A rant warning! Last night Hugh and I were talking, amongst other things, about hierarchies and their impact on individual’s autonomy, or sovereignty as he calls it. And, predictably, how the internet has changed what has been long accepted as the balance of power between the individual and institutions. These things never far from my mind, a few thoughts struck me as I watched a couple of episodes of the series Rome.
- Vorenus, the prefect of 13th legion runs into Pompey Magnus who is fleeing with his family to Egypt. He decides to let him go after Pompey begs for mercy for his wife and children. Upon return to the camp, he explains to Caesar that he didn’t feel the need to apprehend Pompey as he was abandoned, weak and dirty and bring him to punishment. Caesar gets angry and says “Remember I am the only one who dispenses mercy around here“.
- Pompey Magnus is treacherously assassinated by a Roman soldier who serves an Egyptian master as he moors on the Egyptian beach and his head offered to Caesar as a welcoming gift. To the Egyptian’s shock, Caesar is appalled and storms out in anger at their barbarism and Pompey undignified death. (Talk about cultural clash.) When they protest: But he was your enemy? He angrily replies: He was a consul of Rome!
- Vorenus is instructed by Caesar to find and free Cleopatra. He takes the opportunity to apologise for his ‘lapse of judgement’ regarding capturing Pompey. He says, if only I did my duty…
These are examples of how power, rules and resulting hierarchies create environments where individuals have no real autonomy by default. In the first one, Vorenus has his ability to make moral decisions (i.e. based on what he considers right and wrong) denied to him. In the second, Caesar’s outrage at the death of his enemy is not about Pompey but about the disrespect to the office that lent this particular wretch significance above other human beings.
The third is about duty. Duty is important, often deeply embedded in people to follow a particular rule that usually makes sense on some level – either evolutionary or social. It is however designed to protect the system, rarely the individual. I am not attacking the sense of duty that comes from individuals themselves but the kind of duty often invoked to subdue them, namely duty to follow orders. Without autonomy, that kind of ‘virtue’ is just another tool in the tyrant’s toolbox. It took a collectivist horror for the European societies to realise that it is morally inadmissible even for the armed forces to follow orders, abrogating humanity.
Hierarchical systems and institutions take over people and hollow out anything that is individual to replace it with their own trinkets – position, status, power, money, influence, resources. People are defined by what position they hold, by the family they are born into, by people with greater power than them and finally, if they are lucky, by their decisions. Such systems with centralised or unchecked power attract people who wield it enthusiastically and ruthlessly. Using that power, in exchange for perpetuating the system, they shape others to its rules. Nasty things become possible in the name of the system… It’s one of the ways power corrupts. Institutions and systems go through life cycles, often imploding by themselves or getting overthrown by new, more eager ones. If they survive it is by striking a precarious balance, by giving people just enough freedom to prevent rebellion. Judging from history, it doesn’t seem that much is needed. Fortunately, there are always individuals who push for more autonomy and so the struggle continues.
Top down hierarchies are mechanisms for implementing centralised power. Their rules are a shorthand for the power structure and a substitute for knowledge of how things work, understanding of consequences of people’s actions and impact of their decisions. How many times have you heard – well, if I let you do this, then everyone would want to do that and where would that lead? This is an admission of suppressed individuality. It is disguised as respect for others, when it fact it is merely ‘respect’ for the ways things are within the system.
When people exercise their autonomy more freely they start seeing consequences of their actions and/or indifference to them. In centralised power systems, you cannot have an action without the system being involved. The action has to be assessed and judged to see if it follows or breaks the existing rules. And an appropriate action as mandated by those rules is then taken.
In a distributed environment that is not possible. Or desirable. A network is such an environment. What is so wonderful about the internet, amongst other things, is that it is demonstrating how a greater autonomy, freedom and fewer restrictions on individuals lead to a more connected and increasingly social place. The old collectivist chestnut that with greater emphasis on the individual comes atomisation of society is just that. It certainly does not stand comparison with the explosion of connectivity, innovation and creativity fuelled by individuals having access to technology and tools that were until recently in the domain of businesses and governments.
