Check whether a hierarchy you are in grows people or dominates them

Ask whether the ranking you live inside exists to build people’s capacities or to keep power where it is.

Warum es wirkt

Riane Eisler distinguishes hierarchies of actualization, built on relations of “linking”, from hierarchies of domination, built on rigid “ranking” that in her account is maintained by fear and force. Wilber, reviewed by Puhakka, draws a parallel line between healthy holarchy, where higher levels include and serve the lower, and pathological dominator hierarchy, where one holon “assumes agentic dominance to the detriment of all”. The distinction lets a person object to a particular hierarchy without having to reject every difference in skill or responsibility.

So gehst du vor

1. Pick one hierarchy you are part of — a workplace, a family, a team, a congregation.
2. Ask three questions: Do people below get more capable over time? Does information and skill flow downward as well as up? Can someone below question the person above without being punished?
3. Mark each yes, partly or no, with one real example.
4. If you have authority in it, choose one change toward growth — teaching instead of withholding, explaining a decision — and try it this month.

Evidenz

Eisler’s terms appear in her work beginning with The Chalice and the Blade (1987); Mercanti’s 2012 interview summarizes them as “hierarchies of actualisation” rather than hierarchies of domination and “linking” rather than rigid “ranking”, and quotes her saying dominator rankings are maintained through fear and force. Puhakka’s 1995 review of Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality reports his distinction between holarchical (“healthy”) and dominator (“pathological”) hierarchies. The three questions are an application, not a validated measure. (anecdotal)

This practice uses only Eisler’s conceptual distinction between kinds of hierarchy, not her separate historical argument about prehistoric societies, which it neither relies on nor evaluates.

Quellen

• Eisler, R. (1987). The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Harper & Row.
• Mercanti, S. (2012). In Conversation with Riane Eisler. Le Simplegadi, 10, 143–152.
• Puhakka, K. (1995). Restoring connectedness in the Kosmos: A healing tale of a deeper order [Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, by K. Wilber]. The Humanistic Psychologist, 23(3), 373–391.
• Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Shambhala.

Häufiger Fehler

Deciding all hierarchy is domination and refusing any role with authority. The distinction exists precisely so a person can keep the growth kind — a teacher, a mentor, a good parent — while resisting the other.