Organisation - Quareness Series 207th "Lecture".
It may be a truism that everything in this world has to be paid for in some fashion and that nobody gets anything for nothing. In this regard we may wonder what price we must pay for technological progress. For example we may wonder if it's realistic to expect democracy to flourish when/where political and economic power is being progressively mechanised, concentrated and centralised. It seems obvious that mass production cannot work without mass distribution which ultimately means the little guy cannot successfully compete with the big players. Inevitably more and more economic power gets to be wielded by fewer and fewer people, leading to some form of dictatorship by Big Business and/or the State. It matters little in the long run whether such authority/power is wielded ruthlessly and openly or politely and secretly as over time this state of affairs may even come to dictate the thoughts, feelings and actions of practically everybody "caught in that net".
It also seems obvious that societies are good only in so far as they help individuals to lead happy and creative lives. In this regard the late German social psychologist Erich Fromm observed that in spite of so much material, intellectual and political progress, our contemporary societies are increasingly less conducive to mental health. For him the really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." We could say they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society, with their conformity developing into something like uniformity. But "uniformity and freedom are incompatible...uniformity and mental health are incompatible too...man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becomes one, the basis for mental health is destroyed."
It is clear that Mother Nature in the course of evolution has gone to great trouble to ensure that every individual is unlike every other individual. Physically and mentally each one of us in unique and I dare say that any culture which, in the interests of efficiency (or say in the name of some dogma) seeks to standardise the human individual, unavoidably sets itself against man's biological nature. It's of course true that the desire to impose order upon confusion or to bring harmony out of dissonance and unity out of multiplicity is a primary and fundamental urge for us and may be mainly beneficial (despite occasional "mistakes")...especially within the realms of art, philosophy and science. However, it's in the social spheres of politics and economics that this "will to order" can get to be really dangerous. In these realms any theoretical reduction of unmanageable multiplicity to comprehensible unity can become in practice a reduction of human diversity to subhuman uniformity, of freedom to servitude. It's quite sobering to realise for example that in politics the equivalent of a fully developed scientific theory or philosophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship, or in economics that the equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is a smoothly running factory where the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines. The said "will to order" can easily make tyrants of those who aspire to clear up a mess when the beauty of tidiness is used as a justification for despotism.
Of course social organisation is indispensable but it can also be fatal. Too much transforms us into automata, suffocates the creative spirit and abolishes the possibility of freedom. In truth liberty arises and has meaning only within a self-regulating community of freely cooperating individuals. Our optimum social environment and prime condition for a genuine democracy
may be one that fosters this kind of responsible freedom within small self-governing groups. Life in large urban environments for example is relatively anonymous (and even somewhat abstract) as people generally tend to relate to one another as embodiments of economic or leisure focused functions rather than as total personalities. It's hardly surprising that for many feelings of loneliness and insignificance tend to grow in such conditions. Indeed a great gulf separates the overly gregarious social insect from the big-brained mammal. No matter how hard we may try, mankind cannot create a social organism...we can only create an organisation. This is basically why in any process of trying to create such an organism, we merely wind up with a totalitarian despotism.
In his 1956 book "The Organization Man" the late American sociologist William Whyte drew attention to an emerging new social ethic with key concepts such as "adjustment", "adaptation", "socially orientated behavior", "belongingness", "acquisition of social skills", "team work", "group living", "group loyalty", "group dynamics", "group thinking" and "group creativity". The alarming assumption here being that the social whole has greater worth and significance than its individual parts, that inborn biological differences should be sacrificed to cultural uniformity and the rights of the collectivity take precedence. For this mindset the ideal man is portrayed as one who displays "dynamic conformity" and an intense loyalty to the group with an unflagging desire to belong in subordination. Such a social ethic (widely current) is now beginning to look more and more like a justification after the fact of the less desirable consequences of over-organisation. Attempting to make a virtue of necessity it's starting to reveal itself as a quite unrealistic and indeed dangerous system of morality. The social whole, with its value assumed to be greater than that of its component parts, is not a hive-like organism but merely an organisation...a piece of social machinery with no real value except in relation to life and awareness. It cannot be conscious or alive when its value is simply instrumental and derivative. And it can be truly good only to the extent that it promotes the good of the individuals who are the parts of the collective whole.
When you were born a new song entered the world,
You're on this Earth to do what only you can do,
You are the greatest gift you have to give.
Don't die with your song still inside you
And not being grateful for all of it.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
June, 2024.