And for the likes of me Chris Locke’s memorable outburst from 1995 still reverberates:
And I sit here and some of what I’m hearing is how to work in the system. Well I say fuck the system — it’s dead it’s stupid it’s non-responsive it’s counter productive it’s fucking socially evil and if we put any more of our goddamn time into propping up these dead-ass morons we deserve what we fucking get…. We’re not going to work in the system because THE SYSTEM DOES NOT WANT US.
cross-posted from Media Influencer
As a big fan of Rome (I didn’t think it would be my kind of thing, but I loooooved it and am horribly bummed that there won’t be more episodes… markets can be stoopid after all) I interpreted things a little differently.
Within the context of the series, Vorenus is, above all, an upholder of tradition (despite his not very exalted place in said tradition). He disapproved of the entire process of Caeser’s advance to Rome and rise to power as an affront to the natural order of things. I thought his letting Pompei go was due to the unnatural (to him) idea of a pleb arresting a consul. In the vortex of competing loyalties, the older loyalty won out as it always will among the less imaginitive.
Caeser’s first quote is of course how much of the world is run. In many, many places (including your birthplace IINM) rules and laws are not required to make sense or be fair or humane, that is perogative of the person whose job it is to enforce them. His reaction to the Egyptians’ killing of Pompei was not bound by principles but petulance, he wanted to pardon Pompei (or order him killed, it was all the same to him) and not have vassals making his decisions for him.
Vorenus entirely true to character, was absolutely prepared to be killed for his role in upholding the old order against Julius the usurper. It was Caeser’s unexpected pardon that finally won Vorenus’s loyalty. Pompei and the old order were dead and he could either finally be loyal to the new order or accept chaos and anarchy (highly unlikely given his general personality).
The genius of the characterization of Vorenus is that he completely accepts the order of the world as presented to him despite said order of the world acting against his interests time and time again. Just as his unquestioning respect for tradition leads him to one bad decision after another.
As for hierarchies. Humans are essentially a hierarchical species, like it or not (I’m not charmed by the idea, but it does seem to be the hand that DNA dealt us).
The choice is not ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ hierarchies (any more than we can ‘reject’ the fact that we need to breathe oxygen) but to try to keep the hierarchies as humane and flexible as possible so that those of us who cannot thrive in rigid hierarchies (a group I like to think I belong to) can get by while not depriving the majority of something they clearly want and/or need).
Tyrant’s toolbox?
They’ve got a whole bloody IDE, and NuLabour is churning out patches and security updates every week.
Michael Farris: The post is not really about the series… but never mind.
I would point out that, for instance, my employment is a “hierarchy”, and it’s freely chosen.
That — “hierarchies” — does not constitute an essential for purposes of analysis.
Billy Beck: possibly and that is why I talk about centralised power or top down hierarchies… also, it’s not like you have much to choose from in terms of organisations and institutions to work for.
I myself prefer a network or a heterarchy.
I am failing to make this clear. Again: my boss sits at the peak of a “top down hierarchy”, and his power is quite “centralized”. He calls the shots. That’s why he’s “the boss”. Regarding varieties to “choose from”: I actually and in fact cannot count how many different people/organizations I’ve worked for in my adult life. There have been too many for that. However, they all had this same characteristic.
The proper political distinction here is coercive hierarchies.
Today’s lead on the Metro seems to fall into this category. Mind you the story itself is atrociously written with one of the most badly worded intro paragraphs.
Thought Police to target drinkers
“People who even think about going for a drink face being banned from their town centre for up to two days under wide ranging new police powers.”
“Ministers insist the new powers are a vital weapon in the fight against drink related violence.”
“Well-behaved people who refuse to stop drinking can also be targeted.”
