Article 3:
The Origin of Control - Part 1
by Wendell Krossa
(From the series "Creating A Horizontal
God", Copyright, W. Krossa)
The Animal nature of Hierarchical Relating / Its Definitely Not Human / Ongoing Animal Influence in Human Mentality / Knowing Our Origins / Animal Relating and Animal Existence / Wandering Around / Settling Down / Views of Civilization / Domestication
The Animal Nature of Hierarchical Relating
I am arguing that the contemporary view of God in the Western world is very animal-like. This is not intended to be an offensive argument. Rather, it is only an attempt to recognize that the vertically oriented or hierarchical relating that exists between God and humanity is essentially a form of animal relating. This form of relating needs to be exposed for the destructive predatory characteristic and practice that it really is. It expresses the domination that was introduced into early ideas of divinity.
Hierarchy or vertical hierarchical relating is the defining feature of animal existence and at heart it is the expression of predatory animal drives and nature. It is a form of relationship which embodies and encourages the expression of domination and control by some over others. Hierarchical relating is a form of relating in which superiors dominate inferiors in a competitive struggle for control of resources or power and often simply to control others for the sake of control.
This study is also arguing that our contemporary forms of hierarchy originate with the predatory domination of our animal past. This vertical form of relating has continued on through the various stages of human evolution, from primate to hunter/gatherer, and then into the institutions of early human domesticated society, and thereby into the present.
Hierarchical animal relating is the opposite of truly human relating which is horizontally oriented, free of authority or control, and involves relating as personally responsible equals. Hierarchical relating can not foster nor promote human relating or development with its essential need for free cooperation and free response. To the contrary, vertically oriented relating effectively undermines human forms of relating and existence (1). It violates the very essence of freedom by introducing a superior/inferior orientation, which too often leads to destructive control. Efforts to humanize hierarchy are doomed to fail as there is simply nothing humane about vertical relating.
And the reason that I trace hierarchical relating directly to its animal origins is to graphically contrast it with the human forms of relating that characterize a society of free equals. I want to place dominating forms of relating in stark contrast with what is humane and thereby show the regressive and backwards nature of control. We are now human and there is no excuse to continue acting like animals. I also trace the origin of hierarchy because I want to understand how and when a vertical orientation entered and corrupted ideas of God.
The continued use of hierarchical relating in contemporary society explains much of the alienation and conflict experienced by people who exist in these vertical relationships. This would include most people today as the vast majority of humanity still exists within the lower strata of hierarchical institutions of one type or another.
By looking at its animal origin and early development, I hope to understand something of why hierarchical relating is still used as the most common arrangement of human relationships and human organization despite the fact that it is being recognized more and more as a very destructive practice in human existence.
This chapter will look beyond arguments that hierarchy is a "natural outcome of social evolution" (2) or that it was the natural way to organize domesticating people. This chapter will also disagree with the contention that hierarchical relating is the natural expression of human nature. It will challenge the argument that according to the "iron law of oligarchy" (3) any effort at human organizing must inevitably result in hierarchy.
And contrary to some views on the subject, I believe that hierarchy is not a human invention which emerged at the time of domestication. The roots of hierarchical relating are to be found much, much further back in world history. Hierarchical relating is ultimately an ancient expression of animal nature and animal behavior. It therefore originated in the deep past of humanity when people were still more animal-like than human.
The vertical relationships of hierarchy express quite simply the ancient animal drive of competition for resources and the domination required for survival in a competitive animal environment.
As Brinsmead has stated, "Since humans are still animals it is natural for vertical relationships to develop among them. These relationships form a pyramid, a chain of command, a hierarchy of superiors and inferiors. In this vertical animal order, status and prestige depend on prowess in climbing the social order" (4).
In one sense hierarchy is human nature if it is understood that we still have residual animal drives and instincts emanating from an ancient animal brain. We are still emerging from an animal past and are therefore still in the process of moving away from animal reality toward becoming fully human. The continued operation of ancient animal drives in human mentality explains in part why people still try to control others and relate vertically to them. But it is our residual animal drives which inspire hierarchical relating and not our emerging humanity which is our essential nature and which inspires us to relate as free equals.
