Hierarchy vs Self Organizing

It is a common fallacy assumed among humans that if they do not have a government, then chaos will ensue. What they do not understand is that governments are formally organized hierarchies, and there is always a person at the apex directing the affairs of the rest through a chain of command. One of the few astute observations made by journalist Ilana Mercer characterizes the hierarchical mentality:

"The military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government, chief of which is its liberalism. Like the government, the military is freighted with pathological political correctness."

The need for Government, “the exercise of formal authority, control, and rule” (Webster) is always perpetrated by those people who cannot exist without rigid structure in their lives. They are uncomfortable being without some outside force giving them direction, steering them through the unknown, it being fraught with fear and anxiety. Said Eric Hoffer:

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.”

The “leader” and the “led” are of the same cloth; neither can tolerate weakness in themselves and will do what is the most fundamental principle of creation: coagulate together, like to like. Soon, it becomes a mass movement to substitute what is lacking within—self-confidence, self-esteem, and the sense of identity those internal states generate. Such people have no reference point to distinguish between chaos and anarchy. To them, the absence of an hierarchy is the worst of all evils, for it is chaos to them. They do not know how to self-govern. Anarchy to them IS chaos, and such persons cannot endure the existence of chaos. And if chaos is introduced into society, they will run in panic to create an hierarchy to put an end to it. Biden, Washington, Hitler, Lenin, Rousseau, Charlemagne, Julius Cesar, Genghis Khan. Revolutionaries. People who cannot tolerate the looseness and confusion of the Democratic process. To them it is chaos. They cannot tolerate weakness in others, for it is a reminder of that weakness they cannot endure in themselves. We see the pattern emerge in our time with the fall of the Weimar Republic:

“The years of the Weimar Constitution which followed were for most Germans a time of irritation and frustration. Used as they were to commands from above and respect for authority, they found the loose, irreverent democratic order all confusion and chaos. They were shocked to realize ‘that they had to participate in government, choose a party, and pass judgment upon political matters.’ They longed for a new corporate whole, more monolithic, all-embracing and glorious to behold than even the Kaiser regime had been—and the Third Reich more than answered their prayer. Hitler's totalitarian regime, once established, was never in danger of mass revolt. So long as the ruling Nazi hierarchy was willing to shoulder all responsibilities and make all decisions, there was not the least chance for any popular antagonism to arise.” Pp44-45 The True Believer

“When people revolt in a totalitarian society, they rise not against the wickedness of the regime but its weakness.” P43 The True Believer

We still today have a memory of how far that hierarchical accountability extended during the Nuremburg Trials.

The revolutionaries of the American Colonial period were of that merchant and business class that had founded them a century before. What were they revolting over? Benjamin Franklin put it so succinctly:

“The inability of the Colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war.”

How was it they lost control of their money?? There was a grand weakness in the Colonial monetary system, one that threatened to dissolve all the wealth those Revolutionary men had laboriously built up. The problem was, Franklin had provoked the abandonment of universal precious metal currency in favor of paper backed by land, forty-six years before the inception of military skirmishes. The Colonists could not pay their taxes to Britain with Colonial script! All issues pertaining to Liberty Americans have been told since were at the heart of the American Insurrection, were subordinate to this chief problem. It wasn’t the taxes per se:

“The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament: which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England, and the Revolutionary War.”

Franklin did not want to admit here that his monetary policy left the English bankers little choice. That poverty came about not due to the British counterfeiting which came later, but because the monetary systems were unstable in relation to each other. Remember that where land became the icon of wealth after 1729, speculators appeared like mushrooms throughout the Colonies, and Washington like so many others got involved in the land “banks,” making claim to frontier land that they had no right to. The Natives who had inhabited the land were inconsequential, and they who had never thought of “owning” land which they considered was given to all by the Creator, were at a distinct disadvantage where preserving their inheritance was concerned. Speculation can only exist in a climate of monetary instability. We see its feverish panic as a reflection of the massive spending sprees of Congress over the last half century. We see in this Hoffer’s observation:

“…the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.” P54 The True Believer

What was the aim of the American mass movement? The same as it was for the bay colonies, for Christopher Columbus’ exploration and exploitation. The same for every immigrant who has ever sought refuge “ yearning to breathe free.” But what they find here is not “Freedom,” but a system where everybody oppresses everybody else, under the umbrella of the wealthy oligarchy who plunders them through a fluctuating monetary policy of debt.

