I came up with this system model that could be thought to develop the previous one to focus more on organizational agency.

What is important to recognize is that each actor proposes actions based on their education and background. We could take the Iran nuclear program as an example:

• Authoritatively thinking people such as military officials most probably propose military action to solve the crisis.
• Economically thinking people such as economists propose market-based solutions such as sanctions.
• Politically (many-sided) thinking people such as politicians are most likely to promote diplomacy and peaceful resolution of the crisis.
• Hierarchial (authoritarian) individuals typically actively reject diplomatic efforts, and political (liberal) individuals reject military action.

In case of the Greek economic crisis the proposals go like this:

• Hierarchial thinking produces proposals based on rules, monitoring, austerity and abandonment.
• Market thinking promotes approaches such as letting banks go bankrupt and supporting creative destruction.
• Political thinking produces ideas that seek to increase political cooperation and public discourse.

All the proposed actions are processed in the dialogue in which the system transforms into a synchronous one: the individuals agree on “what must be done” and start acting as a larger unit. Here dialogue is more of a “process of reality” that results in collectively approved action.

At last I get to use my system modelling skills! (I did get grade 5 on scale 1-5 from the dynamic simulation course last fall where we used Powersim to build technical and ecosystem models.) Here I have used Vensim PLE which is free for personal use.

Here is pictured a system model on learning: the scale can be individual as well as organizational. The model is not definitive in the sense that all possible causalities are drawn; I have most probably missed something, but you get the image.

• An arrow can be read as “affects”.
• The arrow above emergence means flow; the boxes can be thought as stocks.
• + means positive causal link. This means: “If A increases, also B increases, and if A decreases also B decreases”
• - means negative causal link: “If A increases, B decreases, if A decreases, B increases.”
• || in the arrow means delay.

Most of the variables are quite complex and not something that can be measured.
Instead of increase/decrease, we could think the positive causality as “Improvement in A improves B”, negative causality as “Improvement in A weakens B”.

Power is the force that seeks to keep these systems intact and functioning. Basically it aims for balance between the forces of conflict, unity, crisis and separation – each of them in excess amount has the ability to break down the organization, and too little of them can make the organization unresponsive and dysfunctional in the long term, thus rendering it irrelevant.

Here I have tried to picture the dynamics:

By the way, Veljko Rus, a Slovenian sociologist, wrote about positive and negative power in 1980:

Positive power (induction), as an ability to initiate activity, and negative power (resistance), as an ability to stop some activity, are treated in this paper as two closely related poles of the same power cycle. The paper further demonstrates how existing theoretical treatments of power phenomena have been reduced to an analysis of positive power and have consequently been unable to treat the contradictory interdependency of positive and negative power.

Following the atomistic systems approach, I drew the following picture. In the framework conflict is the basis of power in human relations; different scenarios take place depending on the system type, that is, the prevailing culture.

If we were to define positive and negative power in this context, negative power would be “interfering force manifesting in other people that seeks to suppress individual (or group) potential and desires”, and positive power would be “individual and collaborative force that seeks to enable individual and collective potential”. Suppression is an example of negative power, while dialogue implies use of positive power. Deliberation and indifference are something in between.

Because suppression is so typical in the contemporary society, conflicts and use of power are often interpreted solely in this frame. An example of this process could be a discussion between blog author and commentator. While the author might seek to build dialogue, the commentator interprets the author’s “eagerness” as suppression because of the prevailing interpretative frameworks.

In the field of organizational conflict management Rahim (2002) has developed this model:

The equivalences are clear; Integrating style takes place in a dialogue, dominating and obliging styles exist in suppression, avoiding style is indifference and compromising style is deliberation in the atomistic thinking.

Human systems typically include four types of interactions: conflicts, unified interactions, crises and separate interactions.

Systems typically have many of these interactions going on at the same time: there are forces that collide with each other, forces that unify and forces that separate the actors.

Conflicts and crises are defining moments in the interaction process: based on the skills, requirements and valuations of the actors, the system can either move towards stronger unity or deepening separation.

We could imagine an everyday conversation that shows these various interactions:

Jack and Maria are sitting in the break room. Jack is reading an article about happiness in work, Maria is reading a women’s magazine.

Jack: I think our workplace could have a better working atmosphere. [opening the interaction from an initial state of separation]
Maria: What do you mean? [conflict]
J: Often I’m faced with excessive criticism instead of constructive attitude. [building the conflict]
M: You’re totally right, that happens quite often.[unity] I think it has to do with the managers, they often seem out of touch from the practical work. [unity, separation]
J: Well, to some extent, yeah. [unity] But I think all employees are partly responsible for the atmosphere, not just the bosses. [crisis]
M: I guess you have some truth in that. [unity]

Maria’s first reply shows the structure of a conflict: it isn’t necessarily a “big argument”, but asynchrony between the participants’ thoughts. Typically unity is built towards others, as can be seen in the way Maria says managers are to blame.

