On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
>
>> Are you saying that hierarchies are the natural and inevitable order of
>> things and that non-
>> hierarchal arrangements are not?
>
> It's hard to say anything's "natural" in human behavior, but nonhierarchical
> arrangements have yet to present themselves in durable quantity.
>
> Doug
Nonhierarchical social arrangements are relatively common in human societies; people just take them for granted. (e.g., peer groups, many family relationships, food co-ops, my local bike repair collective, most open source software projects, lots of bands, just to draw a few examples from our own society.)
What's natural is the human capacity to create both hierarchical and nonhierarchical social relations. What pushes us one way or the other is a sociopolitical question.
Miles