And when people got home from the wars, what jobs did we peg them for?? Law enforcement! Fire fighting, too. Both are stressful jobs. And let's face it, not all the guys who signed up were good people to start with.
The thing to remember is that the bad apple spoils the bunch, i.e. one bad apple in the barrel and you can soon toss the entire barrel out. Because the bad apple made the other apples rot faster.
Edit to add: it is in part a plant hormone thing, and in part a microbe growth thing.
I think there is a third factor, when working with others we need to ignore our own goals in favour of the goals of the group. This is fine if the group is small enough to understand the group's goals and methods, because that allows evaluation of whether you want to stay a part of that group, but in larger groups you can lose sight of either the goal or the methods.
Right on, thank you. I'm just surprised by the lack of comments. I've been in Wonkette's orbit since 2016 and usually every article gets at least 100 responses.
That's an interesting point. I might rephrase it to something more like, "it's easier to align your own goals with the group if the group is small enough. Once the group gets 'too large' its goals become more muddled and one's own needs and desires rise to overtake them." Both size and time work against long term cooperation.
Regarding short term vs. long term cooperation, there's a parallel in volunteer organizations. They say 90% of the work gets done by 10% of the people, which aligns with my experience. The longer a project goes on, the more individuals drop out because life intervenes and it's hard to keep focus.
You can get all sorts of effort from everyone in a group to restore a ballfield in a day. Every group I've ever been in that needs to operate continuously for a year or more experiences huge turnover because it's hard to keep priorities aligned for an extended period.
Interesting, we are obviously looking at the same thing (behaviour changes in larger groups) but it is exactly opposite to mine. I've seen many examples (various obedience experiments, every multinational company, all authoritarian governments) where people's own desires don't overtake them and they just keep working for The Man. I think that is a lot more common than that people defect.
I'm not denying your experiences, obviously both happen. I just wonder what factor makes the difference, there has to be something or a collection of somethings. If we can figure that one out we can use social engineering to make authoritarian regimes fall and to make volunteer groups stay together.
In the case of companies it is a combination of comfort and necessity, if your life is comfortable you are less likely to walk away from a good job and you will ignore the unsettling acts of high management. If you are afraid to lose your income, then you learn to ignore the unsetlling acts simply to protect your ego. volunteer work is uncomfortable and it adds nothing to the first two layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs(physiology and safety). So if one of those is challenged, then you drop the volunteer work. (Sidenote: I just realised Maslow's hierarchy is missing Comfort, it should be placed between Safety and Love.)
Maybe the reason volunteer work is more often dropped than jobs is simply because it is higher on an expanded Maslow's hierarchy. There are more levels below that can be damaged, so you are more likely to go down a level. I have to think about this some more.
Many years ago, I read some of the books by Daniel Quinn, the series called Ishmael. Quinn is a terrible writer and always seems to condescend to his reader, which drives me crazy, but he had an interesting thesis. Basically, his premise was that when society moved from a semi-nomadic to an agricultural one in the paleolithic period it was the move away from a communal organization toward the kind of authoritarian, hierarchical structure that we see today - capitalism, property ownership, over-population, and the resulting ecological crisis began with "civilization."
I bring it up because the spirit of cooperation, of community, that is still present in our best natures seems tied to a much older instinct that we are better when we help the least among us. But the energy that is built up in response to these emergencies always seems to get channeled into authoritarian structures - the second Gulf war, for instance. I was opposed to it, but felt powerless to stop it. The Patriot Act was an infringement on civil liberty, but the energy of the moment carried it forward without a second thought. I can help my neighbor, donate to the local food bank, but even the bottom-up force of hundreds of thousands seems to fall flat in the face of the top-down structures that are in place. Breaking those structures by force seems to leave a vacuum often occupied by another authoritatian - trying to reconstruct from within means patching onto a structure that is broken by nature. I guess the question is how do we actually bring about change?
I've also been reflecting on this because, as a professor of art history, I've begun to see that the introductory course in art history always celebrates the Classical - which derives from the Greeks and is adopted by the Romans. This impulse toward the Classical is celebrated as rational and humanist, but really seems to be tied into authoritarian control, class and racial discrimination, and elitism. The power of the Romans is essentially transferred to the Christian church. The field of art history itself was founded on the 19th century belief that we were the inheritors of the "greatness of the Greeks." I'm trying to find a way to make it clear in the class that the history being traced out is the foundation and institutionalization of structural inequity.
I don't disagree that people working for a shitty company or living in a shitty country might continue to do so. I will assert however that the larger the organization and the more distant the power center, the less effort individuals will put into aligning their interests with the org. This is the equivalent to tapering off as a volunteer in my model.
It's almost guaranteed that if you're an anonymous cog in a giant wheel, at least some things will happen that you don't agree with and can't impact. A lot of people, myself included, tend to disengage when that happens, performing enthusiasm theater to get along. That's exactly what happened at my last job as the small startup I worked for was swallowed by progressively bigger companies. At the end, nobody knew exactly what I did but they thought I was great. Meanwhile I read all the articles on Wonkette.
Hm. I think I'm mostly agreeing with you here.
