We often have used two terms in our writing - The bottom up and the top down. In this essay we will attempt to go more into specifics of what these two phrases mean and why they are so important for system balance. Also, why within man made socioeconomic systems, which are hierarchical, our cosmology advises heading one direction, the bottom up, over the top down because that hierarchy is a pyramid structure.
In terms of hierarchy, being an arrangement in which items are represented and positioned as inferior or superior in terms of size of influence. Hierarchy’s come in many different forms. Both occurring naturally in nature and within artificial man made systems. In the plant kingdom for example there is very much hierarchy in fractal patterns such as leaves or branches where a primary stem then extends out into small sub stems.
For example if a tree has one main trunk and 100 branches, one of those branches cut won't kill all the other branches, but cutting the one trunk will kill the whole tree. So rather than having the entire forest consist of only one tree with one trunk with every single branch in the entire forest stamping off that one trunk, nature knows to instead have many different trees, with many different trunks, supporting many more various different branches, in a more decentralized way. So that if one tree is lost then there are still many many more sub hierarchies of other individual trees. Thus there are nested hierarchies within hierarchies.
In nature within pack animals there is a hierarchy of influence. In the animal kingdom, in primates or elephants for example, there is the matriarch or patriarch and their control and influence extends down into the younger adults and then down into the offspring. Within human indigenous cultures this had been similar for eons - in small tribes with leaders or councils of wise elders.
But all those things directly knew each other. Once direct individual to individual barter ceased being the primary form of exchange, and money came to be a thing because of the advent of agriculture and thus population size, socioeconomics arose. Said to be the study of the interrelation between economics and social behavior. Things started going weird when the population grew large enough that many people started to not know who each other were. Then authoritarian figures like kings and queens arose, who began colonization and parasitizing the resources of the animal kingdom and people of the land, and due to having become the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, the pyramid capstone, began to impose centralized authority over others. This was the first advent of few controlling many. A rare and new negative for humanity which had lived more in decentralized hierarchical harmony for its prior existence. If you had an honorable philosopher king or queen who truly loved their people, it barely worked, but when the king or queen was a deplorable like in Game of Thrones, like the vast majority kings and queens were through time, you now had a system resulting in overarching corruption control led by few that had its talons over many larger groups of individuals. Now extending over what were to become imperial kingdoms of control, of many villages and then later towns and later smaller city centers. That, rather than each tribe or village having their own smaller sub hierarchy of rules.
After the Second World War, the world split into two major geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with conflicting political views about government and society. The Western first world and the Eastern second world each made up a mix of government and corporate influence - all based around money and finance. The remaining three-quarters of the world population, countries that did not belong to either bloc, were considered "Third World." The term "Fourth World" was then coined referring to widely unknown nations of indigenous peoples, "First Nations" living within or across national state boundaries. So hierarchy then went really extreme in the first and second world and stayed more balanced in the third and fourth world.
In the first and second worlds, whenever a system has socioeconomics and politics, there will then be opposition opinions and attitudes. To identify the fundamental differences between political polls, we have left and right. Which, unlike the so-called polarization of politics, are not a black and white binary. For when one is extreme on either end of left or right, the more collectivist they become in their thinking. Following the dogma and doctrine of that extreme. Equilibrium lies in the middle grey area between black and white where individuals should not call themselves solely of the right or solely of the left but recognize they have aspects of each and lean one way or the other. These two are not about individual vs collective. For there can be extreme collectivism and thus dogmatism on the extremes of both sides. Instead these two poles of political philosophy are mostly about hierarchy. For modern left leaning liberal speak on behalf of the bottom of the hierarchy. While the modern right leaning conservative speaks on behalf of the top of the hierarchy. So the conservative leaner will see societal problems with those at their lesser socioeconomic level and the liberal leaner will see societal problems with those at their higher socioeconomic level. The difference in ideologies should just be about finding balance points regarding system distribution and hierarchical scale which is more egalitarian. Not about one way being exclusively better than the other and catering to only one side of a spectrum which then leans authoritarian as seen in something like the most extreme version of left wing ideology which is called communism or the most extreme version of right wing ideology which is called fascism. Neither of which we want anything to do with for it’s either the gulag or the camps for any individual who thinks for themselves.