Ongoing Animal Influence in Human Mentality
To help understand the ongoing operation of vertical relating and domination in human relationships, I want to note some material by Dennis Sandole that looks at the continuing influence of residual animal drives in human mentality. Even though humans began to evolve toward a more human intelligence and existence during the hunter/gatherer era and later in domestication, the human brain at that time still contained within its basic makeup an ancient animal substrate brain. This animal brain had developed within animal reality and was structured for that predatory and dominating animal existence. It was a brain that was hardwired for animal response.
Even now, millennia later, primal animal drives and emotions continue to emanate from the archaic animal part of the brain to influence the more advanced human parts of the brain and thereby influence emerging human thinking and behavior. People today are still profoundly influenced by ancient drives and emotions such as the competitive drive to control and dominate others. We carry a deep animal imprint within our very brains. This imprint which was selected for over hundreds of millions of years of animal existence will not disappear overnight.
Sandole claims that humans have a triune brain and each part has its own way of perceiving the world (5). The breakdown of this triune brain is as follows:
The reptilian brain which is the central core.
The paleo-mammalian brain which is the limbic system.
The neo-mammalian brain which encompasses the cerebral cortex.
Sandole argues that we can still see ancient forms of behavior that we have inherited from our reptilian and mammalian ancestors. He says, for instance, that humans "appear to have been pre-wired by the reptilian brain to be ritualistic, to be in awe of authority, to develop social pecking orders, maybe even obsessive compulsive neuroses" (6).
We also appear to be pre-wired in the limbic system to respond emotionally to threats to the self or to species survival (7). This is expressed in aggression toward others.
But human brains have also developed the cerebral cortex- the most advanced and human brain type. The hypothalamus in the lower brain, says Sandole, may send a message to the cortex indicating that the aggression center has been activated. But the cortex has evolved the ability to reflect, to consider the environment, to remember past experiences, to question, and to choose its response (8).
And even though the more ancient animal parts of the brain remain as active elements in the modern human brain, they need not dictate human response. The higher and more recent human brain (in terms of evolutionary progress) can operate to pause, reflect, and choose not to respond in an animal-like aggressive manner. It can override animal impulses and drives and choose to respond more humanely. Hopefully, says Sandole, with continued evolution the frontal brain will continue to develop to control the aggressive animal drives.
But, unfortunately, at the time of the emergence of god consciousness and the creation of the early institutions for domesticated human life it appears that people did not yet possess the cerebral cortex ability to pause, reflect, and control animal drives with more humane response. And because the mentality of those early people was still very animal-like and all of life at that time operated within vertical dominating relationships, they saw life as a vertically oriented reality. They therefore quite naturally created societies oriented to vertical relating and control. It was the only reality they were aware of. Those early patterns of human organizing set the mold for later human societies and social institutions and that explains in part why we still find everywhere the remnants of vertical relating in our contemporary social orders and institutions.
But hierarchy has no part in what we are becoming- truly human. It has no place in a human future or in truly human existence for it is base animal relating and therefore antihuman.
Note: I am using the terms vertical and horizontal, to try to graphically capture the essence of the difference between animal and human forms of relating. There is nothing especially insightful or new about these terms. They have been used for decades in organizational theory and psychological literature to describe two prominent orientations in relationships.
But these terms are once again coming to the fore to describe the essential difference between forms of relating that are animal or human. The key point to remember is that a vertical orientation expresses animal-like domination and control, while horizontal relating serves to describe non-controlling cooperation and the free interaction of true equals.
My argument is that the only way to properly understand why we still have a vertically oriented God and vertically oriented institutions is to recognize the deeper origins of vertical relating in animal existence. By looking back at vertical animal relating and by noting how it may have progressed into human society, we can then see where hierarchical views of God and vertical worldviews originated and how animal-like relating became entrenched in our societies as the predominant form of relating among people.
One of the points this and following essays will also try to communicate is that the process of early domestication was in one sense simply the institutionalization of dominating animal relating. That predatory form of relating, which had operated for millions of years in animal food hierarchies, was formalized in the emerging institutions of early domesticating society. By being incorporated into human social orders and institutions at that time, vertical relating was then made legitimate and given authority and permanence in human existence.
It is important, then, that the main features of human domestication be noted as this is the time in history where animal relating became entrenched in human society. We need to understand the how and why of that process as our contemporary organizations and social arrangements are all grounded in those patterns of early human organizing and state formation. And if we are ever going to remove the destructive element of control from human relating then we need to understand that institutionalized vertical forms of relating are destructively animal and a serious hindrance to human progress.