This seems another ineffective law “the 2006 Violent Crime Reduction Act. “. I think we’re almost in that “Not the Nine O’Clock News” territory- re Constable Savage who was arresting people for “Looking at me in a funny way”…
You can see the sketch here btw.
Constable Savage
I’m with Billy Beck on this.
I’t not “hierarchies” itself that is bad. All businesses are, necessarily, hierarchies (run by the boss or the owner). Individuals often accomplish more by associating with others and forming organizations, which, by definition, are hierarchical.
What matters is the voluntary basis of such hierarchies – i.e. the individual’s freedom to quit, which implies his voluntary adherence to the hierarchy.
Jacob: So I guess, we’ll just have to agree to disagree… My point is that there is an inherent trade-off between the advantages of centralised-power or top down hierarchies and the ability of an individual to exercise his autonomy. The fact that the individual may be part of a system voluntarily doesn’t change that. A silly example – my job in the City was certainly voluntary and well rewarded but I haven’t met a person (including myself) who wasn’t aware of how little autonomy they actually had whilst being part of the system.
Here is where the internet has changed the name of the game. Instead of working within systems we came to accept, there are now alternative ways of organisation that have already demonstrated greater respect for individual’s autonomy. It is about options – the more options I have, the more likely I am to choose the one that gives me greater freedom. And that range is being expanded.
The Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede who compares ‘national’ cultures looks a lot at hierarchization as this is one of the principal ways in which cultures differ across the world. According to him, within any society, inequality has to be measured from the _bottom_, not the top.
That is, the question is not “How much inequality will elites impose on a society?” (answer: as much as they can) but “How much inequality will those at the bottom put up with?” (answer: that depends on lots of factors)
I am with Jacob. If the hierarchy is voluntary and with no extra-territorial punishments for leaving (e.g. blackballed, apostate, closed shop etc), then it is the individual’s choice to decide if they want to join, leave or work alone. Some entities do not work as a democracy (OPOV) and need a hierarchy, hopefully based on merit! When it is the owner, then I cannot see why there is an objection – MY company means I make the decisions…period. No groupthink if that is what I prefer. As for a corporation, hierarchies do indeed bring about some of the most vile individuals and very often useless ones from a commercial standpoint.
peitr: they are making a suite of plug-ins, too.
My job is hierarchical, in much the same way as a military organization. There really are bosses who wear shiny Mexican General crap on their uniforms (which we really have, and that’s entirely to reinforce our being part of the group even at the cost of us being individuals for ten hours a day) and they bark orders which are really orders.
Any workplace that tells you how to cut your hair is not a place to be an individual while you’re on the clock. And facial hair? HA!
Coerced? Hell, you should see what people put themselves through to work here. Last hiring cycle saw 200 people apply for four positions (and that’s 140 applicants after we discarded the ones who didn’t make the minimum published standards either).
I can throw my ID and shield on my boss’ desk and announce “Screw you guys, I’m going home!”
So it’s voluntary, right?
I don’t know. Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t.
Once upon a time, I couldn’t have seen myself in an hierarchical environment like this. I’m not sure that growing up was a good idea.
I can agree with social duty but that depends on contextual definition. I don’t agree as fact, evolutionary duty, as if its in the genes however slight to obey, because that implies it is without conscience and the will to disagree. Like others here, I’ve been in hierarchies who’s purpose is order and direction, certainly the power to command and control, yet with understanding of basic needs intrinsic to individuality, even one’s sense of morals or the more PC ‘values’. If that understanding was not there such power could easily diminish and the ability to get results much more difficult, if not impossible.
To claim or imply as a basic truth “hierarchical systems and institutions take over people and hollow out anything that is individual” is a heck of an presumption. The grander the scale the more power of control the institution can wield but that power isn’t necessarily the subjugation of the will, conscience and even the aspirations of one’s hope to one day be free from it. More than likely its out of fear of punishment, at least for the common people not attracted to wield it.
