Hierarchy is WEAK, not strong
Вставка
- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- In this video I'm going to talk about fragility, resilience, and antifragility, as well as complex systems analysis and emergence. Hope you enjoy!
Patreon: / anark
Tip: cash.app/$Apeiro
Twitter: / anarkyoutube
Mastodon: kolektiva.soci...
Anarchist Library: theanarchistli...
Libcom.org: libcom.org/tag...
![[UA] NAVI vs MOUZ | BO5 | IEM Rio 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CMBYk0cbGoA/mqdefault.jpg)
This reminds me of internet infrastructure: It routes around problems, which is something centralized problems can't do because the data flows in one direction.
Yes, indeed!
(From the Netherlands by the way?)
honestly, i struggle to understand what you are saying here ... how does internet infrastructure "route around problems"? This statement makes no sense. What are "centralized problems"? Do you mean centralized infrastructures? Also, what do you mean by "data flows in one direction"? The directionality of dataflow is not contingent on whether something is central or distributed, but whether it is one or bidirectional. Your local network inside your house is centralized, because however many devices you have in your local network, there is only one router that connects it to the rest. it's still bidirectional.
@@thomasmann4536 Internet uses decentralized communication and traffic can flow even if one device along the path gets taken out, because it'll simply take a detour in that case. This is unlike the telephone system of way in the past where a centralized coordinator had to physically enable the connection, and could therefore also freely tap the contents of the connection and deny access if they wish so. It's also been anti-fragile in the sense that it has developed to respond to threats of spying, modification, and impersonation.
The problem is that historically that's how most societies were formed (a horizontal structure, not a pyramid depicted in this video.) It's just over time as centers of power became so large and entrenched that they became abstracted that we lost what they were.
Generally historically how societies formed was you had large families that would form alliances with other families and found a tribe or a clan. As time goes on two or more of these clans would unite and form a city and then eventually several of these power bases of cities would unite and form a large state.
If we zoom down to something manageable to understand you look at a city. Lets take two historic tribes, the Hungarians and the Magyars. They formed an alliance and settled together agreeing not domination of one tribe over the other but a sharing of power. This power of course is held by the clan which is composed of families. So each of these founding families held a fragment of power and had every right to disrupt, dispute and contest the way things are going. It's not that they immediately to "there's a supreme boss and everyone has to do what he says!" The dichotomy of founding family and those who came into the land (or were native to it and occupied by the tribes) became the dichotomy of "well born" (nobles) and "low born", those without family or clan or in 15th century parlance "house."
The need for a central war leader was a constant thing and this position was usually held by a chief, or a king. In Rome's case that was the temporary post of dictator during the republic days. For most of history this figure was not truly supreme, merely the chief among equals, essentially ruling by consent of the families who founded the society. Rome was mentioned and what the Brutus family did to their last king is a PERFECT example of how kings always ruled with the consent of the powerful families and true tyrants were brought down. So the king would have an army and the families of the land would all form their own armies and generally most power went to the families. Kings generally wound up working with the common "low born" people to build loyalty there as a counterbalance to his precarious position. So instead of a straight hierarchy of power with the lords between the king and the common people it's actually more horizontal than it appears on the surface. Again, Rome is a great example, Julius and Octavian (Augustus) both from a formerly exiled family managed to hold such outstanding central power against the noble families by buying the loyalty of the low born and using them as their power base. Yet as Julius showed, the counterbalance is not absolute and his successor had to play to the mob AND consider the wishes of Rome's powerful families and houses.
And this is what makes it interesting, hierarchy historically does not mean a straight pyramid. It was always quite chaotic. The absolute monarchies that the "sun king" brought into Europe seemed to have changed things at first, but the reality is that his power was continually contested and balanced against by merchants and industrialists. So his "rivals" just changed not the nature of the structure itself. If you actually look at how these societies worked the map of power is more like what Anark drew on the right, not on the left. Essentially characterizing societies be it in 600 ad or today as the pyramid on the left is just... a cartoon caricature designed by someone who doesn't actually read history.
@@colonel__klink7548 great comment. People nowadays forget, that often time the "rulers" at the top actually were very dependent on those beneath them in the hierarchy nd were basically only ruling with their goodwill. The problem is that nowadays, too many people think of monarchies like modern dictatorships, and that's simply not how it worked
I think there’s also something to be said that, to people who are used to hierarchical systems, this kind of restructuring might look like a collapse. Recently the Zapatistas went through some restructuring, and their allies in other countries started calling it the end of the autonomous municipalities, even though that doesn’t seem to be the case
the fragility of centralised systems and resilience of decentalised systems was one of the things I loved learning the most when I was starting to read up on anarchism. In common culture societal systems that are authoritarian and iron fisted tend to carry an almost fetishistic air of "effectiveness through brutality" which I have always found uncomfortable, that in times of crisis the social structures that we must sacrifice in order to survive are those that aid the most people and that we instead need to reinforce structures of domination. Learning about how when we analyse these systems under a critical lens hierarchy and domination is what underperforms during crisis was as relieving as it was eye opening.
I think you are conflating hierarchy with domination/authoritarianism. Firstly, not all hierarchies are rigid, and some hierarchies are voluntary. Hierarchies, for example in companies, enable quicker decision making, thus allowing for more efficient mechanisms. The idea that in times of crisis, we "must" sacrifice structures, is untrue. Rather, most people *want* to sacrifice freedom in order to gain security, or rather the illusion of security, and not because an authority told them to, but because most people have grown accustomed to the safe environment of our countries and are afraid to give it up. Humans have always feared uncertainity and tried to control as much as possible of their surroundings, this is not something that was "invented" by hierarchies or authoritarianism.
In fact, your own argument that in times of crisis, certain structures are given up in favor of more authoritarian ones counters the very notion that centralised systems are less resilient than decentralised ones. If crisis and struggle cause a decentralised system to collapse in favor of a centralised one, that mean it's not resilient. And you can see this time and time again where a crisis causes a society to become more authoritarian, but not less.
@@BigFormula93 not at all. What I am saying is: the fact that people seek out authoritarian structures in times of crisis speaks to the fragility of non-authoritarian systems.
@@BigFormula93 Hmm, let's look. When the Weimar Republic suffered a crisis due to the worldwide economic crisis and hyperinflation, the NSDAP got into power, few years later turning the state into a totalitarian dictatorship.
When the campaign of 1920 went south and the USSR fell into political crisis, it turned from a still fairly open society into Stalinist terror.
When the planes crashed into the WTC, the US turned from an open country to one where your civil rights can be suspended indefinitely with only a suspicion of terrorism, where you can be held without a lawyer and tortured.
