The word “government” is often used in a straw man argument, with the common implication that “the government” is bad and “the people” are good. In reality, government is simply the working social structure of all societies. There is no such thing as no government unless there is no society. Governments can be more egalitarian or more hierarchical, those are the two faces of government. Liberalism, democratic, republican, monarchical, conservatism, libertarianism, Marxism, capitalism, socialism, fascism etc, etc are some of the many masks worn by governments. However governments are essentially, in degrees more hierarchical or more egalitarian. One government wearing a particular mask might be very hierarchical, while another government wearing the same mask might be very egalitarian. The “no-government” dream often proposed when bureaucracies start to overwhelm egalitarian social structures is a false choice. When an elected government is overthrown, it is inevitably replaced by something. It might be rule by large corporations or fascist style dictatorships or something else but some form of government will fill the vacuum. Rule by corporations can be every bit as unfair and generally more brutal than rule by elected governments. This can be observed simply by looking at history and the current state of countries where the governments are too weak to stand up to corporations; dumping toxics, stripping them of resources, and driving workers to death with overwork and exposure to toxins.
An egalitarian style government (democracy or republicanism) was the goal of the Enlightenment movement or The Age of Reason, after enduring centuries of monarchies and similar hierarchal governments. But egalitarian-style governments have been with us much longer than that. Hunter/gatherer societies seemed to have practiced a very organic form of egalitarianism. The rise of agriculture demanded a more hierarchical work force.
We are now faced with large corporations headed by billionaires becoming our de facto rulers of the world. A reality which is often disguised by these same billionaires using their control over information sources to shape their own messaging. This isn’t a movement away from government this is a movement toward a more hierarchical world-wide government system. Often this is justified by declaring it being more efficient or more justified (to the winners goes the spoilers sort of thing). I won’t argue what is most just in this essay, I will only try to demonstrate what I think is most aligned with human nature from my observations.
I would like to explore the forces at work in driving governments to become either more hierarchical or more egalitarian. The egalitarian pull seems to arise out of an innate sense of empathy which is part of our human nature. Enlightenment era thinkers came up with the phrase “all men are created equal”, but this same sentiment exists in many different forms throughout written and probably unwritten history, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is one example.
The hierarchical pull seems to rise out of a sense social “earnings”. As a person begins to see themselves as a unique or special individual among many, they begin to develop a sense that what they provide to society is more valuable than what other people provide. So they feel entitled to unequal social earnings, whether it be money or other socially valuable things; title, power etc. And yes within a society not all peoples’ contributions are equal, some are certainly more valuable than others to the overall “social good”. However it is often those making the least amount of money, those who are the least corrupt who are actually providing the greatest “social good”. Social rewards are not determined by “social good” but rather by “social power”.
So these two social poles of egalitarianism and hierarchicalism seem to pull against each other in opposite directions, without one being more important than the other and without one ever disappearing and being replaced by the other. They are in fact equivalent to the two poles we often see occurring in the Natural World. The one pulling towards consolidation/connection and the other towards disbursement/separation.
In the Natural World neither one ever wins out because they are both faces of one thing, like two sides of a coin. In the social world we do see hierarchical governments rising and lasting for long periods of time, but eventually they collapse, usually as a result of their cruelty.
So what is the traditional political dialogue which favors hierarchical government and what is the political dialogue that favors egalitarian government?
Hierarchical appeals generally favor the individual over the community. The anti-egalitarian appeal is the appeal of the individual. No one seems to like the stifling nature of bureaucracies. It ties us down with its thousand tiny strands holding us back from really expressing our true nature. It creates a structure which surrounds us and makes us feel imprisoned. Individualism fulfills our needed to express our true selves.
The egalitarian appeal generally favors community. We can only build community when we feel true empathy for others within that community. A highly developed sense of community is really the major thing that sets humans apart for most other animals. Our unseen and very powerful connections to our children, our parents, our relatives, our friends, our peers, our town, our state, our country, etc. These are all things which create an unseen but very strong bonding between individuals.
