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States Are Composed Of Decisions
Love this comment from Snorkage on an earlier post of mine:
The problem with state as macro-organism model, aside from being an over-simplification, is that individuals ultimately make decisions. The government is more like an unthinking body that follows “rules” “orders” and “directives” because it has to. The process by which said “rules” are created, and then implemented is more nebulous. But ultimately, the trail goes back to individuals. Things like “states,” “governments,” “religions,” and “corporations” are fictions through which individuals operate to escape liability for their actions. If individuals took certain actions themselves, they would face criminal and civil liability. Done through organizations, their liability is eliminated, or greatly reduced through plausible denial.
Read the rest. So what’s the converse of this? People taking responsibility for their decisions and the consequences of their actions?
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April 5th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
the opposite is a functional relationship with another individual or small group.
as the number of the group rises people become less familiar with eachother and so less responsible and obliged as well…..so rules and regulations and rulers and regulators emerge…..consuming ever greater amounts of the groups resources.
so here we are.
a dystopia that will digest it`s self.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
So are beehives and wolf packs composed of decisions, also?
Is the human body composed of decisions made by all the individual cells?
April 6th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
In general, government officials are shielded from civil liability for acts committed while in office provided they act or have acted within the scope of their office. In any case, you have to prove that the official’s action lead to a particular wrong and that is very hard to do because it is easy to conceal or muddy the chain of causation. Especially when government officials restrict their questionable activities to “off-the-record” actions.
While corporate officials lack the exact protections of government officials, they have similar defenses in place.
Without such protections, officials would almost certainly be facing jail-time, or civil penalties, and nobody would want to be a leader.
Thus, individuals form and maintain these organizations so they are free to “do” what “needs to be done” without suffering negative repercussions. Otherwise the things that need to be done will not get done. And if eggs get broken or toes get stepped on, so be it.
This is the rationale behind “deregulation.”
But what is most interesting about this phenomenon, is the implicit inevitability that some groups or individuals will have to be shafted for the “greater good.” The people at the top know this, but it is not polite or wise to go into too much detail.
Involvement in such organizations is a survival choice in and of itself. Become part of the hive, or face the risks of being one of those the hive shafts.
You’re either on the team or off the team.
Of course, the hive may designate certain sectors of itself for destruction, but such sectors need not know this in advance.
In any case, only a select few can coagulate to play the role of queen.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Snorkage, without governments or corporations, would there be no conflicts?
To me all the same conflicts over resources would be there just on a smaller scale. Not only that but up close and dirty.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
@ Ted
The gist of what I wrote pertained to how an individual or a cabal would exploit an organization’s structure to accomplish and further their own narrow aims at the expense of people who do not have the protection of membership in said corporation, or who play an expendable role within said corporation. The organization, an entity consisting of other individuals, becomes an extension of the “decider” or “deciders.” The constituents are reduced to being gears in a machine. Those outside become fuel for the machine or components to be assimilated into it.
So the gist of what I wrote has more to do with the nature and dynamics of conflicts, rather than their existence. I disagree with the people who say that conflicts with corporations are conflicts with pure “hive-minds.” The “hive-mind” is only a tool, kind of like a biological AI, appearing to think, but not actually thinking; limited by the talent of the designers and the deciders. But behind the “hive-mind” are individuals make decisions that push the “hive-mind” in different directions with foreseeable results.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Hmm. Reducing Risk Through Consensus.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I certian things once underway are self perpetuating, and the choices more limited than you might think. For example a CEO can’t decide that the corporation he heads will no longer grow in revenue. He can’t decide that the corporation will no longer provide a good or a service to consumers.
The choices are all based on how to increase revenue and how to gain market share, things like that. Within that there is room for creativity, but it has to translate into results.
as far as this idea that all CEOs are simply parasites trying to suck all the energy out of institutions into the very top, I don’t buy it.
At the bottom, the foundation of the whole structure is the consumer, without which there would be no corporations
April 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
See, I think the difference here is you, Snorkage, seem to think states are composed of top down decisions wheras I think they are compopsed more of bottom up decisions. Like decisions to become dependant and collective in exchange for security.