When COVID struck, many western countries turned from open democracies with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, into countries that ordered lockdowns and severe cuts to personal freedoms where you werent even allowed to visit your dying relatives, when there was plenty of evidence those measures were ineffective. Many of such additional laws made were not rescinded.
When Athens started losing the peloponnesian war, it turned into a military dictatorship.
When one man died and the other 2 stopped getting long, the Roman Republic turned into a dictatorship.
shall I go on?
I'm sorry, but history is full of examples of how free societies turn into tyrannies pretty quickly^^.
@@BigFormula93 ah yes, because when people VOTE for these changes, then it's of course not the common people seeking out authority in the face of crisis :D
the NSDAP was voted into power, going from less than 5% to 33%.
Stalin was elected the new secretary of state.
The covid restrictions had overwhelming support of the population (with e.g. 25% of the population in Germany demanding even more).
And the changes made in the US to the likes of the NDAA went through multiple different iterations of congress with republicans and democrats (who are representatives of the people).
I'm sorry, but you can't rly weasel your way out of this when talking about democracies where people have the power to vote in or out whoever they want. Especially when there were alternatives who were against the authoritarian course every single time.
reminds me of the fragility of mono crops vs the anti-fragility of biodiverse ecosystems. evolution of life has done a billion+ years of "experiments" on anti-fragility. should study life's "playbook"
James C. Scott's book Against the Grain discusses the fragility of the early state at length.
Great segment! I like the idea of societal structures mimicking biological structures in terms of resilience. DEMOCRATIZE THE ENTERPRISE
I would add that all hierarchical organizations still depend on a degree of non-hierarchical practice to survive; the difference being that such horizontality is limited to those within the same class. For instance, the general managers of the various departments of a workplace sharing information, or different states coordinating internationally to better exploit natural resources or police their populations.
This, of course, often runs against the winner-take-all incentives necessitated by hierarchy, which is where many of the fragility problems with hierarchy start.
Winner take all wasn't really the norm for past hierarchies. Winner take all is really a neo liberal position. Essentially winner take all comes from a perspective of growth and change, if you look at "traditional society" ie feudal society in Europe all the social structures and systems were built to try to achieve entropy. Each rung of society bound together in a series of mutual obligations and rights with the king existing to arbitrate for the lowest rungs of society against the middle (mayors, counts ect) or the upper rungs (dukes.) This actually created a power base for the king in every one of his subordinate's realms with which to counterbalance and contain their powers.
Economic activity was heavily regulated with price controls for both the floor AND the ceiling of products to prevent people from pricing the poor out of food but also preventing people from gaining market share by becoming too productive and destroying their economic rivals.
Most societies based upon physical coinage were this way where power is balanced and maintained instead of a constant accrual. Those societies pushed toward entropy with outside stressors like war being the only reason why change comes. Modern society, where debt is the principal aspect of currency (money is both a debt AND commodity, with the commodity aspect being it's principle aspect in ages past) coerces productivity and power growth. All men are essentially born into debt in these societies as money's principle aspect IS debt and so if you aren't growing you're sinking.
I think this is important to understand.
The world (and it's systems) are way to complex to be only working in one way everywhere all the time.
This is probably pedantic, but I don't think evolution is a system. Evolution specifically is a process. I think a system you could pick instead would be a species, an ecosystem, or an individual animal. I hope this is not too nitpicky. It just made the theory a bit more vague to me, in a video that's already hard to wrap my head around.
I agree with you. The ecosystem or the ecology would be the system and evolution would be the process of selection within that system.
This makes sense.
One of the hallmarks of an insecure hierarchy (as in, the people in power are preoccupied with maintaining their position of power) is for folks in positions of power to be averse to being fungible, because if every other member of that hierarchy had the skill set to perform the functions of that position of power, they'd be a lot more interchangable. In this manner, the fragility of hierarchy is a design feature, not a flaw.
It can be both.
I love listening to your videos whilst I’m at work. It keeps me going.
I will note a few things in my own studies on horizontal social structures:
1) All energy will flow best in a horizontal framework, not just information. Existence itself is a constant test to the structure of any organization or physical object or otherwise, and so a sort of passive adaptation to the surroundings allowed in horizontal structures (and not hierarchical structures) creates a substantial effect in the long term. If I need to travel to work because I work for some corporation, that car itself requires ADDITIONAL resources than if I DIDNT need to travel to work, a passive weakness invoked simply by participating in a hierarchical framework.
2) When different elements of the same system are allowed to adapt uniquely to their surroundings, while still maintaining communication, system-wide adaptation to events on minor scales will be allowed. If I try method 1 to complete a task, and my friend does method 2, we can both understand the value of each method.
3) When different mechanisms of the same system are allowed to operate situationally as opposed to rigidly, they can account for the subtle differences in the environment which are present in different conditions, thus allowing for complex responses to environmental shifts and imbalances to be sustained naturally and easily. No need for slow communication to some central figure, rather, one can act upon their immediate surroundings and directly communicate any shift in conditions to others around them, allowing them to adapt their own actions as well.
4) Since institutional forces require SUBSTANTIAL energy intake and output in order to not immediately degrade, they tend to simply fall apart when forced to retreat some part of their framework. Imagine if in America, we simply couldnt use trains for a week. The country would fall apart instantly. In a horizontal framework, when one loses ability to sustain some operation, they simply retract their tools and move along, maneuvering away from hardships more easily due to the fluidity of their framework.
edit: in addition to part 4, this is why institutional forces tend to get "trapped" during times of opposition; they cannot as easily simply move out of the way of opposition, and they leave a papertrail to themselves by holding a specific position in society. You can't just capture the leader when there IS no leader.
Never thought i would call myself an anarchist but here I am
Support your local anarchists👍❤️
Hey, Anark, I just finished the "State is counterrevolutionary" series, fantastic stuff. I'd like to see a potential series on different forms of anarchy, whether AnComs, AnSyns, AnMuts, Anarcho-Egoism etc...
It could be a good opportunity to show people the vast diversity in Anarchist thought & philosophy.
Rumor has it that A Modern Anarchism Part 4 will be going over different modern anarchist organizations, tactics, and structures. In the meantime Part 2 of A Modern Anarchism goes over the individualist strand of it in-depth.
@@eating_a_cookie ＼(^^)／
I would say that the number of possible connections is an important factor, and it is the primary argument in favour of hierarchy: It allows bigger organisations without increasing the number of connections. So there are three ways we can create decentralized organisations:
1. Figure out ways to increase the number of interactions without straining people, i.e. bring up the total number of connections. This is what you're thinking of here. This can be done through technological or cultural methods.
