One thing that I've been doing in my tour
repeatedly
When I talk about the first chapter of my book, which is stand up straight with your shoulders back
It's a discussion of hierarchies and and their eternal nature right because my claim is and is not my claim
I think it's mere fact that
Organisms that have to cooperate and compete with other organisms of their type
Inevitably arrange themselves into hierarchies and that's been going on for so long
Which is at least 300 million years that our nervous systems have adapted to hierarchies as if they're a permanent
element of
being
right more permanent than trees like
seriously permanent at the most fundamental neurochemical the one that regulates the entire brain serotonin is
acutely sensitive to hierarchical distinctions and so that's part of the
proposition I laid that proposition forward was to say
whatever
Pitfalls hierarchies might produce. You cannot lay them at the feet of the West's
Patriarchy or capitalism. It's like that's a non-starter you're wrong and not just a little bit wrong
You're so seriously wrong that if you insist upon doing that, you won't even achieve your own aims
Because you're actually not grappling with the problem. The problem is if
hierarchies are a problem, which they are the problem is way more serious than
mere capitalism it's way deeper and if you're actually interested in rectifying the
Constantly the negative consequences of hierarchies. Then you're gonna have to get a lot more sophisticated than they're then you're idiot Marxism
So so so part of the elaboration of that argument is well
hierarchies are inevitable because
We have to solve complex problems and we have to solve them socially and when you implement a solution to a complex problem
Socially you produce a hierarchy because some people are better at the implementation than others
so there's a hierarchy of competence and then there's a hierarchy of distribution of the Spoils and
so and in both of those hierarchies you get a
disproportionate
Clumping of resource at the top and dispossession at the bottom. It's in the nature of hierarchies
So what's the left for the left is to remind?
those who are benefiting from the hierarchies that the hierarchy
comes at a cost and the cost is the clumping of people at the bottom and that
That's an eternal cost and it's not trivial
And so that's what the left should be properly focused on the Left should be providing
The voice of those who are dispossessed by hierarchies and the right should be saying yeah
But the damn hierarchies are necessary and they're not only necessary, but they're also productive
Then the left says yes, but they tilt towards
Tyranny, and they can be occupied inappropriately by people who are playing games of power
Fair enough the right has to take that into account the hierarchy can reach it reach it if I and is
Likely to do that and it can be taken over by people who are corrupt and that's likely to happen. And so
But but it's okay because the dialogue can work out the the right can say well, yeah
we need the damn hierarchies and they need to be buttressed and the left can say yes, but
They have to be maintained properly so they don't deteriorate and degenerate and and I think that's I think that's ancient wisdom
I think the ancient Egyptians had figured that out in their symbolic
Representations so now when the left goes too far it does something like say well
How about no hierarchies? It's like no, how about not?
wrong because all that happens if you flatten one of the things that happens if you flatten out the hierarchy is that you can't even
Organize your perceptions
you can't perceive the world without looking at the world through a hierarchy of value and
if
Because you can't perceive the world unless you make one thing more
Important than all the other things because you don't even know what to look at
and
if one thing isn't more important than all the other things then you have nothing to aim at if you have nothing to aim at
Then you have no meaning in your life. So the left can't just demolish the hierarchies in the name of some equality of outcome
Let's say because you blow out the future
You leave people aimless and you destroy the very institutions that allow people to make competent progress in the world
That's not an acceptable outcome. So we have to we have to agree to live with the tension
Necessity for hierarchies the proclivity for them to pathologize and
The the necessary voice of the left in speaking for thee for the dispossessed