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.
Why it works
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.
How to do it
- Pick one hierarchy you are part of — a workplace, a family, a team, a congregation.
- 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?
- Mark each yes, partly or no, with one real example.
- If you have authority in it, choose one change toward growth — teaching instead of withholding, explaining a decision — and try it this month.
Evidence
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.
Sources
- 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.
Common mistake
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.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Holons, Holarchy and “Transcend and Include”, Made Practical
- Ask what each earlier self gave you, and what you dropped
Walk back through the people you have been and list, for each, one capacity you kept and one you left behind.
- Reclaim one capacity you cut off on the way “up”
Pick one capacity you disowned while becoming more mature — feeling, play, need, belonging — and give it a small, regular place again.
- Release the old identity, keep what it built in you
When you leave a role, faith, team or culture behind, separate the identity you are letting go of from the capacities it gave you.
- Treat the stages you outgrew with respect when you meet them in others
Notice contempt for people who see the world the way you used to, and treat it as a sign of exclusion rather than growth.
- Look at a problem as a whole and as a part
When you are pulled between your own needs and a group’s, describe the situation once from each face of the holon.
- Notice when one part of you is running the whole
Spot the part of your life — work self, achiever, rational mind — that has taken over and is crowding the rest out.
Related concepts
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- Systems Thinking
Seeing structure instead of events — and the leverage that creates
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
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