Between modern day conservatives and progressives in the U.S there is one philosophical discussion that completely differentiates the world views of each respective group. These respective philosophies are the belief in natural hierarchies for conservatives and in absolute egalitarianism for progressives. The belief in natural hierarchies by conservatives is one that believes that there will always be groups of people that dominate in nature and in human societies and certain people will reach the top of these hierarchies because they’ve earned it in some way and that is moral. While the belief in absolute egalitarianism by the left is a belief that any type of hierarchy is oppressive to individuals and that any hierarchy should be attempted to be dismantled because people at the top have arbitrarily made it there and to have that is immoral.

In this blog post I’ll be arguing for both those in favor of hierarchies and egalitarianism so I can be the devil’s advocate to some extent, but I do lean towards the idea of hierarchies.

For the case in favor of natural hierarchies many systems assert hierarchies including capitalism and hierarchies are a natural result of great variation between people and things within the natural world. For example, someone who is born with a larger stature and who is naturally athletically gifted will succeed more in basketball than someone with opposite characteristics. Is the aforementioned situation unfair? Yes but that is how natural world is. An antelope within the plains in Africa couldn’t control the fact that they were born as prey yet they were and naturally they are hunted by predators such as lions, within the natural hierarchy of the food chain antelopes are underneath lions; but does this make them lesser beings than lions? No they just have different strengths and weaknesses and that is why the fulfill the role that they have within the food chain. A more modern example of hierarchies would be that of Capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system which wholeheartedly supports the idea of hierarchies because within a free market there will always be those who find success and those who fail based on their own individual merits. Within an absolutely free market some would find great success and others would find abject failure because of their merit and luck, but in today’s society we have the U.S. government to ensure that no one is completely ruined by the free market.

Now to speak in favor of absolute egalitarianism as aforementioned in the final sentence of the last paragraph the U.S. government makes sure that some people won’t completely fail out of the free market and become disenfranchised. Also as I aforementioned it isn’t fair that some people naturally get ahead of others because of factors that they can’t control. Their are two ways to achieve the perfect egalitarian society and one would be to bring those who are at the bottom rungs of the hierarchy up or to bring those at the upper echelons down, this is considered to be moral because it serves the end of fairness and equality between persons. Those who are absolute egalitarians would also argue that all too often minorities and under represented groups are often oppressed by the majority with the hierarchy that they inhabit so the only why to create equality for those disenfranchised minority groups would be to deconstruct the social hierarchy all together.

So ‘ve argued for both philosophies and I’ll leave the rest to the reader, I hope I hadn’t straw manned either belief because I tried my best to fairly represent both parties. I’ll leave you with one question where do you think you fall within these two general philosophies? Of course you might not fully agree with one or the other because they are both extremes but I’m curious none the less.