The Material Conditions Of Hierarchy

By Leo Gura - May 9, 2025

This is really good:

It is correct that material conditions drive politics and social hierarchy, or lack thereof. But actually, something more fundamental is at work: survival.

All social organization, culture, and ideology is a function of survival. Survival is the elephant in the room that no one is seeing. Whether you’re an SJW or a neo-Nazi or a radical feminist or a Beatnik or a theocrat — the common thread is always survival. Humans are survival zombies. They do not make conscious choices about survival, they just do survival using the nearest and most convenient survival pathways available to them at the time. For example, a hot girl will become a model. Why? Because that’s the nearest survival pathway for a hot girl. Why would a hot girl go out of her way to learn physics or programming when she doesn’t have to? Another example: a gay weed smoking kid in San Francisco in the 60’s becomes a hippie. Why? Because that is the nearest survival pathway given the community he lives in. Why would such a kid become a neo-Nazi when he doesn’t have to?

Even the core ideas that make up your mind are all just nearest survival pathways. That’s why Christians are Christians, Muslims are Muslims, and Buddhists are Buddhists. The key insight is that 99% of humans do no original thinking, they just think whatever people nearest to them think. This is true regardless of the content of the thinking. It could be Nazi thinking, LGBTQ thinking, post-modern thinking, hippie thinking, New Age thinking, Christian thinking, science thinking, Buddhist thinking. The mind is lazy and just takes the shortest path. The shortest path is whatever increases the mind’s survival within its community.

The function of hierarchy is to enable survival. How much hierarchy, how strict or lax, depends on what the environment will let you get away with. In ancient Egypt the environment allowed for Pharaohs and slaves. Today’s environment no longer allows for that, but allows for Trump. In the 1930’s Germany the environment allowed for Hitler. And in 1910’s Russia the environment allowed for Lenin and Stalin. Today’s environment is ripe for people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson — which is why they are popular and successful. Success is all about finding the shortest path up the tallest hill in a survival landscape. Try this: instead of thinking of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson as human beings, think of them as zombie survival strategies. These are elaborate survival strategies which are unconscious of themselves as survival strategies. Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson do not know that they are survival strategies with legs and mouths.

The key insight is this: Humans are survival zombies, just like animals. The difference is, humans invent a lot of complex mental story and rationalization around their zombie activities, and these stories are made in the same zombie fashion.

The purpose of Actualized.org is to realize that you have been a survival zombie your whole life and to finally become conscious enough to transcend it.

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