Science fiction from the very literary to the very pulpy has pondered whether humans are doomed to oppress each other because we live in a hierarchical society. Can we ever change? Do we need to?


Here's what the experts think.

Confucian philosopher Steve Angle recently authored a paper about why some forms of deference and hierarchy do not have to be oppressive, especially if the hierarchy is always changing and evolving. He writes:

My main goal . . . is showing that deference and hierarchy need not be oppressive. The most important point to realize in this regard is that, on the basis of all that I have just said, relations of hierarchy and deference are properly understood as occurring between individuals, not groups. One person aptly defers to another on the basis of a fit between the latter's role, experiences, learning, or skills, and the particular circumstance in which the two find themselves. I defer to Elaine in the courtroom because she is the judge, but not in the grocery store-or at least, not for that reason . . . When people of one social group-identified by gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, and so on-defer to members of another across situation-types, though, this smacks of oppression.


From Angle's perspective, hierarchy is a problem when it becomes structural (groups over groups) and when people don't play different hierarchical roles in different situations.

Science fiction author Octavia Butler, on the other hand, has a more pessimistic view. In her trilogy Lilith's Brood, aliens called the Oankali say that humans were pretty much doomed to destroy themselves because we are both intelligent and hierarchical. The implication is that hierarchy is always destructive.

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Is it possible to build structure without domination? That would entail finding trustworthy leaders and teachers who can guide us without coercing us. But maybe humans need a little domination to make society function smoothly. That, at least, is the premise in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Evitable Conflict," where our perfectly rational robot overlords arrange for people to have wars and killing because we go crazy without having a few oppressive situations in our lives. A similar idea crops up in The Matrix, where the Machines admit that plugging humans into a paradise-like virtual world always failed - people only became completely immersed in the fantasy of the Matrix when it contained deprivation and oppression. And even in the environmentally friendly world of Ernest Callenbach's novel Ecotopia, the government mandates deadly wargames once in a while so that people can get their aggression out.

Maybe, as Iain M. Banks has suggested in regards to religion, humans will have to tweak our genomes before we emerge as fully rational creatures. Until then, will hierarchy always lead to one group taking power away from another?