Hierarchy Blindness

Post Reply New Topic

I think you were expecting a different set of criteria to present itself as hierarchy.
In females most of their social hierarchy software is geared around reproductive control. Control of the genetic content of future generations was the original function of hierarchy.

If you had been female and came to work dressed extra cute, rich, or sexy, then you would hae experienced the female world of hierarchy from your coworkers. No matter how you dressed you would feel it every day while working with other females. Outward appearance is just one factor where a daily pecking order must be established.

If you were the only male in a female environment then it makes perfect sense to me that they did not impose their aggressive ranking process on you. In a female environment the individuals are often relieved to have a male coworker to interact with because you will not present them with the same hierarchal expectations as the other females.

I like working in a female environment because they are less aggressive towards me. I also don't threaten them because I don't compete for reproductive control, or to be a queen-bee. It's probably those factors that they appreciate more than the actual work itself.

As far as male hierarchies go, I've had much opportunity to study them due to my having had a military career.
The actual organizational structure or topology, and/or the pay-scale/rank structure are separate from the social hierarchies that are applied by individuals due to the hive-mind.

These separate hierarchies are planned for organization/mission functionality and do not directly stem from reproductive control.
Even though they are separate, people obviously still abuse the systems to either serve the hive directly, or to secondarily serve the hive via their own identities.

I know that's not well written, so I hope it's not too confusing.
It's also still mostly my own observations. Your results may differ.

Very interesting and thought provoking. Thank you.

Olympiadis, I somewhat understand your statement, but I don?t quite agree. In my opinion it is not justifiable to state that female hierarchies would base solely on reproductive control - on ?nature?, or that on the contrary male hierarchies would base solely on the functionality of the hierarchy - on ?reason?.

Actually considering reproductive control I could similarly argue that many of the male created hierarchies might in fact be seen as an attempt to have some reproductive control. For example marriage and numerous religious practices and rules can be seen as an attempt to restrain the reproductive power of females, for men can never be absolutely sure whether they reproduced or not, whereas women can always be sure that the child born is of them, and they also used to be the key component in whether the child survived or not. Also I could argue similarly as you that with the outer signs of power, money, status, violence and so on, men compete of the reproductive control amongst other men.

Also based on the environments I?ve worked in, I?d say that hierarchies are rather situational, dynamic and without clear, all-encompassing purposes. I don?t think I am ranked high in any of the female hierarchy types you described, but still I feel very much respected in my work place. The leading role handed to me at times is certainly not based on reproductive control, but to other factors that are needed in the situation. Also I?ve noticed that females and males are ultimately not that different, we just look and value them differently. For example I?ve noticed that in the workplace men gossip in a very similar manner and as much as the females, but it?s just called networking instead.

That isn't what I was trying to say. I'm sorry. I know it wasn't very well written.

The military has lots of females, and they also follow organizational & rank hierarchies as well. They are for the reason of organizational/mission functionality.

Males also engage in purely social hierarchies that ultimately reflect reproductive control as well.
I consider them secondary, or an added layer over the female controlled structures. They are designed to comply with approval within the female hierarchy because ultimately the females of our species have final reproductive control.

Males want to achieve high ranking in the judgment of the females. One roundabout way to do that is to achieve high ranking among the males.

I don't really associate "reproductive control" with "nature".
I think the mechanisms of hierarchal thinking have grown far beyond what I would describe as nature or natural.
The actual reproduction is sort of irrelevant, because the memes themselves primarily support identity and a chemical "feel good" feed-back system in the brain. People just want to feel the power, so it's separated from the nature of reproduction by several layers now.

I think the origins of this type of structured thinking was in nature, but a very long time ago.

It's ok.

I don't agree with all of your points, but you do make in my opinion very interesting remarks considering power and its meaning. I agree that the "feeling of being in power" has become an overemphasized purpose in life for many. It's hard to say what that ultimately reflects. Maybe people have in a way lost the "purpose", strive for food and survival, and now strive for fame, position, power and money...?

