintained through violence. That cannot be natural.
So are you saying humans don't seek social status?
I wouldn’t argue that social status = hierarchy. What is social status? Respect, mainly. Dignity. Everyone wants those things, but they can be given to everyone. When someone wants more than that, hey are a problem, not the natural order taking over.
Someone who is extremely intelligent and educated gains a lot of social status. But that has nothing to do with hierarchies. At least not necessarily. For example, I don't think anyone feels subordinate to Eminem just because he has a lot of social status.
You think too high of Eminem fans, or fans in general. A system that ignores the instinct of humans to follow or lead is doomed to fail without permanent, pervasive, and relentless (re)education. Call it aculturization if you want, but that is dangerously close to fascism.
An ideal education system would teach citizens to recognize these instincts as pernicious and illegal, just as the instinct to, for example, grope an attractive person. From time to time, someone will surely rediscover hierarchies, and that will be a test of resiliency for the New System.
There is no such instinct.
If you’re going to argue, please don’t make people look up basic stuff, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
What does the social behavior of mandrills have to do with that of humans? There is a reason why zoology and sociology are two very different fields of study. If I want to know something about humans, I have to look at humans and not draw conclusions about humans from non-humans. People who equate the two are, at best, essentialist in their reasoning and, at worst, social darwinists. In any case, it contradicts empirical evidence, which speaks much more in favor of contingency as a fundamental social principle. If I want to derive a biological statement from this, then at best it is that humans seem to be adaptable.
I stand by it: most people neither want to be dominated nor dominate others. Such things are a result of circumstances such as the scarcity of resources or the ideologies that are hegemonic in a society. As evidence, I refer to the countless human communities that have no hierarchy whatsoever and would not function with one.
I can only agree with your last statement, encause IMO, people have three natural postures regarding hierarchy in their group:
I agree that apathy can dominate if life has become very comfortable, but a group struggling to survive will naturally form a hierarchy. Practically all human groups throughout history have formed some kind of hierarchy, no need to analyze mandrills.
What makes you think that? And don't start with the monkeys again.
The reality is that we can't really say anything about human nature. Analogies to other animals or idealising the status quo as a natural state don't help either. We live in a capitalist society that makes it necessary to compete with others for resources. Therefore, we must also expect this behavior to manifest itself. Of course, this tells us nothing about human nature, apart from the fact that humans tend to adapt to their circumstances.
It’s not capitalism that makes us compete for resources, it’s the natural consequence of not having infinite resources. Plants and animals compete for resources at every level, blaming capitalism is a leap of logic that could reach the moon.
But anyway, it seems like you want people to be anarchical by nature, and are willing to fall into wishful thinking if needed. All I can add is that we grow hierarchical, little children understand the pecking order easily, and they know they’re at the bottom of the ladder, and the parents at the top. The favorite is between, but the grandparents are even higher than the parents. Anarchy is against our nature, and the nature of most social animals. If it is to be abolished, it better be very thoroughly, encause we’ll have to work against our tendencies.
We humans are animals too, more intelligent, but still pretty animalistic. Don’t discount ape instincts as if they didn’t apply to us.
We do not have infinite resources, but we certainly have far more than we need to cover at least the basic necessities of life for everyone. Capitalism, due to its internal mechanisms, will always lead to scarcity. And this is not socialist folklore, but the consequence of how the system works. The entire structure of capital as private property, owned only by a small fraction of all of humanity, means that the capitalists get most of the wealth generated through the economic activity of the overwhelming majority of people. This alone creates scarcity, because a large amount of resources ends up in the hands of a very small number of people. But that's only one side of the coin. The scarcity created by capitalism is completely irrational in many respects (even if it is perfectly rational from the capitalists' point of view). A few examples:
Moreover, scarcity is a necessary precondition for making profit (since things that are abundant cannot properly embody much exchange value). Take housing, for example. Here in Germany, and certainly everywhere else, rents are rising. The neoliberal government's solution lies in the private sector. But this sector will never build enough to eliminate the scarcity. Because without it rents would fall (which would be good for us), meaning that the investment would yield no or less profit (which would be bad for the capitalists). Scarcity is the prerequisite for profits and that’s precisely why it will always exist in capitalism. No matter how efficient or productive we get or how much we work. It is at the heart of one of the basic contradictions of the capitalist system: that what is irrational to us is completely rational from the point of view of the capitalist class.
