Hierarchies

No matter where you are going, you must start from here. This is s.t. with which everyone will agree in theory and even principle but violate without thinking when they begin talking. Everything we say and do is couched in how we process and store life experiences. The corollary to this, when you’ve been everywhere on Earth you will be right back where you started; while this is true, we don’t have to go full sphere in our travels; IOW we can stop and stay at any place along the way.

One of the beautiful things about our mind is that it isn’t spherical but universal, i.e. it is boundless like the universe. The farther we go the more there is to discover out to infinity. The evolution of our thinking in terms of physics, for example, continues to go through advancing theories; each supplanting the last and we still haven’t arrived at the truth.

Richard P. Feynman, a winner of the Nobel prize in physics, adhered to the belief in science that in order for s.t. to be true, it has to be observed and proven through repeatable experiments. While this is a noble statement it doesn’t address what I am sure he realized, that imagination is the starting point and everything else is a by-product of it.

It is also not as much fun as believing in ghosts; saints, re- incarnation, ascension, assumption, heaven and hell. There aren’t many things, if any, in religion that will stand the test of the scientific method. Priests and others who rely on the donations of the faithful for their daily bread will tell you that it requires faith; that certain beliefs are from inspired sources; that at least one man is infallible. When one looks at it through the cold eyes of everyday experiences, it goes quickly into the pigeon hole labeled preposterous.

Religions, and here I am being all inclusive, give people a roadmap for making behavioral decisions. It became clear to me, upon doing my own research, that one can reach conclusions that support legal, ethical, and moral behavior without the benefit of a Bible, Koran, or other “inspired” text. Yet religion gives those who are mentally lazy, careless, or otherwise occupied, a convenient source of “good” behavior and doesn’t require much personal involvement. And to this extent religions are important because many/most people have more to do than concern themselves with learning the what’s and whys of these areas of their life; sort of like using a calculator instead of learning to take a square root. You get the right answer either way, as long as your calculator is functioning properly. One could retort that a person can make a mistake doing a square root calculation as well but this is the learning experience, not abdication.

The problem is when religion (the calculator) takes over and starts telling you what to think and do. The priests, et al, often go out of bounds in their preaching and interpretations and we get ridiculous dogmas, or an inappropriate jihad mentality. This is not a unique or uncommon phenomenon; it has been happening since we gathered together in groups larger than family. A self-perpetuating autocratic hierarchy develops and it has to be supported by the rank and file, sort of like governemnt and taxes, only the constitution that governs this hierarchy is not subject to question, amendment, or interpretation without it being that of the hierarchy; and woe to him/her that may disagree, to wit Galileo or the victims of the Inquisition. There are plenty of examples in Islam and other religions who have a governing hierarchy.

This autocratic hierarchy phenomenon is strictly a human, i.e. not inspired by spiritual forces, and can be seen in any large organization. Companies, churches, service clubs, brotherhoods, sororities, and philanthropic organizations, all have hierarchies. Those who aspire to leadership in these hierarchies are those who satisfying their vanity as job one. These govern by fiat and pronounce what’s good and not so for the membership. Members OTOH are following some set basic principles and meeting their need to belong to social groups and couldn’t care less about the pronouncements of the hierarchy. They are only affected when the collection basket comes around.

The hierarchy invent all sorts of important sounding issues to keep their jobs; to keep the donations flowing so they can feed their egos while the basic tenets upon which the organization is founded are rendered unimportant because they are easily understood and there is, in fact, no need for the hierarchy. Witness the end of the aristrocratic hierachy with the French Revolution. This bloody purge occurred when it became the pre-eminent reason for its own existence instead of remembering that it was secondary to the subjects of the king.

The existence of hierarchically organized religion can be tolerated when it doesn’t affect the affairs of those who don’t subscribe. The French realized this in 1905 and completely severed any religious references in government affairs. They recognized that the influence of religion on the regulation of the population in general is something inherently bad.

Hierarchies do some good; they allow the small contributions of many to aggregate into amounts of money that have critical mass for accomplishing goals. This is good where the leaders are volunteers, i.e. don’t get any of the donated money. They should be allowed to exist only when (1) the organization is audited annually by independent third parties and the results of same are public record, and (2) that they recognize and fully obey the letter and spirit of the laws of the jurisdiction and country wherein they are.

These two things alone would end much of the abuse. It has worked well for publicly held businesses; it wasn’t practiced when the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church protected sexual predators. As it is now, show me a hierarchical organization without these controls built into its operation and I’ll show you a scandal about to happen.

So, I’ve gone high and wide of my opening but this self-perpetuating, autocratic, hierarchical phenomenon is on my mind. It is vanity gone wild; a distraction of the imagination. Go back to square one, recommence; learn from this lifetime to develop farther in the next.