More about ‘complexity hierarchy and values hierarchy’

Because we are politically correct liberals we know that hierarchies are bad. Everyone is equal to everyone else and to put someone above someone else is bad. [From a philosophical perspective this is an example of a performative contradiction. The position contradicts itself. If all formulations which say that one item is better than another item are bad, then the formulation that states that all items are equal is better than all others, thus, itself being bad.]

The distinction to be made here is between hierarchies of valuing and hierarchies of complexity. An example of a valuing hierarchy is that the paler your skin the more value you have as a person. A recent program on Harlem pointed out that the Cotton Club only hired au lait blacks. Darker skinned persons weren’t acceptable. We find such hierarchies to be unacceptable.

Our vignette about Jack and Jesse and the juice glass is an example of a complexity hierarchy. [Just Conflict, page 90-91] Jack can think in three dimensions and so knows that the short squat glass holds more juice. Jesse only knows amount in two dimensions and so thinks the tall thin glass holds more. Jack’s way of judging amount is objectively superior to Jesse’s. But that doesn’t mean that Jack is better than Jesse. He is only more mature.

We are watching what is happening in Libya. We know that Kaddafi is on his way out. We are worried about what will follow. We are worried that the country will descend into tribal warfare.

There is a developmental sequence we all move through with regard to the circle of our care and concern. We are necessarily self-centered when we are young. Then we move to being more centered in our families, or our community, or our tribe. We may be ethnocentric, or species centric or even cosmos centric. A wider scope of concern is more complicated but more mature.

We are pleased to see that, at least in eastern Libya, the mood of those who oppose Kaddafi is to work together without regard for tribalism. They are committed to a unified and free Libya. Despite economic and educational deprivation, the revolutionaries are showing great maturity. Their way of constructing relationships is more mature, and thus more complex but effective, than is the way Kaddafi has been constructing relationships. We may have a judgment that Kaddafi is a bad person, but it is objectively true that his way of constructing society is less stable and just than a democracy would be.