The following is a deep explanation about the nature of organizations and human systems and how people linguistically idealize them and use that as their point of departure:
emile wrote:Anarchistnews comment: Both Harvey and the reviewer
An organization such as a ‘tightly-coupled system’ that jumpstarts out of the rational actions of a group of humans not ‘real’, it is idealization; i.e. it is ‘linguistic idealization’, something we can talk about as if it were real, because everyone understands ‘the language’ used to construct it, language that also endows absolute local, independent, behaviour-jumpstarting subjecthood to humans.
As general systems pioneers such as Russell Ackoff have pointed out, every ‘system’ is included in a ‘suprasystem’ so that while we use analytical reasoning to talk about ‘the system’ as if it were a ‘thing-in-itself’, it is NOT a ‘thing-in-itself’, but is included within a more comprehensive dynamic.
The continually transforming relational-spatial suprasystem of nature is the source of humans and humans have not always been emergent features within it, and many conclude they won’t always be emergent features within it, because of their blindness to their being ‘part of something larger than themselves’.
As Ernst Mach put it;
“The dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.”
So, fine, scientists can ‘dream up’ a nuclear power plant scenario in terms of; ‘if we do such-and-such, then such-and-such will be the result’. This view of a nuclear power plant is ‘linguistic idealization’. The physical reality is what is going on in the suprasystem that is producing humans who then infuse belief-based programs into their minds to direct their behaviour. When they talk about what they are doing, whether they say they are extracting petroleum from tar sands or bringing radioactive materials into critical-mass producing proximity to produce electrical power, ... that is not ‘the real physical dynamic’, ... to understand the real physical dynamic, one has to acknowledge what McLuhan and Mach are saying, that THE PHYSICAL DYNAMICS OF THE NATURAL WORLD WE LIVE IN DO NOT START FROM WHAT HUMANS INITIATE. The medium [the transforming relational space we are included in] is the message.
One of the mods here insinuated that all forums have rules and all moderators here and elsewhere try to implement them, but that is the type of linguistic idealization critiqued above, arguing in terms of the "thing in itself". It is especially very funny that a self proclaimed anarchist wrote that, lol. In the real world you have rules -- called laws. If you don't like those rules, should you move to a country where you like the rules and imagine that it matters? You have cops, and you have alleged methods to complain about the laws and cops. But does that matter? No -- because things don't exist onto themselves isolated from other phenomena -- or independent arising. If you have power that is what matters or if you lack power that is what matters. Ultimately most cops(like moderators), find the ways to use the system against those with the least power voicing or expressing what they know their masters don't want to be circulated and to protect those with the most power. In other words the behavior of the policed tends to matter little compared to their position within the social structure. Arguing that it is rule and fairness based, is linguistic idealization based on the "thing in itself".