By striking a balance for the institution to survive, in essence its allowing enough freedom for enough people to be comfortable in their humanness. By depriving that quality, that depth of one’s own inner judgment… the system will put a stake in its true (and unnatural) heart.
I’m also not so sure an unrestricted Internet leads to a more connected and increasingly social place. 🙂
I wouldn’t have it any other way tho.
>>It took a collectivist horror for the European societies to realise that it is morally inadmissible even for the armed forces to follow orders, abrogating humanity.
I know I’m veering somewhat off the central topic, but… European countries still have armed forces, and they are still required to follow orders, are they not? That sort of heirarchy is simply necessary, for a great multitude of reasons, not one of which is invalidated by being thousands of years old. The fundamentals of battle haven’t changed, for all that the hardware has, and if the individuals do not follow orders, the battle plan fails.
Disclaimer: I am absolutely not attempting to validate anything perpetrated by Nazis, simply speaking in the abstract, so nobody go there, mmkay?
Regarding the Internet, governments are noticing and they don’t like it. ISTR a British politician only recently complaining about how it alters the “balance of power” between business and the state, but I can’t find that article anywhere.
Instead my searching found the UN’s Internet Governance Forum. Oh dear. CNET has some good coverage. Some of it borders on the comical:
Steevo made a good point.
There are many kinds of hierarchies, and the degree of autonomy an individual enjoys inside one, while not unlimited, depends on the structure and policies the hierarchy.
On the other hand, an individual’s willingness to accept limited autonomy depends on his support for the hierarchy’s aims and policies.
So, tradeoffs, and more tradeoffs.
By the way – if you work in the City, presumably administering other people’s money, you can’t expect to have much autonomy. Restrictions are needed, rules must be followed, and this is not a bug but a feature.
Adriana,
Try it this way:
100 people in a network = 100 brains
100 people in a pyramid = 1 brain + 99 instruction relay and execution devices
A wise leader in an authoritarian structure will turn it into a network by delegating authority and granting autonomy. To the direct extent that authority and autonomy is delegated, the pyramid reshapes into a network. If a hierarchy defines the output of each module rather than the process, then it is taking on the characteristics of a network.
Correct.
Frankly, I think Adriana has a good general point. Heterarchy is workable on a social level. Militarily, it even did a smash-up job for the Normans, too. Though how one affords 5th-gen fighters in a heterarchy I don’t know.
The next obvious step, and what seems to me the most difficult, is how one then uses parallel, voluntary institutions to break away from an older hierarchy into the heterarchy of one’s choosing. Without having to spout slogans, toss grenades, or radically accelerate the more romantic elements of libertarian sci-fi in the process. Because if that is not an option, then the heterarchy is a nice place to escape to… but only on a cultural level. Sort of like being a comic book geek.
I would like to elaborate a little bit with an example.
If the goal is to reduce street crime, there are two possible general approaches. One focusing on process and one focusing on product. The hierarchical, process based approach would be to issue an edict banning drug use within the hierarchy. Some ‘brain’ upstairs decided drugs were the problem.
The product based approach would exclude criminals from the network.
I worked for a company that appeared to be a hierarchical operation but the management ran the company as a network. If someone wanted a desk moved, they called housekeeping directly or ‘borrowed’ the guy pushing the vacuum for a couple minutes. If someone in the office needed another pallet of paper brought up, they just asked a nearby fork lift driver to get it. The only times the hierarchical power came to bear was when imbalances started showing up in the network. Then the management would either reallocate resources or redefine production goals. The president of that company spent a fair amount of time walking around and listening (not talking to) the lowest entry level employees and everyone else as well. I think he kept close track of the network.
Curiously, as I think about it now, he retired and when the next president placed a hierarchical manager in the stream above me, I left the company.
Not all of which are first class brains…
That’s a caricature.
In a typical hierarchy most or the better (more experienced) brains are in the upper layers, the lesser ones in the bottom rungs.