2. Figure out ways to deal with assymetry in number of connections without creating a pattern of power centralisation. i.e. make use of more social people (or better communicators! Writers are a valid category here, not just the charismatic faces) without creating a leader/follower dynamic. This primarly would be done through cultural methods in my opinion.
3. Limit group size to what people can handle and then figure out intergroup interaction patterns that don't lead to hierarchical patterns.
Of course, we can do / try all three at once. And we can have overlapping groups, just like friend groups, neighbourhood groups, and family groups can overlap without becoming a single group. And you can share a hobby with some friends but not others.
Just like the video, I like all this theory and it makes sense but I'm having a hard time thinking of it in practical terms.
Like how would this concretely translate to workplace hierarchy or supply chains?
@@MILOPETIT Well, point 3, limiting group size, isn't hard. That's just a matter of making everyone conscious of the effects of group size on behavioural patterns, that's spreading knowledge just like you and I are doing here :) Intergrou interaction patterns are complex and may lead to hierarchy, so that's the tricky bit. Though we are competent enough to deal with that as long as we are aware of the risks, this too is a matter of spreading knowledge, though in this case it is partially ideological so that gets closer to propaganda, and when it comes to propaganda you want to be careful: This leads to two problems: Lying becomes extremely tempting which is a slippery slope down to hierarchy; and propaganda pollutes societal feedback, potentially hiding underlying issues. If you've got social scientists studying group behaviour (and really, you should want that, with proper checks on their actions, of course), you've ruined all their work.
The 2nd point about assymmetry in connections is also partially about spreading knowledge, though it will require some more conscious intervention by the socially aware experts like social workers, ethologists, psychologists, and the like. The pattern of social groups being connected by hypersocial individuals is naturally occuring, and they don't inherently tend towards creating power structures since the personality traits that lead to flitting from social group to social group are the same personality traits that make you less vulnerable to peer pressure, which I think is a mayor factor in early power centralisation. Power structures in assymetric sociability would only happen when you're trying to artificially create hypersocial social structures, let it follow it's human messy nature and there won't be any problems.
I, as an introvert, can't imagine increasing social interactions without increasing strain, so as long as it remains mostly optional and somewhat limited I will defer to the experts here and follow their example (for as long as it feels good).
A powerful concept here is when someone has charisma and/or leadership skills they should be encouraged to develop those in their group. Leaders build leaders, and if everyone can lead, everyone has power.
Leadership and hierarchy do not need to be synonymous. Leadership should be technical and task oriented to create success for the whole group, and it should be taught and distributed to create an antifragile organization.
Really liked this one : )
One feedback on the use of the tablet would be to explore using different colors - for example, when circling neighborhoods, municipalities, etc, you could have used a different color for each level, so that when you drew the other neighborhoods, they'd stand out as the same level as the original neighborhood
when designing network applications i have to spent some thought on this aswell.
its easier to have a main server and clients, its also very well established how to build this (and caches are basically layers to the hierarchy)
but thats very fragile to many problems (server outages are the obvious one, but also the latency between server and client)
and peer to peer network is more robust and can achieve better performance, but developing it is a hassle :D mainly solving conflicts if clients disagree
applying this to human systems highlights the importance for people to understand how power works, if they do they can reduce hierarchy and become stronger for it, if they dont outside manipulation is a very real danger
Okay can we get Dr Zoe Baker to recognize the academic vigor of Mr Baryon's lecture? Excited for more classes!
Thanks, Anark, it's a perfect structure for rhizomatic resistance, exciting stuff!!! Interstitial transformation here we come!
I think the tablet worked very well. A picture's worth a thousand words, and the diagrams made it much more evident how a horizontal structure is fundamentally different from a hierarchy vis-a-vis fragility.
Complex systems are great. There is something really cool to their perseverance. And, I always love to see their dynamics unfold!
Humans have culture, which is more horizontal and faster than gene adaptation.
We can build resilience and immunity to damage, perhaps without taking too much permanent damage.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. -Rocky
Just want to say you’re a really great and eloquent teacher. Really well done!
watching this video i kept thinking of ecosystems. most, when working as they should, can withstand a lot of external pressure before breaking BUT once broken are hard to repair. feels like we are in the ladder position politically rn
oh you talk about this aswell, whoops
Great lecture Prof Anark!
Great episode, very helpful, thank you!
This reminds of me of Ozymandias. Despite having all the power in the world, the King Ozymandias and his hierarchy still collapsed in the end, demonstrating the fragility of hierarchy.
Also, if you're reading this Anark, you should do a video (unless you have already) describing how an anarchist military would function and its strengths in a similar manner to this video. Too many liberals will see the idea of anarchism and immediately dismiss it because "it has always collapsed." Good work as always.
I fuc*ing loved the lecture theme for the video!!
It is really out of the box on youtube
came here from the post about the Q&A Andrewism made and i'm about to start binging your content because this was a very clear explanation of the content
Love your videos. Thank you, Anark.
Clear explanation of horizontal systems! Though I feel there’s a lot left hanging on “different systems handle different stressors with varying success”. To try to explain what I mean (and this might be pushing the abstract too far) but you showed how a horizontal system is more anti-fragile or resilient to events that damage nodes. However what about a stressor that is magnified by communication lines, an example being a stressor that behaves more like a viral pathogen. To me the increase in connections between nodes would provide more pathways for that type of stressor to spread. This is why I’ve never found what has been explained to me as “pure anarchy” to be very convincing especially when applied to larger systems. You might be getting at this towards the end and just don’t have time to fully flesh out the idea but I feel both hierarchies and completely decentralized horizontal systems are fragile in different contexts which to me seems to be a defeater to both ideas. It seems that true anti-fragile systems are extremely complex (like how our bodies/muscles are really only anti-fragile when you fold in all other biological systems in us). They usually involve a layering or blending of maybe conditional hierarchies woven through decentralization. Fascinating stuff though makes me miss my smaller political theory lectures.
Yep, That Shows that "Anarchy is Order" is Correct!
Thank you, Anark - excellently articulated, as always!
This, no doubt, has been said before, but I believe it bears repeating: you are doing work of truly critical importance, cutting through the nonsense people are fed by the powers-that-be and clarifying misconceptions that many have, unconsciously, integrated into their world-views. The level of genuine, thoughtful and profound analysis that you conduct is exactly what the world needs today, and seeing it espoused gives me so much hope for the future.
(Love the new tablet, too, by the way! Antifragile, evolving pedagogy? 😂)
Great video as always, thank you!
I'll use this argument, it's helpful to explain why I support Anarchism.
Great video! Could it be possible to make your upload your videos to some podcasting service. They would be great short format podcast episodes (short in comparison to most podcasts). Since your videos normally do not rely heavily on visuals, I think it would be a great fit, as well as added way of accessing your information.
