Welcome back to CityXcape, you are watching the series on the ten elements of community. In the previous episodes, we covered ritual, contribution, and familiarity. If you have not seen the preceding three episodes, It’s important that you go watch them. Because from this point on, we will start to build on knowledge from previous videos. In this episode, we will cover the fourth element of community- hierarchy.
As much as people dislike this word, hierarchy is a fact of nature. Every world, every system, every society has hierarchy. Even the cosmos are not immune to this law. Star systems also have their pecking order.
If hierarchy is so pervasive throughout nature, it must not be this evil system most people perceive it to be. Therefore, before we get into the meat of things, I’d like to spend a little bit of time cleaning up the image of this word.
Hierarchy comes from the fact that not all elements are equal. Some planets are bigger than others, so in the scale of size, Jupiter is higher ranked than earth. Likewise not all individuals are equal in skills. Some are most certainly more talented than others, to deny this is to delude ourselves into magical thinking.
But to keep a balanced mind it is important to realize a few things. First, there is no absolute Hierarchy. Hierarchy is only a relative measure. John might be a better programmer than James, but James is a far better carpenter than John. Who’s to say that programming is better than carpentry, or mathematics is better than dancing. Things only have relative value.
Second, hierarchy is not static. John is a better programmer than James right NOW. But five years later, that might not be the case. Hierarchy is not fixed. It is an ever changing thing. With established powers constantly falling and new ones taking their place.
Lastly, hierarchy does not imply a lack of universal respect for life. A high level master can still love his students and treat them with dignity. Now that we have seen that hierarchy is fluid and not absolute, let’s take a look at how this system helps a community.
Hierarchy is not a bed, but a ladder. This ladder is what allows progress.
In a normal, un-hijacked community, hierarchy is built upon the elements we covered in the previous episodes- ritual, contribution, and familiarity. Leaders are typically those who are excellent at a ritual and have contributed the most to that community. Their excellence and consistent contribution have allowed them to become familiar to many. This familiarity wins them a vast amount of trust, and this collective trust is what defines a leader. Too abstract? Let us use a real example.
Meet William. He is a 26 year old surfer. He’s been part of the community for over a decade, having rode his first wave at the age of 14. He’s surfed at several beaches throughout the United States and even the world, and has won several awards for his talent.
He’s put much of the sponsorship money he’s earned back into the community by investing into surfer owned businesses and surf events. As a side hobby, he coaches young surfers about safety and has a YouTube channel about surfing. His content has helped a lot of beginners join the community.
Here we can see that William is an archetype for the community because he’s mastered the ritual of surfing. We also see that he’s a great contributor, training young kids, helping the surfer community grow, and even pouring his own capital into businesses owned by surfers. Lastly, we see that his constant participation and contribution have made him familiar to a great deal of surfers. He is locally famous. These three things give William a high status in the surfer community, which leads us to what hierarchy is ultimately about.
Status is a way to reward members who contribute. It also lays down a path for new members to follow, a ladder to climb. Without hierarchy not only would a community lack the reward mechanism necessary to keep high contributors active but it would also completely stagnate due to the fact that members would have no ladder to climb. The community would be flat, there would be very little progress.
Think of all the men and women that you admire, whether you know it or not, they have given you a roadmap to follow. A worthy ideal to strive to. This personal mountain to climb would not exist if it weren’t for hierarchy.
