This is article 2 in a series about Hierarchy. Article 1 is here
A world based in hierarchy. How did we get here?
We have all been raised to “know” that hierarchy is the normal and natural way to run the world. No one ever says this out loud but it screams at us in a thousand, million ways. We see it every day of our lives and as early as kindergarten we are picking up its subtle message. It does not take long for children to see and hear that some are better (smarter, cuter, faster, stronger) than others. And just as quickly our inner voice is saying to us — am I good enough? We become jealous and fearful of others who seem to be ‘more than’ and we unconsciously seek ways to find those who are ‘less than’ me to make ourselves feel better.
As the circle of life that we live in continues to expand beyond immediate family, neighborhood, school, town, etc., we see hierarchy ever more. We quickly know that we live in a good or bad neighborhood (wrong side of the tracks); that our schools are the best or the worst. Boys pick up the message that they’re better than girls and girls absorb this message from a media that reinforces a second-class standard. Women make less than men doing the exact same job and no one bats an eye. Those who identify as LGBQT know as soon as they’ve figured this out for themselves that it’s best to keep quiet in order to avoid being pushed down and out of the “normal” world. Racism is but one face of hierarchy and it has been blatantly advocated for through our legislative system, courts and prisons, economic limitations etc.
No one needs to be reminded of what happened in the 60s when the civil rights movement emerged to challenge the norm of hierarchy. While Civil rights seems like such a no brainer — who wouldn’t want everyone to have equal civil rights in our country? — in a world based on hierarchy only those at the top of the heap deserve these rights. And when you’re raised in hierarchy as a norm, if you’re at the top of the heap you feel responsible and justified to maintain the system that has always been. It’s not something you question. What you question is ‘how dare those lower in the hierarchy think they have the right to challenge the system?” We saw that in Charlottesville, VA in 2019 when white supremacists marched to maintain their place in the hierarchy.
Only, hierarchy hasn’t always been. It was not the normal way of life for tens of thousands of years. Paleontologists and archeologists have shown that 35–45,000 years ago hierarchy was not the norm. And then one day, things began to change. No one can date it to exactly one day but what we can see over time is that small tribal communities that lived in wholeness-based, integrated, life-centered and egalitarian systems began to be overrun. Out of the Northern Steppes (think Russia, Crimea, Mongolia) came a horse-riding, weapons based group that quickly overpowered and decimated these tribal groups. All the men and boys were killed. Some of the women taken by the marauders. The few people that survived were absorbed into this new group that was committed to domination over others — hierarchy. Over the next 10,000 years, little by little every life-centered tribal group was absorbed into the hierarchy story and the memory of these egalitarian times was supplanted so fully by the hierarchy story that we no longer remember these egalitarian times.
The rise of hierarchy is a fluke of the human journey. Those coming out of the Northern Steppes had no idea what they were putting into motion. They were one small tribe that took over another small tribe. They couldn’t see forward 10,000 years to today!
Humans have actually lived many more millennium as life-centered, egalitarian cultures than we have a hierarchy-based, dominator cultures. Some might argue that because hierarchy took over life-centered egalitarian cultures it must mean it is the better way. But that would be like arguing that because a virus takes over a body and kills it, the virus must be better than the body. No, the reality is that toxic systems exist in the world and what we can clearly see is that hierarchy is one of them — and proving to be quite deadly.
The fact that hierarchy came to be does not mean we’re stuck with it. Actually we’ve been trying to dismantle it piecemeal through lots of different groups — -Civil rights, Black Lives Matter, the Women’s movement, and LGBQT. Yet here we still are — -fully entrenched in hierarchy. Hierarchy is the elephant is in the living room but we keep trying to fix the trunk, a leg, an ear or the tail. Yes, fight racism, support women’s rights, advocate for social justice and equal economic justice. But don’t kid yourself that it’s going to solve the problem. Racism, sexism and social injustice are symptoms of the problem.
The problem is that we think hierarchy is the normal way to live — -that there are always some who should be on top and others who shouldn’t. Until we confront this flawed thinking, racism, sexism, have and have nots will continue because they are produced by this flawed thinking. The good news is this is becoming ever more visible now and change is in already happening. We can get there from here….from hierarchy to wholeness is on its way!
