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@ vinney
2025-06-12 16:08:03
the AI demon at least has some suggestions for further reading:
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This is a profound question—how to **bootstrap temporary hierarchies** within a network without risking **their persistence and ossification** is a key concern in both political philosophy and organizational design. And yes, there *is* prior literature on this, though it’s fragmented across disciplines. Here's a synthesis:
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### 🔧 The Problem:
**Hierarchies are efficient for coordination** but risk becoming **self-perpetuating** due to:
* Power's tendency to preserve itself
* Resource centralization
* Path dependency
* Legitimacy via familiarity ("we've always done it this way")
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### 🧠 Conceptual Parallels in Literature
#### 1. **Temporary Hierarchies in Indigenous and Stateless Societies**
* **James C. Scott** – *"The Art of Not Being Governed"*: Describes how Zomia peoples use *ephemeral leadership* and physical mobility to avoid state capture. Leaders are accepted only situationally (e.g., wartime), then shed.
* **Pierre Clastres** – *"Society Against the State"*: Some stateless societies actively resist the formation of permanent leadership, enforcing anti-hierarchical norms even during crisis leadership moments.
#### 2. **Sociocracy / Holacracy / Fractal Org Models**
* Emphasize **roles over ranks**, where leadership is **domain-specific and revocable**.
* Teams can temporarily assign someone as a “lead link” but *only for as long as the task requires*.
* Built-in **feedback loops** (like regular elections or review periods) help avoid permanence.
#### 3. **The Panarchy Model (Ecology & Resilience)**
* In ecology, **panarchy** refers to systems cycling through phases: exploitation → conservation → release → reorganization.
* Applied to human systems: **hierarchies arise in “exploitation” or “conservation”**, but collapse or are discarded in “release” to allow adaptive “reorganization.”
* Emphasizes **deliberate design of decay** or burnout stages.
#### 4. **Provisional Authority in Revolutionary Thought**
* **Bakunin and Kropotkin (Anarchist traditions)**: Acknowledge *temporary tactical unity*, but stress that these must be *voluntary, revocable, and non-coercive*.
* “**Means must prefigure ends**”: If the goal is a non-hierarchical society, the organizing form should itself be anti-entrenching.
#### 5. **Mutual Aid & Affinity Groups (Anarchist Practice)**
* Affinity groups operate as **flat networks**, but will *elect spokes or coordinators temporarily*, for specific actions.
* Once done, roles dissolve automatically—often via **cultural expectation**, not formal mechanism.
* Example: many **protest movements** use “spokescouncils” only during logistics-heavy phases.
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### 🪨 Why Hierarchies Stick Around
Even in systems designed to be temporary, hierarchies can entrench themselves through:
* Information asymmetry
* Resource control
* Ritualization of roles (leaders become symbols)
* Drift from the original mission
* Lack of cultural pressure for dissolution
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### 🛠 NON-Tech Strategies for Decommissioning Hierarchies
#### ✅ Cultural Tools:
* **Myth and Narrative**: Embed the story that *all leaders must step down once the task is done*. Ritualize this.
* **Rotating Leadership**: Roles rotate on a schedule regardless of performance.
* **Time-Bound Mandates**: No task = no leader. Leadership only exists when coordination is required.
* **Mockery and Satire**: Cultures can ridicule those who cling to power—strong in indigenous or anarchist traditions.
#### ✅ Rituals and Ceremonies:
* **Exit ceremonies** to publicly dissolve power roles.
* **Accountability circles** where former leaders report and then rejoin as peers.
#### ✅ Organizational Design:
* **Exit clauses** in charters (“sunset clauses”)
* **Consensus-based revocation** procedures
* **Deliberate redundancy** so leadership isn’t irreplaceable
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### 🧩 Relevant Phrases / Search Terms:
If you want to explore further, try:
* "Temporary hierarchy in flat networks"
* "Anti-leadership culture"
* "Leaderless resistance"
* "Consensus minus" (decision-making when consensus isn't full)
* "Prefigurative politics"
* “Distributed leadership with revocability”
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### 🪞Final Thought:
The deepest answer may be cultural: *design a norm where power is suspicious unless it justifies itself constantly*, and where *stepping down is honorable, not shameful*. If that’s baked into the narrative, then tech (like DAOs) can merely reflect it—not enforce it.
Would you like a list of primary texts to dig deeper into one of those threads (e.g., anarchist traditions, indigenous governance, or sociocratic orgs)?