This was fantastic, thank you!
Nassim Taleb always has interesting ideas. Thanks for the vid.
Yes more videos like this please! Visual learning is very very useful. Alg0rithm!! #system #order #theory #environment #environmental
21:40 I guess a good form of summarizing anarchism is that it’s a form of socioeconomic and geopolitical engineering using biomimicry to organize society on a large scale. Furthermore getting our value motives in line with a more superjective compatibilistic system rather than a pretty abjective status quo in most capitalist and communist countries… legendary, enlightened anarchists!
great video.
4:58 Lecture me, daddy Anark!
Thank you so much, I’ve been wondering about this a lot lately! Love you Anark!
93 93/93
Even with a social democratic system (with libertarian and socialist characteristics) that would have universal basic income, a plurality to a majority of businesses being cooperatives and strong labour unions being everywhere that’s still old school capitalist enterprises would be better than what we’re doing now imo.
Great video as always.
Antifragility: "Anything that doesn't kill me only pisses me off."
Don't know if I'm misunderstanding how emergence works but it kind of reminded me of modeling a 3D cg character, particularly when you have something unique in mind and at least at my level need to look up disparate tutorials to find the tools and techniques to achieve specific forms and effects; when I just finished this one aspect of my character which was unique on it's own way, it felt so wondrous to have made that. Particularly how the small pieces managed to build up into a greater whole.
Emergence is when you figure out walking and collision detection, and all of a sudden your 3D model can climb stairs without you ever programming a single line of stair climbing code.
@@bramvanduijn8086 That's fair, thanks for the clarification!
New Anark video!
Anark's editing skills went from "bad" to "not so bad"
This is also a really good point against the Maoist China as well. Like a single blow towards the leadership lead to the downfall of the entire so called people's revolutionary committees because at the end they had a hierarchical structure. I'm so disappointed at times that Maoists ignore this issue and fail to accept that their hesitancy to dissolve the hierarchy was THE major setback for a socialist China from ever existing.
Thanks man! 🤘
This definitely began to get me to look at the stability of different socioeconomic systems in a different way, but I think there is a lot more that can be uncovered in this topic. One of humanities greatest strengths has always been our adaptability; yet we build such rigid and absolute systems that are so black and white. It’d be interesting to eventually explore the idea of what a non-rigid, adaptable system within anarcho-communism could look like. I’d love to hear from anyone else if they have more to say about this; I’m still new to anarchism and only picked up Malatesta for the first time today so there may already be an answer I don’t know about
Read "Anarchy Works". Study the Makhnovshchina and how they functioned.
@@JohnDoe-xs5gv I did a brief gloss over of what you mentioned and goddamn I didn’t know a single thing about anarchism in the USSR. It was interesting as hell. I’ll definitely be delving further into researching it
@@calebdunlap7566 Yes, a commonly overlooked faction during the civil war. If it wasn't for the Black Army (Makhnovshchina) the Red Army (Bolsheviks) would have lost and it would have been a White victory. Leninists like to forget this fact however.
The struggle between freedom and authoritarianism is also the struggle between complexity and oversimplification/erasure.
The anarchist theory is so mind-blowing, great video and great channel
More drawings and diagrams please. Information mapping is easy to understand.
The core difference between horizontal built structures and horizontal natural structures is that the natural structures (such as evolution) will eliminate a "failed" node (a species that is not adapted will go to extinct) whereas a built structure will reinforce a "failed" node (identify the cause and prevent re-occurence, such as patching vulnerabilities in software or improving opsec in organisations)
A muscle flex versus chalk cracking and flaking
Great video, where can I find resources on this?
Recommend reading Nassim Taleb's "Antifragile"
correction: feudal systems had elaborate succession laws preventing exactly the type of infighting you present, which is why, in most cases, the death of a king, even childless, did not result in the collapse of the entire structure. Even in the cases where the succession was not clear, and there was a succession war, the system did not collapse, but continued as before once the matter was settled.
This is exactly why feudalism survived for so long: because it was NOT vulnerable to events like that (plus, because the people were actually quite autonomous. it was more a blend between a hierarchy at the top and a decentralised network at the bottom)
I consider this a very good correction. I agree with your assessment in that they safeguarded against their fragility. The broader point, about them tending towards warring states periods, remains true though. Their lines of succession were not a very durable strategy for maintaining cooperation in the system. There were many confounding factors that led to instability in this arrangement, perhaps because a lord was unable to bear children, perhaps because there were deaths in the line, claims of illegitimacy, religious fissures, or even just power politics.
On the second point, while I agree with your assessment in describing the diffusion of power in a general sense, in practice it was still very hierarchical throughout. The lords were lords over very large parcels of land and often had many, many serfs that they exploited to extract portions of their harvest (or in currency in later cases), could conscript them to war without recourse, could abuse or mistreat them at a whim. The peasantry, more often than not, lived in fear of the political leanings of lords not only present within their own fiefdom, but also upon the border of their fiefdom, and even more so if they were bordering another nation, because if that lord ended up in dispute with the lord who owned their territory, the peasantry would be first to suffer. The peasantry had no power to make decisions in society and were entirely a subject of the lords and the king.
It is true to say that the lords were often very free actors. They could even be given almost complete autonomy to act under the king, depending on the king. Some kings kept their lords under very strict control and dictated actions from above prolifically, while others were more about handling their own affairs and letting the lords have their way. This also changed depending on loyalty to the king and their claim to the throne. The two main strategies for kings to maintain loyalty was through fealty or through fear. Very strict monarchies tended to come from use of fear to maintain loyalties, whereas fealty generally led to more cooperative environments between the king and the lords.
But it was still a very tumultuous method, precisely because of the hierarchical structure it was posited on. Different hierarchical power structures were all competing against one another, dealing with political deceit and the constant threat of protracted land wars. In every one of these wars of succession, the hierarchical structures which had existed before broke apart and reformed into new ones. The system of monarchy itself persisted, but "monarchy" as a concept is not the system being discussed. Instead, here, I am talking about "monarchies." The discussion of the persistence of a method for political organization is a question of hegemony and revolution; which is a question of process. Here I am talking about the power structure of hierarchy and its response to stressors.