To my eyes, whether it be a voluntary or (relatively) involuntary association, both time and size work against the sort of enthusiastic helping we agree are desirable.
So maybe that's one way to reorganize society, bottom-up as small groups tasked with taking care of each other.
And then my mind goes to HOAs and I realize it'll never fly, Orville.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful conversation. You've forced me to attempt to think through why I'm so sceptical that this could really work long term and nationwide.
One of my dearest friends teaches art history at a small NJ college. He has added to the curriculum art that is far older than that of the Romans and Greeks, including Paleolithic art.
"So maybe that's one way to reorganize society, bottom-up as small groups tasked with taking care of each other."I think you are on the right path here, but the goal is too broad, which leads to long term, which, as you said, leads to disengagement. So we need small specific goals that can be achieved in a short time. Heh, we are basically re-inventing Agile except that the groups dissolve more often. So, the idea is to make the whole of society work in Agile short term work groups with specific goals. For that to work in a coherent way with the rest of society (i.e. the other short term work groups) we need some kind of centralised hub where people can put down requests and pick up a task to work on with a small group for a short time. I've seen similar things in MMO's but never geared towards groups, that probably does exist though.
Are we really going to change reality into an MMO? Then we need to solve the Internet-makes-people-act-like-assholes problem. So, the workgroups must be as local as possible, yelling insults at someone within sight is hard because you can see the pain you cause. Also, you are within punching distance. This should work often enough to keep the members return users.
The big design challenge is to build the hub, though that is not unsurmountable, similar ideas roam around in the Maker culture and I have seen it in Sci-Fi, specifically Cory Doctorow's Walkaway. B.F. Skinner's Walden Two has similar ideas, though it uses human controllers instead of a technological hub. Which has it's up and down sides. The key point is make it completely decentralised, so the hubneeds to be simple and easily copied. You can link hubs together but that should not be a design requirement. You want this to work even if government is fighting it, which means you need to avoid a central point of failure.
I'm really enjoying this conversation, we should continue this elsewhere (these comments can be hard to search, Discuss keeps breaking stuff). I can't PM, so I made a disposable email from which I can send you my personal email. Regretr@mail.com I expect it will fill with spam fast for posting it publicly :P
Late to the party, but it has always seemed to me that the dividing line between communal and authoritarian societies is the development of agriculture because it led to the idea of inherited real estate.
And when people got home from the wars, what jobs did we peg them for?? Law enforcement! Fire fighting, too. Both are stressful jobs. And let's face it, not all the guys who signed up were good people to start with.
The thing to remember is that the bad apple spoils the bunch, i.e. one bad apple in the barrel and you can soon toss the entire barrel out. Because the bad apple made the other apples rot faster.
Edit to add: it is in part a plant hormone thing, and in part a microbe growth thing.
Those are both excellent observations.
I think there is a third factor, when working with others we need to ignore our own goals in favour of the goals of the group. This is fine if the group is small enough to understand the group's goals and methods, because that allows evaluation of whether you want to stay a part of that group, but in larger groups you can lose sight of either the goal or the methods.
Party's over on Open Thread. It's Canasta Night.
Right on, thank you. I'm just surprised by the lack of comments. I've been in Wonkette's orbit since 2016 and usually every article gets at least 100 responses.
The two flanking articles have over ten thousand comments between them.
That's an interesting point. I might rephrase it to something more like, "it's easier to align your own goals with the group if the group is small enough. Once the group gets 'too large' its goals become more muddled and one's own needs and desires rise to overtake them." Both size and time work against long term cooperation.
Regarding short term vs. long term cooperation, there's a parallel in volunteer organizations. They say 90% of the work gets done by 10% of the people, which aligns with my experience. The longer a project goes on, the more individuals drop out because life intervenes and it's hard to keep focus.
You can get all sorts of effort from everyone in a group to restore a ballfield in a day. Every group I've ever been in that needs to operate continuously for a year or more experiences huge turnover because it's hard to keep priorities aligned for an extended period.
I find this discussion really interesting and I'm glad Herr Doktor opened it. If it doesn't suit you there are plenty of other things to read here.
To each their own. Just stating an opinion, just like yourself.
Interesting, we are obviously looking at the same thing (behaviour changes in larger groups) but it is exactly opposite to mine. I've seen many examples (various obedience experiments, every multinational company, all authoritarian governments) where people's own desires don't overtake them and they just keep working for The Man. I think that is a lot more common than that people defect.
I'm not denying your experiences, obviously both happen. I just wonder what factor makes the difference, there has to be something or a collection of somethings. If we can figure that one out we can use social engineering to make authoritarian regimes fall and to make volunteer groups stay together.
In the case of companies it is a combination of comfort and necessity, if your life is comfortable you are less likely to walk away from a good job and you will ignore the unsettling acts of high management. If you are afraid to lose your income, then you learn to ignore the unsetlling acts simply to protect your ego. volunteer work is uncomfortable and it adds nothing to the first two layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs(physiology and safety). So if one of those is challenged, then you drop the volunteer work. (Sidenote: I just realised Maslow's hierarchy is missing Comfort, it should be placed between Safety and Love.)