Once a whole slew of people get together and decide that, someone has to call the shots, and provide the security. Its a two way street. Everyone is complicit.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:59 am
But I also think that if evryone were totally independant, we would all be like a bunch of antisocial hermits with guns or spears pointing at each other.
There is a reason why single celled organisms give up freedom and atonomy to form larger multicelled organisms. Its a cell eat cell world out there. Just look under a micrscope at a drop of pond water.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I don’t know - I guess I see us being a lot like that most of the time
April 7th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Well, yes and no. I think primitive tribal people were more caring and compasionate on an interpersonal level, but then in the next valley they would kill and eat those people.
This hs been the observations of lots of westerners iving among primitive tribes.
I most places in the US you can walk down the street without having to carry a weapon, but everyone lives cut off from everyone else in little castles, in subdivisions.
Lonely crowds often fill the downtown.
there is unity as well as lack of unity. Diversity is embraced for the sake of economic exploitation in my opinion. We are united in being consumers, but not much else.
Now take a Muslim country under Sharia law. Lots of conformity, diversity is not embraced, but there is spiritual unity. Its patriarchal and hierarchical, but within certian well established boundaries, very affectioinate and familiar, men walking down the street holding hands in friendship.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Most people carry the weapons in their hearts though
April 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
These are good questions. You should try to find the answers to them.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The CEOs? Why, they’re just management. In any case, they have to show up at the office and work long hours. Who actually controls what is more complicated. You have to look at ownership, activism; you’d have to have a gods-eye view to know it all. The people at the top are not forced down any one particular course of action, although there are pressures on them; they make choices. Sure they can “save” money by underpaying or otherwise exploiting people, but they do not have to. They choose to.
See, this whole “free market forces” made me do it is just a bunch of rhetorical nonsense from which they can escape the blame for their actions. And if they believe it themselves, all the better for their self-image.
This isn’t to say that there are not Malthusian constraints; but sometimes the elite perception of Malthusian constraints preempts their actualization.
For examples, see: Late Victorian Holocausts
http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-H...s=books&qid=1207591419&sr=8-1
Look, the government fiction, at least in theory, preempts all other fictions, at least in the U.S. The government fiction grants rights to the group, individual, and corporate fictions, and can take them away. All corporations must file papers with a Secretary of State to exist. Once in existence, said entities create relationships with property to exclude other people. Many of these entities are collectives such as corporations, trusts, agencies, groups, partnerships, and so on. There is a limited amount of “real” property, as in “real estate” and no practical limit on how much one entity can own. Since everything was bought up awhile ago, the vast majority of humanity must try to become vassals to one of these entities, in exchange for subsistence, or if they are really obedient, a micro-stake with an opportunity to move up. But generally, most people are shut out, or are in danger of being shut out.
I could write more, but one should really do a close reading of “History” from non-Pollyanna sources to confirm for oneself.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Relevant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_dividend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
Also related:
http://www.cicregulator.gov.uk/
April 7th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
What are we sparring for who can be Socrates?
I am trying to find the answers to those questions. Why do you think I raised them ?
But I think the answer to the questions of why bees would get together and form a hive, why cells would get together to form a body is close to the answer of what a State is.
Moreso, than the explanation that a State is an elite cadre’ of evil mad scientists throwing a net over everybody to further their evil secret plans mwa ha ha ha….etc.
I also think there are complementary agreements goping on. Some people want to dominate, others submit.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
You can’t find the answers to those questions through argument and comparison with unrelated ecological systems. You can certainly say that a group of bees is LIKE a group of humans, but you can compare any two things you want. That’s what our mind is for. What benefit is derived from making this comparison? What are the assumptions and agenda which lay underneath it?
1. What is a decision? How do you know when you’ve made one? When someone else has made one? When a bee has made one? When an individual cell has made one?
2. What constitutes automatic behavior and where does it come from?
3. What is the difference between individual decision-making and collective decision making? What about collective intelligence? What about group identity? What about inherited patterns of activity?