@@Anark first of all, thank you for answering, and sorry for the wall of text you're about to witness :)
What you describe is a very inaccurate, sensationalized view of feudal societies perpetuated by modern media that does not find much evidence in academia and historical writing. Actually, it's not so modern. Beginning in the enlightenment period of the 19th century, it became a common thing to "smear" the earlier ages. Things like "ius prima nocte" (i.e. the lord being able to sleep with a newly wed woman first) are however completely fabricated and there is plenty of evidence against it. In fact, lords very rarely "exploited" their peasants for one big reason: They could not afford to. These peasants were the ones who built their homes and fed them, which is why they had to keep them somewhat happy. They also didn't have the resources to control their peasants or coerce them to do anything, which is why even serfs (and not all peasants were serfs, some were freemen who did not have a lord) enjoyed a great deal of autonomy. We know of how much tax peasants paid: they paid 10% of their harvests to their lord, they paid 10-15% to their town, and up to 10% to the church. This is less than in many western countries today.
Serfs were also very rarely conscripted. Most lords, when they went to war would hire mercenaries, often consisting of second and third sons (who did not inherit any land or titles but had still gotten military training). Why? Because peasants would make poor soldiers because of a lack of training, and the lord would have to spend money to equip them. It was just a far better investment to get more professional soldiers. Of course levies existed, but you can see how infrequent their use was if you consider, for example, the 100 years war, where despite prolonged periods of fighting on their own soil, France was still doing fine economically, even so much so that they could start modernizing their army towards a professional one in the early 15th century (Gendarmes, who were also not peasants). Only the introduction of professional armies and elaborate bureaucracy in the times of absolutism allowed for the lord to control his peasants more directly, but that is precisely when the age of feudalism ended.
On a side note, you use the term "warring states", which is actually a specific time period in chinese history, where seven kingdoms fought over dominion over China, with Qin finally coming out on top. However, China had always been more centralized and it is hard to call it a "feudal society". Nothing like this ever happened in Europe, where succession conflicts were usually very swift. The big ones like the Spanish Succession were such large conflicts not because the succession wasn't clear, but precisely because of the implications of it being so clear: France did not go to war with the Habsburg because of the throne, but because it did not want to find itself in a 2-front scenario against its arch-rival, and the other parties joined out of political calculus that can be seen in any political system (for example in the Korean War).
I think your assessment of "tumultuous period" is resting on flawed ground. You look into the amount of wars and battles that have been waged in that period, while neglecting, that for example the holy roman empire often times saw centuries of absolute peace within its borders of countless of fractured states.
which brings me to your point about individual monarchies versus monarchy as a whole. Well then: The holy roman empire as a feudal system existed from about 800 AD until its formal dissolution by Napoleon in 1806, with the biggest change being the proclamation of the Erbkaisertum (hereditary rule) and the peace of westphalia after the 30 years war (cuius regio eius religio). After the dissolution, various states like the kingdom of Bavaria, the kingdom of Saxony, Hannover or Westphalia did not even survive for 100 years, and the German Empire lasted from 1871 to 1918. The Weimarer Republic from 1918-1933. The third Reich from 1933-1945. The German splinter states from 1945-1990, and the unified German Federal Republic from 1990 til now. The HRE takes the cake by a mile.
Similarly, the kingdom of France existed from the 9th century AD until 1789, and now in less than 250 years, there have already been 5 french republics, plus the empire of Napoleon, and 2 other brief intermissions of Napoleon 3. and Vichy France.
I could go on, but instead I am going to recommend to you some historians who have debunked many of the erroneous notions of the "oppressive and cruel" middle ages:
Chris Wickham, who wrote about the so called "dark ages" (which is a term not used anymore by historians because of the overwhelming evidence of how those times were not the regressive era we first thought. another fairy tale of the enlightenment.), Marc Bloch, who wrote extensively about Feudalism, and Norman Cantor.
hope, this helps :)
I am curious how this system of communities can form mutual defense formations. Let me explain:
In current military operations, command and control is a two way process. Command issues orders and mission requirements, while the control flows from the lower levels to the commander. Basically control dictates the ability and expectation of a force to the commander, who then issues commands, and receives feedback. With a flattened hierarchy, I am curious about how to implement effective battle space coordination, as large scale forces rely on the smaller forces in their area to accomplish their objectives to be successful.
I imagine this would be decided in the following manner, but I am open to suggestions.
First, experience within the defensive organization creates potential candidates for command. Those in the formation decide who is their commander, and cedes decision making power to that individual, enabling command. That elected commander is subject to withdrawal based on the formation’s consensus. The commander can conduct planning and coordination for the formation, and enable a more complete battlefield operation. I also assume that the commanders of the various forces in a flattened hierarchy will coordinate their plans to achieve their objectives.
I think that during active combat, the authority of the commander to issue orders, as it was established by consensus, must be followed. After action review of plans enable the formation to evaluate and implement improvements to their capabilities, while also addressing misuse of forces when necessary. This final step ensures that the elected commander is accountable to the troops in that formation, thus returning power to the collective after combat has concluded. I think it also is prudent if the defense formation is a volunteer force that agrees to limitations on their liberties as part of their assignment, and that they are afforded certain privileges within the community based on their forfeiture of liberties. Perhaps this could look like an increased stipend or allowance for additional luxury items that are otherwise available but more expensive.
This is the part that I get a little hazy on, particularly.
You actually just intuited the way that the anarchist militias in the Spanish Civil War functioned pretty well
Hierarchy can only exist through intimidation, coercion, and violence. If a relationship between two entities lacks this, it is not a hierarchy but merely a consensual relationship.
What you explained here is similar to the Black Army during the Russian Civil War. Firstly, all soldiers enlisted voluntarily, there was no conscription. Secondly, all policies were decided through assemblies and officers were abolished, instead commanders were elected and directly recallable. These are not hierarchies or positions of authority, these are consensual relationships. The main role of commander was to speak to the other elected commanders to coordinate country-wide plans, but other than that the soldiers came together in assembly to discuss plans. It's the same structure as any other anarchist structure but for the military. People come together, make a plan, and send one of their own to the council to rely that decision with everyone else.
Anark can you speak about Jamaica anarchist organization wether on the island or in diaspora or in the Caribbean in general
7:50 you need what is called a "complete graph," in graph theory.
I like that you drew hierarchy from a side perspective and anarchy from a top down perspective because the missing axis in each drawing illustrates what each system prioritizes. Hierarchy essentially views the world 1-dimensionally because it dedicates an entire axis to measuring the authority/domination of each person. Whereas anarchy can view the complexity of the world more fully by disregarding such socially constructed values like authority. Of course, none of this would apply to a 3D model, so it isn’t a perfect analogy, but I think it does have some value since humans are much better at depicting and comprehending things in 2D than 3D.
i didnt sit through this but the use of muscles is good.
Up for the next Q&A. If Hierarchy is inherently fragile, why was most of history and most territory except for occasional pockets governed by hierarchical systems?
Anti-fragile things get stronger in reaction to attacks, why didn't anarchic systems simply reject any attempts anyone made for hierarchy?
