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Re: Are \"they\" really the enemy? (Systems commentary)
In message <[email protected]>
the impostor "Jim.Dixon": @pylon.com:; writes:
> System-makers typically expect automatic processes to determine
> the character of the whole, and the operations themselves
> become the purpose for which the system exists. [etc]
This whole discussion, I think, begins with a misconception: the
original writer was talking about the idea that a group has an
existence separate from that of its members; you are talking about
systems that people have designed, or think that they have
designed.
> When a system is designed to organize human behavior (as in
> "governing" it) it has the inherent mistake of being based on
> the presumption of complete knowledge of human nature (yet who
> agrees on what that comprises).
Only a philosopher could make such a statement.
A family is such a system, but it is based on no such presumption.
Families begin in what is usually a completely mindless activity.
And any honest parent of teenage children will admit that he or
she is almost totally ignorant of human nature. If the parent
doesn't admit it, the child will let the parent know.
Most of us just bumble along. We have little theories. We
recognize that we do not have complete knowledge of anything.
> Anyone who is circumscribed by
> the system created is held within its confines, is judged by
> its borders and by its limits upon their decisions. If someone
> wants to try out an idea or method which does not fall within
> the allowances set up within it, they must first go outside of
> the system to have the freedom to act according to the new
> idea.
Or they must be willing to raise hell. Once again, look at any
family with children. The parents set limits. The children
throw themselves into challenging those limits with great abandon.
Some kids leave when they see that the system cannot challenge them
any more. They go to look for stronger limits.
> ...
>
> No one is going to be agreeable to participating in a venture
> in which they do not have some confidence about the reward; in
Look at real systems. Look at the family. No one is asked to
join: they just get born. That's how most of us become Americans
(or whatever) too. The great systems that control most of our
lives are simply _there_.
> a ready-made system if someone has become dependent upon the
> security it provides, they are going to be even less willing to
> give up the comfort of pre-determined decisions and predictable
> outcomes. Then there will be seen less of reason and more of
> unimaginative automaticity.
Ah, there is so much to disagree with. In the Middle Ages,
people like Thomas Aquinas lived in societies and institutions
which controlled thought and behaviour to a high degree. But
Aquinas devoted his life to reason and he was no unimaginative
automaton.
Poetry is the result of forcing speech into predictable patterns.
Reason depends upon the existence of accepted principles.
> In a non-political system or manner of existence (not designed
> to rule over human nature per se), individuals have to rely
> upon their own abilities, upon the development of their own
> judgement, rather than upon the "governance" of their behavior
> by strangers.
I think that you mean to propose this as an ideal, yes? But you
fail to see that many situations are zero-sum games or even
negative-sum gains, where someone must lose. And often it is
in no one's particular interest to do that which is for the
common good of all. One of the functions of politics and
government is to limit the freedom of individuals where the
exercise of that freedom can lead to harm to others. It is in
everyone's interest that there be white lines down the middle of
roads and that cars be forced to drive on one side or the other.
> This doesn't mean that there could be no systems
> in existence at all; there are still business enterprises which
> call upon the coordination of efforts towards a specific goal.
> But this does not obligate that they take on the quality of a
> "perpetual picnic". The more that individuals look at systems
> as relative to the accomplishment of particular, specific
> goals, the less they will look to them as the means to
> accomplish the re-shaping of mankind (i.e. the morality of the
> neighbors). Such systems actually could accomplish a
> "re-shaping" of some individuals, but as an accessory
> contingent event, simply from the fact of those involved having
> discovered a means of achieving some personal command over
> "Nature".
We have no choice about systems. Without the system called the
English language, you and I would not be communicating. Without
schools, you would have no education. And so forth.
It is of course true that we can design small systems for specific
purposes. But you cannot look only at the overt, rational,
explicit, acceptable purposes of the group.
> Trying to understand the system (whose system?) is really
> putting the cart before the horse (first you need a problem, to
> which the system is the solution).
No. Systems exist and they have attributes which are independent
of those who created them and those who staff them. You walk
around the corner and there is a mob. The mob is a little
system, like a dust devil. What it is a solution to is irrelevant.
It is there, and it has an effect on you. You need to understand
it to some degree if you want that effect not to be harm.
The people in the mob may be carried away by what they see as
noble motives and they may not even notice the harm that they
do to things and passers-by. Motives are far less important
than effects.
> Trying to understand all of
> human nature is a Major Enterprise. It's much more managable
> to set up small systems based upon the control of those who
> have cause to set one up, who are interested & willing to
> participate, than trying to set up an all-encompassing system
> which includes even unrully, ungrateful beasts with an attitude.
The author of the original comments might say that when you
set up your little system, call it the overt one, you will at
the same time set up another, call it the covert one. The
covert one arises in part out of private, unconfessed motives.
It is just as real and often far more effective than the overt
one.
I knew this guy in Calcutta, in India. He was a Salvation Army
major. He ran a group that distributed food to the very poor.
Every day they went out in a jeep and fed thousands of people
from a big pot in the back. This is the overt system. A selfless
relief worker, a group of kindly saints bringing food to the
starving.
The number of starving people around Calcutta was always a good
approximation to infinity, so the Sally Ann used a system of ID
cards. These ensured that only deserving people got free food and
that each person got only one meal.
To many of the Bengalis, the major was the devil incarnate. They
actually had no food and their families would starve without the
daily visit from the Sally Ann. The major had many arbitrary
rules which they could not understand. He also had a bad temper.
So as they saw it, every so often, the soup god would blow up and
yank someone's ID card for no reason. They were extremely careful
when he was around. He terrified them. They propitiated their
dark god daily. This was the covert system.
--
Jim Dixon (the real one)