Each one does what he does best (giving instructions or implementing them, or a mix of both). There is a place for all. There is also mobility from layer to layer.
Each person also has some degree of autonomy, and some degree of obligation to follow instructions from above.
Ah yes, ‘government by experts’.
We understand.
Yes, but Adriana’s primary thesis is not about pure networks per se, but heterarchies… the latter allows for significant variations within capabilities.
My twin, for example, is a very good analyst. I am very good synthesist. Not surprisingly, he is a computer programmer and I am an historian. While Pietr has a point about the technocracia, we can break out the differences between “forest” and “trees” methodologies without necessarily positing a rigid hierarchical, or worse, the formation of elites into castes creating pseudo-hierocratic structures.
Properly speaking, the “trees” underlings are very often the true experts. How to harness those experts effectively can be conceived as a delegated task as much as it can be considered leadership/management.
Yes, Russ, but the Adriana’s article centered around the comments of an individual working in IBM. Having had quite a bit of contact with Big Blue in the early eighties, I am quite confident that it was a pure hierarchy, not a heterarchy. The heterarchy that generated the PC around that time got rolled by Bill Gates precisely because they were stuck in a hierarchy.
i>Duty is important, often deeply embedded in people to follow a particular rule that usually makes sense on some level – either evolutionary or social. It is however designed to protect the system, rarely the individual.
I completely disagree. The individual is a weak and pathetic being, easily enslaved, robbed, bullied, raped, or killed by any group of significant size. Thus, duty, to family, tribe, neighbor, and country is essential and needs be reciprocal, for it is only so that the individual may flourish. The downside comes when individual duty is replaced by coercion and one sided demands.
Hierarchy is the natural way of organizing large groups and also reflects different roles, ranging up from the guy who swings the hammer through the fellow who organizes the delivery of materials and the hiring, and ending with whoever brought together the financing, design, property, and desire. All are needed.
Adriana’s second example where Caesar expresses horror at Pompey’s beheading on Ptolemy’s orders: “He was a consul of Rome!” is interesting for another reason.
Caesar’s response probably reflects much more than his anger at being denied his enemy to do with as he pleases. It probably reflects a sense of political “morality” and pride in the Roman state. As a former consul, and even among consuls one of the most illustrious, the killing of Pompey The Great on the order’s of a foreigner, even a pharoah, was an insult to Rome. Only the senate, a court of senators or a Roman dictator had power to call someone of his status to account.
It is precisely because of a decline in the sense of pride in the British state and a parallel decline in what passed for political morality in parliament that power is passing to the political elite in Brussels.
We did have a sense of political morality in Britain – that was the role of conventions in the unwritten constitution.
Furthermore, the office of prime minister was reduced by Tony Blair to no more than a “star vehicle” for his acting talents and ego trips. If that does not disgust people then they clearly have no love of Britain.
Here in Britain, as so often in history, the decline of pride, commitment and morality in one heirarchy leads not to greater freedom, but to subjugation to a worse political heirarchy.
Power is an inevitability. The only question is whether those that hold it share to some extent our values or reject them in favour of other values.
HHAHAHAHAHAHA, ohh hehehehehee, heh, ahhhh [slaps thighs and wipes some tears away], hehehe… HAHAHAHA.
[calms down].
Dude. I love you. That is the funniest thing I have read in months.
Midwesterner, you are right, it is the networks I am interested in, pure and simple. The internet being the best one of them so far.
I only linked to heterarchy coz it’s a cool term and shows that hierarchy is not synonymous with structure.
I can only assume you did not actually read the whole article. The point being made is that that cooperation, which you can get from hierarchies, can also come from networks. So it is not hierarchy vs. atomised individual, it is “is there a better way than top down hierarchy?”.
And there is nothing whatsoever ‘natural’ about hierarchy. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It is cooperation that is ‘natural’ and there is more than one way to get that. The point is that networks tend to work better than hierarchies at achieving the required cooperation amongst the “weak and pathetic beings”.