4. What about Free Will within ecological systems?
April 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/07/for-love-of-water-in.html
Here, read about how the entity that calls itself the “World Bank” “forces” the entities known as “Third World” “governments” to sell the “rights” to their indigenous water supply to “First World”-originated “multi-nationals,” who then bottle it and sell it to “consumers” in the “First World.”
This is not about “survival” as much as it is about “prosperity” and “power.” We could all survive if we wanted to, but some choose to sacrifice the survival of others for their own prosperity and power.
As often as competition is found in nature, more often do we find cooperation and symbiosis.
In any case, surplus populations become difficult, or not cost-effective to “govern” and “control.” What cannot be governed or controlled is inherently chaotic, and anathema to the order of the state, and therefore it must be destroyed.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
teo torriate.
japanese.
i think it translates as “let us cling together.”
April 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Tim,
I think the ecological comparisons reveal what the power relationships are inherent in how all things are connect. As far as the fallacy of argument by anology, that may be true, but I think repeating bpatterns is a quality of the universe. In that sense they are not unrelated.
Snork,
I see where you are coming from in terms of the World Bank and so forth, I choose to look at it for what it is. Not as an evil cabal that has left a blight of sin over the Earth, but as different players in a game. We are all playing different roles in a game. Some people are here to dominate and contol. I think the US military Industrial Complex has a lot of enneagram eight energy.
But as you progress in the game roles evolve. I think these robber baron types looking back will be shown to have played a positive role.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
@ Ted
The problem with the game analogy is that the people at the top are playing “Monopoly” or “Oligopoly” or “God,” and the rest of world is playing “Survivor,” or “Refugee,” or “Dispossessed,” or “Concentration-Camp Inmate.”
The top deals with bottom in terms of abstractions, as they are separated from them by layer upon layer of bureaucracy. So to them, it IS more like a game, which makes it easier for them to act and make decisions. The people at the bottom experience it as life and death.
Institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank were set up by strong countries to control weaker ones, at least initially, although it is conceivable that thing will even out over time. But this is always a promise that is made to keep people in line. Things will be better in the future; prosperity is just around the corner.
This is cold comfort for people who have had the land and water bought out from under them.
It’s easy to have a lot of “enneagram eight energy” when, by hook or by crook, 1/3 to 1/2 the tax dollars are funneled into your pocket.
As for evil, Plato believed it to be hurting your friends and helping your enemies. From life’s perspective, the great enemy is death in the form of utter annihilation, or extinction.
War is planned annihilation. Is planned to preempt the chaos of unplanned annihilation, which might threaten the whole. But, it should become a relic of the past, although many argue that serves more useful, more esoteric purposes.
What’s frustrating about these comments is how we are all having a conversation in slow motion.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I had the same reaction to the question so I think the answer is yes.
I think this is true but the bigger problem is that we’re stuck using words to describe life and life is rooted in something that can’t be described using words. I still enjoy trying because sometimes you get close.
QUEEN! Freddie lives again!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3uhUutCTs
April 7th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Maybe more what I am trying to say is that I don’t see you making direct observations in the field about wolf pack and beehive decision-making, its causes and consequences. I’m feeling more and more like that would be a better use of all of our time: more direct observation, more living, less theorizing… Not picking on you or your comments in particular, so much as I’m trying to reinforce a point about where I am at and where I’m trying to head with all this stuff…
April 7th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I spend time outdoors everyday…but yeah, living in the moment, direct experience is good. But anyway I want to build a beehive.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
actually a garden to attract bees.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Go for it! Watch the Chicago Tribune video on this site. I visited the featured business for work. The bees are right next to the expressway and feed on weeds in the alleys and at nearby Garfield Park. It’s one of the most flavorful honeys I’ve ever tasted. If you have a roof beehives can be kept there too.
http://www.beelinestore.com/
April 8th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Mike Wallace interviews Aldous Huxley:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/v...deo/2008/wallace/huxley_aldous_t.html
Huxley offers up the “impersonal forces” are leading us to totalitarianism argument.