For the past several years I've noticed a disturbing simplism with people who claim to be "anarchists", most of them on the younger side of things, with respect to the notion of hierarchies. Many such people rail on endlessly about the evils of all hierarchies, pledging to see them eliminated in toto, no matter the cost. This tendency to simplistic views is now extremely common, it having grown steadily in America since at least the mid- to late-1960s. We could see it with the hippies as they spewed their half-baked notions of freedom, war, culture, and politics in general as they served well enough in their roles as useful idiots to the progressives. But at least many of those young adults recovered, at least in some part, once they stopped the LSD, dropped dope smoking, and of necessity had to go get jobs so they could eat and have a place to sleep that wasn't some stranger's couch or the back of a van. Sadly, the trend of simplistic world views has grown not only to ubiquity in certain populations, not all of them of a "progressive" or "left" bent, but it has done so in a manner such that it seems civil discourse with such people has become just this side of impossible with large legions of them. In that vein I would like to zoom in on those who self-ID as "anarchist": this Bud's for you. I would begin by noting that here my use of "anarchy" is not as jargon, a snippet of heavy baggage that the term has carried for well over 100 years now, and which is why I prefer "autodiathism", from the Greek for "self-determination". Men such as Gavrilo Princip are prime historical examples of minds run amok to the extent that world-altering changes ensue in the wake of the material choices of action they make pursuant to the chaotically errant beliefs they embrace. One such current fad beliefs among so-called "anarchists" is that all hierarchies are inherently evil and that they must be eliminated... probably by any means necessary, and regardless of who gets hurt. And so I feel obliged to correct this false belief for the sake of humanity's future, not that anyone's listening. There are a great many different types of hierarchy, the salient idea being the plain and simple fact that hierarchy in sé is neutral. Claiming the idea of hierarchy as some sort of inherent evil as so many go on about until the eyeballs of reasonable men roll from their sockets, is plainly non-credible. It is like blaming the gun for the murder of the poor fellow working the graveyard shift at a corner bodega. It is so obviously wrong, it astonishes those same reasonable men as to how it is possible that anyone with an IQ is able to accept it as even worthy of considerations, much less as valid and true.
The bottom-line value of any hierarchy lies in whether it brings the employers of such structures to the satisfaction of their objectives, all else equal. A hierarchy is just another tool. It can be used for good, or otherwise.Communist and other authoritarian political hierarchies, particularly when applied to populations larger than the typical Irish Catholic family of three generations past, have proven as universal failures because they chafe against everything that is human in people, most particularly those who have to work to support those who loaf; it pisses people off and leaves them with attitudes which are understandably antithetical to that which is generally considered constructive and desirable. Reasonable people do not like being robbed, defrauded, or played for fools.
As for hierarchies in businesses, an area of consideration that gets all sorts of truly foolish lip service in so-called "social media" discussions, those are mostly private matters. Little Johnny Dough and his brother Dill, may have jobs at Glominoid Corporation, but they are by no means entitled to those jobs in any absolute sense, contrary to what some people might believe. Therefore, if they don't like their circumstance as applies to their employment, they are free to seek other arrangements. If they cannot secure other employment, then they are out of luck in that regard, and are then faced with the choice to cowboy up and get with their employer's program, quit, or risk being given the heave-ho when their less-than-satisfactory attitude comes to the boss's notice.
It's a tough world out there, but not nearly as tough as it might be. People would do themselves a big favor in remembering that. Not only are hierarchies not inherently evil, in many situations they are absolutely necessary. The lowest hanging fruit there, of course, would be the case of warfare. Imagine Galithia has just marched its army over your northern border. They are well-trained and disciplined. They operate on a hierarchical basis and function like a well-oiled machine. This is what I call "superorganization": when a group of people come together pursuant to a common purpose in order to accomplish things that a solitary individual could not achieve on his own. Could a single man have built the Great Pyramid at Gizeh in Egypt? Not likely, especially with the technological capacities we currently assume were available in those days. But gather twenty thousand men of manifold skills and sprinkle twenty or so years of time liberally about, and before you know it, VOILA! Superorganizations must perforce be managed. Your body is a superorganism in cellular terms, and it is a hierarchical system that manages the various functions. You don't have cells in the tendon of your left big toe managing heart rhythms or the lining of your colon doing your thinking for you... well, at least most of us don't. The organs such as brain, kidneys, heart, liver, etc. are arranged in a form of hierarchy insofar as the regulation of their respective functions are concerned, as well as their inter-relations. Someone one needs to tell the gall bladder when to dispense its contents to the stomach, how much, and when to stop. That represents a functional hierarchy with which you would not be able to properly digest your food intake, which would eventually lead to the arrival of your expiration date. Consider the erection of a 150-story office tower. Without a properly designed, constructed, and functioning hierarchy, the task becomes utterly impossible to so much as get off to a reasonable start, much less complete. Yet I hear "anarchists" railing one endlessly about the universal evil of hierarchies as a class of arrangements. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Now we look at the other side of the coin, where hierarchies bring some form of evil to the world. A prime example is always found in political schemes. Communism/socialism is perhaps the premier example of hierarchies that produce nothing better than unvarnished evil in the forms of poverty, degradation, servitude, disease, misery, and death. In such cases, the anarchist's complaint stands valid, almost to a fault. Consider the political corruption that now rampages through the halls of America's Congressional offices. What was once at least marginally better in such terms, is now utterly absent any pretext of respect for either the Constitution, or the rights of Free Men its putative purpose is to protect from harm. The well designed hierarchy of American governance has been turned against the people it is supposed to serve, this example underscoring the way in which the tool has been turned from proper application that produced net good results, to something which foists net evil upon the people. Just as a hammer is a tool, or capitalism, hierarchies can produce fine results, disaster, or just about anything in between. It is neither good nor evil. The good and the evil that results rests wholly at the feet of those who design, administer, and operate a given hierarchy. This isn't rocket surgery. And to rather than going all crazy, losing one's mind over <GASP> hierarchies, it pays good dividends to dig just a little more deeply where it will be revealed to anyone with an open mind that the value of such structures predicate almost completely on the results they produce, all else equal.
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