Hierarchy In Nature.

[TreesandPlants]

Hey,

I was just wondering your responses to the common question:
Isn't hierarchy natural? If so, then aren't we just fighting against nature?

All responses are good, but if I could get a detailed response to this it would be great.

[Marja]

Hey,

I was just wondering your responses to the common question:
Isn't hierarchy natural?

No.

[treez]

First you can always turn that question around:

If hierarchy is natural there's nothing wrong with slavery right?

If hierarchy is natural, then it's perfectly ok for me and my friends to show up at your door with guns, force you from your home, and forbid you to return, right?

If hierarchy is natural, there's nothing wrong with me raping your moms, right?

Hierarchy may indeed be natural - afterall slavery, forced relocation, and rape occur on a daily basis.

And perhaps humans as a species might overcome this by ... evolving.

[trueness]

Hey,

I was just wondering your responses to the common question:
Isn't hierarchy natural? If so, then aren't we just fighting against nature?

All responses are good, but if I could get a detailed response to this it would be great.

If hierarchy being natural makes it right then everything is right. Anytime you screw someone over just to get ahead in life. Oh well that's just climbing up the hierarchy and is perfectly natural.

If it's a fight against nature then it's a fight that should be won. Humans have been evolving and adapting in response to nature's hardships. Instead of staying in the jungle we invent clothes and fire and settle the whole world. Instead of dying in natural disasters we detect them with doppler radar and sensible people evacuate. Instead of letting infections end our lives early we invent medication and operations to stop them and live longer.

And instead of allowing people who want to dominate other people we can stand up to them and say "NO"!

[Marja]

A lot of the hierarchies people have seen in nature aren't hierarchies in nature, but in how people see it.

For example, late medieval and early modern philosophers divided life into a scala natura, with God at the top, then angels, then humans, then the higher animals, then the lower animals, etc. The arrangement of animals and plants on the scale doesn't reveal any special features of or relationship among the animals and plants involved. It just reveals the categorists' prejudices.

Quite often, when people refer to 'hierarchies in nature,' they are referring to the scala natura or some modern reinvention of it. At other times, they are referring to greater or lesser development of one ability. That is not hierarchy in the sense we mean hierarchy. At other times, they are referring to nested arrangements, like the Linnean system or cladistic systems. Those or not hierarchy in the sense we mean hierarchy either; they are the farthest thing from the scala natura. If the scala natura is "hierarchy" and the Linnean system is "hierarchy," what does "hierarchy" mean and what isn't "hierarchy?"

On the other hand there are hierarchical behaviors among some species. We might reasonably consider predation hierarchical, or we could restrict the term to behavior within one species. Many pack-living animals could be considered hierarchical but that wouldn't say anything about other group-living animals.

We are probably the best model for ourselves. We can look at varied human societies, not all of which have involved hierarchy, and we can look at varied behavior patterns among the other apes...

[theeternaliam]

In essence, Man,and maybe all beings(in essence) is "super-natural". We are beyond the confines of Nature, and basically that's what nature can do-is confine. The proof we are Divine is our inherent desire to go "beyond" nature, proving there must be a "part" of us that belongs beyond the natural. We Reason. We Know. We experience, and in no way am I suggesting animals don't or can't, that I don't know. I believe this argument here, whether nature is hierarchical, is proof anarchy isn't simply a political urge.(I'm sure most of us know this, but may refuse to acknowledge this, or forget it) It is also a "spiritual" urge. I Want To Be Free of ALL confines. Including the rstraints imposed by my body, my environment, my habits, ALL Hindrances to My True Being and True Will. This has already happened to me and to us all. Like it or not, We Are Free. No natur, no mind,no hierarchical government/organization can ever Truly Restrain us. Now I know, all attack upon me is futile. Rejoice, brothers, for no government. no being, no god can Rape us. We are undefiled and Free. Drop your tethers, and free your brothers and sisters of the constraints you impose on them. WE ARE FREE!!!

[Insecuritykiller]

Maybe, humans decide for themselves what they want. Maybe nature is nothing to do with it.

[anarchy]

Last I checked, humans are a part of nature.

[trueness]

Last I checked, humans are a part of nature.

That's true. And it's our naturally evolved brains that allow us to think up ideas and change things, so doesn't that make our ideas natural? In fact every social arrangement and every technology is natural, because it comes from our brains, which are natural.

[theeternaliam]

Ever see 2001:A Space Oddyssey. I'm just sayin', man

[Virus]

Hierarchy and domination exist in nature to quite a large extent, and that evolutionary hard-wiring exists in modern man. We are also social animals, with a reciprocal nature and both aspects are observed in our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" argues not that our genes make us selfish, but the genes themselves are "selfish" in that they "desire" replication first-and-foremost. I think this ties into the drive for dominance in that the man who dominates others increases his reproductive success as females are hard-wired to be attracted to men with status or to be more accurate, men with resources. It makes absolute sense as securing a man with command of resources improves her reproductive success.

But this doesn't mean we can't use reason to override our programming and embark on a common project of civilization. We have already moved so far beyond that. As one of the previous posters pointed out, slavery is pretty much the default form of human society in terms of our history. Slave societies have existed relatively stable for thousands of years. Democracy is barely out of its diapers. To use the argument from nature is a justification of slavery. As David Hume and various other philosophers of science have pointed out, "You can't derive an ought from an is." You can't look at nature then say that we must organize society along those lines. Nature is a brutal place, we don't want a "natural" society, we want one based on reason, where we utilize our higher faculties to design a society that fits in with a modern conception of freedom and maximization of potential.

[|Y|]

Dawkin's "Nice Guys Finish First" and Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid" pretty much disprove the idea that societies are "hierarchical." Only across species lines are societies or ecosystems remotely resembling hierarchies.

What we are currently experiencing is "Social Darwinism." That is, the application of our observations of nature to human society.

We see a lion eat a gazelle, we automatically assume that some humans are Lions and others are Gazelle. One key idea that really illustrates this is "specialization." That is, certain people doing certain tasks on varying scales within society. It is, as I've said so many times, not too surprising that the word "specialize" derives from "specie." We are nothing but cogs in a human created society of specialized classes of individuals.

[Yarrow]

anyone read The Naked Ape? The author studies human behaviour from the perspective of a professor in primate studies.

clearly, the lesson here is that we can better ourselves and our environments, rather than pollute them. sorry to say it (and work up that righteous indignation), but i'm reminded of the reasons for being a vege.

[Agnapostate]

I actually wouldn't disagree with the claim that human societies have evolutionary tendencies to organize themselves in hierarchical networks. But to claim that this is a basis for ethical inquiry about anarchism would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy. If we realize that hierarchy can easily be replaced by other varieties of hierarchy (for instance, the replacement of the czarist regime with the authoritarian Bolsheviks), then we're better equipped to address hierarchy if and when it does emerge.

[Jawn Disease]

Either humans are part of nature, or we aren't.

If we are, then anything we do is therefore natural -- a natural process which is an expression of our DNA. In this sense, buildings, farms, dams etc can be seen as effects of a natural process that our species undergoes given the right conditions and amount of time. An analogy would be beaver dams. Their dams are natural. They occur in nature without any intervention. If humans are a part of nature then our whole civilization can be termed natural. So in a sense, hierarchy is natural to humans, but so is anti-authoritarianism.

if we are not part of nature, then it doesn't matter