Still more on hierarchy

Continuing from this post:

Wilber also doesn't acknowledge that dominator hierarchies are based in not only individual but male dominance. He accepts the spiral dynamics notion that levels alternate between individual and communal preference. Whereas for Eisler the individual focus, typically also male focus, is a regression rather than an alternating advance. Hence we get formal operations* being not only metaphysical in that it separates the binary poles, but also favors the male dominant side of said poles: male over female, heaven over earth, absolute over relative and so on.

Another thing from Wilber's comment about Jacques' work, even though a company might be hierarchically organized in terms of job responsibilities, from laborer to CEO, each person "can operate on any level in the hierarchy they are capable of." This recognizes that while there is hierarchy, no one part or person of it is at one particular level. The company is more a democratic mereology.


The same goes for individual people in terms of their own mereology as noted earlier in this thread using Luhmann. While there are certainly hierarchical (assemblage) levels in terms of our organization, each level retains its own autonomy and development, and it functions within the autonomy of the level of the whole. This is very different from the sort of hierarchical complexity that sees each member of the set (whole) entirely subsumed in the whole and strictly limited to the whole's agenda. That is a dominator hierarchy and at the heart of the very way levels are constructed based on an over generalized, over (male) individualized, over rationalized, over metaphysicalized and deficient/dysfunctional mode.

* This is to be distinguished from healthy, real formal reason, much commented upon in this Ning IPS thread.