One of the big problems with human society, expressed in two elegant sentences:
Most organizations would cease to operate efficiently if deference to authority were not one of the prevailing norms. Yet, the norm is so well entrenched in organizational cultures that orders are regularly carried out by subordinates with little regard for potential deleterious ethical consequences of such acts.
– Robert B Cialdini and Noah J Goldstein in the 2004 Annual Review of Psychology chapter on Social Influence
There’s no easy way out of this, either. Furthermore, I’d say (and take the quote further than was intended by doing so) that authority resides not just in persons, but also in systems.
Accept these four uncontroversial premises:
– Systems are massively beneficial.
– Systems only work if they are obeyed.
– Systems that are imperfect cause problems when they are obeyed.
– No system is perfect.
…and you end up with this.
So what you are saying is that individuals are quite willing to abdicate their own responsibility and put their trust and faith in a “higher power”? Though, conversely, that means the system can only have the power if enough people take it upon themselves to believe in it – so therefore aren’t we almost all responsible?
At any rate, your post reminds me of that interesting film, “the Corporation”: http://www.thecorporation.com/
R
I’m going to repeat a comment I made yesterday over on No Right Turn’s blog.
We don’t know why Mrs Muliaga died. So, please, stop speculating, and stop playing politics with this issue.
I’m really struggling to understandwhy ‘the left,’ who often castigate the media for misrepresenting issues, now accept everything in the media about this death without, it seems, any questions.
Is it really nothing more than we hear what we want to hear? I thought we were wiser than that.
I would disagree that your first two premises are uncontroversial.
I don’t accept that “systems”, as a general case, are massively beneficial or that systems only work when they are “obeyed”. I don’t believe “obedience” has any part in most systems.
Systems exist, we can make a subjective assessment of whether they are beneficial, but that is not a property of the system, it is a subjective human value judgement on observing the system.
For example, is the planetary system around Beta Cani “beneficial”? Possibly, but beneficial to whom, and how can you tell? Is the MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) “beneficial”? Probably not to it’s targets, but maybe to it’s operators and their superiors, etc.
Playing one’s part in a system is not necessarily a matter of “obedience”. For instance a person’s part in the system known as the carbon cycle is not a matter of obedience, it just is. And when the piston is pushed up by the rod, is it “obeying” the rod, and is the rod “obeying” the crankshaft in turn? I’d argue that such anthropomorphisms are at the very least unhelpful!
Of course if you want to restrict your statements to “human management systems” or some such, maybe the statements might be less controversial, though I’d still probably disagree with them.
R: more or less. (I’m distrustful of the idea of responsibility in some ways, because I think it presupposes an autonomy that may not always exist.)
Scott: Cheers. While I don’t think I’m playing politics here – if anything, this is edging towards libertarianism, and Ayn Rand brings me out in hives – I am guilty of having an imperfect understanding of the case and blogging about it anyway. (Ironically, perhaps, it was all the political grandstanding around it that turned me off paying attention and led to my ignorance.) That said, I don’t think this post was inappropriate.
Frank: Your language policing is appreciated. How about “managed systems” as the definition I intended; and “obeyed” was a deliberately provocative for “followed”. How about this alternative phrasing:
– managed systems usually deliver significantly better outputs than unmanaged activities.
– if such systems are not, by and large, followed, then they do not deliver better outputs
– if such systems are followed even though they are imperfect, then problems result.
– all such systems are imperfect.
Anyway, consider me chastised. 🙂
Re: systems – I’m most happy that you subsituted “are” for “usually” in your only-in-comments revision, though I would still prefer “seem to”.