www.eggtempera.com/bergt/leda.html
Update: Aug. 13.
In the post below I suggested the key issue underlying the seeming confusions over what the political “Left” and political “Right” mean is their different evaluations of hierarchy. I became interested in this issue while trying to understand why some liberals have proven consistent defenders of liberty and others have made excuses for those on the right or left who have attacked it. Liberalism’s traitors are mostly on the right today, but they have not always been. The dividing line seems to be whether they were willing to ally with the anti-liberal left or anti-liberal right against other liberals.
Now I want to explore hierarchy more deeply.
In my experience the people who most emphasize the importance of respecting natural hierarchies merit membership in it the least. The children of successful businesspeople somehow think they did something to deserve their position. Catholic priests and Bishops defend ecclesiastical hierarchy as being God’s will when they are not buggering little boys and girls or covering up for those who do. “Conservative” intellectuals elevate the “life of the mind” while attacking simple minded caricatures of those with whom they disagree. It seems as if the more someone praises hierarchy as natural and good, the less qualified they are to partake of any higher status. Today’s most vociferous defenders of natural hierarchy would never make it there on their own merits.
Aristotle observed that when a polity fell apart from internal class struggle, it was the wealthy who initiated the conflict. Their desire for ever more wealth and power led them to use their greater resources to take from those with weaker. The poor finally have enough, and rebel.
The extreme left’s anti-hierarchical resentment is rooted in the depredations of the powerful, who seek to fill with wealth and status an inner emptiness and spiritual hole in their hearts that all the wealth and power of the world will not fulfill. And here is where Zeus comes in…
In a story by Lucian (120CE to after 180) Zeus was angry with Eros because to gain a woman’s favors he always had to turn himself into something he was not: a swan for Leda, a bull for Europa, and so on. Zeus complained “What they love is the swan or bull; if they catch sight of me, they die of fear.”
Eros replied no woman could fall in love with him when he looked so fearsome and dominating. If Zeus wanted love for himself he had to make himself lovable, Eros suggested, “stop brandishing the aegis and carrying the thunderbolt, and make yourself really pleasing and soft to look at; let your curls grow and tie them in a ribbon, wear a purple gown, strap on gold sandals, walk to the beat of a flute and tambourines, and you’ll se, more of them will tail you than Dionysus’ maenads.”
Zeus replied “Get out of here! I don’t want to love by becoming that sort.”
When we are at the top of the hierarchy we can connect with others on our terms alone. But because the pay off for this kind of connection is external recognition, and the person doing the recognizing therefore never sees the other as having genuine depth, there is never a real connection with the other. Even Zeus felt the lack.
Love of hierarchy with oneself on the top seems to cover a fear of mutual connection, a fear quite evident in Zeus’s reply. Apparently somehow giving the other’s desires significant billing diminished him in his own eyes. A secure deity would not have that problem, but an amazing number of patriarchal Big Boys are pretty insecure
On the other hand, those who support other people lording it over them, such as the average core Republican voter, most likely lord it over others they see as below them. They find solace from the domination by others in dominating those lower on the pecking order. They would make good chickens, but poor citizens of a democracy. Chris Hedges American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, an excellent study of the “Christian” right, goes into this issue at some length. See especially his chapter “The Cult of Masculinity, pp. 73-94.
And so I am firmly on the left side of the left/right divide. As a good liberal I recognize that hierarchy is both inevitable and can be very beneficial. The most beneficial hierarchies are in the physical sciences. They are earned by the person’s own qualities, and are acquired only to the degree he or she makes contributions to the field of science as a whole. There is relatively little luck, inheritance, or attachment to office involved.
As we enter areas of life where luck, inheritance, and attachment to office grow in importance for gaining status, its negative side grows and its positive side diminishes. At its most pathological not only is high status an irredeemably external means to fulfill an inner need, it reflects achievements the holder has not really earned,m and at some level the George Bushes, Bill Kristols, and Jonah Goldbergs of the world know it.
Those who merit hierarchy the most likely care about it the least.