So it is not hierarchy vs. atomised individual, it is “is there a better way that top down hierarchy?”.
Not without duty and commitment. Friendship and acquaintance may easily evaporate in difficult circumstances. And networks themselves are often hierarchical, the connection graphs tend to exhibit centers where important folk reside; people don’t just connect to everyone else on an equal basis. Nor is this just a consequence of agriculture and civilization, nomadic tribes from the Indians to the Mongols also had war leaders, chiefs, and kings. Indeed, the idea of kings has been around for at least 5000 years, it is only recently that it has become a rarity, but only because modern society supports many kings, each in their smaller demesnes. I believe the centrality of such organizational structures in human life must be acknowledged and explained before the new millennium is announced.
It occurs to me that the human body itself, with all it’s specialized organs supporting, what, consciousness and will, may be something along the same lines. Another example might be insect societies or stallions with their harems. Those forms of organization aren’t completely alien to human beings, we can recognize something a bit familiar. Perhaps hierarchy is a consequence of variation, selection, and the usefulness of organized specialization.
I think Chuck has just made an excellent point, this being that even social networks involve informal hierarchies, which returns us to what Jacob noted. What is important for individual autonomy is our ability to withdraw from hierarchies or networks whose purposes we no longer share or have an interest in. It’s this capacity to withdraw from purposive association that preserves our autonomy, since it is inescapable that our joining a purposive association involves an element of submission, but so long as submission here is voluntary, I don’t think it represents a problem.
Networks rely on contracts between equals, not directives between more and less powerful.
Whether formally contracted or casually assumed, networks are set up on the idea that one person has something somebody else wants and they agree to terms.
Hierarchies rely on directions from bosses issued to workers on behalf of a goal perceived by the bosses. Networks rely on expressed desire by the consumer to the producer of whatever transaction is occurring.
Hierarchies are driven by direction. Networks are driven by desire.
Heterarchies in otherwise authoritative structures are simply little networks. They tend to work very well within their own reach but as soon as they have to work through the surrounding hierarchy, they are at the mercy of all of authoritarian system’s weaknesses. Add to the IBM/PC example above, the lab at Xerox/PARC. It was a little heterarchy with a leader who used authoritarian powers granted him to run a networked effort. They ways he beat the hierarchy are good stories. But when it came down to delivering the product to the marketplace, he could not get past the authoritarian hierarchy of ‘The Copy Machine Co’. The egg never hatched and basically entered the public domain.
Chuck,
It’s all a matter of bandwidth. Hierarchies make very efficient use of bandwidth in exchange for all other efficiencies. Networks burn bandwidth at a huge rate so that everything else is more efficient.
Surely, those directives have an object of desire? why else would they be issued?
I’ve been mulling this post over for a few days, trying to decide if I wanted to comment at all, and then, what would be worth saying, given the flow of the comment stream so far.
I find the alleged opposition between hierarchy in human social organization and autonomy in one’s relationships to be a false issue, creating a conflict where it does not necessarily exist.
We are primates, genetically similar to, and socially derivative from, the various primate species that preceded us. Observations of those social structures invariably remark on the existence of a very powerful dominance hierarchy, which underlies the social standing of both males and females.
Anyone who has raised pets, from fish to cats to dogs to farm animals, or has raised children, and tried to assist in their play groups or coach their sports teams, has observed variations of this same system in those relationships as well.
I must disagree somewhat with Perry, in that I truly believe that certain fundamental social structures are so ingrained in the animal, and especially the primate, brain that they are very natural, indeed.
The early hunting/gathering clans, which comprised human society for many more millenia than the modern social forms we see around us, were small, cooperative working groups, but were very certainly hierarchical in exactly the same way as the various tribes researched in the past few centuries have been.
