Hierarchies and health

 A friend recommended a book titled The Nation of Plants, by Sefano Mancuso, a leading authority on plant neurobiology. The book discusses the eight principles that govern the lives of plants. One is the fact that plants are governed by decentralized “vegetable democracies,” rather than by hierarchical command centers. Instead of specialized organs, all their functions are distributed throughout their entire bodies.

Not only are our bodies organized in a hierarchical way—with brains at the top—but so are our societies. Our hierarchical organizations evolve bureaucracies in which commands coming from the top get transmitted throughout the levels of the hierarchy. Problems with hierarchical organizations include the Peter Principle (in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence), as well as Parkinson’s Law (bureaucracy expands as long as it is possible to do so, which, in fact, is usually between 5.17 and 6.56 per cent per year).

Hierarchical organizations can also be unhealthy. The Whitehall study in Great Britain examined more than 28,000 employees for ten years. They found that employees at the lowest level of the hierarchy had a mortality rate three times higher than that of employees at the highest level. Even when risk factors, such as low income, smoking, or on-the-job safety risks, were controlled for, employees in the lowest levels of the hierarchy suffered from cardiovascular disease at a rate that was 2.1 times higher than that of employees at the highest level. The cause of these discrepancies is the substantially higher stress levels at the lower levels of the hierarchy. Subsequent studies have confirmed such findings.

As you might expect, Mancuso recommends that we organize ourselves like plants do: in a diffuse model, in which consensus and authority derive from one’s own capacity to influence, rather than being conferred from above. Rather than having a single command center, decisions can come from the periphery where the needs are clearest, and information is more readily available.

One wonders: how’s the health of those folks we deal with at the DMV?

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