Monday, January 3, 2022

The Psychological Need For Hierarchies

 Jordan Peterson is correct: the need for hierarchies is an ancient biological drive. The need for social hierarchies, pecking orders of who is more in, more groupist, and more popular, and who is more out, less groupist and less esteemed, is profoundly, deep, aching need that people need to fulfill. We are born depraved: we are selfless and loathe a nasty pathetic self; one tantalizing way to compensate for this feeling of inferiority is to be able to kowtow to those above, and backhand those socially beneath one. The need for social hierarchy is the most pernicious of managed hierarchies and causes endless suffering and cruelty among humans.

This morning I was reading Eric Hoffer's The Syndicated News Articles, and he mentions hierarchies on Page 186 and 187, and I believe his mistrust of this human institution is closer to my own than Peterson's acceptance of it: "The clamor of our scribes (intellectuals) for power should be seen as reaching for the distant pass . . . If there is anything certain it is this: Wherever scribes attain power they create social order that is both hierarchical and regimented. No matter how idealistic, an intelligentsia in power becomes a privilegentsia. . ."

Hierarchies should be kept as flattened and deinstitutionalized as possible to make room for liberty and a culture of maverization.

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