Not Just Bad Apples: The Domination Hierarchy as a Trauma Factory

The billionaire bros want to dominate the world through technology. Their incestuous and insatiable greed involves trauma. Lots of trauma.

The domination hierarchy creates the conditions for traumatized individuals to rise within it, while also ensuring its survival. A rigid, high-control system fosters adaptations that reinforce it: dissociation from empathy, compulsive control, and a drive to dominate or be dominated.

People don’t just happen to act in these ways; their environment shapes them,  and the environment has been engineered over generations to favor those who can thrive within it.

Those who lack access to power are conditioned into submission or survival strategies that keep them from disrupting the structure. Those who rise in the hierarchy often do so because they have the traits and adaptations that allow them to wield power without being overwhelmed by its moral weight.

A system like this requires trauma. It selects for individuals whose nervous systems have adapted to survive in dominance-based structures, whether through aggression, manipulation, or calculated detachment.

Once in power, they reinforce the mechanisms that shaped them, ensuring that the next generation is formed in the same mold.

The hierarchy isn’t just fostering traumatized individuals; it is built on trauma, self-perpetuating, and designed to keep its logic intact. That’s why breaking it requires disrupting the conditions that make these adaptations necessary in the first place.

This post includes content generated by ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI. The AI-generated content has been reviewed and edited for accuracy and relevance.

About Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Shay Seaborne CPTSD teaches Relational Neuroscience for stress reduction, trauma recovery, and community building. Shay has studied the neurobiology of fear / trauma /PTSD since 2014 and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) since 2019. They write, speak, teach, and make art to convey their experiences as well as their understanding of the neurobiology of fear, trauma theory, Interpersonal Neurobiology concepts, and principles of trauma recovery. A native of Northern Virginia, Shay settled in Delaware to sail KALMAR NYCKEL, the state’s tall ship. But once they finally had mental health insurance, their life rapidly changed. The standard treatment for PTSD nearly killed them. The psychiatric abuse began a cascade of negative medical encounters that repeatedly caused additional harm and the development of severe Medical PTSD. Shay wishes everyone could recognize that "mental health problems" are symptoms of dysregulation, our mainstream culture is neuro-negative, and we can heal ourselves and each other through awareness, understanding, and safe connection.
This entry was posted in IPNB of Hierarchy and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply