this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
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These heirarchies caused or exaserbated just about every major tragedy in history - war, genocide, slavery, rape, empire, colonialism, capitalism, etc.
But depending on how you look at it, 25-40% of humans just like heirarchies and want them, despite the misery they cause for both the empowered and disempowered.
That's a huge problem - fascism will likely always have a base of supporters to come back from no matter how many times we defeat it, and you just can't imprison/disenfranchise/exile that high a % of people for a wide variety of obvious reasons.
I fear this is a "this is who we are as an organism" problem that will follow our species wherever we go.
I'd like to see how you got to "hierarchies = fascism". I also think that the people who want hierarchies are much higher than 25-40%.
Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it's the precursor to all supremacist thinking.
If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%. Die hard as in will support those candidates no matter how poorly they're doing. Support levels wax and wane as anxiety goes up and down, or as supremacist candidates tend to be winning or losing, but the core support base for authoritarian ideals routinely comes out around 25-40% across most western countries.
It isn't because "some people are better than others", it's because some people are better than others at leading. Leadership is a skill, and it can be learned and practiced just like any other skill. You could say, "Hey, Mary is good at fixing things, let's put her in charge of repairs. Margaret is good at planning projects and organizing people, let's put her in leadership."
And no, it doesn't imply that the person leading should have total control over everything or that they can't be held accountable.
You said "humans who want hierarchies" and you're equating that with "support for supremacist candidates". Does that mean that if I support a centrist or a left-wing candidate, then I don't want hierarchies? I can tell you, there are certainly not that many anarchists in the world. 60-75% of the population?
Get them into kink.
Seriously though, you can have consensual hierarchical structures that provide an outlet for those desires to the degree that they are innate. Is the desire to force everyone in the world to be a part of your hierarchy really part of that innate desire? Or is it more that some people feel more comfortable when they have a clearly defined status?
And it doesn't have to be confined to kink, for example, in a community for a competitive sport or game, there can be a bit of an implicit social hierarchy based on skill.
Those kinds of hierarchies are a lot closer to the hierarchies that humans evolved with, applying to an immediate social group, within "Dunbar's number." There was never a long period of time (from an evolutionary standpoint) where state-wide or globe-spanning hierarchies were selected for, so it doesn't really make sense that those would be innate and unavoidable desires.
I wonder how many people think that their place in society would be a lot lower if it was based on competition, so it is better to preserve the system that keeps them where they are at.
In support of that theory, there was a multiplayer video game study a while back that found it was the less skilled men who were assholes to women players. The better players didn't seem to care about their teammates gender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Male_behavior_towards_female_gamers
Well, there are people that believe their position would be higher if the 'others' wouldn't have taken that spot.
That's literally true though? If it's hard to see, take it to the extreme: If you were the only person in a place, you'd be the most important one by default?
They wouldn't do a good job, but they'd have the job since, you know, there is less competition.
I did work and travel in USA, and they were paying us peanuts due to some law shenanigans (they had to pay overtime for Americans, not us.) Wouldn't they have to hire a native instead of me if I wasn't allowed to work there?
Same reasons cults work. They want someone else doing the thinking and leading for them, and surrender responsibility and blame to someone else. It's never their own fault, so they want a system where they don't have to be responsible or feel at fault.
The thing is, tree structures are very good ways to scale interconnected systems. Ask any computer scientist or computer networker about it.
This applies to societal systems as well. A bronze age society that has a feudal structure can manage a much larger area than a flat society. Armies can be coordinated that would be an ineffective mob otherwise.
That doesn't make hierarchies nice for the people living in them, any more than the industrial revolution was actually nice for the people living through it. But they are an enabling technology, and societies that did not have hierarchy were eventually overwhelmed until almost every living human is living that way.
For sure it's more effective with entreched heirarchies, bit i think it's possible to use that organisational structure without it metastisizing into a perminant heirarchy. Anarchist federations do this, sortition is useful, turn-taking etc.
I don't believe such a thing ever existed. Other mammals display heirarchies so it was probably present in a distant ancestor, predating humans and our societies.
It's the nature, duration and intensity of heirarchy that has changed so remarkably in the last 15k odd years.
The desire for hierarchy and order isn't an inherently bad one. A highly authoritarian individual will be the first to volunteer when someone needs to run into a burning building to save someone. They will be the first to volunteer to defend the community. They will also be the people that organize trash pickups, because littering is bad.
However, they can also be easily weaponized against others. Just like littering is against the natural order of things, and they will go out of their way to pick up litter, they can be convinced that other people are also against the natural order of things....with significantly more horrific outcomes.
I don't think this is necessarily true. A person can just as easily be motivated to do these from a sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility than a desire for hierarchies. (Ursula le Guin's The Dispossessed explores the various aspects of how a society could be built on such principles.)
I don't believe these two go together, heirarchies tend to be characterised by tension and discord.
It's actually the exact opposite! The phenomenon of Elite Panic is well established and included in disaster planning.
During an emergency, most people exhibit "spontaneous self organisation" - bucket lines, food distribution, search parties, etc. Whereas people with authority are much more likely to freak out, to fail to understand that the situation is different, to enforce detrimental rules, to feel threatened, to generally act badly.
huh?
Oh, you misunderstand. I'm talking about authoritarians. You seem to have done some reading in the past. Do some more. theauthoritarians.org
The people that form those bucket lines and search parties would, ironically, be more likely to be authoritarian in worldview, and therefore have the greatest psychological need to fix the problem.
This touches the terrain of leadership and motivation, and I'd argue that authoritarianism is accidental here. Sure, here and there leaders with authoritarian views rise (e.g. Mussolini), but also people who do not believe in it so much (e.g. Che Guevara). There have been studies about the psychology of leaders and motivators, and they seem to be driven by a lot of energy and often certainty at least in some core ideas. There are books like A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness that go as far as to suggest these traits border the unhealthy in many notorious and strong cases.
Definitely.
It seems that populism/fascism is 'ingrained' in our simple minds. But that begs the question, why do some of us reject it? Random chance, empathy, or education?
It raises the question. Begging the question is this.
These are not mutually exclusive. Right-wing populists can also be fascists.
I don't think it's ingrained and then rejected, i think it's present in some % of humans because heirarchic organisation is useful in limited, temporary contexts.
Pirate ships were feircely egalitarian until a target was sighted, then the captain is a dictator until the loot was secure. Some hunter-gatherers had a season of authoritarianism (say, hunting season) in between seasons of different social organisation.
So like how sickle cell anemia is debilitating but grants near immunity to malaria, heirarchophilia has just enough limited benefits that it remains as a variant within the population.
Or that's how i think about it.
Personality difference.
theauthoritarians.org
Because I was taught as an American that I should be a rugged individual, which is incompatible with fascism. I also do not really enjoy much sports so this tribalism blah blah just doesn't do it for me. I also don't much like circuses and spectacles; fairs, to me, are just meh.
And I could probably ignore it when it's benevolent, but it's often malicious like germ warfare.
"Rugged individualism" is also incompatible with hierarchies but these people aren't thinking that far into it. It's just a myth that makes it your fault when society fails.