[lbo-talk] Re: hierarchy (was woj and America)

[joanna bujes]

At 08:57 PM 05/08/2003 -0700, Justin wrote:
>Well, we're also the only fully linguistic primate society, and there is a 
>lot more variation in our behavior than in (say) chimpanzees. Personally, 
>I'd believe that we can live without hierarchy after about 10 million 
>years of seriously trying variations on it, ratherthan jumping the gun on 
>the question and foreclosing it by looking at a generation or two of 
>ethological studies. Read Phil Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition. jks

I think this discussion would benefit from disentangling "hierarchy" from 
"power." I think it's possible to have a hierarchy without power. In fact, 
one sees it all the time. For example, people are very attentive to 
hierarchies based on skills. My daughter attends a ballet class with is 
based on the osmosis theory of learning. Dancers of all ages (4-60) and 
levels mix together in one class. They practice together and mostly learn 
through imitation. The teacher calls out the moves but does not appoint 
role models; the students choose who they want to imitate. It seems to work 
amazingly well and to promote a very focused but relaxed attitude in 
class.There also used to exist an age-based hierarchy in more traditional 
societies which probably did reflect  the value of experience gathered by 
the older members.

What I'm trying to say is that man might be innately attentive to hierarchy 
without inferring from this that there must always be masters and slaves.

Joanna