Brinsmead also argues for a more complete understanding of the true origin of vertical relating and dominance. He says that "no society can overcome the tendency to form vertical relationships unless it distinguishes what it means to be truly human from what it means to be animal" (9).
He notes that contemporary world cultures and civilizations emerged from the ancient vertical view of dominance and submission (10). He argues that it was, in fact, this view of dominance that led to the domestication of other humans, plants, and animals. Domestication, quite simply, was the process of formally extending animal-like control more widely over people and all of life. That ancient vertical concept of dominance has also led to repeated efforts at world conquest and wars of subjugation.
Zwemer argues for the importance of knowing our animal origins by stating that history is filled with confusion, frustration, and conflict due to the ignorance of "the dual origins, natures, and destinies of the human race" (11). Man is an animal but is in the process of becoming human and moving toward a radical egalitarianism and human equality, says Zwemer. This egalitarian existence is totally incompatible with the vertically oriented world of man as animal.
There has been a tendency in modern biology to accept and promote the idea of the continued expression of animal traits in modern humanity as natural, inevitable, and even right for human existence. There has been little effort to distinguish the fact that while animal existence selected for certain traits, such as competition and domination for its ongoing existence, the emergence of modern human consciousness is leading humanity in an entirely new direction away from competition and domination and toward cooperation, equality, and freedom. We should not therefore unquestioningly accept past evolutionary direction and traits as somehow predetermined and therefore inevitable or right for human existence.
Evolutionary psychology, as an example, accepts the idea of evolution shaping the human mind over millions of years to be an animal oriented mind. This discipline too often accepts the inevitability of evolutionary direction moving toward the development of animal traits and existence (Robert Wright, "The Evolution of Despair" in TIME, Aug. 28, 1995, p.35). But this confuses differing realities and differing directions of development. We need to distinguish clearly between the remnant animal brain/mind and its impulses in modern human mentality and the emerging human mind/consciousness with its new impulses, emotions, and drives.
Animal Relating and Animal Existence
From the time of its earliest emergence on earth, animal life has been characterized by certain features considered necessary for its survival. One of the most prominent features of animal life is the drive for existence and reproduction which is expressed in competitive and dominating hierarchical relationships among animal species known as the food web or hierarchy (12). All animals survive by dominating species below them. This is the harsh reality of animal existence.
This drive for survival is expressed by Selfish Gene Theory which argues that the central drift of evolution involves competition and domination in order to survive and pass on personal genes or those of a clan to succeeding generations. Evolution is characterized as an intensely competitive and selfish process.
The essential nature of animal reality, then, is that animals relate vertically in strict hierarchical arrangements. These dominating relationships are also evident within species where dominant individuals control their group members in what is known as the group pecking order. In the fiercely competitive world of animal reality, domination is widely employed in the struggle for advantage over others.
Dominating relationships are especially evident in primate species, which are the direct ancestors of modern humans. Humans exist near the top of this animal order as perhaps the most dominating of all creatures. According to Zwemer, "No other creature is so possessive, territorial, power hungry, and violently predacious" (13).
What inspires the formation of vertical relationships or hierarchies is the instinct or drive for advantage over others. This drive inspires fierce competition for access to and control over resources. In this struggle for ongoing existence those who can not dominate by brute force are coerced into cowering submission. This struggle results in the vertical arrangement of relationships among animal groups. The stronger dominates the weaker. Aggressively competing and dominating others in the brutal struggle over resources is a distinctly animal characteristic.
James Lovelock has the following to say regarding the origin of competitive domination as a central feature of animal existence. He states that about 3 aeons ago (3 billion years) when life first emerged, it was faced with scarcity of vital food sources (key materials for survival) and had to learn to draw on basic raw materials in the surrounding environment. "The need to make choices of this kind must have occurred many times and hastened the diversification, independence, and sturdiness of the expanding biosphere. It may also have been during this time that the idea of predator and prey and of food chains first evolved. The natural death and decay of organisms would have released key materials to the community at large, but some species may have found it more convenient to gather their essential components by feeding on the living" (GAIA, p.22).
