· 7 min read
There is a quiet wisdom embedded in the structure of a close friendship: no one rules, no one submits. When someone starts acting too controlling, the others push back — not with violence, but with laughter, eye rolls, or a simple refusal to play along. These moments reflect a deeper, often overlooked truth about human nature: that we are not hardwired for dominance, but for equality enforced by collective resistance. This is the principle of the reverse dominance hierarchy, a social structure where the many actively prevent any one individual from consolidating power over the group. It is a political order without rulers — one maintained not by laws or police, but by solidarity and social intelligence.
In a time of unprecedented inequality, political disillusionment, and ecological breakdown, rediscovering this form of bottom-up power may be more than an anthropological curiosity. It may be the key to reimagining a democratic, just, and livable future.
What is a reverse dominance hierarchy?
Coined by anthropologist Christopher Boehm, the concept of reverse dominance describes a social mechanism by which groups resist domination rather than submit to it. In egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, leaders were tolerated only as long as they served the group. The moment they tried to coerce, accumulate, or elevate themselves above others, the community pushed back — through mockery, ostracism, non-cooperation, or, in extreme cases, expulsion.
Unlike authoritarian systems, where power flows from the top down, reverse dominance ensures that power remains fluid, relational, and accountable. It’s not that no one leads — it’s that leadership is provisional, revocable, and never allowed to crystallize into domination.
You already know this: Friendship as micro-politics
Most of us experience reverse dominance every day — among friends, in collectives, in informal communities. In a healthy friend group, no one can monopolize decisions without resistance. Leadership rotates, decisions are made by consensus, and anyone acting too self-important is brought down to earth with a joke or a challenge. There is a deeply intuitive sense that we are equals — not in the abstract, but in practice.
These social instincts are ancient. For tens of thousands of years, humans lived in small, interdependent groups where survival depended not on outcompeting each other, but on cooperating and keeping each other in check. The suppression of dominance wasn’t a flaw in our nature — it was our greatest social technology.
Why our society no longer supports reverse dominance
Modern society, however, is structurally incompatible with reverse dominance.
First, in today’s political economy, power isn’t just symbolic — it buys influence, access, and security. Unlike in friendship groups, those who dominate gain material advantage, and the systems they build protect and expand that advantage.
Second, the rich and powerful no longer depend on those around them. They can hire, automate, or relocate their needs. The mutual interdependence that sustains equality is broken.
Third, where hunter-gatherers used social pressure to keep power in check, modern institutions — corporations, nation-states, militaries — entrench hierarchy and suppress dissent. You can’t ridicule a CEO out of office. You can’t mock a law into changing.
Finally, we’ve normalized domination as leadership, competition as virtue, and inequality as natural. The result is a society that rewards those who rise above others — not those who rise with others.
But there’s something even deeper at play: a kind of social atrophy that sets in when people are no longer embedded in strong, interdependent communities.
As surplus grew and mobility expanded, we gained the ability to leave situations we didn’t like. We could leave our group of origin, our community, our partner, our job. We stopped looking inward and working through relationships — and instead, we walked away. This mobility seemed like freedom, but it came with a cost: disconnection.
Where we once had no choice but to resolve tensions through cooperation and negotiation, now we can simply move on. This erodes the social muscles required to maintain egalitarian relations. When people isolate, and social connection weakens, the subtle skills of negotiation, patience, empathy, and conflict resolution atrophy. The fewer everyday social interactions we have, the less practiced we become in the art of being with others.
Think about how many more places of interaction we had just thirty years ago — before the internet, social media, remote work, home delivery, and hyper-individualized lifestyles. We chatted at bus stops, debated at union halls, played cards at the community center, argued politics at the bar, exchanged recipes with neighbors. Now, we stream alone. We exercise alone. We shop alone. We are more isolated than ever, and this isolation creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop: the less we interact, the worse we become at interaction; the worse we become at interaction, the less we seek it out. Our social skills shrink. So does our tolerance, our trust, and our ability to hold each other accountable.
This is one of the great unspoken reasons why reverse dominance hierarchies no longer emerge naturally: we simply do not have enough practice being together.
This is why we must rebuild the third places — the informal public spaces where people meet without a transaction: parks, libraries, repair cafés, community kitchens, tool libraries, maker spaces, saunas, sports clubs, and community gardens. These are the places where social trust is built, where people learn again how to deliberate, disagree, and remain.
Without them, there is no solidarity. Without solidarity, there is no resistance to power.
How to rebuild a society of reverse dominance
To create a society that reflects our deepest egalitarian instincts, we must redesign the conditions of power itself. Reverse dominance is not about removing all leadership — it’s about creating a culture and structure where no one can rise above the group in a way that undermines the group.
Citizens’ assemblies with real power
We must strip power from career politicians by institutionalizing democratic lottery systems — citizens’ assemblies where everyday people, selected at random, deliberate on key decisions. These assemblies must have legislative or binding power, not just advisory roles.
Unlike elected officials, citizens in these assemblies are not incentivized by money, status, or re-election. They represent the diversity of society and make decisions based on deliberation, not lobbying. This model reintroduces horizontal decision-making at the heart of governance.
Universal basic access
We must guarantee free and universal access to essentials: housing, food, healthcare, education, public transport, and clean energy. This decommodifies survival and removes the leverage that dominant actors hold over others.
When people do not depend on employers or landlords for their basic needs, they gain the freedom to say no — to walk away from exploitative arrangements. Economic freedom becomes the basis for social equality.
Green job guarantees
Rather than relying on market forces to create employment, we must commit to a green job guarantee — publicly funded work opportunities that contribute to ecological restoration, care work, and community resilience.
This not only addresses unemployment but ensures that work is directed toward regenerative, socially beneficial ends. No one should be forced to compete in a market for survival. Labor becomes a form of contribution, not subjugation.
Wealth tax and redistribution
Reverse dominance cannot coexist with extreme inequality. We must implement steep wealth taxes on capital, inheritance, and passive income to ensure that no one can accumulate the power to dominate others through wealth alone.
Redistribution is not about punishing success — it’s about protecting democracy. It creates the material basis for mutual respect and shared stake in the future.
Cultural shift: Redefining leadership
Finally, we must transform how we view leadership itself. True leaders are not those who control others, but those who hold responsibility in service of the group. Leadership must be temporary, accountable, and always revocable.
We need new narratives — through education, art, and storytelling — that elevate humility over hubris, listening over commanding, cooperation over competition. When power is seen not as status but as stewardship, dominance loses its appeal.
The future we already know
We do not need to invent a new way of being. We only need to scale up what we already do in miniature. The principles of reverse dominance exist in our friendships, in our grassroots movements, in the best moments of our shared lives.
To reclaim them at the level of society means designing systems that resist hierarchy, restore interdependence, and make domination both materially unrewarding and socially unacceptable.
It means refusing to be ruled — not through revolution, but through refusal, redesign, and reconnection.
This is not a utopia. It is a return to who we already are when we are most human.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
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