Article 22
The Shape of Truly Human Social Orders - Part 2
by Wendell Krossa
(From the series "Creating A Horizontal God", Copyright, W. Krossa)

Personal Freedom Versus The Group

 

Community also produces a very real tension with general conceptions of personal freedom. It appears to be extremely difficult to find a satisfactory balance and maybe it is a lifelong struggle and learning process that simply can not be avoided or alleviated in any way. The tension has to do with the desire for unlimited personal freedom and the responsibility we all have to other people. These relationships of responsibility often infringe on what we feel are personal liberties.

 

In more traditional areas, where community is still a prominent element of social life, community and community traditions often stifle personal freedoms. But such community relationships also provide a strongly supportive environment. Often movement away from one's community will provide more personal freedom, but at the cost of losing the supportive relationships of that community.

 

These supportive relationships maintain community health in a variety of ways. Restraining aberrant behavior is one way. It has been suggested that the loss of good community relationships has resulted in more crime. Community pressure it is believed, has been very effective in restraining aberrant behavior. Note Japan as an example. Where there are no effective community relationships, people feel less restraint. Consequently, the argument is made that we need to give communities more control over policing in order to put more pressure on community members to behave responsibly. Currently, criminals in our communities deal with strangers in police forces and strangers in the judicial system and this lack of personal familiarity does not produce the restraining shame that community members could effectively use if they were more in control of these judicial and policing functions.

 

In making these points about traditional community practices we are not arguing for a return to the often stifling influence of traditional communities, but we are arguing for new forms of community that promote free cooperation and free commitment as well as the supportive relationships found only in community.

 

It is an ongoing struggle to find a balance and maybe the nature of human existence is that there will always be tension around this area.

 

We would also point out that an excessive emphasis on personal freedom is a uniquely Western tradition. Liberty is not solely about personal choice but it is also about the free initiative to take responsibility for others, their interests and good. It is about freely subsuming personal interests and needs for the greater good of community. This understanding of freedom is more advanced in Eastern cultures than in the West. Eastern cultures have a stronger sense or consciousness of belonging to and existing for the whole. This is a healthier sense of freedom.

 

But in arguing against isolating individualism we are not arguing for the stifling conformity of traditional community. In places like Japan and Singapore there are low crime rates and good employment security, but at the cost of strong social control and conformity. Even these societies are now feeling the pressure from their citizens for more personal freedoms. How do you merge the positive aspects of community pressure (i.e. shame to inhibit bad behavior) with the human demand for diversity and spontaneous creativity? We in the West tend to view community pressure as too controlling. Is that just because of our views of personal freedom are too extreme?

 

Perhaps we need to question more seriously some of the extremism in our individually oriented concepts of freedom. Is our brand of Western personal freedom really better than more community oriented cultures which stress responsibility to community? Our loss of community support has left us with intolerable levels of stress, depression, violence and crime, family breakup, and endless other pathologies. Are we really better off than societies, like Japan, which we dismissively condemn as too conformist?

 

What we need is fresh initiative in searching for new forms of community that guard pesonal liberty and equality but within responsibility to community.

 

2. A human social order will be genuinely horizontal in orientation. This will be true of all areas of a society- family, school, work, government, and all social arenas. Only a radically egalitarian orientation can provide the proper form of relating necessary for true human existence. Human relating can never be oriented upward or downward to other human beings. It must always be horizontally oriented toward others as equals.

 

But to move toward a horizontally oriented social order, there is a need for a radical shift in social attitudes to support truly egalitarian forms of relating. Current widespread hierarchically oriented thinking will never encourage the emergence of human relating. Institutionalized vertical relating has a long history, strong traditions, and powerful ideas such as the sacred to validate its continued operation. Whether in economic status, work position and prestige, or other social status's, people tend to feel the ascending vertical order of hierarchy is somehow natural, just, and the only efficient way to get things done. After all, it has always been that way. But such forms of relating effectively destroy human equality and therefore also human freedom.

