A lot of threads about politics but not so much about religion so I decided to start my own. Religion.
- Thread starter austenite
- Start date
I'd like to think a community built around a non-heirarchichal philosophy would be less likely to cover up abuse by their members but I have to admit my bias here is pretty obvious.
The congregation (religious community) I grew up in had its own very clearly defined hierarchical structure that dictated every aspect of the congregation which usually had absolutely nothing at all with liturgy or dogma.
That can happen even if you don't have an explicitly hierarchical philosophy ethos. Communism is explicitly egalitarian in its ostensible value system, but somehow it mostly to always ends up creating an autocratic structure. Perhaps it's a defect of people that can't be easily patched.
Yeah. Hierarchies seems like a pretty naturally occurring phenomena as far as mammalian life is concerned.
It just seems pretty obvious that the taller the "stack"is, the easier it is to obfuscate malfeasance and corruption.
Even removing the term Communism—since many reflexively bristle at this due to socialization, there are some flaws to the system. Communes and other flat hierarchies can work well in isolated small examples. It can even work in smaller for-profit arrangements, such as professional services practices of ~20-30 staff members who share common ambitions and ethos.
It tends to break down in larger examples, even when people are generally aligned. A common example would be a large construction project. Small teams comprised of members with good work ethic can self-organize well. But scaled up to thousands of people will devolve to something similar to herding cats. Perhaps the best solution is to have a hierarchical management, but devolves to looser management (a type of federalization) at local levels—as well as the core principles are upheld.
To add some technical workplace terminology—small teams can be Agile, but larger projects have to be Waterfall.
Or, you know, they can work in large examples. I mean, it's essentially how Spanish greenhouses in Almería are organized. These a few hundred thousand people involved in that industry. And it's mostly co-ops.
Agricultural co-ops can hardly be considered all-encompassing social organization.
But they are an example of a large flat hierarchy. You can also look at some corporations like Amazon which, while not flat, are incredibly shallow, but somewhat authoritarian in operation. The reality is that there is nothing that suggests flat or nearly flat hierarchies can't scale. Aside, perhaps from the power hungry nature of certain jerks.