There is a aspect of modern management theory called “span of control”. It refers to the number of people that can effectively be organized to work together under the direction of a leader. It is remarkably similar to the early hunting clans’ numbers, 12-15, and also to many diverse human task groups, from army squads to sporting teams to corporate boards of directors.
I have long felt that the default human organizational principle is that of a feudal structure, an overlapping construct of personal loyalties, clan or tribal affiliations, and religious/cultural identity.
Everywhere I have looked, from early tribal cultures to ancient social constructs, from secular to religious organizations, from the Mideast to Europe to Asia to the Americas, both ancient and modern, I have found the same set of organizing principles.
Small groups, generally male, but with obvious and significant exceptions, who develop a web of relationships, loyalties, and explicitly or implicitly assigned duties, work together to accomplish certain tasks, resolve contentious issues, or devise strategies for future action.
This is the form of empire and corporation, of hunting tribe and scout group, of research team and engineering project, of the small tribal groups that survived the several extinction bottlenecks that humans have faced over the millenia, and the NASA project teams that put men on the moon.
One of the fundamental fallacies of “sovietism” is the futile assertion that this structure can be willed away, and absolute equality somehow materialized out of thin air, negating millions of years of human social evolution. The remnants of this idea can be found in contemporary “economic democracy” theories, which always claim that evil capitalist hierarchies can be replaced with fairy tale councils of equals acting only for the “common good”.
Hierarchy as an organizing principle for various human constructs, then, is similar in many ways to other human attributes, from heterosexual reproduction to omniverous dietary abilities.
I do not find it to be a moral failing if the human brain is sympathetic to a strategy that searches for ability and confidence as it attempts to process both social and reality clues to form opinions as to which course of action to follow.
The world has ever been, and is still very much today, a dangerous place, where life and death often hang on the decisions and efforts of one’s family and friends in the face of critical situations.
The critical elements have always been the ability to have one’s opinions heard and respected, and the subsequent right to opt out and leave the group if the decisions made are objectionable to the point that no participation in the proposed project is possible.
This has gotten overlong, (no surprise there, I’m afraid). Once again I suggest a little book called “Hanta Yo”. It is a mythical examination of many of these very topics, although that was not the purpose of the authors. It is not hierarchical structure that undermines individual rights and liberties, but the coercive imposition of obedience regardless of the beliefs of the coerced.
This is the only true liberation that has ever been achieved in human society—a rule of law which denies the despot any mechanism to enforce compliance.
It is not the position Mr Thompson holds that inspires Galt’s cooperation, but the gun pressed into his back, which he reveals to the world at the first opportunity.
There will always be leaders and followers. The important element is whether they are delineated at the point of a sword, or determined by ability and mutual respect.
No dover_beach. Those directives result from an estimate of a third party’s desire. Networks remove the ‘professional’ hearer, interpreter and relayer of that desire. Hierarchy introduces a huge amount of subjectivity into the feedback loop in order to save bandwidth. When bandwidth is available networks rule. No filters required.
VR, I agree with you that authority structure is a familiar and in many ways incorporated part of some human’s identity. But at the same time, it is not essential. Another, and perhaps the greatest, of human adaptations, is the process of adaptation itself. I do not believe that a hierarchy is essential for humanness. I think it quite likely that humanity is undergoing a fundamental change. I see the possibility of humanity dividing into collectivists and individualists. Collectivists will of necessity function in a hierarchy. Individualists will need the bandwidth of technology to achieve large civilizations. I’ve made my choice.
Mid, once again I must say that I think you are seeing a dichotomy that simply doesn’t actually exist.
If I join a group, or cause a group to form, because I find the goals and objectives of the effort to be worthwhile, and the methods utilized in proceeding towards that goal legitimate, the idea that there will be no form of hierarchy in the group because “networks are non-hierarchical” is nonsense.
I might be very good at some or many tasks, but I will not be the best or most skillful at everything required for success. Some other member might be very good at precisely the areas in which I am deficient. Should we pretend, then, to be equal in the value of our ideas in this area? Should I not defer to his direction in the area in which I have limited skills?