Tell me if you select this.
reminds me of arboreal vs rhizomatic systems
Good parallel. Very similar concepts
Great Video!
Off topic, but do you have recommended resources for learning about socialist Yugoslavia?
Very good vid. Reminds me a lot of deleuze's political project.
The systemic stressor of corruption can bring short term gains to the hierarchical structure, but long term failure. How the "horizontal" system fares with corruption inputs would be of interest.
it was good using the tablet!
Thoughts on cybernetics/the VSM?
Very cool stuff. Will be implementing VSM in part 4 of A Modern Anarchism
One aspect i would have found interesting to discuss here is wether this applies to the structure or the constituents of a system.
Is a resilient system one that manages to preserve the power structures (ie the lines and organization of the nodes) in times of crisis or one that preserves the nodes while being able to change the way they are organized and interact?
14:35 justice for bottom left node
great video though
In that sense perhaps anarchism is like permaculture...
Excellent as usual
I think there's more to be said about black swan events. If you didn't do that to save time, that's totally fair. The point of designing for black swans isn't just to withstand them when they happen, it's to prevent them as well. For instance, you don't just want to design buildings to withstand the worst earthquake measured so far. If you do that and the new worst earthquake hits, you'll be in trouble. This is a black swan event we can predict andaccount for, thus making it no longer a black swan event. Then again, it has been a few years since I read antifragile, so I might be off on that.
I thought the point of designing for black swans is that you can't design for specific black swans, but you can design for disruption. So if you design a building that is capable of resisting shocks instead of a building good at resisting earthquakes, you will get a building that can also handle a truck crashing into it.
Black Swan events are precisely those disastrous events that you can't/don't plan for. In fact, Taleb spends a considerable amount of the book talking about how over-planning based on current expectations is nearly impossible and that, instead, we have to build systems that are responsive to stressors regardless of their nature. Antifragility is a fact about how systems are structured which is embodied in bottom-up forms of organization and which cannot be modeled by top-down systems. Top-down systems would have to cease to be top-down systems to be properly flexible to incoming stressors. Instead, they are forced to do faulty planning which never truly prepares them for unforeseen calamities.
humans also have the benefit of being able to learn from others.
i can imagine a horizontal structure working like the immune system in that once a solution is found, it is copied throughout the whole system; and after the infection is dealt with, a few nodes keep the solution ready to activate it if required.
continuing the immune system metaphor, would there be cancer (one of the most antifragile systems in the body) and if so, what would it be?
I wonder what autoimmune disease means for this metaphor.
Third!
you should do a review of Stalins "anarchism or socialism" book. even if it is longer compared to other arguments put forth against it will probably overall help the anarchist cause. and there will probably be some people who use that book as an argument against anarchism.
But this conception only takes into account Black Swans, which are by definition extraordinary events. The ordinary struggles are the day to day, and hierarchy is excellent at apportioning those. This is the problem that anarchism needs to face: that morality and efficiency are not necessarily compatible. We need to convince people to be less successful in the day to day for the general good to be achieved.
Why does "bottom up" not sound horizontal?
What you call a horizontal multilevel system is PRECISELY a hierarchical system. Once you start having layers of scale dependent groups that is hierarchies so you are only restructuring the hierarchies in to hierarchies.
You are just talking about structure and iteration. Hierarchy is a relation of domination and monopolization. Horizontality does not preclude nested structures; in fact, anarchists have always supported confederation of councils.
@@Anark I agree with that except that "confederation of councils" IS hierarchical.
If all hierarchies are bad(because they are innately power concentrating) then your "confederation of councils" IS hierarchical.
What you show is a hierarchic structure which is also known as a Tree in CS and mathematics.
Then you show a complete graph which you call a "horizontal structure.
Those are fundamentally different structures.
But then you start grouping nodes. THIS is exactly what a hierarchy is. Your grouping is a topology of subset inclusion.
E.g., what you are doing is looking at various subsets of the powerset(the set of all subsets).
If you have n "nodes" and you put them in a set S then various subsets represent various connection types. The set of singletons would represent a set where everyone is completely disconnected(this would represent no society). The set itself would represent all are connected(a completely flat "horizontal" system. Any other subset would represent that those nodes/elements are connected.
E.g., suppose we have 5 people/nodes S = {a,b,c,d,e}.
Then some subset such as {a,d,e} would be a "flat horizontal" group for a, d, and e(all have the same level of "power".
If we take some collection of subsets(a subset of the powerset then it will represent various possibilities of designing a system.
Unfortunately you will Always have concentration of power. You can't get away from it unless you have a completely flat system(which is just having the set itself).
E.g, {{a,b,c}, {d,e}} is a system of 2 completely independent components but both are flat. If we add in a "grouping"(which is what you do when you start circling you nodes) then we must have {{a,b,c},{d,e},{a,b,c,d,e}}. This new set joins in the lower subsets BUT through the inclusion relation(A is a subset of B is the same as saying A is included in B) shows that you have a hierarchy. (You can draw the hierarchy but I cannot do it on youtube but it is pretty basic and searching wikipedia for powerset, inclusion relation, etc will give the results).
The point is that this "inclusion" relation is innate, it is mathematical and once you get away from a completely connected "totally flat horizontal system" you will have a hierarchical system and over time it will become exactly like any other hierarchical system(after all, that is what happened to America more or less).
Those "confederations" will slowly dissolve in to a power structure/hierarchy because that is their raw form(it is mathematical and the innate power imbalance in individuals and groups will crystalize out and over time more in to it's more pure form). There is no way to not have that happen. It's built in to the abstract structure of the system. Once you start grouping things in to layers of subgroups upon layers THAT is a hierarchy and since power is innately bound up in it you have a power structure which will ALWAYS funnel power to the top layer.
No matter what scheme you think you can devise to thwart the hierarchy you'll fail. There will always be someone/something that will work to exploit it given enough time.
All you have done as far as I can tell is reconfigured the jargon using different terminology but no matter what you call it: representative democracy, confederations, hierarchies, etc they are all the same abstract system where power flows from the bottom up.
This is why nature if filled with hierarchies. Power is hierarchy(power derives itself from hierarchy). Ants, Bees, you, any society, etc.
The only way out of the issue is either to accept it(and all it's problems due to how humans implement it) and try to optimize it to work better OR to not accept any of it.
I don't know the answer to the issue. It is a fundamental issue and it might be a fundamental contradiction to want to have a fair system(as there is always going to be power struggles in nature even in "flat systems"(so no system is truly flat)).