Maybe the reason volunteer work is more often dropped than jobs is simply because it is higher on an expanded Maslow's hierarchy. There are more levels below that can be damaged, so you are more likely to go down a level. I have to think about this some more.
Many years ago, I read some of the books by Daniel Quinn, the series called Ishmael. Quinn is a terrible writer and always seems to condescend to his reader, which drives me crazy, but he had an interesting thesis. Basically, his premise was that when society moved from a semi-nomadic to an agricultural one in the paleolithic period it was the move away from a communal organization toward the kind of authoritarian, hierarchical structure that we see today - capitalism, property ownership, over-population, and the resulting ecological crisis began with "civilization."
I bring it up because the spirit of cooperation, of community, that is still present in our best natures seems tied to a much older instinct that we are better when we help the least among us. But the energy that is built up in response to these emergencies always seems to get channeled into authoritarian structures - the second Gulf war, for instance. I was opposed to it, but felt powerless to stop it. The Patriot Act was an infringement on civil liberty, but the energy of the moment carried it forward without a second thought. I can help my neighbor, donate to the local food bank, but even the bottom-up force of hundreds of thousands seems to fall flat in the face of the top-down structures that are in place. Breaking those structures by force seems to leave a vacuum often occupied by another authoritatian - trying to reconstruct from within means patching onto a structure that is broken by nature. I guess the question is how do we actually bring about change?
I've also been reflecting on this because, as a professor of art history, I've begun to see that the introductory course in art history always celebrates the Classical - which derives from the Greeks and is adopted by the Romans. This impulse toward the Classical is celebrated as rational and humanist, but really seems to be tied into authoritarian control, class and racial discrimination, and elitism. The power of the Romans is essentially transferred to the Christian church. The field of art history itself was founded on the 19th century belief that we were the inheritors of the "greatness of the Greeks." I'm trying to find a way to make it clear in the class that the history being traced out is the foundation and institutionalization of structural inequity.
I don't disagree that people working for a shitty company or living in a shitty country might continue to do so. I will assert however that the larger the organization and the more distant the power center, the less effort individuals will put into aligning their interests with the org. This is the equivalent to tapering off as a volunteer in my model.
It's almost guaranteed that if you're an anonymous cog in a giant wheel, at least some things will happen that you don't agree with and can't impact. A lot of people, myself included, tend to disengage when that happens, performing enthusiasm theater to get along. That's exactly what happened at my last job as the small startup I worked for was swallowed by progressively bigger companies. At the end, nobody knew exactly what I did but they thought I was great. Meanwhile I read all the articles on Wonkette.
Hm. I think I'm mostly agreeing with you here.
To my eyes, whether it be a voluntary or (relatively) involuntary association, both time and size work against the sort of enthusiastic helping we agree are desirable.
So maybe that's one way to reorganize society, bottom-up as small groups tasked with taking care of each other.
And then my mind goes to HOAs and I realize it'll never fly, Orville.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful conversation. You've forced me to attempt to think through why I'm so sceptical that this could really work long term and nationwide.
Edited for spelling and to complete a thought
One can do way worse than to consider what Solnit has to say.
One of my dearest friends teaches art history at a small NJ college. He has added to the curriculum art that is far older than that of the Romans and Greeks, including Paleolithic art.
"So maybe that's one way to reorganize society, bottom-up as small groups tasked with taking care of each other."I think you are on the right path here, but the goal is too broad, which leads to long term, which, as you said, leads to disengagement. So we need small specific goals that can be achieved in a short time. Heh, we are basically re-inventing Agile except that the groups dissolve more often. So, the idea is to make the whole of society work in Agile short term work groups with specific goals. For that to work in a coherent way with the rest of society (i.e. the other short term work groups) we need some kind of centralised hub where people can put down requests and pick up a task to work on with a small group for a short time. I've seen similar things in MMO's but never geared towards groups, that probably does exist though.
Are we really going to change reality into an MMO? Then we need to solve the Internet-makes-people-act-like-assholes problem. So, the workgroups must be as local as possible, yelling insults at someone within sight is hard because you can see the pain you cause. Also, you are within punching distance. This should work often enough to keep the members return users.
The big design challenge is to build the hub, though that is not unsurmountable, similar ideas roam around in the Maker culture and I have seen it in Sci-Fi, specifically Cory Doctorow's Walkaway. B.F. Skinner's Walden Two has similar ideas, though it uses human controllers instead of a technological hub. Which has it's up and down sides. The key point is make it completely decentralised, so the hubneeds to be simple and easily copied. You can link hubs together but that should not be a design requirement. You want this to work even if government is fighting it, which means you need to avoid a central point of failure.
I'm really enjoying this conversation, we should continue this elsewhere (these comments can be hard to search, Discuss keeps breaking stuff). I can't PM, so I made a disposable email from which I can send you my personal email. Regretr@mail.com I expect it will fill with spam fast for posting it publicly :P
Late to the party, but it has always seemed to me that the dividing line between communal and authoritarian societies is the development of agriculture because it led to the idea of inherited real estate.