One of the most enlightening moments for me recently has been when a sociology researcher attempted an experiment on youtube to prove that we can organize without hierarchy. His main point was not what was interesting to me.
His experiment was actually flawed in a major way: he proposed a task to a group of 100 that was doable even by a single person. In such a case, organization is easy. But what I found interesting is that even in such a setting hierarchies emerged: people took some organizational power and others followed. Even if that was clearly unnecessary. And the crowd following his channel are probably less authoritarian than average.
It was a revelation to me: to have flat structures, you not only need to make it possible to organize without hierarchy, but you also need a process to constantly weed out emerging hierarchies. Another theory is that you should rather explicit some lesser-evil hierarchies to prevent the emergence of others, in the same way you may let one weed grow to prevent the emergence of other less desirable ones.
I still don’t have a theory or a praxis that goes with it, but that has been good food for thought.
and no we will not interrogate what leads them to stealing food. material conditions? what’s that?
Some people are just assholes. They can be in the same general situation as you, but not respect boundaries, and in the absence of consequence they’ll be downright sociopathic.
Anyone generalizing from those assholes to absolutely everyone is not being serious. But that’s not an excuse to ignore those exceptions and insist absolutely everyone is reasonable.
One of the most enlightening moments for me recently has been when a sociology researcher attempted an experiment on youtube to prove that we can organize without hierarchy. His main point was not what was interesting to me.
His experiment was actually flawed in a major way: he proposed a task to a group of 100 that was doable even by a single person. In such a case, organization is easy. But what I found interesting is that even in such a setting hierarchies emerged: people took some organizational power and others followed. Even if that was clearly unnecessary. And the crowd following his channel are probably less authoritarian than average.
It was a revelation to me: to have flat structures, you not only need to make it possible to organize without hierarchy, but you also need a process to constantly weed out emerging hierarchies. Another theory is that you should rather explicit some lesser-evil hierarchies to prevent the emergence of others, in the same way you may let one weed grow to prevent the emergence of other less desirable ones.
I still don’t have a theory or a praxis that goes with it, but that has been good food for thought.
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Some people are just assholes. They can be in the same general situation as you, but not respect boundaries, and in the absence of consequence they’ll be downright sociopathic.
Anyone generalizing from those assholes to absolutely everyone is not being serious. But that’s not an excuse to ignore those exceptions and insist absolutely everyone is reasonable.
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Some assholes are rich.
Psychopathy is a thing and touches a sizeable part of the population. It is unwise to dismiss their existence.
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