( food and survival,) = real

( fame, position, power and money) = illusion

The real has solid physical limitations in the material world.

The illusion does not have those limitations because it exists only in the imagination.
Illusion only gains power (real effects in the material world) when it is shared by other human minds.

Yeah, often it's not about the real, but of the power to hold something that others can't hold. In "being rich" the meaning isn't in the objects or money, but in the exclusion of others, in having power - not being just ?anybody?, but ?somebody? in relation to "anybody". Why else would anyone buy a really expensive brand watch and show it to all, when any watch would serve its purpose?

Exactly.
If you knew that no other human would be around you for years, then would you still mow your lawn or dress nice?

We jump through a lot of hoops for the apparent benefit of other people, but it's not a "real" benefit, just an imaginary one. Most of it is to prevent ourselves from slipping in rank within the imaginations of other people.
Our actions serve hierarchy, which of course exists only in the imagination.

I think that a lot of autistics feel that it is very wrong to have things (hierarchies), or control, forced on us from the realm of other people's imaginations.
We may not all be able to explain exactly why it is wrong, but it is something easily felt intuitively.

I think that NTs treat the conceptual world of imagination as primary reality, where autistics do not.
Your gut might tell you "this isn't real. this is bullsh*t", or something to that effect.

I have never used that term before. It explains so much.

NT woman are much more into ape like hierarchies than men are. NT men act different as soon as women are around because they seem to know that girls are this way. I didn't realized this a long time because of my lack of empathy.

I hate if NT girls try approach me once I had to be rude to other guys who tried to mess around with me. They don't even know me and are not into anything else of me but being a way that I don't like to be. I don't understand the way that the brains of girls are if it comes to men.

I disagree with the use if the word "blindness." I don't think it's blindness to see the often arbitrary and absurd nature of many of society's hierarchies.

A better term would be Hierarchy Indifference.

john bradshaw in his book "creating love" makes a good argument that hierarchies hurt all those who participate in them.

Depends on the hierarchie. There exist different forms of natural hierarchies among people.
The ape like form of the strongest and most dominant. For this you are right.
But there exist also the cooperative form of the stoneage hunters who had to cooperate for successful hunting and fighting. The leader was the most trustworthy one. If it comes to this you are wrong.

I don't think so. Most aspies are less aware of hierarchies and totally blind once it comes to the importance that hierarchies have for NTs.

Personally I like the term "anarchistic," but each to their own. I was very pleased to read this thread and realise that not respecting hierarchies was such a common feature of autism. One of the best phases of my life was when I fell in with a nice bunch of anarchists. I'm hardly blind to hierarchy though. I'm often acutely aware of it. I'm forever noticing this supposedly "great-and-good" class of people whose fitness to lead rarely stands up to scrutiny, and I enjoy lampooning unequal social systems. This movie clip demonstrates how I would behave towards leaders all the time if I didn't have the sense to know when I was asking for trouble:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng

Considering that not doing hierarchy is such a strong feature of autism, I'm surprised that not everybody with ASD is an atheist, because organised religion seems to be rooted in the most rigid hierarchy imaginable, i.e. the all-powerful deity to which people are expected to completely submit and obey without question. I suppose running against the anti-hierarchy thing is our tendency to like order though, and I guess there's a lot of seemingly free personal choice emphasised in the way some brands of organised religion are run.

It's typical for aspies to search for such relations. And there are above average atheists among ASD people but the reason is a different one. The most common religions are rather for visual thinking people who feel lots of empathy. The religions provide the imagination of a 'really nice' imaginary person which is the most positive thing and who takes care about the people even after death. Being religious becomes an emotional thing of love to this imaginary person and most religious people don't want to give up this love ever.
Logical thinking people who lack the feeling of empathy to imaginary persons are much less into any kind of religions and there are lots of such people among the aspies.
But you should always keep in mind that most religious people won't ever give up to be religious because of their related emotions. For this it's rather a waste of time if you try to convince religious people to become atheists.