Ed,
At 16:31 29/10/2009 -0400, you wrote:
Keith, I tend to agree with you. Even in the most hierarchical
organizations I've been part of, government departments and large oil
companies, workers were divided into small five to ten person groups
headed by a leader who interacted with other groups. But I do wonder if
the marauding armies of Attila the Hun were organized like that.
I reckon they probably were -- essentially. Not so much collections of
small separate groups, of course, but of their coalescing into much larger
clans and tribes -- but each, almost certainly, with a small
decision-making group at the top. We can easily (and temporarily) lose our
natural small group cohesion when some supernormal prospect comes along or
powerful emotions are let loose. Thus, football crowds, street
demonstrations, political revolutions.
The clans and tribes of the Huns all moved spontaneously out of central
Europe when the prospect of huge pickings in the Roman Empire were
available. The opportunities for each of the army-clans to loot were great
enough for them not to organize themselves hierarchically into a
super-army. Once they'd looted the clans moved on until they were picked
off one by one by much more disciplined Roman armies. This lack of overall
structure is why they didn't leave a permanent civilization behind them --
in exactly the same way that Genghis Khan and the Mongols were not able to
do so 700 years later.
Some geneticists also suggest a deeper reasons for the failures of the Huns
and the Mongols. A highly-selectable (that is, highly beneficial) brain
gene mutation (called ASPM) had occurred somewhere in the Middle East at
around 7,000 to 10,000 BC at the time when cities first started emerging.
It's considered that this must have had much to do with extended
social/political abilities and the rise of exquisitely planned cities in
Mesopotamia, the Indus valley and northern China, and ASPM spread rapidly
(relative to normal mutation rates) by intermarriage mainly along trading
coastlines and river valleys. It became fixed very quickly and has now
penetrated about half of the present world population.
However, the Huns (in Hungary) and the Mongols (in Mongolia, of course!)
were nomadic pastoralists living originally in largely isolated groups
hardly more than family-sized groups as they went from one pasture to
another. It is highly probable that the ASPM mutation had not yet
penetrated their gene stock and whatever socially-modification effects (one
presumes) that the gene might have had in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean
and China Sea regions (and their vast numbers of cities by about 400AD) was
largely absent in the Huns (and, later in the Mongols).
But that's by the way.
And even modern armies seem to have a lot of people at the bottom and
then fewer and fewer people as you go up -- i.e. rapidly narrowing pyramids.
But not so pyramidal as they used to be! More like an hour-glass shape. The
British Army has far more Generals and Brigadiers than battalions and the
Navy far more Admirals and Captains than battleships. Hundreds of them in
the smallest armed forces we've ever had!
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 3:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Some questions
Ed,
OK, here goes.
I am totally persuaded from a mass of anthropological evidence that
humans live, work and make decisions best in groups of no more than about
ten or adult individuals. For various ergonomic and environmental reasons
this is how we had to spend at least 100,000 years of our existence on
fairly open savannahs and our genes have shaped our behaviours
accordingly. This is the size of football teams, terrorist cells, army
platoons and special squads. Boards of directors, inner cabinets, royal
commissions, special committees (as in our House of Commons), are rarely
larger. And it is this size of opinion-making, decision-taking body that
I am pretty sure takes place at the top of governments when important
decisions have to be taken on this or that.
However, there can be several groups of this size at any one time,
depending on the number of particular problems and issues that happen to
have landed on the government plate. Undoubtedly a smaller number of
individuals immediately around the leader -- one or two key civil
servants, one or two influential public individuals, one or two personal
friends perhaps -- form a pivotal group that, in turn, creates the other
more specialized groups and remains key decision-making members of them.
Whatever the constitutional complexion of the government -- whether a
dictatorship, a bureaucracy or a so-called democracy -- I'm sure that a
similar pattern exists in all of them. It's a moving feast with only a
passing resemblance to what might be expected if you were to draw an
organizational chart of the government or describe it formally in a text book.
If you like, it's hunter-gathering all over again -- but then I don't
think we've ever left them. They're always there -- sycophants or
independants -- at the very top in all organisations immediately around
the leader.
Keith
At 10:18 29/10/2009 -0400, you wrote:
I posted the following a few days ago and got no response. I'm posting
again because I think the question I raise at the end of the original
posting is an important one.
Ed
We tend to see societies like Canada and the US as liberal and democratic
and responsive to the general public. But is that how they really operate?
Are political parties really open and responsive to the public at large or
are they corporate entities doing what they have to in order to promote
themselves in seeking and maintaining power? Do they really hold the
interests of the public as primary or do they largely behave in their
self-interest? When they show themselves to the public, are they showing
their true and honest selves, or are they behaving like soap adds on TV?
Hey, look, there's Harper playing piano and singing a Beatles' song at the
NAC. Gee, he's a nice open guy after all, not someone who's closeted away
from scrutiny at the PMO. IMHO, it's no better than selling soap.
And one also has to think about the complex linkages that exist between the
political and corporate sectors. Lobbying, getting the political sector to
do what the corporate sector wants, has become a major industry --
invisible
to the public but enormously powerful. Consider health care reform in the
US, beneficial to the general public but potentially very harmful to the
health insurance industry. So send in the lobbyists to make sure it
doesn't
emerge as something that threatens corporate power and profitability and
doesn't do much for the public either.
Who really governs us? And what really is ethical behaviour when it comes
to government and the corporate sector?
I think the question is particularly relevant in light of the recent
invasion of the House of Commons by young people who were very concerned
about the lack of a firm government stance on what to do about climate
change. Given that the December conference on this issue and the
government doing little more than politely trading insults with the
opposition during question period, were the kids right in invading the
sacred space of the politicians? I tend to think they were. How else
could they get their point across? While the politicians regard the
House of Commons as sacredly theirs, who really does it belong
to? Might not arrangements be made to let members of the public in to
make their case directly instead of making them have to shout from the
gallery and be dragged out?
And I know the committee system exists, but it too tends to slow,
cumbersome and exclusive, used most often to shed darkness instead of light.
Ed encore
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
<<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>/>,
<www.handlo.com>
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
<<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>/>,
<www.handlo.com>
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