I'm not judging your system. I'm simply saying it is a hierarchy by it's internal structure and you have simply disguised it through a change in terminology and, in this case, how you drew it. They may appear different but ultimately are the same in terms of the flow of power. To control that flow of power to make it "work" will require "rules of the game" that will be exploited and broken down over time(so at best you are stuck with the problem of trying to design a perfectly defended system).
I'm not saying the problem is easy to solve, it is one of the hardest problems humans have to deal with. No one has ever been successful at balancing and constraining power and likely it will never happen. I have come to the conclusion that it likely is not suppose to happen. One must make some compromise. Maybe your system makes the right amount of compromise but I would say that it is an extremely difficult issue to solve. you want want power in a flat system but power is innately unstable which will warp that flat system in to a hierarchy(specially when it runs up to other power). So we as humans either have to accept not having any power(which we cannot since you cannot make it a universal law) or you simply try to design the best possible hierarchical system that somehow limits power in the best possible way; to do that requires a great amount of intelligence, foresight, and power to implement.
@@Anark
@@Anark ... Unfortunately you will Always have concentration of power. You can't get away from it unless you have a completely flat system(which is just having the set itself).
E.g, {{a,b,c}, {d,e}} is a system of 2 completely independent components but both are flat. If we add in a "grouping"(which is what you do when you start circling you nodes) then we must have {{a,b,c},{d,e},{a,b,c,d,e}}. This new set joins in the lower subsets BUT through the inclusion relation(A is a subset of B is the same as saying A is included in B) shows that you have a hierarchy. (You can draw the hierarchy but I cannot do it on youtube but it is pretty basic and searching wikipedia for powerset, inclusion relation, etc will give the results).
The point is that this "inclusion" relation is innate, it is mathematical and once you get away from a completely connected "totally flat horizontal system" you will have a hierarchical system and over time it will become exactly like any other hierarchical system(after all, that is what happened to America more or less).
Those "confederations" will slowly dissolve in to a power structure/hierarchy because that is their raw form(it is mathematical and the innate power imbalance in individuals and groups will crystalize out and over time more in to it's more pure form). There is no way to not have that happen. It's built in to the abstract structure of the system. Once you start grouping things in to layers of subgroups upon layers THAT is a hierarchy and since power is innately bound up in it you have a power structure which will ALWAYS funnel power to the top layer.
No matter what scheme you think you can devise to thwart the hierarchy you'll fail. There will always be someone/something that will work to exploit it given enough time.
All you have done as far as I can tell is reconfigured the jargon using different terminology but no matter what you call it: representative democracy, confederations, hierarchies, etc they are all the same abstract system where power flows from the bottom up.
This is why nature if filled with hierarchies. Power is hierarchy(power derives itself from hierarchy). Ants, Bees, you, any society, etc.
The only way out of the issue is either to accept it(and all it's problems due to how humans implement it) and try to optimize it to work better OR to not accept any of it.
I don't know the answer to the issue. It is a fundamental issue and it might be a fundamental contradiction to want to have a fair system(as there is always going to be power struggles in nature even in "flat systems"(so no system is truly flat)).
I'm not judging your system. I'm simply saying it is a hierarchy by it's internal structure and you have simply disguised it through a change in terminology and, in this case, how you drew it. They may appear different but ultimately are the same in terms of the flow of power. To control that flow of power to make it "work" will require "rules of the game" that will be exploited and broken down over time(so at best you are stuck with the problem of trying to design a perfectly defended system).
I'm not saying the problem is easy to solve, it is one of the hardest problems humans have to deal with. No one has ever been successful at balancing and constraining power and likely it will never happen. I have come to the conclusion that it likely is not suppose to happen. One must make some compromise. Maybe your system makes the right amount of compromise but I would say that it is an extremely difficult issue to solve. you want want power in a flat system but power is innately unstable which will warp that flat system in to a hierarchy(specially when it runs up to other power). So we as humans either have to accept not having any power(which we cannot since you cannot make it a universal law) or you simply try to design the best possible hierarchical system that somehow limits power in the best possible way; to do that requires a great amount of intelligence, foresight, and power to implement.
@@Anark To be clear, since you probably won't read all that I wrote,
My point is that ALL "nested structures" are implicitly hierarchical and it is this that make all hierarchical structures(not just the obvious ones) become corrupted and solidify in to "dominance and monopolization".
That is, it is only an issue of time. Obviously a pure hierarchy directly built on control takes no time to solidify in to one... but any other system that tries to design itself to avoid the power flow of hierarchies will succumb over time as they will be corrupted.
While it may be possible to avoid that through a extremely well designed system, it is likely that it only slows down the decay/corruption/transformation. So at best it is a kicking of the can which may serve some purpose.
Hoping for the best won't cut it when the system is "nested". Nested is fundamentally hierarchical. The power flow may not be dominant but it has a positive growth rate until it implodes and destroys everything.
I was wondering, what’s y’all’s opinion on the idea of viral content promoting anarchism as a means of initiating direct action? Also, is it necessary in your minds for an anarchist federation to have diplomatic representative(s) with no domestic power that are elected through a democratic process are necessary to legitimize and acclimate the world to an anarchist federation? I ask mainly because that in my eyes could possibly be the only way to avoid a counter revolutionary coalition war…
Hang on, surely stressors can do more than just take out one or multiple parts of the system? Surely they could also do things like disrupt communication, corrupt information, or make a part go rogue and overtake parts of the system surrounding it. Or other things I can't even think of. I think some of these are better addressed by horizontal organization, and others better by hierarchical organization. I don't think this is the slam dunk we'd want it to be, though I might be wrong on that.
It seems to me that, within the examples you laid out, hierarchical organizations are both more susceptible and more deeply impacted by all of them, as information bottlenecks inherent to hierarchies make disrupting communication and corrupting information much easier. Personally the overtaking part still also seems like more a problem for hierarchical systems, as the lowest nodes tend not to have adequate defenses of their own, because they are not sovereign.
Yet for most of recorded history hierarchy chads have continuously dominated those that resist.
Hierarchy is more powerful, it's more in tune with our nature and reality.
You have it backwards. The people who instill hierarchies squeeze more out of the people at the bottom and can thus become "chads" as you call them. There isn't a big man until the concept of tribute comes into existence.
So the history of hierarchy has been people trying to found the perfect one, squeezing all they can out of the people beneath them to "become chads", and then getting overthrown and executed ad infinitum. It's just a broken model
How about we replace “survival of the fittest” with “population resilience through diversity@
What is being shown at 19:38?
