Objectivity is an Asset

[Riggerjack]

So how do we build better hierarchical structures where they are needed, and eliminate the ones that are only causing harm (or how do we lessen the harm when we can't structurally remove the hierarchies)?

Well, no. That isn't where I go.

I consider that while I despise hierarchies, and focus on the negative attributes, my experience is extremely in the the minority (as always). That even the most negative hierarchies are positive for someone and the ratio of positive to negative even within a hierarchy is highly variable.

So I have no desire to eliminate any hierarchies. They are all doing some good.

Rather, I study how they are formed/maintained, which processes/resources are involved. Then all the rejected processes/resources. Because I am more interested in how to make more effective use of the "waste" to form non-hierarchical structures. This will, over time result in patterns that make forming/maintaining hierarchies more difficult. The rate of hierarchic atrophy may increase, and rate of formation drop; but I have no intention of interfering with any existing hierarchies in any but the most indirect of ways. And those ways would be to achieve similar goals by methods more appealing to those who would have been in a hierarchy, otherwise.

Carrot, not stick. If someone opposes what one is attempting, effort is lost to opposition. See above.

Consider unintended consequences, and control. Control brings unintended consequences, and contests for control. I have no desire for control. Or to contest anyone else's idea of control. If control were the goal, I would be thinking of hierarchies in an entirely different way.

Which leads me back to:

This is the part of systems thinking that causes me the most confusion. That people are capable of mapping systems, and identifying the leverage points. But for some reason can't seem to perceive that every one of those leverage points is contested, and currently set at a compromise point that represents the net interest of concerned parties.

Control is an illusion. But implied in every form of systems thinking is the implication that someone has control, and could implement the changes they propose. Please read the Donnella Meadows link.

Whereas I think the degree of freedom is curtailed at the same rate that the illusion of control is gained. The more one "controls" the less freedom one has in the use of that control.

[Riggerjack]

I should be clearer about yesterday's post. I didn't mean what I said to be taken of a criticism of JBP or sociologists. Rather I was trying to show how different framings get different results.

JBP is a therapist of some form. As such he is focused on individual performance. His framework is appropriate to individual decision making for personal interaction with hierarchies.

Mine isn't. Mine is different, not better.

That sociologists choose to frame things the way they do is, I'm sure, appropriate for their purposes, and techniques. But their goals, techniques incentives are different than mine. My framing is again different, not better.

[7Wannabe5]

The goal of those who use the concept of structural violence
is to highlight ‘the history and social consciousness’ of poverty, premature death
and disability and to locate the causes of this type of violence.

I would agree with this. With the caveat that "they" are as likely to succeed using (my very limited understanding of) their methods, as JBP is likely to come around to my way of viewing hierarchies. I would say he has no interest, or incentive to look at the world as I see it. And neither do "they".

I don't disagree.

Different questions yield different results. One tells us something about how we do harm, the other is good for letting us know who to blame...

7WB5 said: although I sometimes think that being a Female Libertarian is the same kind of "stupid" as being a Trailer Park Republican.

Riggerjack said: This is because you still, (despite all the evidence to the contrary) ascribe economic interest to political position, then recognize the contradiction you create, as a contradiction you can assign to your subject. I have met republicans in trailers, and libertarian feminists. They didn't seem at all confused to me. Certainly less interested (than average) in holding the Child/Parent role in a transactional relationship, but not confused.

Two things. First thing is that I don't really "still..etc." I was just being lazy or rude. As you may have noted, I flipped from describing myself as "having" both Libertarian and Sesame Street Socialist tendencies to describing myself and other people as "being" a couple things or another couple things. So, in terms of adult developmental models such as Kegan's, I was semi-consciously flipping between higher and lower level of functioning or abstraction. So, my bad.

Another way I might better communicate what I was trying to convey is that I see myself and others as having various potentialities and I realize that these various potentialities are more likely to manifest in different contexts, but sometimes they don't work that well together; like wearing pearls with overalls.

Second thing. My take is that your distaste for human who wants to "know who to blame" and human "holding the Child/Parent role in transactional relationship" has to do with your strong value for "mutual respect among adults." The funny thing is that I can simultaneously see how this could be the keystone for Libertarian society, while not perceiving my own internal Libertarian as being very adult in fucntioning or terribly concerned with respect. IOW, what I think of as being my internal Libertarian is more like Tom Sawyer than Howard Roark. So, for instance, we might disagree on whether eating fried pickles at a Hooters with somebody who voted for Trump, but wants you for MMF partner, after he gave you a ride to voting place, so that you could vote Green ticket, was a very Libertarian thing to do, especially given that he paid for the fried pickles.

This might kind of explain the difference between ENTP take on "liberty" vs. INTJ take on "liberty" (not to imply inability to take on any alternative take with further personal growth or infallibility of model(s)):

The following diagram summarizes many of the key links we’ve discussed between personality and political preferences:



Based on this, we might predict the ENFP personality type to be the most politically liberal and the ISTJ to be the most conservative, with the remaining fourteen types falling somewhere in between. Keep in mind that because the S-N preference is the most politically potent, it would not at all be unusual for a type like an INTJ to be politically liberal or an ESFP to lean conservative.

https://personalityjunkie.com/08/person ... -big-five/


Anyways, I went back and read the Meadows article you linked previously and made some notes. Great find! I think it is worthy of it's own thread. I will start one elsewhere.

What else? I think I kind of grok what you were writing about making use of the waste outside of hierarchies. I wanted to note that in "Discards: Your Way to Wealth" Dan Quinn makes the point that the way a given business defines itself will necessarily create waste. The more strictly the business is defined, the greater the degree of its specialization, the more waste it will generate.