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gibingus · 08-12-2004, 06:02 PM

what a whopper, art. nice one. can't even begin to address everything that's here, hope i can contribute some though.

accepting that hierarchical systems of control are the only social option is like saying math stops at addition and subtraction. hierarchical organizational structures certainly have their place, but human interaction embraces much more complicated and much more flexible paradigms. example: current thinking in business management theory will tell you tall top-down organizational ladders are less agile and respond slower to change and are subsequently less competitive than businesses that employ matrix management structures.

in sociological and anthropological terms, we can extend the mathematical analogy: social interactions are rarely straight lines or polar geometry... even when only two people are involved. they aren't even coordinate geometry in tidy quadrants. art's own descriptions of the optimal range harken calculus, and i argue that real social structures push past set theory and are multi dimensional, organic and fractal. the rigid lines we draw of the hirearchy are the real illusion - we use it to simplify, classify, explain why 2+2=4, but in reality, it doesn't add up.

the media thing: enough self loathing. accept that you are what you complain about. civilization is enabled by complex communication. it wasn't our opposeable thumbs, or binocular vision, or nice posture that got us this way. we learned to talk, worked together to solve problems, and then learned to pass it on by writing the solutions down, and it just kept getting faster from there. communication is media and civilization is communication. withc awareness comes the capacity to change.

knowledge is power, and knowledgable indviduals are empowered and self-aware. they question authority. the more we communicate on a granular level, the power of mass communication is diluted. the more knowledge we seek individually, the less susceptible we are to spoon-fed informaiton, propaganda, marketing manipulation, etc.

i don't really get the whole " what means of control will be the most beneficial to society" bent here, i think it's pretty much elitist crap. no matter what language you put around it, an authoritarian system compromises free will and sets a ruling few over an ignorant, placated, or apathetic mass. of course beneficial is a subjective term, so maybe it depends on which group you're in to judge how beneficial that society is.

08-12-2004, 06:02 PM	#111 (permalink)
gibingus Insane Location: 38° 51' N 77° 2' W	what a whopper, art. nice one. can't even begin to address everything that's here, hope i can contribute some though. accepting that hierarchical systems of control are the only social option is like saying math stops at addition and subtraction. hierarchical organizational structures certainly have their place, but human interaction embraces much more complicated and much more flexible paradigms. example: current thinking in business management theory will tell you tall top-down organizational ladders are less agile and respond slower to change and are subsequently less competitive than businesses that employ matrix management structures. in sociological and anthropological terms, we can extend the mathematical analogy: social interactions are rarely straight lines or polar geometry... even when only two people are involved. they aren't even coordinate geometry in tidy quadrants. art's own descriptions of the optimal range harken calculus, and i argue that real social structures push past set theory and are multi dimensional, organic and fractal. the rigid lines we draw of the hirearchy are the real illusion - we use it to simplify, classify, explain why 2+2=4, but in reality, it doesn't add up. the media thing: enough self loathing. accept that you are what you complain about. civilization is enabled by complex communication. it wasn't our opposeable thumbs, or binocular vision, or nice posture that got us this way. we learned to talk, worked together to solve problems, and then learned to pass it on by writing the solutions down, and it just kept getting faster from there. communication is media and civilization is communication. withc awareness comes the capacity to change. knowledge is power, and knowledgable indviduals are empowered and self-aware. they question authority. the more we communicate on a granular level, the power of mass communication is diluted. the more knowledge we seek individually, the less susceptible we are to spoon-fed informaiton, propaganda, marketing manipulation, etc. i don't really get the whole " what means of control will be the most beneficial to society" bent here, i think it's pretty much elitist crap. no matter what language you put around it, an authoritarian system compromises free will and sets a ruling few over an ignorant, placated, or apathetic mass. of course beneficial is a subjective term, so maybe it depends on which group you're in to judge how beneficial that society is. __________________ if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.