 

Efficiency Before Humanity

 

Being human and relating as true human persons is just not the priority concern in contemporary human social orders. Efficiency in operation is the current dominant concern and governing principle of most organizations and governments (Murray Fulton, Ed. 1990. Co-operative Organizations and Canadian Society). Such efficiency, in the current economic system dominating the world, demands a vertical management structure with tight control.

 

Legislation has also been developed in modern states which demands hierarchically oriented management systems in order to protect against failure in the contemporary competitive environment. The elite oriented legal authority of government therefore supports such vertical systems of control.

 

While efficiency is a valid concern in the contemporary economic system, it should never be allowed to supplant or distort the horizontal orientation necessary for human relating and human existence. Efficiency must not be the primary concern in shaping decision making processes and institutions. Becoming fully human is the purpose of life, the reason why we exist. This is the primary reason for human existence on this planet and therefore it must be the dominant concern of all social institutions and organizations. It must never be supplanted by other concerns no matter how important and valid they may appear to be.

 

Efficiency, we feel, is to often an elite concern for personal benefit. While it is an important operating principle of organizations in order to succeed and to gain the most from the economic system which prevails over much of the earth at present, too often it is a cruel concern which has produced immense human misery in terms of unemployment and the alienation experienced by the powerless majority who exist at the bottom of contemporary hierarchical organizations. Efficiency is not the primary purpose of existence. It must be subservient to human and community well-being.

 

We will note later some of the growing evidence that efficiency is better served by horizontally oriented systems of human cooperation and decision making.

 

3. A human social order must allow for and encourage true human freedom. This will mean encouraging creativity, spontaneity, diversity, complexity, and chance. It will mean freedom for life to spontaneously express itself in all the infinite uniqueness that is humanity.

 

Freezing the Founders

 

The organizing of human social life and relationships in civilized societies has always had a tendency to move in the direction of excessive uniformization which constrains human freedom in destructive ways. Such uniformization occurs often in the process of human organizing where a growing conformity affects organizational culture through the use of law. This leads to growing rigidity and control under often restrictive and narrow systems of rules and regulations. Such systems of law inevitably operate to freeze behavior patterns around one version or standard which demands conformity to all under its authority.

 

Such organizational uniformity often occurs in the following manner. Those involved in starting some new movement or enterprise often set out a pattern for those who will later join the enterprise. This is an effort to avoid needless reduplication and to prevent repetition of early mistakes. While it may be intended to help others, it often arises from the belief of early founders that they have some special insight or approach that is best for all to follow. Many institutions, ideologies, and systems of law are then shaped around the distinct personalities and ideas of a few founding fathers.

 

The pattern that founders set forth may be in the form of a mission statement of set of policies and procedures. Often these initial policies are buttressed by growing systems of rules and regulations which interpret the early policies in ever more detail as time passes. Such growing body of organizational law has turned many free spirited movements into tightly controlled organizations shaped to suit the personalities, beliefs, practices, and whims of the founders or leaders. These systems of rules embody in a very rigid manner the successful responses of the authors of the movement, responses which may only hinder future creativity and freedom for unique response in following generations of members.

 

With the passing of time and growing veneration of the founders, free systems of organizing eventually become more rigid and frozen, buttressed by closed and finalized systems of law. As someone said, it is easier to preserve structures which are more concrete, than to maintain a focus on the early spirit and vision of founders which is less objective. But in allowing a shift to conserving structure, organizing no longer remains a flexible tool to serve succeeding generations of members. It becomes a rigid institutionalized master to which all members must conform to and pledge loyalty to serve.

 

What should remain a flexible process to serve new members is then frozen and institutionalized to become a controlling master of subsequent generations of members. The few at the top shape it to suit their own unique personalities and styles and this structure is then used to dominate and control others. Later generations of people joining these institutions are then required to deny their own unique selves and to adjust to what becomes the rigid personality or culture of the organization. The many are coerced into denying their own uniqueness in order to maintain their existence in the rigid institution. This destroys humanity and true human existence. It is also a blatant denial of human freedom.

 

What should assist diverse and unique humans to respond freely in creative new ways (the process of cooperative organizing), becomes instead a strict master controlling and thereby destroying the freedom and diversity of generations of people that will follow.

 

Interesting in this regard is the use of such traditional practices as seniority. Seniority is simply another tool of control. It is used by people who have been around longer than others to gain privileges and opportunities that are denied to more recent members. It is another element leading to vertical relationships of superiority/inferiority. It takes a great human spirit to welcome new members with equal benefits and opportunities as all other members, but it is a very human thing to do.

 

We remember Jesus' parable about the vineyard workers. The workers who came near the end of the project were treated the same as the workers who had toiled long and hard. The long-term workers complained that this equal treatment was not fair, but the response of the owner (God) was, "Will you begrudge my generosity?".

 

New Wine, New Wineskins

 

When a new group of people or a new person joins a task requiring cooperation, those persons may need entirely new forms of organizing in order for them to remain human in their own unique way. The old forms that may have suited their predecessors may now only restrict their freedom to bring the new and unique expression of their humanity to the cooperative task. Every group and individual needs the freedom to express their humanity in their own way. Do our systems of organizing allow for this uniqueness and encourage it, or do they restrict and constrain it?

 

Human efforts at organizing must never be allowed to become a tool used by the elite few to dominate and control the many. When this happens the tendency is that something which should remain an open ended and flexible process to serve a wide variety of diverse people, is frozen around the values and personalities of the controlling managers. Their unique features are frozen into the organizational structures, laws, and operating procedures. What should remain an open-ended, flexible, and changing process to serve unique people, becomes instead a fixed, closed institution focused around the ideas and practices of early founders and which then demands human loyalty and conformity to those elite oriented standards.

 

The process of organizing human cooperation has too often resulted in fixed and closed institutions- objects- which demand loyalty and subservience from human beings. This freezing of processes into rigid institutions contributes to the enslavement of people as objects. It hinders the freedom of people to become selves in freely changing process which is the essential nature of human beings (as we noted in the material by Zurcher).

 

All states and organizations have tended to follow this path from initially more free and open movements, through the development of growing bodies of law to govern members of the growing movement, to the growing rigidity of institutional tradition and law culture, to eventually become objects or monuments which members must strictly conform to and serve.

 

In this regard, it may be very important to build into the constitution of our organizations a death clause. We have a tendency to venerate and preserve institutions, especially those that have been around for a long time, even after they have outlived and lost sight of their original task. A clear death statement might help us to end something that no longer serves to assist people in accomplishing some clearly stated objective. This may also help prevent many processes from becoming objects.

 

Rothschild also notes this problem of organizational permanence as the tendency toward the development of oligarchies that displace participatory democratic systems and then seek to maintain an existence even when the original organizational goals have been fulfilled. She says that various explanations for such a conservatizing process of goal displacement and the attendant process of oligarchization have been adduced: (a) Organizational goals may become increasingly accommodated to contrary values in the surrounding community; (b) Organizations, such as the March of Dimes, may essentially accomplish their original goals and then shift to more diffuse ones in order to maintain the organization per se; (c) Organizations, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, may find it impossible to realize their original goals and may then develop more diffuse ones; (d) Procedural regulations and rules (means to attain goals) may become so rigid that they are converted into ends in themselves and; (e) Organization maintenance and growth may be transformed into ends in themselves, as in the German Socialist Party, because it is in the interest of those at the top of the organization to preserve their positions of power and privilege within it" (Joyce Rothschild, 1989. The Cooperative Workplace, p.74).

 

These trends continue to operate inspite of the evidence that "Organizations will have the intellectual resources to adapt to changing and complex technological problems only if they direct the talents of specialists from many disciplines into project groups that are run democratically, groups that are dissolved upon completion of the project at hand" (Ibid, p.75). In such groups, members are taught to regard organizational operations as experimental and tentative. "Procedures and rules are seen by members as ad hoc and flexible. Programs and operations are experimental and if they don't work, they are altered. The sentiment that all operations and programs in an organization ought to be tentative, militates against the usual ritualization of rule use that turns means into ends" (Ibid, p.77, 83).

 

Many researchers are now pointing out that in a rapidly changing environment such flexible and adaptive processes are required for survival. This is because temporary project teams are seen as best able to develop innovative solutions to complex problems and in this way meet the challenges of a turbulent environment. Inspite of the evidence that impermanent processes run democratically are the best way to deal with complex problems and issues, most organizations continue to countenance the operation of " conservatism of organizational purpose (through goal displacement, succession, or accommodation), rigidification of rules and ossification, oligarchization of power, and maintenance of the organization as an end in itself" (Ibid, p. 77).

 

Rothschild further states that it is a basic and unexamined assumption that all organizations desire to be permanent. But we need to challenge this basic assumption and begin to associate the disbanding of organizations not with failure, she says, but with the achievement of goals (Ibid, p.77). Creating impermanent processes is a step toward freeing human life from the calcifying trend of modern institutionalization.

 

The Destruction of Diversity

 

Snyder and Fromkin argue that most contemporary social structures operate to destroy the uniqueness of people (C. R. Snyder and Howard Fromkin. 1980. Uniqueness: The Human Pursuit of Difference, p.180). Some of the more extreme examples of institutions which destroy human uniqueness are the following:

 

Ø      Old folks homes.

Ø      Mental hospitals.

Ø      Jails and prisons.

Ø      Army barracks and boarding schools.

Ø      Monasteries and convents.

 

But most other organizations also destroy uniqueness in some measure. People, say Snyder and Fromkin, on entering organizations are "shaped into an object that fits the institution, to assist in the smooth running of routine operations" (Ibid, p.180). This process leads to a loss of uniqueness which can lead to anti-social behavior, according to them.

 

The primary reason for the loss of uniqueness is due to the attempt by modern organizations to maintain control over large numbers of people and their behavior. Members are therefore forced to fit their behavior to match "some standardized general profile" (Ibid, p.186). This is achieved through conformity to rules. Any deviation from the organization's standard behavior or policies is dealt with by disciplinary action which then reinforces the tendency toward rigid conformity.

 

Snyder and Fromkin argue that the conformity promoted in modern institutions is an effort to enhance efficiency, but it has large costs in terms of increased dissatisfaction. With the loss of individuality, there is a loss of creativity and spontaneity which is too costly a price to pay in the interests of efficiency.

 

They assert that the outstanding characteristic of humans is the individuality which is the supreme mark of their humanity. "The uniqueness of individuals is one of the most fundamental characteristics of life" (Ibid, p.195). In this regard, they note for instance, that the number of possible human genotypes- different versions of people if you will- is estimated as being somewhere near 70 trillion.

 

These estimates have probably increased with more recent discoveries regarding the brain which state that there are infinite possible connections among the brain's neurons. But it is sufficient to point out that there is infinite diversity among people and this diversity is an essential element of humanity which must be adjusted to and encouraged by all systems of organizing. We simply can not afford to waste the vast creativity of human beings or life in general.

 

Related to this issue of human uniqueness and group interaction or relationships is the fact that human life is not about agreement and conformity but rather the healthy influence of difference. Difference is not to be feared but to be appreciated as offering more options for creative advance and survival. There is still a residual belief in many people that all members of groups or organizations must agree on policies, operating procedures and response. Too much institutional life therefore urges group conformity which militates against freedom for diversity and spontaneity or uniqueness of response. This is inhuman and unhealthy for the emerging humanity of group members which is oriented to uniqueness and the self as evolving process. Difference and uniqueness should therefore not just be tolerated. but positively encouraged and enjoyed for their health granting benefits for the group.

 

Also in regard to the uniformization trends of modern industrial life and society we would note that uniformization has reached new heights of control in the use of machines in the production process. Previous to the use of modern machinery, craftsmen could still express their own uniqueness through making similar items, but never making an identical copy. Each item they made was in a sense a unique expression of the craftsman as artist. Machinery has now eliminated that uniqueness in making each item monotonously the same. Such technological trends answer the issue of efficiency, but what about human uniqueness and creativity? It is no wonder that modern factories have been described in sociological studies as depressingly inhuman places to work within.

 

Blueprintism

 

The process of human organizing must also avoid the temptation to use the tools of organizing to develop blueprintism. This involves the use of structures, plans, and laws to set forth detailed plans for the future. The submission to detailed law to guide life destroys the essence of life which must include choice, spontaneity, and diversity. Plans or blueprints tend to freeze life into fixed patterns and which then become laws which only hinder other options for healthy human diversity and change.

 

This tendency toward blueprintism is encouraged in part by the Western view of law. This viewpoint believes all life is governed by fixed, unchanging, and eternal laws. Therefore life must and will behave uniformly and predictably. This is a view which then tries to control all of life in a uniform and predictable manner. Chance and uncertainty are given little place in such a worldview.

 

It is all part of the human effort to create certainty and thereby eliminate the elements of chance and randomness which are essential to freedom and which evoke sheer terror in many people. Some have argued that for many people the fear of such freedom is greater even than the fear of death.

 

Life Can Not Be Controlled

 

But inspite of the massive and ongoing historical effort to over-organize and control life, life just will not follow the pattern we prescribe for it. Life remains open, free, unpredictable, and going who knows where. Some have argued you can never plan the future for any group of people due to the unpredictability of human beings and social systems. Planning is the effort through which people try to create control and security. But inspite of endless planning and organizing, most people survive through ad hocism or muddling through. And this muddling along in an ad hoc manner has worked fine for tens of thousands of years and continues to work well in the present. Inspite of the modern pretense to rationality and tight control in our planning processes, in most situations people continue to survive quite well mainly by muddling through. Remember in this regard, that much evolutionary advance has been through random mutations, which is another form of muddling through.

 

 

It may be much wiser for us to simply try to follow life and adjust to its unpredictability rather than to waste so much energy trying to control it and force it in directions we feel it should be moving toward. Someone has even argued that leaders do not really lead nations of people but simply try to push themselves to the front of directions they believe people are moving toward. It is more a case of being chased, not leading.

 

Powerholding elites have long tried to control the lives of people by surrounding them with complex systems of law and regulations. But these systems of law for nations or organizations often simply reflect the unique preferences and methods of the controlling elites. While these systems of law may contain useful advice from the experience of the past to assist people in the present, too often they become tools to rigidly dominate and control others in a rigidly conforming manner and according to the narrow interests of the powerholders.

 

Most sinister in the use of such systems of law is the attempt by ruling elites to claim that such law is sacred, that it is from God. To those who happen to be in a position of authority of any kind, at least have the sense and decency to admit that the law you are administering is simply a human creation to achieve some human objective and is in no manner from God. Do not try to abuse people's respect for the divine and bind them with an enslaving sense of the sacred focused on petty rules that may be no more than the embodiment of the whims of ruling elites.

 

Much of the human practice of using law and organizational structures to control others is reflects a serious lack of understanding of the complexity and diversity of life. It is a lack of appreciation for the health giving properties of diversity. This lack of understanding has led to a long history of effort to destroy diversity and replace it with uniformity. In more recent times this effort toward uniformity is driven by the felt need of powerholders for profitable efficiency.

 

Fortunately, emerging information from such areas as chaos theory is breaking the grip of these old rigid views of life. We now see randomness and diversity as healthy and essential to the basic nature of life. Yes, there is order in life, but it is proving to be much different from the eternal and unchanging laws humans have created. Life and nature have an order that flows dynamically and even changes direction. It is an order that is open to spontaneity, chance, change and even disorder. Such freedom is not chaos or anarchy, but simply normal, healthy life.

 

Freeing Life From Institution

 

The argument is still heard that nothing would ever get done without the uniformity of controlling hierarchies. This view basically presumes the average person is stupid and must be controlled and coerced in order to do anything useful or productive. It presumes that all people must do things monotonously the same in order to be productive. It also reveals a serious lack of trust in average human beings. But we need to remember that just as we have learned over thousands of years to function in hierarchy, so we can now also learn to function productively in more horizontal social orders.

 

In fact, a horizontally oriented society would lead to much healthier communities and workplaces as people would be allowed relate as truly human equals. Evidence is also mounting that such forms of horizontal relating are more productive than archaic hierarchies. Ultimately, we have no choice but to move toward horizontal relating as this is the only truly human option.

 

Institutions and organizations would be all right for serving human life and existence if they remained in the form of process tools for cooperative efforts. But they would have to be radically restructured to become flexible enough to serve diverse and constantly evolving humanity. Certainly, the use of institutions as tools of elite control must end. This has robbed millions of people of the basic human opportunity to express themselves as the unique humans they are.

 

Millennia of existence in rigid hierarchies and institutions has made it very difficult for many people to think of life aside from controlling institutions and organizations. But life is inherently a free, open, and changing process. In reality, true life can never be institutionalized. True life simply can not develop fully and properly within the context of contemporary forms of organization.

 

In seeking more human ways for organizing life (to the extent that organizing may be required at all, and this certainly must be rigorously challenged at every step of the way) we need to break completely free of old parameters and experiment with entirely new directions. We have wasted too much of human creativity and effort in maintaining old vertical structures and systems that no longer serve increasingly diverse humanity.

 

We also need to remember that it is people who create organizations and institutions with their positions and offices of power. These organizational creators then imbue their creations with authority in order to maintain control of others. Often an unashamed appeal is made to God as the author of the organizational effort. This has led to immense human damage. These institutions do not deserve human respect or loyalty as they too often embody the basest practices of control and therefore do not advance human freedom, equality, or anything remotely enhancing the human spirit. We must always remember that all human organizations and states are merely manmade and therefore can be changed and discarded.

 

It is time to get past the nonsense that you need to strictly control people within organizational structures in order to get anything done. You do not need someone snapping orders from the top of a hierarchy in order to gain efficiency. As someone said, "Workers do not need bosses to get work done" (in The Cooperative Workplace, p.185). This attitude that people must be controlled arises too often from an impatient arrogance that feels it has the only right way to do things and therefore refuses to allow other choices and options.

 

It is still widely believed even in the present that someone barking orders is the most efficient way to get things done. But the communist experiment proved convincingly that centralized power holder control is highly inefficient. Lets not forget that brutal experience.

 

In this regard we would also argue that the venerable idea of people submitting to leaders or following leaders can be dangerously inhuman and lead to serious abuse of human freedom. This idea of leadership needs to be challenged and radically rethought. Multiple millions of people have died because of blind loyalty to leadership and human created authority.

 

It is time to acknowledge the growing awareness that hierarchical existence and relating is inhuman and simply wrong. Just as vertical relating can never be human relating and in fact operates to destroy freedom and equality, so vertically oriented institutions can never promote truly human relationships or human well-being and in fact are destructive of true humanity, freedom and equality. They operate to destroy our most valued ideals in democratic society. This could also be said about the root source of support for hierarchical control- the old vertical God. That view of God also serves to destroy true human relating, freedom and equality.

 

The above features for true human social order are not a complete nor exhaustive list. The intention was only to try to capture some of the basic features of relating and organizing that are essential to the well-being and development of the human self, those things essential to true human existence. These basic features can be used to evaluate present structures or to shape new processes and structures. These criteria are based on previously noted human features, basic features essential to true human existence and freedom.

 

We have purposely avoided setting out any sort of detailed model to guide life into the future. That would destroy the creativity and spontaneity required for the multitude of different situations people will find themselves in. It would also rob people of the responsible choice they must exercise to become fully human.

 

 From the series 'Taking The Vertical Out Of God'
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