More on hierarchy

Continuing from this post:

I see the same idealistic dynamic or restricted economy involved in such integral models when based on the same kind of egoic-rational consciousness and its hidden metaphysical premises including a mereology based on the kind of set theory inherent to that consciousness. Whereas we see a different sort of democratic mereology in Bryant and the speculative realists, which I'd suggest is influenced by this other kind of emerging reasoning beyond the metaphysical formal operations inherent to capitalism. And in many cases, integral theory in its support of such an idealistic economic system, as it tends to unconsciously use the same kind of consciousness structure from participating in and enacting not democracy but plutocracy.

I do though appreciate Wilber here talking about actualization hierarchies:


"As Elliott Jacques’ works have empirically demonstrated, the way most organizations are structured, those at the lower levels of this hierarchy usually work on the floor or assembly line; those at the intermediate levels mostly work middle management; and those at the upper levels work upper management (including CEO, CFO, COO). What these newer organizations do is move all of those levels—the entire hierarchy itself—into teams of usually 10 to 15 people. Any person, in any team, can make literally any decision for the company—and, in fact, virtually all the major decisions in the organizations are made by team members. [...] This makes each team, and each person in the team, much more Integral—they can operate on any level in the hierarchy they are capable of, as long as they consult with those who will be affected by the decision (although they don’t have to follow the advice), where previously they had been constrained by their place in the pyramid. One of the great findings of Laloux’s work is that actualization hierarchies can flourish when dominator hierarchies are removed. A company of 500 individuals thus has, not one but 500 CEOs, any one of whom might have a breakthrough idea and be able to implement it, a true self-management move that is one of the major reasons for the astonishing success of so many of these organizations. What happens to middle and much of upper management? Mostly, it doesn’t exist. Those hierarchies have been relocated."

I also appreciate this from Wilber:

"[T]here are two types of hierarchies, there are dominator hierarchies where higher levels abuse their capacities and oppress or alienate or repress individuals that are viewed as being lower on some scale. [...] So in actualization hierarchies [...] things going from atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, for example. There, each stage transcends and includes its predecessor."

And there's the crux of the difference between many of the sources cited and commented on in this IPS thread with their strange and/or democratic mereology. By definition his actualization hierarchy assumes certain premises on the nature and construction of hierarchical complexity, which indeed does oppress and repress (subsumes) those lower on a particular scale. His rhetoric is good but doesn't match the implicit, taken for granted, and seemingly unconscious assumptions of his own measuring scale. Hence we get the likes of altitude sickness, still rampant in kennilingus.