What is important to notice is that these various “micro-interactions” take place in the communication process all the time. No state is problematic in itself, but they all require communication skills to direct the process towards a desired state.

There are typical phrases that emerge in the different phases:

Conflict:
“What do you mean?”
“What is your point?”
“Why did you do that?”
“Do as I say.”

Unity:
“You’re right.”
“We’re all in this together.”
“What should we do?”

Crisis:
“In my opinion you acted stupidly.”
“I disagree with you on this.”
“Why are you neglecting me?”

Separation:
Polite co-operation with minimal interaction.
Silence.

If we were to combine this with the different system types thinking, the defining factor would be “what the emerging unity is like”. The equivalences could go something like this:

Closed system – strongest dominates
Open system – majority dominates
Random system – no-one is responsible
Synchronous system – everyone is responsible

Radical leftist
Right-wing conservative
Anarchist
Neoliberal
Socialist
Mainstream
Liberal
Establishment
Idealist
Realist
Bleeding heart

Emotions are totally acceptable, we are humans after all. Maybe the problem is that even in this time of open expression of feelings, some archaic masculinity forces debaters to hide their emotions in seemingly objective language. Then anxiety occupies the discourse and prevents reasonable thinking.

You can test your own presuppositions by using adjectives that are contrary to the truths in the discourses you participate in. What kind of feelings arise when you think of these terms?

true anarchist
joyful socialist
mainstream radical
establishment anarchist
radical idealist
bleeding heart realist

(Inspired by Crooks and Liars.)

23.

The oldest social specialization, the specialization of power, is at the root of the spectacle. The spectacle is thus a specialized activity which speaks for all the others. It is the diplomatic representation of hierarchic society to itself, where all other expression is banned. Here the most modern is also the most archaic.

At the root of specialized power is applause. Approval is the only thing spectacular power demands while having its laudatory monologue.

Now that religion no longer provides spectators the consolation their dreary lives need, the president of the United States has become one of the holy men preaching for salvation.

After such a powerful man has spoken, it is polite to clap. In this sentence lies his power.

Debord wrote in The Society of the Spectacle:

19.

The spectacle inherits all the weaknesses of the Western philosophical project which undertook to comprehend activity in terms of the categories of seeing; furthermore, it is based on the incessant spread of the precise technical rationality which grew out of this thought. The spectacle does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality. The concrete life of everyone has been degraded into a speculative universe.

20.

Philosophy, the power of separate thought and the thought of separate power, could never by itself supersede theology. The spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion. Spectacular technology has not dispelled the religious clouds where men had placed their own powers detached from themselves; it has only tied them to an earthly base. The most earthly life thus becomes opaque and unbreathable. It no longer projects into the sky but shelters within itself its absolute denial, its fallacious paradise. The spectacle is the technical realization of the exile of human powers into a beyond; it is separation perfected within the interior of man.

The power of the spectacle lies in the power of unimaginative thinking that infiltrates every aspect of collective life by stating:

No such thing shall be that yet hasn’t been.

The spectacle altogether rejects history that states that 1) things change, and 2) everything that now is hasn’t always been. Instead, every image is filled with tautology: everything is because of, and the challenge of man is just to live with it.

The task of a philosopher is to leave this world of moving images in order to turn towards more real existence. The burden of return is difficult to carry, and that is why philosophers prefer to stay in the sun and philosophize ad infinitum and end up with extremely pragmatic advice such as “something should be done about it”.

To overcome this built-in dead end of philosophy, philosophers should become engineers concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for problems. Tangible creation with the idea of Good in mind is the only way of effectively deconstructing the spectacle since it communicates the most disenchanting message:

Something can be done, and I am doing it.

I draw this image to clarify the thought about emergence in the previous post. You could imagine the axes to stay in place while emergence of things and phenomena “flow” towards it.

One could start paying attention to where in this process different fields such as science, politics and philosophy focus on. (This kind of continues the faith-self-reliance discussion.) The result is this image:

In this way of thinking, different “emergence fields” have been constructed that focus on different areas of the process.

Science studies matters that have emerged. Applied science uses scientific knowledge to generate new and useful emergence (such as technical equipment or new practices).

In the field of politics, the attention is partly on “what has emerged”, but mostly it focuses on generating “what is good”.

Religion is mostly concerned with distant future (“what shall emerge”), but to some extent their followers also seek to enter the field of politics.

Philosophy is the basis from which structured science, politics and religion have emerged, so it’s a kind of meta-level field.

In the contemporary culture the typical aim is to keep the fields clearly separated. This often produces controversies and clashes; examples are when religion tries to enter the field of science (intelligent design) or politics (islamism), politics seeks to enter science (value-free science) or science enters religion (new atheism).

It seems that the only fields that are passive are philosophy and applied science. Something in these fields cause engineers and philosophers to be typically peaceful people. Perhaps it’s the satisfaction creativity provides.