Hierarchies started appearing at the end of the last ice age about 6000 years ago, when it became essential for the survival of our specie to create power structures to protect the scarce resources available.
Hierarchy is a form of organization that allows for psychopathic types to climb up the power ladder. Psychopaths are usually disguised as nice, well adapted, collected, and productive people. Most of the world's organizations are hierarchical, meaning that these organizations are plagued with psychopaths at the top of the ladder. Psychopaths don't give a shit about mother earth, about the well being of human beings or other earthlings, about sustainability (unless it is the sustainability of their position of power).
Hierarchies are neither good or bad, they simply have the consequence that they become harboring centers for psychopaths and alikes to thrive and gain power. The other unseen consequences of hierarchical organization that they create a space of competition, scarcity, superiority, exclusion, blame, greed, jealousy, and it doesn't allow for the full potential of the beings in the structure to unfold, to evolve, to grow, to heal, etc. It puts stress in the leaders and allows the other people in the organization to delegate their responsibility to the leader. Simply put, is unsustainable and it doesn't harbor the full potential for human beings to unfold.
Hierarchies are not only in working organizations, they are also in educational institutions (teacher, principal, students), religious institutions (pope, cardinal, priests, followers), non-profit organizations (president, vice-president, volunteers), health institutions (doctor, manager, nurse, patients). The result is the giving away of responsibility for how the people show up in the team, "I'm only a nurse, I cannot say anything about what the doctor is doing because I will be fired", the result is people not showing up with all their power in the team.
Since hirarchy is the defacto way of creating structure in modern culture in any organization that we create, is very difficult to escape the paradigm of hierarchy, we've been doing it for the last 6000 years so it's very much ingrained in our DNA. If you're an overachiever, or you want to get things done your way, or you don't have the patience to wait for others to "catch up" with you, then it becomes a huge challenge to find an alternative. Hiearchies are in fact an organizationaly pattern that is plagging the Earth and that help continuing to perpetuate the Patriarchal Capitalist Consumerism Culture and the killing of all life on Earth.
In our team and our Gameworlds we are currently experimenting with Torus Technology, a radical alternative to hierarchy that liberates the individual and team potential to almost 100%. Torus Technology is Free to use Open Source Thoughtware, meaning that anyone can use it and implement it to their company, project, community, government, organization, club, etc.
- Is simple to learn and use
- is non-hierarchical, based on a circular or galaxical org chart rather than a pyramid.
- Effectively includes and empowers a wide variety of unique individuals.
- Unleashes and integrates group intelligence for efficient and wise decision-making.
Torus Technology can be a bit challenging to get from just seeing the writen instructions about how it goes, this easiest way to get it is to see it in action. If you want to see Torus Technology in action send me a message and I will walk you through a simple demonstration.
Links and Resources
An wholy-written article from Israel Kairos, a Possibilitator from Brazil writing about Hidden Hierarchies and the insidiousness of Hierarchies in our current world: https://israelkairos.medium.com/hidden-hierarchy-shapeshifter-gameworlds-159f055260f3
Torus Technology Online Handbook. Here there's more in depth information about how Torus Technology works and other forms of organizations and their pros and cons: https://torustechnology.mystrikingly.com/
The Hierarchy. Relevant questions about the hierarchy. https://thehierarchy.mystrikingly.com/
