Difference between revisions of "Competence Hierarchy/Dominance Hierarchy"
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Dominance hierarchies are at least 350 million years old; they exist in lobsters, crayfish (c. 511m years), and bees. You can watch it in children’s play. They create rules, multiple rules, which eventually to a structure, a pyramid of value, a dominance hierarchy. | Dominance hierarchies are at least 350 million years old; they exist in lobsters, crayfish (c. 511m years), and bees. You can watch it in children’s play. They create rules, multiple rules, which eventually to a structure, a pyramid of value, a dominance hierarchy. | ||
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Revision as of 21:31, 29 March 2020
Contents
Definition
Applications
In a Functioning Society, Hierarchies Are Based On Competence
you have to value things in order to move forward in life, and you have to value things in order to have something valuable to produce. But if you play out the value in a social landscape, you’re going to produce a hierarchy. The problem with producing a hierarchy is that a small number of people are going to be more successful than the majority, and a very large number of people aren’t going to be successful at all, at that particular thing. It’s inevitable. So you say, “well, we have to put up with that, because we need to pursue things of value.” OK, fine. That’s the right-wing perspective, that the hierarchies are justifiable and necessary. Now, the left-wing perspective is, “yeah, but wait a minute: the problem with hierarchies is that people stack up at the bottom, and that they tilt towards tyranny across time.” That’s also true, and so you need that dialectic in society, between the right wing, that says, “we need the hierarchies, and they’re useful, and you should be grateful for them, and they structure you and give you form, and they provide value,” and the left, that says, “yeah, but they exclude people, and people stack up at the bottom, and that’s dangerous to the hierarchy itself, and it means that people might not have opportunity,” and you have to say “yes” to that. The situation we’re in, right now, is one where the radical leftists—and this is mostly a problem that, for me, is the universities—say, “yeah, but all hierarchies are just tyrannical power.” It’s like, “oh, no, they’re not. Hierarchies are based on competence, in a functioning society, and mostly our society functions. So you can’t go that far.” Now, that doesn’t mean that hierarchies don’t tilt towards self-interest and tyranny across time, but that’s a bad thing. It’s even a bad thing from the conservative perspective. So there’s room for the left. There’s room for the left, because the poor will always be with us. That’s the reason that there’s room for the left. The dispossessed need a voice, not least because there are talented people among the dispossessed, and if they’re stuck at zero, everyone suffers, because we don’t have access to their talents. It’s a bad use of resources. But on the right it’s, “no—we need the damn value hierarchies, and we need to be grateful for our traditions and our structures. They stop us degenerating into chaos.”[1]
Interpretations
"At the bottom of the most pathological manifestation of the collectivist dictum is an assault on competence itself." [1]
Dominance hierarchies are at least 350 million years old; they exist in lobsters, crayfish (c. 511m years), and bees. You can watch it in children’s play. They create rules, multiple rules, which eventually to a structure, a pyramid of value, a dominance hierarchy.
Dominance hierarchies are created by election, not power. Because if you’re the tyrant, the two next people in the hierarchy will gang up and depose you.
See Also
References
[1] Freedom & Tyranny with Russell Brand Transcript