He who has the Gold makes the Rules, and it does not matter what form that gold consists of. They, who are euphemistically called “Founding Fathers” (are we the Founder’s children?), put together a system of national government to supply the defects of their monetary policy of at least fifty-eight years. To that end, they claimed control of the money creation and supply, the right to impose tariffs and taxes,  to regulate trade among all the Colonies, to dictate through Congressional  and Judicial edict what was the supreme law. Most disliked this idea, and warned against the loss of Liberty. And with good reason, for Liberty in its elemental form exists where there are no limitations to one’s actions. But in a society, Liberty must be limited to the extent it infringes upon the Liberties of its members. But by definition, government cannot do anything but infringe on liberty, and thus becomes the very means Bastiat warned destroys it. The Framers made the most common error of the Ages; converting the right of common defense into the right of common aggression.

All this those Framers sought to do to dismiss the monetary, economic, and social chaos they had collectively incurred upon themselves. For them, the only solution against the disagreement and disunity among the various Colonies was something stronger and more irresistible than the deliberately loose Confederation that came into existence in the middle of the Insurrection. To solve that chaos and compel compliance, they modeled the British Imperial government with the substitute idea that men of vested interest, that is, men of property would have the privilege of setting on its councils, under the charade of balanced powers (meaning presumed competing interests), and regulate the affairs of all men according to their predilections. Everyone else had to step in line or be juridically punished. To make it palatable to those less advantaged, they affixed the “People’s” name to it, offered limited participation through a scheme of wealth acquisition, having the audacity to call such restrained democracy a “Limited Republic.”  For them, this was establishing order in the midst of chaos. For those who did not want it, saw no reasonable need for it, and heartily wished to see the enterprise fail, their lives went from chaos to tyranny worse than under the British crown and his Parliament.

Now the crux of the matter is Chaos and Anarchy are nor synonymous. Anarchy is the absence of government. It is the state of political disorder. Webster is wrong in associating the idea of Lawlessness with Anarchy. This word derives from the Greek, anarch, which means “without a leader.” The Apache did not have a leader, as did most all the Native American tribes. The Jews did not have a leader until they abandoned their heritage and installed Saul as king. Geese do not have a leader. Bovine and Equine and Fish do not have leaders. People confuse the appearance of ad-hoc structure among the animal domains as hierarchical. But they are not hierarchical, because what puts structure into their “communities” is shared vision.” It is only among that select group of humans, insecure within themselves, who form hierarchies, structures with a chain of command and imposed restrictions from the top, who create governments, the worst of these is not Democracy (the political system in which no one has their say for very long),  “purposeless, irrational, subject to public opinion and passing fashions, rambling, confused, underhanded, scheming, in love with its own purity”, but all forms of Republics. In any Republic, by definition, the supreme power is vested in the electorate, which necessarily must be limited, or it becomes a Democracy. The problem with a Republic is that is by its nature, a caste society.

Anarchy on the other hand, is the epitome of self-government. It is the refusal to allow anyone the privilege or power to control or rule their life, to put them by coercion or persuasion into submission or subservience. Anarchy is the finest expression of autonomy, otherwise known as soveriegnty. Doctor Thomas Szasz put it this way:

“The Greeks regarded liberty as synonymous with virtue, a condition the person could forfeit, by insufficient self-control or intemperance. This view—which is not wholly foreign to us—meshed with their belief that only certain persons could be self-governing, able to form and be members of the polis (that is, certain Greek-speaking, male adults); all others were regarded as unable to govern themselves and therefore unfit to be a part of the political community. This conception formed the basis of Aristotle's political philosophy and of Plato's Republic, which is a blueprint of a caste society in which each person plays the role for which he is best ‘fitted.’” p103 Meaning of Mind

It has been observed that Republics always die in chaos. (“…republics tend to become imperial and tyrannous, they [then] collapse and we’re back to Chaos” Gary North) The reason has always been the same—civil virtue departs from those appointed to maintain Liberty, seduced by affluence, advantage, and venality. One need not look much further than the Bidens or ex-premier Gladys Berejiklian to see that totalitarianism follows in its wake. Money and power, those twins of affluence, soon convinces them of their invincibility and infallibility.

