A word about hierarchies

"If the high Authority appoints you to an office, know this: every step upward on the ladder of offices is not a step into freedom but into bondage. The higher the office, the tighter the bondage. The greater the power of the office, the stricter the service. The stronger the personality, the less self-will." – Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game.

In Orthodoxy, as everywhere (acknowledged or not), from the pre-school sandbox to the hair salon to multinational corporations, there exists a definite hierarchy. But as in Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game, it is a hierarchy of bonded service, and I use 'bonded' and 'service' advisedly. A higher rank in the hierarch entails a great weight of responsibility, with a corresponding lesser freedom. Indeed, for those of highest rank among monastics, the Great Schema monks–those 'dead to the world'–such notions as "rank" become silly terms for the downward mobility and ironic authority in Christ's upside down kingdom. The "greatest" in the kingdom is servant of all after the pattern of the King who lays down his life on the Cross as ransom for the world.

Hierarchy might be the wrong term for such an 'ascent' … maybe 'lower-archy' would suit better, or Roger Mitchell's kenarchy? (i.e. kenotic leadership or self-emptying service)

Three types miss this dynamic altogether in their notions of hierarchy.