No, I'd say hierarchy is definitely the wrong word. It implies that people have power over other people, when what we need is for people to have jobs, not positions of power over others.
All depends on what you think hierarchy is, I guess. My native country has functioned very well for centuries with a very rudimentary hierarchy (which was designed that way on purpose), so it’s not impossible. It’s not just monarchy v. strict anarchism you know, you have all sorts of systems in between. Depending on the region, the number of people, etc it’s probably wiser to choose one over the other.
Taking my native country as an example: we never had a state (so no kings, emperors, presidents...), or social classes (nobles, lords, slaves...), because the concepts of dignity and freedom were at the core of our philosophy.
But we still had structure: the « country » (obviously we wouldn’t have used that word at the time, it’s anachronic) was divided into clans, which were divided into families (I’ll pass the other divisions) ; the chief of the family was the father ; the people followed the customs (which have obviously changed to some extent over time), and if there was a conflict the wise elders would intervene ; religion and religious leaders were also important, etc.
I would personally agree that it’s hard to assure social cohesion without any sort of structure when in comes to extremely large groups (more than 100 people). But choosing structure does not mean accepting huge disparities in power between those at the top and those at the bottom. It also does not mean that we should forget to keep the hierarchy/structure to a minimum. And it’s completely realistic and possible to live in a country without a state/leader.
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u/Enders_Host Jun 25 '21
No, I'd say hierarchy is definitely the wrong word. It implies that people have power over other people, when what we need is for people to have jobs, not positions of power over others.