The consequence for us, however, is that we are now forced to compete for scarce resources. From an individual perspective, it is then disadvantageous to cooperate with others, as they pose a threat to us. Suddenly, what you represent, namely a need for hierarchies, becomes at least a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hopefully, we can agree that under such circumstances, we cannot really say whether this behavior is natural or not. My experience shows that in situations without hardship, people are much more inclined to treat their fellow human beings (and, frankly, other living beings) well and show no need to dominate others.
I think the mistake in your thinking lies in a naturalistic fallacy. You start from the status quo and draw conclusions about the natural state. Hierarchies, society, and scarcity then become something we cannot change. The result is a legitimisation of the status quo through naturalness. And I would say that this is the result of many decades to centuries of capitalist ideology, to which we are all exposed at almost every moment of our lives.
I don't think we can agree on this. But I want to encourage you to at least consider that what we have learned and taken for granted throughout our lives could be, as Marx put it, more appearance than reality.
Social media is built on social status and comparison.
Some heirarchies (my personal opinion now) are both natural and desirable: parent and child, teacher and student.
Many are harmful, and should be removed, no matter how "natural".
I wouldn't say "hardwired to create heirarchies" so much as there's a tendency, in any case.
Wouldn't we just create another hierarchy in it's place? Have fun playing wack a mole.
It won't be fun. It will be work. I was saying that from the beginning. It's a task without end, but still worthwhile.
There are a lot of hierarchies that are undesireable.
Some groups are hierarchical and others are not. My group of friends, for example, is not hierarchical. My partnership is not hierarchical either. So human social groups cannot be described as inherently hierarchical. Perhaps it is necessary to entrust people with tasks. But temporary, democratic delegation of responsibility is something different from social hierarchy. For example in cooperatives there is usually an elected chairperson. Nevertheless, most cooperatives are not hierarchical.
This applies to economic hierarchies such as those between the working class and the owner class, but also to social hierarchies, for example through patriarchy, racism, and other forms of discrimination. If you believe that hierarchy between people is natural and therefore worth stabilizing, for example, that men should call the shots in relationships and in society, or that it is right for the majority of society to work, while a small minority does not work but becomes rich from the labor of the majority, you are advocating a right-wing view of society.
What mammal doesn't try to establish a hierarchy? We have over 300,000 years of neural programming to seek social status because it increases the odds of reproducing. I am questioning if completely eliminating all hierarchies is even possible.
Discussions about human nature are always fruitless, as humans cannot exist in a natural state. They are always culturally integrated and completely shaped by their culture. Hannah Arendt once said, “Anyone who says ‘human nature’ is lying.”
“Every fool,” as Emma Goldman put it, “from king to policemen, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weakness of human nature. Yet how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?”
Change society, create a better social environment and then we can judge what is a product of our natures and what is the product of an authoritarian system. For this reason, anarchism “stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.” For ”freedom, expansion, opportunity, and above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.” (Red Emma Speaks p. 73)
I am just saying I don't know if eliminating all hierarchies is possible while humans are wired to seek social status. What mammal doesn't use dominance to defend resources and territory? I agree that most hierarchies should be abolished but I am questioning if this is even possible in the real world.
I would say that almost no mammal does that if it has alternatives. Especially when resources are distributed in such a way that there is enough for everyone. Cows in a pasture don't attack each other. Why should they? But this applies above all to humans, who are capable of reason. That's why we have created systems such as democracy, which are enormously de-hierarchical. That is also why there is no right-wing democratic tradition. They will always attack democracy because it creates equality where, in their view, hierarchy actually belongs.
What kind of dominance exists in normal circles of friends? Do people fight over who gets the most pasta? Of course not, because they prefer to be considerate of everyone else. Circles of friends do not function according to a logic of dominance. They function through negotiation, empathy, and mutual recognition. Why not build society in the same way?
Violence, subordination, and rigid hierarchies are not laws of nature, but rather the result of social circumstances. They usually occur where there is scarcity, which today is mostly artificially created, or where inequality is ideologically justified. Where people experience firsthand that cooperation works better than competition (like in friendships), the logic of dominance loses its appeal. And that is precisely what authoritarian ideologies fear.