If a network of individuals decides to land an astronaut on the moon, should we all pretend the financial analyst has just as much authority over the composition of the fuel as the chemist? Just as much to say about the design of the engine as the engineer?
Hierarchies are inevitable because they recognize fundamental aspects of human activity, not the least of which is that labor is best divided amongst those most skilled to preform it, and cooperative effort needs to be focused and directed towards specific goals.
Even here at Samiz, these basic principles operate every single day. Form follows function.
An agreement among equals to abide by certain conventions in the pursuit of a mutual goal is not inherently an evil thing just because some of the parties are then given authority over certain aspects of the enterprise.
The key points are equality and agreement. The fact that these are the very elements so often violated by coercive hierarchies has colored this entire conversation, and rendered all aspects of hierarchical organization suspect.
The dream of an entire population operating at some ideal of Mazlow’s self actualization all the time in all ares of life is a fairy tale.
Midwesterner at August 23, 2007 04:18 PM: I worked for a company that appeared to be a hierarchical operation but the management ran the company as a network. If someone wanted a desk moved, they called housekeeping directly or ‘borrowed’ the guy pushing the vacuum for a couple minutes. If someone in the office needed another pallet of paper brought up, they just asked a nearby fork lift driver to get it. The only times the hierarchical power came to bear was when imbalances started showing up in the network. Then the management would either reallocate resources or redefine production goals. The president of that company spent a fair amount of time walking around and listening (not talking to) the lowest entry level employees and everyone else as well. I think he kept close track of the network.
That is still a heirarchy, as the management still had the authority to reallocate, but yes, it is a hybrid, but aren’t they all? Even the Army allows, nay, expects Officers to decide in the field. Oh, sorry, one exception – the UK Police, who appear to follow protocols and chase targets robotically.
I will try again (having just written a comment that disintergrated).
“My honour is loyality”, the motto of the S.S., shows a basic misunderstanding of honour and loyality.
A person should be loyal to an honourable cause, and what is honourable is decided by what is accord with basic morality – being “loyal” is not a valid justification for evil. For an honourable person should only be loyal to what is honourable – being loyal to evil is not “honourable” and it is not right loyality.
In the case of Ancient Rome, loyalty should be to the constitution of Rome and for a moral reason – because it was on these contitutional traditions that the liberty of the citizens depended.
A military commander (such as Julius) is only a lawful military commander whilst he is loyal to the constitution of Rome. One has no “loyality” to a commander in revolt – indeed he is no lawful commander at all.
“But Julius is my friend….”
Contrary to certain early 20th century British degenerates friendship is no justifcation for crime.
It is one’s duty as a friend (as well as citizen) to try and convince Julius not to revolt in order to try and make himself a dictator (as this is against his own moral good as well as against the good of the liberties fo the citizens of Rome).
It may even be understandable to say “I can not kill Julius, he is my friend”, but to say “I will kill X, Y, Z, because Julius tells me to, and I must be loyal to my friend” is not acceptable. Even if X, Y, Z were going to arrest Julius and put him on trial for his life.
All this was as well understood by the moral code of the North (that became the common law of such nations as England) as it was by the classical law. So the S.S. no more followed the law of the “Nordic” world than they did the law of the Roman Republic – no matter how much they pretended (perhaps even to themselves) that they did.
There is no basic conflict between being a good soldier and a good citizen – or between being a good citizen and a good person.
It is a matter of finding the honourable course of action – and following it.
Adriana —
I’m reminded of an old line: “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” There is an immutable essential in that which necessarily conditions everything about this whole ethical/political issue.
I stand where I stood at the top of this.
(I was away for a couple of days, which is why I’ve neglected this.)
Perry —
That cannot possibly be true. In order for that to be true, we would have to dismiss the principle of private property in a division-of-labor economy.
Think about that.
I did and it makes no sense to me at all.