As our government moves toward either the pole of hierarchy or the pole of egalitarianism, they slowly start to become encumbered with their own deficiencies.
The egalitarian pole becomes encumbered with the bureaucracy of always needing approval for every decision or action. The individual inside us becomes stifled and seeks to escape the bureaucracy.
The hierarchal pole becomes encumbered with its insensitivity toward the lower rungs of its pyramid which in fact is where the majority of people exist. Historically the cruelty towards the less powerful in hierarchal governments has been extreme; slavery, serfdom, massacres, genocides, imprisonment, poverty, starvation etc.
Then why can’t we take the “good” from one and apply it to the “good” from the other?
This isn’t possible because our social structures do not exist in a vacuum. As we observe the world around us we can see it moving in one direction or another. It would be a mistake to think one was better than the other however.
When social units become very large however, maintaining a degree of egalitarianism becomes much more difficult. The social power afforded to a few comes at the expense of social power lost to others. And this reaching for more and more social power by the few sometimes sees no limit. We can observe this in our current world where billionaires have more power than elected governments. Will we live long enough to see a swing back towards egalitarianism? I wouldn’t know the answer to that. But I do know that at some point people will seek out a world with greater empathy and greater connections with others. This is an undeniable part of our nature.
When socially agreed upon rules are abandoned, hierarchical rule inevitably take it’s place. A set of socially agreed upon rules can create a system where those lower on the pyramid receive better treatment than they otherwise would. Rules such as those involving keeping land in public trust or the set of rules created to guarantee that all people are treated with equal respect (all men are created equal). Rules like these should be nothing more than a way of seeking balance, but often the rules are created by the more powerful to keep down the less powerful. Or the rules themselves become the end and not the means. Or they are often used to protect certain entrenched interests.
In an ideal world this seeking of justice by using socially agreed upon limits, would be balanced with our need to express our individual spirit, not as a peddler, but as a story-teller passing along that always evolving story, and trying to put our own stamp on it.
If we view government as the overall form that our society takes, we see that the two oppositional and balancing forces that make it up are; rules and the lack of rules. Or in other words; bureaucracy vs free enterprise, or regulations vs anarchy, or innovation vs practicality, or freedom vs responsibilities, or art vs. math, or liberty vs justice. Whether any particular word has a negative or positive color should be irrelevant, because the two are balancing forces; neither one is “right” or “wrong”, both are necessary. Government is both of the two forces working together; the limbs and roots of a tree. Where we draw the lines and whether we favor more rules or the lack of rules is our choice as a society. This is a collective choice we make as a society. It is a choice driven by both our needs and our ideals, and it is the result of constant negotiation and changes of direction.
In general it takes more work to move towards the egalitarian pole. As power becomes more concentrated in fewer people, those people have the power to create even more consolidation as they see themselves as being more deserving.
It is our sense of empathy which creates the entity of our family or those people so close to us that we feel they are part of ourselves. As our sense of empathy moves outward we create a tribe, then a community, then a village, then a state, then a nation, and perhaps someday we will think of the world as our community. There is nothing physical that ties us to other people, it is something that grows entirely out of our own minds. But it all starts with that sense of empathy inside of us.
Balancing that empathy is our own pursuit of satisfaction, you might call it a pleasure pursuit, but that doesn’t quite capture it. Sometimes it has nothing to do with what we think of as pleasurable. It is more of a pursuit to fulfill our unique vision. That something inside us which we don’t quite understand and we don’t know where it comes from. Maybe it is ego, maybe art, maybe selfishness, maybe pure love but whatever name it goes by its call must be answered.
So there is my theory based on my personal observations. Government is a single outward expression of the two balancing forces inside all of us. Its nature swings from “left” (empathy) to “right” (individualism) simply because our own natures swing in a similar manner.
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