The dysfunction stack
June 2024
Everybody’s got their own take on What’s Wrong With The World; this is mine.
The problems we perceive, the ones that show up in our feeds and debates, are at the top of a stack.
They mostly take the form of a battle over privileges and resources. “It’s wrong that the fossil fuel companies are getting rich while destroying the planet” or “Immigrants are taking our jobs.”
When someone argues that one group or another has access to more than they deserve, there are two angles they might be coming from.
Maybe they believe that the wrong group is privileged, and that another group—usually one they happen to be a member of—actually deserves the resources in question. (This is conservative thinking.) Or maybe they’re arguing that no one should receive special benefits—an anti-conservative point of view that counters the core belief behind all such debates:
Some people should die and others should toil in poverty so that a few can live in wealth.
You believe this, or you don’t. Either way, it’s just the top of the stack.
One level beneath this, we usually find the belief that the disparity is justified by the intrinsic supremacy of some arbitrarily-defined group:
Some races (or nationalities, cultures, etc.) are superior to others.
Going down the stack again, we find the oldest and most entrenched such belief:
Men should rule over women.
This is a viewpoint that most of us (regardless of gender) internalize from early childhood, and accepting it—even unconsciously—makes us that much more susceptible to the dysfunctional beliefs further up the stack.
But we haven’t hit bottom yet.
The sexist belief in men’s superiority over women flows naturally from another perspective we’re taught from birth:
Mankind is superior to other animals.
This is actually a relatively new idea in human evolutionary terms. As far as we know, prior to the agricultural revolution and domestication of animals, most human cosmologies put us on the same level as other living creatures.
And in some cases, non-living creatures. Speaking of which, one level further down the dysfunction stack:
Mankind is superior to rocks and dirt.
We’ve now come pretty far from our original debate about immigration and fossil fuel companies. There are feminists who openly reject the idea of men ruling over women, and vegans who openly reject treating animals as objects, but there aren’t too many movements in favor of honoring dust and dung.
It’s not an entirely unprecedented position, though! Consider this passage from the Chuang Tzu:
Master Tung-kuo asked Chuang Tzu, “This thing called the Way - where does it exist?”
Chuang Tzu said, “There’s no place it doesn’t exist.”
“Come,” said Master Tung-kuo, “you must be more specific!”
“It is in the ant.”
“As low a thing as that?”
“It is in the panic grass.”
“But that’s lower still!”
“It is in the tiles and shards.”
“How can it be so low?”
“It is in the piss and shit!”
Master Tung-kuo made no reply.
The fact that I’m pulling out a 1500-year-old philosophical text for reference will give you an idea of where we’re headed as we continue traveling down the stack. Two levels to go!
The next one being:
Mankind is separate from nature.
Sounds pretty woo-woo, I guess. But the notion that humans exist to control the world, and the rest of the world exists to serve us, is how we got to the point where there’s an earth-destroying fossil fuel industry to debate about in the first place.
And this dysfunctional belief is just one step above the one from which all the others originate:
All is not one.
An assertion that every great spiritual text (that I know of) rails against—though this doesn’t stop many of those spiritual adherents from occupying a highly privileged class.
Still, if you believe in the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, or the Kybalion, you reject this assertion—and therefore all the assertions that build on it.
At this point you might rightfully ask, “So what?”
Here’s why I think this framework is useful. The deeper down the stack you operate, the bigger impact you’ll have on the world.
Engaging with others as a staunch feminist—if you can pull it off—will ultimately have a more healing effect than debating on current events at the top of the stack. Getting one human to reject (or even question) their sexism is a bigger win that besting someone on a policy point.
If you’re able to operate at the very bottom of the stack—like Jesus and the rest of those guys—that’s great! But it’s not a perfect fit for everyone, and we shouldn’t all try and become shamans.
We should, instead, recognize the dysfunction stack and engage to correct it at the deepest level we comfortably can. Anyway that’s what I’m trying to do—how’s it working?