Hierarchy is not the same kind of organization that characterizes geese. When they flock, they have a shared vision of their destination, and the bird that takes point to conserve the flock’s energy is the one most rested. All the others form up as happens at the moment. The same thing happened in 1930s America during the Public Works projects:

“A construction company was about to build a road in the mountains and the man in charge, instead of getting his workers from an employment agency, sent two trucks to skid row, and anybody who could get on the truck was hired even if he had only one leg. When the trucks were full, the drivers put in the tailgates and drove us east, where they dumped us on the side of a hill. The company had only one man on the job. We found bundles of supplies and equipment. Surveyors marked out the road and we had to build it. I saw something fantastic taking place. One of us, who had a pencil and a notebook, took down the names, and we started to sort ourselves out. We had so many carpenters, blacksmiths, bulldozer and jackhammer men, so many cooks, first-aid men, and even foremen. We put up the tents, cook shack, toilet, and shower bath, and next morning we went out to build the road. It was an expert job. The rock walls and flumes were works of art. State inspectors hovered around us but could find no fault. The work proceeded automatically. Could a thing like this happen in Russia or anywhere else? I thought, If we had to write a constitution, there would be someone who knew all the whereases and wherefores. We were a shovel full of slime scooped off the pavement of skid row, yet we could have built America on the side of a hill.” P46-47 Truth Imagined

Peter Senge wrote about this phenomenon of self-government in his book, The Fifth Discipline. Chief among its characteristic is Shared Vision. Exactly what birds have. What the Apache once had before they were eradicated as a people. Modern corporate America has debased the idea of shared vision by imposing from the top, the company’s vision, in typical hierarchical style. Of course it was a farce which no employee paid serious attention to. Consistent with shared vision is Personal Mastery, which in essence the old idea of Virtue—the pursuit of personal excellence.

Anyone who has participated in neighborhood projects, whether ecological, educational, or charitable knows how people can self-govern, no different than when traffic lights turn flashing red, Independence Day crowds and movie drive-in customers self-regulate their exiting without external control. It was this lack of a government that brought Western civilization to the Western Hemisphere. None of these men needed a Constitution to know what needed to be done, how to cooperate, when to lead and when to follow. Neither did America’s explorers and Mountain Men. The Apache did not need a government to outmaneuver and fend off the US Cavalry to the discomfiture of Washington.  The same has been true of the townships of the 19th century western territories, the California and Alaskan mining camps.

It has ever been government that corrupts it (e.g. the Federal government’s involvement with liquor during Prohibition), and the source of endless conflicts. Governments always begin with Revolutionaries, discomfited intellectuals who cannot manage their own affairs effectively, who provoke and pester humanity with their “perceptions and views” who wander about needling the populace to gain supporters with their personal issues. This has ever been the case with charismatic men who universally are revolutionary in their ambitions:

“At present, in every part of the world, we see how revolutionary movements initiated by idealistic intellectuals and preserved in their keeping tend to crystallize into hierarchical social orders in which an aristocratic intelligentsia commands, and the masses are expected to obey.” P32 The Ordeal of Change

Government by its very nature, drives out the five disciplines of the Learning Organization, and the creativity that spontaneously arises without it. And yet we observe in all those “ad-hoc” associations, a highly organized structure, one that holds in high esteem the Rule of Law, which IS the shared vision of the anarchic society. Those who cannot exist without concocting government are not only weak in character, but inevitably plunder the less advantaged to pay for their impotence, failures, schemes, and hubris.

REFERENCES
They Thought They Were Free Milton Mayer
When Money Dies Adam Fergusson
The Starfish and the Spider Ori Brafman & Rod Beckstrom
The Meaning of Mind Thomas Szasz
Truth Imagined, The True Believer Eric Hoffer
Who Rules America? John McConaughy
The Whiskey Rebellion Thomas Slaughter
The Jefferson Conspiracies David Chandler
The Law Frédéric Bastiat
The Anti-Federalist Papers
American Aurora Richard Rosenfeld
The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge
Forrest McDonald;
We the People
E Pluribus Unum
Novus Ordo Seclorum

The New Nation Merrill Jensen
Our Enemy, the State Albert J Nock

Douglas Reed;
Disgrace Abounding
The Controversy of Zion

And several more unlisted with which to bore.