Hence the possible origin of vertical dominating relationships. Lovelock is suggesting that competition, predation, and domination were not inevitable realities of existence but were simply a choice made by early life long ago- one option chosen from among others. This choice to prey on others eventually resulted in the complex food chain, with its hierarchical relationships and species competing, preying on the weaker, and dominating others below them. Predation and domination then became essential realities of animal life. But did it really have to be that way? I would suggest that competition, predation, and domination were not inevitable realities necessary for survival. The evolution toward predation and domination was simply a choice made by early life, a choice which set the direction for animal existence that followed. History is constantly shaped by such butterfly-effect choices.
Whatever the reason for the original emergence of competition as a fundamental element of existence, we need not fatalistically accept it as an eternally inevitable feature of life. In accepting competition as inevitable and unchangeable, we have in subsequent history adopted ideologies which validate and encourage competition as the dominant organizing principle for social systems and organizations. This enslavement to the principle of competition has been particularly destructive for human existence.
There is now emerging evidence that one of the fundamental features of the universe and life is creative advance through cooperation. The advance of evolution and life has been profoundly marked by the emergence of structures and processes "characterized by greater complexity, by cooperative behavior and global coherence" (14). The propensity for self-organization into ever more complex states is an essential principle of emerging life, and cooperation is the unifying principle here. Had early life made the choice to use cooperation as a prominent method of survival, then life may have taken an entirely different direction, without brutal competition and domination.
Another distinct feature of animal existence and relating is the unconscious nature of animal mentality. Animal mentality lacks consciousness in that the animal mind does not have space to reflect, question authority, or freely choose to initiate personal action. Animals respond slavishly to aggressive instincts and drives without pause for reflection or introspection before action. Such tight control of mentality and behavior is a key characteristic of animal existence. This controlling nature of animal mentality makes it well suited to domination in hierarchical arrangements of relationships.
Control of behavior in animal groups also originates from without the individual. This outside control often originates with the dominant male (and sometimes female) in the group hierarchy.
I need to clarify here that not all of animal existence is negative. I am focusing only on the element of domination and control which has continued into human existence and caused infinite damage in terms of potential human development. A growing body of research is exposing the devastating impact that continued control has on human well being and development. The consequences are stated in terms of powerlessness, loss of control, or learned helplessness. All refer to the damaging effects of domination and control in human relating.
Whenever domination or control enter any human relationship, then true human relating, which should be based on the free cooperation that occurs between equals, is effectively precluded and ultimately destroyed. This causes immense damage to human well being and development.
Eventually, early humans evolved toward existence as wandering bands of hunter/gatherers. These bands would find resources in an area and remain until those resources were exhausted before moving on to new areas. In some areas the bands would also compete with other bands for scarce resources. This led to patterns of stronger groups dominating weaker groups. In this manner, hunter/gatherer existence continued to reflect the patterns of competitive domination noted in animal existence.
Also, within hunter/gatherer bands people continued to relate vertically in strict hierarchies of dominance much like the primate hierarchies that spawned them. Male dominance, in particular, was the norm in these situations. In this we find the origin of male domination so widespread today.
People emerging from a primate background and taking up hunter/gatherer existence, brought vertically oriented animal relating into the new more human-like existence. But those early humans still possessed a very animal-like brain and shared the common features of previous animal nature. Their behavior was still tightly controlled by instinct and by group patriarchs with no space for independent action.
And similar to previous forms of primate mentality, in hunter/gatherer existence people did not yet possess self-consciousness, self-determination, or self-control. Their mentality allowed no space for reflection or personal choice. It was a mentality very similar to the strictly controlled mentality of baser animal life forms.
Hierarchically oriented hunter/gatherer existence was the stage just before human domestication. While some human-like qualities were emerging, those bands still exhibited very animal-like responses and behavior.
Over the period of some 15,000 to 5,000 years ago a dramatic change occurred in human existence. People quit wandering in hunter/gatherer existence and began to settle in more permanent agricultural communities. They began to domesticate. This process occurred at different times in different areas of the world (15).
In the settled existence of domestication, people began to create more formal arrangements of relationships for their coexistence. This was the beginning of the modern process of institutionalizing life or formally organizing the relationships and patterns of social life. And it was the beginning of a process of extending human control over all life in a more formal manner.
After the eras of relatively spontaneous animal and hunter/gatherer existence, in domestication life was starting to come under the governing influence of more formally organized human institutions. The nation state would eventually emerge as the ultimate expression of this total institutional control of life.
