permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

On Friday, October 24, 2003, at 07:18 PM, RIA SWIFT wrote:

> Think fractal geometry and self-organizing beings like some of the extremely indigenous tribes. 

When I was running a small business I offered my employees--very smart, independent and capable people--a chance to have a profit-sharing plan and to make management decisions. They unanimously turned it down, saying they didn't want the responsibility I had, they just wanted to forget work at 5 and go home. I'm not sure we will ever get to a place where the majority of people in our culture want leadership roles; it's an awful lot of work.

I know hierarchy isn't cool these days, but my observation from the various peoples and groups I've lived with or studied, and of adaptive systems, is that they nearly all tend to self-organize into some form of hierarchy, having various types of leaders--if that's the right word (elders, shamans, chiefs,  chairpeople, presidents)--and "followers." In nature, you see hierarchies based on molecules organizing "upward" (a loaded term) into organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, etc, and usually regulated (led) by some sort of nervous system or chemical signaling. In the most mature and healthy of these systems, the elements in the leadership role simply carry out their function without making a big deal of it, without going pathological and acting as though they are the most important or only crucial element in the system. In the most mature human groups, everyone recognizes that the leaders are simply filling a needed role that some others could take on. But that kind of wisdom is uncommon in most cultures I know of.

Particularly in social systems, non-hierarchical (leaderless) groups are very, very rare--even  in pure consensus meetings we choose facilitators, scribes, etc.: leadership roles. And a single strong leader generally gets a new organization running successfully a lot faster than a group of "equals." One serious problem with totally flat hierarchies and anarchy is that they are inherently unstable (that may be why they are rare in nature) and prone to takeover by "strongman" types unless every single member works to structure them immune to such takeovers. That's why revolutions and social chaos often breed tyrants: a power vacuum offers a window of instability for a powerful leader to take over. Until everyone wants to assume leadership roles (very far off!) we need hierarchical systems in order to create stable institutions. I think Bucky is dead wrong--toss out our politicians and a much more murderous, tyrannical crowd would replace them quickly.


Toby
http://www.patternliteracy.com