Quakers make decisions together in such a way that ideally, everyone’s voice is heard. For Gil George, it’s a revolutionary process.
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Discussion Questions:
- Gil says that “while hierarchy might really efficiently get things done, there’s so much damage done along the way that it counteracts all of the value created.” Do you agree? What do you see as the damage done by hierarchy?
- What do you think is the antidote to the problem that Gil is highlighting?
- Have you experienced Quakerism as being a successful alternative to hierarchical thinking? What are the challenges facing us in this area?
Transcript:
Gil George: Hierarchy is a system of organization that is extraordinarily efficient, but it is also a system that views an end goal as more important than the means to get to and achieve that end goal and I think what we often forget is that the means we use often determine which end goal really happens.
How Quakers Turn Hierarchy on its Head
My name’s Gilbert George. I live in southeast Portland. I have been a pastor of a Friends’ meeting (that has pastors), and I am currently a stay-at-home dad and editing a blog called “Godspace.”
The Dangers of Hierarchy
So, yes, while hierarchy might really efficiently get things done, there’s so much damage done along the way that it counteracts all of the value created. We talk about how hierarchy created civilization as it is. I’d have to ask: what have been the effects of civilization as it is now?
Hierarchy bred a resentment because hierarchy gave some people power and completely stripped it from others. And so when that occurs, there will always always always be a negative response from the people whose agency has been stripped from them. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it best: riots are the voice of the unheard.
Counteracting Systems of Domination
Quakerism counteracts the systems of domination by re-placing the value of all human beings, by refocusing us off of the value of the opinion of one or few who have access to resources and control, and saying that: “this person who just came in off the street has as much access to the voice of God as the CEO.”
And when we actually live that out and we welcome all of the voices to the table–because that’s the important piece. It isn’t shutting off the voices of the people who have access to wealth and power, it’s having the people who have access to wealth and power actually sitting down and listening to the voices of the people who don’t have that same access, and recognizing that God speaks through them equally.
And so we as Friends, in our discernment process—we bring hope to folks all throughout these broken, damaged, hurting systems that are disintegrating all of us, and we’re bringing integrity back into the life of our society.
All People Have Value
Our way of being together is a corrective to the main patterns of dismemberment, of disintegration in our society because we confront the systems of hierarchy by reminding the people on any piece of whatever corporate ladder or other structures there are in our society that every person has deep, wonderful value and has access to the voice of God.
And that shatters hierarchy to pieces, because hierarchy is built on the idea that there are people who are more valuable and there are people who are less valuable. And what we as Friends say is all people, no matter what, are equally valuable.
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
“The means we use often determines which end-goal really happens”
I have always said:
“Get the process right, and we will get the right policy”
Annual General Elections (for ALL elected representative legislatures), please!
I think this account may leave out the extent to which Quakers have historically operated using hierarchal structures. I am thinking specifically of Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings. For example, its inconceivable to think of Quakers taking a corporate anti-slavery stance during the eighteenth century without hierarchical organization and decision making.
Because of the Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meeting Structures, the anti-slavery concerns of individual meetings were able to be taken to higher and higher levels of church polity, and Quakers were eventually able to take an institution stand against buying slavery that would influence later abolition efforts in Britain and the United States. Our Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meeting structures are much weaker now–and so is our political power.
Could it be that hierarchy is challenged, but not discounted by Quakers? Instead of less hierarchies per se, could it be that Quakers identify a multiplicity of hierarchies to which everyone has some angle or niche to which they express power? Could it be that Quakers are not challenging hierarchies in general, but the hierarchy of hierarchies? Could it be that Quaker’s challenge their hierarchies to make room for more people, to invite them up the ladder, or to build them a new ladder that they can climb? Could it be that equality of spirit is not sameness, that their is diversity of value, many kinds of inner light that can shine through humans? How can we celebrate excellence without licensing oppression that could stem from that excellence?