Dave Pollard’s latest talks about “cellular organization,” beginning with a passing reference to Jon Husband’s Wirearchy. These ruminations remind me of Jeff Vail’s work with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conception of “rhizome.” Or Daniel Quinn’s understanding of a “tribe.” These are all different ways of expressing the same idea–the same idea that Diogenes and Jesus taught. It’s echoed in Organic Flash, in the open source movement, in wikis and even in the phenomenon of blogs. It is as old as humanity itself, and universal–because it’s hardwired directly into our brains. It is the rejection of hierarchy; it is an affirmation of humanity. What should we call it? Tribe? Band? Rhizome? Egalitarianism? Cellular organization? Wirearchy? Choose whatever appelation you like best; they are all synonyms. Perhaps the most descriptive would simply be, “freedom.”

There are many kinds of power. In anthropology, we usually distinguish between “ascribed power” and “attained power.” “Ascribed power” is the kind of power we usually think of first. It’s power that comes from birth, or holding a particular position. If somebody has ever admonished you to “respect the office if nothing else,” then they were telling you to obey someone who holds ascribed power. Presidents, kings, popes and CEO’s all hold ascribed power. Attained power is something quite different, though; attained power is the power of esteem and respect. Individuals gain attained power as they gain more people who want to follow them.

The “Big Men” of Melanesian ethnography wield attained power. Through an intricate series of loans, they have managed to indebt their entire tribe. Though these tribes rarely possess much wealth that can be truly “hoarded,” this system allows them to keep a great deal of wealth “on the hoof”–literally–and ready to be called upon when needed. While it would be impossible for any Big Man to herd the number of pigs required for a decent feast, the Big Man’s system of loans and debts means he can call up and slaughter nearly the entire tribe’s pig supply at any given moment. This competitive feasting, with Big Men competing to outdo one another through ever more lavish feasts to gain ever greater attained power, is the central activity of Big Man politics. Through this process, they become leaders. Young men must indebt themselves to the Big Man’s generosity to acquire sufficient wealth to pay the bride prices necessary for marriage, for example, allowing the Big Man to enmesh himself as the central figure of tribal society.

Once the Big Man has discovered some way to pass that power on to his heirs, the Big Man becomes a chief. The heir no longer wields the attained power of his ancestor; instead, he wields the ascribed power of a chief. The competitive feasting process becomes formalized into a full-fledged redistributive economy. The transition from chiefdom to state is very well understood–we even have historical records of such transitions.

The two types of power both have their place in our current hierarchy. In many ways, the most powerful people in the world today are philosophers. Who has more authority over the current United States government: George Bush, or Leo Strauss?

Ascribed power is something new and anomolous, a few millennia old. Attained power, however, is probably impossible to remove completely. There will always be those more skilled than others; older, wiser, more talented, or simply more charismatic. Such individuals will always have more influence than others. Homogeneity is not the same as egalitarianism, though. Nor is it the lame concept of “equality of opportunity” which modern United States society so clearly exemplifies as a failed ideal. Rather, the difference between a hierarchical society and an egalitarian one is the difference between a nest of relationships, and a command structure.

Every society can thus be represented as a bidirectional graph (graph here in the mathematical sense–a set of nodes, with a set of edges connecting them). Hierarchy is a very specific graph. In the diagram above, the graph on the left is hierarchical. Individual #1 is in control. Who is in control of the graph on the right? The key to egalitarian society is not obliterating individuality or denying the uniqueness of each individual, but in multiple dimensions of power. If we look at any one dimension, we might see a de facto hierarchy of influence emerge. The most respected shaman, for example, wields much more power in spiritual matters than a young, untested shaman. However, shamanic power is not the only dimension of power. There is hunting skill, oratory, tool making, or any number of other dimensions. The elder shaman is unlikely to also be the best hunter, and neither will likely be the most accomplished tool maker. Even an individual who does not dominate any dimension may wield more overall influence than even the most accomplished hunter, by averaging higher across all dimensions; a “jack of all trades” can have as much influence as a “master of one.” When we overlay all these dimensions of power into a single graph, in an egalitarian society we are left simply with a bi-directional graph. In a hierarchical society, there are very few dimensions of power, and even those there are, are concentrated into the hands of the few. The website “They Rule” illustrates this nicely by allowing users to navigate the small, exclusive oligarchy that controls nearly all political and economic power in the modern United States.