Despite the fact that settling in more permanent communities is viewed as an advance for humanity (it is called 'civilization'), it is important to note that the onset of domestication itself was not the beginning of truly humane existence because the settling people were still in many ways more animal-like than human.
However, domestication provided the environment in which a more advanced form of human consciousness could emerge and other advances could be made. People in the process of domestication were undergoing changes that would prepare them for the potential emergence of a more humane nature and existence. They were starting to turn more decisively away from animal existence.
But at the onset of domestication, animal drives were still prominent in human mentality. Consequently, that domesticating mentality led early settling people to shape the emerging social orders and institutions of domestication into vertically oriented hierarchies similar to their previous animal hierarchies. In this manner, animal-like existence with its vertical relating continued on into human society and became entrenched in emerging human organizations and worldviews.
That early period of domestication and the institutions it produced became the pattern for all human societies that would follow, including those of the present.
The ancient drives of aggression and competitive domination were well suited to the new hierarchical relationships and structures. Climbing through a social system of vertically oriented relationships required the same expression of animal aggression that had defined previous animal existence. The institutions of vertical relating formed in domestication therefore accommodated and encouraged the ongoing expression of residual animal mentality, drives, and behavior.
Later in domestication, some people would develop more horizontally oriented worldviews, but their traditional hierarchical social orders and institutions would change little in succeeding millennia. This lag in organizational response to emerging humanity has caused severe problems for human development and progress.
There are a variety of helpful studies on domestication or civilization (16). Some refer to the process as state formation. But all refer to the same process of hunter/gatherer bands shifting to more settled and larger agricultural communities. As those bands settled together, they created social orders and social institutions for their new existence. These structures were more formal arrangements of relationships among people. And the arrangement or order of relationships that they created were those of vertically oriented hierarchies.
Some studies on domestication have argued that the hierarchical organization of people in emerging civilization is a natural process (17). It is human nature, these studies argue, for people to organize their relating in a vertical dominating/submitting manner. We noted earlier one organizational theory writer who states that hierarchical organization is inevitable because of the "iron law of oligarchy" (18), which argues that whenever humans organize they will always form vertical dominating relationships with the few controlling the many.
So instead of seeing hierarchical arrangements of relationships as an expression of residual animal nature or drives still very active in early domesticating humans, the hierarchical ordering of humans into strata of superiors and inferiors is commonly viewed as simply human nature and an inevitable arrangement of relationships in human organizations and society.
Studies on domestication also tend to focus on the external factors, which influenced hunter/gatherer bands to settle in larger groups. For instance, in one perspective, increased population is viewed as causing problems with regard to access to scarce resources by wandering bands (19). Increased population everywhere meant the bands were less able to continue wandering in search of fresh resources. They were then forced to remain with other groups in certain areas and share increasingly scarce resources in those locations.
In the areas of scarcity, competition between groups for control of resources resulted in the more powerful bands in a region eventually gaining control. The result was social stratification (a system of superiors and inferiors) and a system of distributing resources which supported the system of stratification (20). The most powerful bands eventually emerged to sit at the top of the new hierarchical arrangements in these areas and it was this power arrangement that was eventually carried over to shape the developing social orders of the newly settled communities in many areas.
Growing population pressure on resources is then viewed as creating the environment in which hierarchical relationships develop and are then refined in emerging human society. This view sees hierarchy as a newly emerging reality among settling humans who came from a more pristine and egalitarian hunter/gatherer past. This view makes the assumption that hunter/gatherer bands were egalitarian groups and domestication spoiled this horizontal existence by leading to the invention of hierarchy as the way to organize and manage the more complex and crowded social life of domesticated societies.
However, this view of domestication ignores the fact that hierarchical domination had always been the manner in which life forms had related in the animal world, including throughout the hunter/gatherer period. Human hunter/gatherer bands continued the hierarchical relating of the primate bands that they descended directly from.
Hierarchy, then, is rooted in and originates from the more ancient animal past. It was a form of relating that continued on into hunter/gatherer bands and through these bands was carried over into domesticating human society. It was not a new invention of domesticating humans as some state formation researchers argue. Rather, hierarchy in domestication was simply the formalization or institutionalization of ancient forms of animal relating which had continued through the hunter/gatherer era.
From the series 'Taking The
Vertical Out Of God'
copyrighted material.