Slime mold self-organizing
1:40 immune system! Lol
False! I am an Anarcho Communist and I am incredibly fragile! 😝
Cute outfit today
I guess this means I'm an anti-fragile snowflake? lmao
I love how often tyrannical systems blame others for things they are/do. It seems to happen in every instance. Fragility is part of it
Perhaps the unconscious of tyrannical actors displays their exasperation at the weakness of the system they’re trying to wrangle
I have a question, if humanity isn't equal then why are hierarchies not a thing? Some people are superior to others, poc are superior to whites, lgbt people are superior to straight people, then wouldn't they be then higher than them in a social and life ladder?
Humans are equal in worth, but they are nonetheless different. The goal is to abolish the relations of superior and inferior, not to flip the pyramid upside down
@@Anark Why not? Isn't it better if the only people that get to suffer are white, abled, and cishet? I'm not making a strawman btw, this is something I'm seriously trying to grasp
16:58 Stopped watching
I... Think that there was a fundamental misunderstanding of how hierarchical power structures work... If you look at a medieval feudal society power and information spheres overlapped. Mapping the power structure looks far more like on the right than the left. In fact most kings spent a great deal of effort arbitrating on behalf of interests of lower rungs of society against counts and dukes as a means of maintaining their loyalty against his rivals which are the lords particularly in charge of duchies. Machiavelli counsels for this saying "The loyalty of the people is easily bought for all they want is not to be oppressed." Further stating that (paraphrasing) "The only true ally a prince has in a time of stress and weakness is the people." There was also in the military forms a great deal of duplicating of military power. Each point of power essentially had many systems built in to help it maintain a degree of independence. When the duchies of England told the king he couldn't raise taxes without their say so the king just... paid for what he wanted out of his own pocket because he had a duplicate power and wealth structure to counterbalance the authority from the duchies (that particular king used his power structure to build the largest ship building industry in Europe at the time.)
I think a complete misunderstanding of these power structures is why you aren't able to explain how anarchism is more "antifragile" than hierarchical society but there is no society on the planet with the population, territory, economic productivity per person, social welfare per person ect as France, much less the USA. You said that in nature fragile things don't survive, well anarchism doesn't seem to survive save in a few special cases. Such as the harsh geography of the Chiapas that prevents any sort of authority from really reaching them, or the harsh realities of Syria where outside forces have systemically dismantled any power structure or held them back in the case of Turkey creating a wasteland in both terms of authority but also *economic productivity.* I am so sympathetic to the moral call of anarchism but I'm so suspect in all of these videos because nobody can seem to explain why Anarchism isn't the norm if it's better. Why did Anarchism fall out during the agrarian revolution when *productivity increased allowing everyone to have more.*
As an anarchist, how is hierarchy fragile when it’s persisted throughout all of recorded history? You could say they collapse and get replaced with others eventually but the hierarchy is stable nonetheless
No, it's less stable than horizontal structures.
@@BigFormula93 the hierarchy is stable but who is in it isn’t.
@@something1600 but then why haven’t they left whatsoever throughout all of recorded history?
@@BigFormula93 sure, but hierarchy as a concept is still around and never left. Why hasn’t hierarchy period collapsed? It’s like saying humanity is unstable because we all die, but humanity is actually quite resilient as a whole.
@@kx7500An entire species is different from a concept. So are you asking about why hierarchies exist at all if they’re so fragile? Like why hierarchy, as a concept, hasn’t completely disappeared from reality? 1) Concepts don’t disappear that easily regardless of how much they fail. 2) Hierarchy first had to be forced onto people, a powerful force/individuals seized control, and instituted them as normal. 3) Other people then inherited those hierarchies, perhaps by force or inheritance, and tried to perpetuate them, maybe for better or worse. Yet, they kept collapsing and each time, and then people tried to change it, selling anarchism - equality, while saying they’re the only ones who can provide it or stabilize it. This is a mix of the carrot and the stick, seize control of the broken remains, enforce your power, incentivize people to join you by selling them anarchism, and demonizing their means of doing things themselves. This is why history has both trended towards democracy, and yet pulled backed to authority. Power perpetuated itself, collapsed, people realized more democracy was better, and the loop/cycle continued until modern day. Hierarchy lives because it sells the idea we can’t be free or equal. It’s easy to demonify people, declare them evil, failures, weak, and that’s what perpetuates the hierarchy.
“The nature doesn’t use hierarchies”. Have you guys not learned about CENTRAL nervous system in the humans? Or you are saying the bees are smarter than the humans? Or more antifragile than us?
The central nervous system does not have control over the entire body. Indeed, every system in the body is mutually reinforcing and contingent on scope. You cannot, for example, command your immune system to function at your whim, though you can do things with your consciousness to improve it. Your immune system can impose fever or autoimmune disorders on the rest of your body and even distort your thought processes, though it does not drive your systems of thought. The human body is, in fact, horizontal in nature. Hierarchies are arbitrarily created by humans who do not understand the complexity of nature.
@@Anark Yes, the central nervous system does not have direct control over the entire body. The same way an absolutist Kind does NOT have direct control over the entire population. They wouldn't tell me when to wake up, whom to marry or what to eat. They can only influence that the same way the CNS does and only in certain situation to intervene (CNS actually CAN influence the immune system by many ways, but the obvious example would be by taking a medicine). But the Kings don't control much of their direct subordinates, either. They delegate functions to them "in their names", but do not micromanage. The old, "feodal", medieval absolutist monarchy is much closer to what you described as nature than anything else you proposed. Actually, the facts are that this "old hierarchical system" have survived since the dawn of the civilization up until the Marxist cancer have arrived. The modern universal democracy (let alone anarchy of Trotsky/Lenin types) haven't survived properly 100 years and are falling apart basically everywhere.
Seriously, dude? Deleting my stuff because I am better than you are? Is that the “anarchy “ style? Putin style? Well, his grandfathers were “anarchists” in the 1917 revolution, as you are
@@VictorTashkov You haven't had anything deleted. Your comment was the sort of trivial misunderstanding that many people have every single day and was addressed directly above. You have probably just been thumbs'd down by a huge number of people and pushed to the bottom.
@@Anark I replied to your answer. And the misunderstanding is 100% percent from your side. I am not going to write again an explain why the brain (CNS) does not control the entire body, but neither do an absolutist King. have also clearly shown that the medieval monarchy of absolutist type is much more "antifragile" and resembling nature than all of the fantasies you are talking about. The monarchy of the absolutist type is exactly a decentralized antifragile system, like human body is. The system you are talking about is the system of the mold. Which one is more advanced?
Now, delete it again. That's what commies do.
Did you really deleted my comment because I explained to you and your viewers that everything you say is a total BS?
Nah. I don't delete comments. You were probably just downvoted into oblivion for being wrong
@@AnarkI am not wrong. Apparently your leftist minions are doing the dirty job to silence the correct answers to your misunderstanding