This is the dichotomy we face: hierarchy versus everything else. Rhizome, cellular organization, the tribe–whatever we call it, it represents at least some part of the enormous diversity possible outside of hierarchy. It is home to nearly the entire range of possibilities. Any type of graph except the pyramidal command structure will do–anything that fosters the emergent complexity of the world, rather than smothers it.

In his discussion of “cellular organization,” Dave Pollard notes:

How big is a cell? As big or small as its self-selected members choose it to be, though the bigger-is-weaker rule would seem to limit it to much smaller size than the 150 people we are (according to social network gurus) able to accommodate in a personal network. The key to the cell, it appears, is the strength of strong links — members are each others’ families, best friends, work colleagues, and everyone in the cell likes (loves?) everyone else in the cell. That makes an astonishing bond, that, if it’s cultivated, can be indomitable, and powerful. What mystifies Gladwell is how Warren and others can manage to harness that power, essentially without hierarchy. It requires a lot of work to reach and steer a million scattered cells of ten people than a single televangelist audience of ten million. But if you can do it, it’s a much more powerful network. The key to reaching these cells seems to be providing them with a flexible template of activities attuned to their values, and letting them self-form and self-manage. The multiple short chapters of Warren’s books serve as a menu of choices for his church’s sells to choose from, apply to their own shared context, and learn from. Most of the learning is from each other.

In this, Pollard has hit upon nearly all the most defining traits of the phenomenon we’re discussing here. The last point–”[m]ost of the learning is from each other”–emphasizes the centrality of an “open source” mentality, such as in Jeff Vail’s synthesis of “rhizome.” Where hierarchies are often represented as trees, Vail takes Deleuze and Guattari’s model of the rhizome, where every node is connected to every other node. Vail identifies open source as part of the “rhizome toolkit,” noting:

Hierarchies exert command and control via a centralized, top-down process. This creates numerous layers that information must relay between, and results in an information processing burden that significantly slows the ability of hierarchy to execute the OODA loop (link). The advantage of rhizome—aside from preventing the abuse of power endemic to hierarchy—is its superior information processing capability. One rhizome example, the network of political blogs, demonstrated its information processing ability during the 2004 election season, regularly trumping hierarchal media establishments on breaking stories.

…

Without the centralized command structure of hierarchy, actions and tactics are proposed by the network and adopted by constituent nodes via a process similar in many ways to a clinical trial. Some node devises a tactic or selects a target and makes this theory publicly available—Open Source. One or several trials of this theory are conducted, and the tactic is then adopted and improved upon by the network as a whole based on its success. This may seem like a contrived and overly mechanistic system, but in fact it functions very much like biological evolution.

These “cells” or “rhizomatic nodes” or “tribes” are also, invariably, small. I discussed this phenomenon in my most recent thesis, “Thesis #7: Humans are best adapted to band life.” In fact, the size limits are not merely for optimal social networking; they are hard-wired into the human brain. This brings us to the most essential failing of hierarchy. Hierarchy is adopted when populations become so large that egalitarian society is no longer possible, and fission is not a viable strategy (for material or memetic reasons makes little difference).

We are well-adapted to such groups. We expect such groups, neurologically, and where they do not exist, we will create them. We need such groups. This should hardly surprise us, as our groups have been adapted to us, as well. It is a case of co-evolution between social structure and the animal it serves–just like the co-evolution of pack and wolf, hive and bee, school and fish, so, too, did band and human mutually shape one another.

Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynics challenged the most basic, underlying notions of hierarchy. Generally reviled for their low socio-economic status, the Cynics taught that freedom was the highest good. This included freedom from tyranny and slavery (which naturally earned them the ire of the State), as well as more philosophical ideas of freedom, such as freedom from material possessions, from want and desire. In short, the Cynics advocated freedom in all its forms.

The result was that the Cynic was one of the most incredibly eccentric figures in the ancient world; the Cynic “uniform” of the tunic, bag, sandals and walking stick (and nothing else) identified their ascetic lifestyle immediately. They wandered from town to town, often engaging in what we would today consider performance art. The most famous example is Diogenes himself, who wandered the streets of Athens with a lamp at daylight, “looking for an honest man.” When Alexander the Great approached Diogenes and offered him anything he liked as reward for his wisdom, Diogenes’ request was that the conquering king stop blocking his sun. Cynics taught in both word and action a disdain for the State, that authority is rooted in one’s own acceptance of that authority, and that freedom can be acquired simply by ignoring the State. Cynics did not advocate violent revolution; rather, they advocated simple abandonment.