So if we look at any major system in the two modern worlds which has to do with socioeconomics, regardless of political leaning, we can see that when scaled too large it becomes more and more corrupt. And when scaled down, corruption is mitigated. For balance of hierarchy is crucial for a system being kept in equilibrium and thus resiliency, as we want some hierarchy, but without extreme hierarchy, instead balanced hierarchy with value amicably distributed.
In the modern world we’ll give examples of various systems and how they work better when smaller, which really just means decentralized, vs larger, which really just means centralized - regardless of political ideology. This is also why we don’t rest the problem with just one of these systems, like saying government only is the problem, or corporations only are the problem or science only is the problem, or religion only is the problem. But realize there’s both good and bad in each, good more on the decentralized side, for when inevitable corruption or decay hits within any of those systems, it does not distribute so broadly, but is instead more localized. So here is a very brief deconstruction of how these four major systems all have both good and bad, but the larger they become in modernity, the more they are all only and exclusively really all about maintaining wealth and thus power and control. For we must realize that since the creation of centralized monetary systems, the world has not ever behaved as we are told.
Firstly we have big governments. Which are centralized governmental power entailed has small groups of individuals, who should be elected by the people yes, but regardless of being elected, end up being able to control aspects of their entire country's populations through policy making. Oftentimes being so removed from their constituents direct lives and hardships. Tending to then care more about supporting and financing special interest power than they do their populations - which in oppressive countries is overt and in more supposedly democratic societies still occur, just in more covert ways. With yes, the power to force taxation and it’s will upon small states, municipalities, and citizenry. Compare that to smaller, more local community governments. Where you instead can know your local community governance, its local representatives, and can be more directly involved in the political process in regards to where local tax revenue is going. Funding your local schools, public works, infrastructure, etc and having much more opportunity to be truly represented at a local level.
Now, to not sound like just a right winger that only criticizes big government and gives a pass to corporate corruption, let’s look at big corporations. Which are those special interests with teams of lobbyists in Washington, that have so much consolidated power that they put their large revenues into political policy. Having created blanket consumerist commercial culture whose primary care is maximizing quarterly profits and not the well being of their employees or customers, who have interlocking boards of directors who demand endless financial growth on a planet of finite material resources, privatising gains and socializing losses done at the public purse, and know to keep the working class infighting. For if you think a giant tech company or government contractor are your friends, think again. Whose sole owner, or board of directors, and top executives, is so rich they have so much power over so many employees that they can easily fire 10,000 workers overnight and move the mega factory offshore for cheaper labor or even buy off entire small nations. The metaphor we use is that instead of one mega hardware store chain that highers 10,000 employees, better to have 500 of those people create hundreds of small business local hardware stores, each which would employ those 10,000 people who would, have more healthy competition, embody more ethical behavior, and distribute proceeds from the business more amicably across the socioeconomic system to the individual workers, rather than funnel it upward to just the top of the pyramid in a parasitic way. Because many smaller and medium businesses have many more people in the pool in control and steering the ship of the business. While one mega corp has just a board of directors who call all the shots which might just be a dozen people. Mass corporations also turn out mass blandness. Where now in the United States, which has suffered from decades of conservative policies which only help the top of the hierarchy, resulting in company merger are company mergers, you now drive across the US and each shopping center has the same monotone corporate blandness, repeated over and over.
So compare that to smaller businesses. Such as the local shop in your town which has encouraged bottom up business growth of interesting, more creative and original small shops. Each containing more original content. In which you can know the business owner directly and they know you, so they actually might care about you and your family and create products that aid in your well being. Such as the farmers market stand owner or any other form of in person or online cottage industry crafter, who make their product locally, usually by hand so it’s extremely well crafted and is higher quality. And the employees have more say over how the business is structured and run. Unlike the giant corporation which turns its employees into mindless cogs in assembly lines. This is why creative optimistic people tend to be drawn to entrepenurialship if not working for themselves.
Now we acknowledge small local governance is not necessarily going to be able to manage national health care systems or a small business is not able to build commercial airliners or mega engineering projects like bridges, or mass produce electric vehicles, so some governmental and corporate scale up is necessary. This is where we may go a bit from small to medium. But equilibrium is to be found so that one federal or private entity can’t metastasis to such extreme size, that it monopolizes power over any or all aspects of the system. Healthy competition is the way. This is why during chunks of specified periods of time, such as every 25 years, it might be a logical idea to make sure any governmental body or corporate entity should be required to split into smaller competing parts. The United States for example has had past policies of trust busting monopolies with great success. So again, regardless of political leaning left or right, which this is not about, it’s about top down or bottom up. Perhaps it’s time to break up left leaning big tech or right leaning big ag or big fossil fuel.
