Duty Is Not Superiority: Relearning Horizontal Value in Human Life and Governance
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Modern society has been trained—almost indoctrinated—to confuse duty with superiority. We rank roles, we stack professions, we attach prestige to some forms of labour while diminishing others. This habit has become so culturally embedded that it appears natural, unquestionable, and even rational. Yet when examined carefully, it collapses.
The truth is simple but radical: duty is functional, not hierarchical. Superiority is an illusion imposed by bureaucratic verticality, not an inherent property of responsibility.
1. The Vertical Illusion of Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is, by design, vertical. It organises roles into ladders, pyramids, and chains of command. Over time, this structure quietly reshapes perception. What begins as a coordination mechanism becomes a moral ranking system. Titles become status. Pay becomes worth. Proximity to authority becomes perceived importance. In such an environment, duty is no longer understood as what one does, but as where one stands above others.
This is how society arrives at absurd conclusions: that a minister is “above” a judge, that an executive is “greater” than a legislator, that a university-trained professional is “more valuable” than a cleaner, a driver, or a caregiver. Yet none of these conclusions survive philosophical scrutiny.
When duty and superiority are studied independently—stripped of bureaucratic framing—no verticality exists. What appears instead is a horizontal formation of specialised functions, each irreducible to the other.
2. Duty in Isolation Is Always Horizontal
A duty is a specific obligation tied to a specific function. Its value lies in precision, not rank.
A surgeon’s duty is not superior to that of a sanitation worker; it is simply different. One preserves life internally, the other preserves life environmentally. Remove either, and society collapses. The same is true across all domains of human organisation. Intelligence varies. Skill sets differ. Capacities are unequal. But inequality of capacity does not imply superiority of worth.
Even perception itself operates on this principle. Vision is not superior to hearing; memory is not superior to emotion; logic is not superior to intuition. Each performs a distinct role within a wider cognitive ecology. None dominates the others without distortion.
3. Political Society and the Myth of “Higher Office”
Nowhere has this confusion been more damaging than in political organisation. Classical republican systems have conditioned populations to see governance as a ladder: Executive at the top, Legislature beneath it, Judiciary somewhere above or below depending on the regime. This framing has justified power accumulation, Executive dominance, and the erosion of accountability.
Yet this entire conception rests on a categorical error. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches do not perform comparable duties. Therefore, they cannot be ranked. One executes; one deliberates and expresses collective will; one interprets, adjudicates, and supervises legality. To declare one “superior” to another is as nonsensical as claiming the heart is superior to the lungs.
Each branch answers a different question:
- The Executive asks: How do we implement?
- The Legislature asks: What do we choose?
- The Judiciary asks: Is it permissible and coherent?
Superiority cannot exist where functions are non-substitutable.
4. Commicaracy and the Re-Education of Power
If commicracy teaches anything, it is precisely this: governance is not vertical power, but horizontal coordination. In the Quandra Govoxical Model, the four branches of ethnopublican governance are arranged not as a pyramid but as an interlocking plane of responsibilities.
To operationalise this philosophy, the ethnopublican State recognises four interdependent govoxical branches, each exercising authority within its designated domain—without constitutional superiority over the others.
A. Citizenry-Branch of Government
This branch exists to remove barriers to direct popular expression. It places regional governance under the authority of citizenry-electorates themselves, ensuring that communities actively shape their socio-economic realities. Its duty is not to rule over others, but to express collective will without distortion.
B. Economy-Branch of Government
The Economy-Branch centres the working-group as the custodian of economic life. Its commissioning powers are specific: self-sufficiency, subsistence security, and the elimination of economic class hierarchies. It does not “outrank” the Citizenry-Branch; it fulfills a distinct duty—economic organisation by those who produce economic value.
C. Secretariat-Branch of Government
The Secretariat is administrative, not superior. Its task is execution, coordination, and translation—turning citizenry and economic directives into functional policy. It governs no one; it implements what has already been decided through legitimate channels.
D. Judicial-Branch of Government
The Judicial-Branch, occupied by the StateLords, exercises supervisory and interpretive authority. This role may appear elevated in society perception, but it is not superior in power—only different in duty. It ensures constitutional coherence and protects the system from overreach, including its own.
What looks hierarchical at a glance reveals itself, in practice, as a horizontal system of mutual accountability. No branch commands another. Each constrains and enables the others.
5. Relearning Value in Everyday Life
This philosophical correction must extend beyond governance into culture itself. Society must abandon the habit of ranking jobs as “better” or “worse” based on monetary income, education, or prestige. A cleaner’s duty is not inferior to that of a professor; a mechanic’s contribution is not lesser than that of a policymaker; a shop worker performs duty that is equally distinct from that of a security officer.
A person with a PhD may have undergone long training; a cleaner may have undergone none. But training is not moral elevation. Pay is not dignity. Titles are not worth.
Even intelligence itself is not equal—and it was never meant to be. Cognitive diversity is functional, not hierarchical. Each form of intelligence serves a role. To pyramid them into a single scale of superiority is to misunderstand humanity.
Conclusion: Toward a Cultural Reorientation
The greatest work of ethnopublicanism and commicracy is not institutional—it is perceptual. It asks society to unlearn the vertical myths imposed by bureaucracy and to rediscover the horizontal truth of duty expressed by commicracy.
When duty is understood correctly, resentment dissolves. When superiority is abandoned, dignity becomes universal. And when governance mirrors this philosophy, power ceases to dominate and begins to coordinate and reciprocate equally.
A civilisation matures not when it builds higher ladders, but when it recognises that no one stands above the work that sustains all.
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