I believe the most important distinction between ourselves and the Cynics is that the Cynics did not properly appreciate the human need for community. Cynics wandered from city to city alone. There were no real Cynic communities, only individual Cynics. Men and women who abandoned civilization in the Cynic model looked forward to a lonely, ascetic life. Many did so anyway–enough to cause several clamp-downs on Cynic behavior by the State, as aristocrats feared the collapse of civilization itself. Yet, the Cynic cause was ultimately thwarted because they did not form communities.

One of the latest strongholds of Cynic thought was actually in Galilee; the Decapolis was a confederation of ten Hellenistic cities populated primarily by Greeks after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the ensuing two centuries of war between the Ptolemies and Seleucids, south of the Seleucid capital of Damascus. One of these ten cities, Sepphoris, lies a mere two miles from Nazareth. In fact, it appears that Nazareth was a generally uninhabited ruin in the first century–except for a brief period at the beginning of the century, where it was reinhabited by masons, artisans and carpenters who took up temporary reisdence there to rebuild Sepphoris following its destruction in Judas the Galilean’s rebellion in 6 CE.

So, positing a historical Jesus in Nazareth is not unlikely, and it is quite likely that he would have been exposed to Cynic thought. The Gospels, even though they are white-washed for Roman audiences, still hold a great deal of Cynic influence. For example, the single most universally accepted quote as authentically Jesus (as determined by the Jesus Seminar):

“Then he said to them, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’”
– Matthew 22:21

While usually taken by later apologetics as Jesus’ acceptance of civil authority, this statement can hardly be divorced from Jesus’ numerous earlier pronouncements about the illusory nature of material wealth. Jesus talks about wealth fading, being eaten by moths, being stolen, and generally drives home the point that material wealth is transient, illusory, and unimportant. Taken in that context, “render unto Caesar” is a statement Diogenes himself might have made: the State pretends to have authority and power. Let it pretend. The real reality has nothing to do with gold, coins, taxes, or anything else of the State. The State has exactly as much authority over you as you allow it to have; so don’t allow it to have any, and it won’t. Don’t fight against it, simply abandon it. Just “walk away,” it’s the essence of the Cynic message.

But Jesus ammends how to walk away. He doesn’t just recast the message in a Jewish context, he also introduces the idea of walking away as a community. Jesus and his followers walk from town to town, gathering food (foraging) from planted fields (Matthew 12:1), and engages in reciprocal relationships with friends who give him food and shelter.

The Jesus Movement survived on reciprocity in a very tribal sort of community (Acts 4:32-37), but this was quickly subverted by Paul, who co-opted the movement within a few decades. In a ploy designed to make Christianity the religio licita form of Judaism, Paul began a campaign to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans by instilling the primary Roman virtue of pietas into an essentially anti-pietas movement. Paul’s direct, blatant contradictions of Jesus are many, even in the canonical Gospels chosen by Paul’s followers. Paul’s bid to co-opt the movment for his own wealth and power ultimately failed, but Christianity was successfully subverted and mutated from a powerfully anti-civilization movement to a piece of civilized apologia. As Christianity became an increasingly civilized enterprise, its monotheism and resulting intolerance for opposition became the perfect accompaniment to Constantine’s autocratic empire. Christianity became Rome’s official religion, which led to its domination through the Middle Ages as a thoroughly Roman religion, and the very definition of civilization.

I think how easy it was for Paul to co-opt the Movement highlights Jesus’ prmary failing (the same failing as Tyler Durden in Fight Club, ironically): he didn’t make peers, he made disciples. None of his followers understood the situation as clearly as he did, and so it was easy for Paul to come in and take over, since none of them had Jesus’ insight to recognize Paul for what he was. Ultimately, Jesus–like Tyler Durden–failed by not being radical enough. They failed to incorporate that essential element of an “open source” revolution.

There is a groundswell forming all around us. No one’s quite sure what to call it; the nodes are not entirely in communication with one another, but the communication is beginning, nonetheless. Whether high-tech or primitivist, the vision of an egalitarian society remains the same–as well as the need for diversity among the various “cells,” “rhizome nodes,” “tribes” or whatever other name we might call the future by.