Now, to be fair and not sound exclusively like a left winger, we have big science. Which is also intertwined into the realm of big academics and universities. Which have some good things, yes, but if we're really honest we must admit that they have morphed into being institutions of high cost and low value, whose goals are to tell people more what to think instead of how to think, and are more concerned with making money through admissions and keeping their tenures rather than really searching for biological, historical, or epidemiological facts and truths. The Ivy League schools in the United States, along with Stanford for example, are sitting on billions in financial surplus and could easily lower their admission fees but year after year, surprise surprise, those fees go up and up and up - because they are financial profiteering institutions first. Then schooling and scientific organizations as a distant second. Big science has brought us many advancements in medicine and technology but has negative things as well. Such as creating more and more efficient weapons of war and mind control, gets consciousness totally wrong, and can be equally dogmatic in its views as religion and thus only advances one funeral at a time. Now compare that to small science. Which is true science of the independent researcher or small team of discoverers. Who may not be credentialed but are truly more open to open ended discussion, take off the beaten path exploration, think for themselves, truly respect the scientific method, and open mindedly follow the data. No matter how outside the box it leads. This is no more perfectly seen than with Egoptopgists. The official academic version of which don’t care to try and find the true details and history and mystery of that ancient culture but instead how to fit it into their preconceived dogmatic timelines. Vs independent truly scientific researches such as R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz and John Anthony West and more. Who looked at ancient culture from a higher consciousness, third eye perspective.
This also is why much of the scientific world expects you to have credentials, so it looks like you're a professional, but in reality because then they know you’ve gone through their thinking inside the box and not rocking the boat conformist schooling structure. It’s also why ancient more esoteric practices such as forms of holistic health, astrology, and alchemy are said by large academic officialdom to be psutoscient when in fact they respect and follow the scientific method.
Then we have fake spirituality which is big religion. The only difference between a cult and religion is the number of its subscribers. Larger exoteric outer religion is a construct made by man to reduce larger spiritual concepts into pre packaged menu sets of literalized black & white moral doctrine to sell wholesale, with dogmatic convictions which are the hill you’re pre-programmed to die one, claim their hierarchy is needed for you to get to the divine, via the disempowerment and imbalance of the divine feminine, misinterpretation of texts as literal historical documents that re-write our origins and history, also telling people what to think instead of how to think, asking each follower to outsource their power to a big G God of guilt and Heaven & Hell, and the money, oh my goodness the money… televangelist preachers who man… do they want you to send in your money.
We were at a mega church in Alabama for a wedding, which was at one of the small side chapels next to the main facility. Which literally looked like a shopping mall. That is NOT a spiritual entity. That is a corporate / commercial entity. Big Religion mega churches in the United States are so corporatized that on job posting websites you will now occasionally see openings for church related jobs - just like a company. And in alternate new age pho spirituality gurus who amount massive followers are not much different - being solely all about the money.
Then we have small spirituality or more esoteric religion which is more spiritually about the individual and their magical relationship to nature. Acknowledging holy works are of mythological, astrotheological, and allegorical origin, which is to do with each person being a direct conduit to the divine through the esoteric cores of all faiths. Acknowledging small g God or Henosis or higher essence or source or divine, whatever name it’s been called by uncountable cultures through time. Esoteric spiritual practices are introspective, personal, direct experience, and initiation into higher states of consciousness which then can not be outsourced to or made to profit from.
So this essay can really expand into a whole book. Perhaps it will someday. For this deconstruction of the big can continue to branch into all artificial systems. Such as big technological, financial, medicinal, etc… compared to their smaller, more decentralized equivents. And a reminder small doesn't mean scale purely in terms of size. It more means the power is more well distributed amongst individuals at the bottom to mid levels of a pyramid. With each having more power. So it's really a lesson in decentralization vs centralization.
Now we are not naive in the sense of thinking this will happen, for it is happening, quickly. It’s taken many lifetimes to centralize and it will likely take just as long to continue to decentralize. But de-centralizing the big we must. For what this really comes down to is the size of many millions of us individuals. Are you a well educated, conscious, truly honorable, and resilient human being who lives more in harmony with your natural environment? Then if you are, by being big in heart and mind and then truly more individualized - you are a big individual. Only small individuals need big systems. Let’s not let them keep us small.
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