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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 20 - 27 Aug 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | accepting the end of a Robert Altman movie as a depiction of
reality? There's no basis for doing that. | |
<
< | | >
> | The idea was that the end of this Robert Altman movie presented an image of a part of reality in a stark way, so that it functioned as a good illustration of the point I was trying to make. But re-reading it I see what you mean. In a short essay it takes up a lot of space, and seems less like an illustration of a point than the point itself. | | | The Law and Contradiction | | | but—as you have commented yourself—they don't work
easily or well at 1,000 words. | |
>
> | Point taken. I wasn't trying to cause discomfort in my readers. To be honest, I was trying to keep the essay interesting. Its hard to tell if what one is trying to do is made impossible by the medium one is working in, or simply because one hasn't done it well enough yet. I'll change tacks. | | | * On the substance of your draft as it stands, I have two
comments. The theory of the contradiction of self requires a
unitary self to be contradicted. I think it's therefore at best | | | political implications. So far, you haven't dealt with that
except by ignoring the issue and those who have raised
it.
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | I am not a great researcher, as I'm sure the various drafts of this and other essays have made clear. Research is something that I am gradually learning as I go through law school. I was not aware of Gustave le Bon nor Edward Bernays. Let me read them, and I'll revise this once more. I think there's no doubt that recognizing the irrationality of crowds doesn't naturally lead to democracy. But what I am trying to think through is some way that we can recognize that groups are irrational without becoming PR people and propagandists. I'm sure that this is not a novel idea. |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 19 - 23 Aug 2009 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | Music is an excellent tool for forming an organized group out of a mob. Music works because it doesn't obey the law of non-contradiction. Thus music can (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group -- unifying them. In fact, music can be understood as an art of pure organization. Composers create anxiety and satisfaction by approaching and receding from the edge of the tonal worlds they create. The tension produced in the middle of a classical sonata is the fear that the composer wont be able to successfully "bring it back" to the tonic, and that it will all "fall apart". The satisfaction is created by the composer pulling it off. But music is never played in a vacuum. The tension felt in the middle of a piece is also the anxiety and excitement created by the possibility that the audience will turn back into a mob -- a group of pure contradiction. The first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is an instance of this reverse transformation of group into a mob. | |
>
> |
- You are making a pretty risky decision, aren't you, in accepting the end of a Robert Altman movie as a depiction of reality? There's no basis for doing that.
| | | The Law and Contradiction
Some people go to law school hoping to obtain the tools that will allow them to change the world. Their first year they are met with the full array of intractable conflicts that run through social groups. They come face to face with Arnold's insight that | | | Yea, I see what you mean Anja. Thanks for the honest criticism. I've been really struggling with narrowing down my topic in these 1,000 word assignments. I'm going to cut out the "theory of everything" stuff. Although it was cathartic to write, after looking at it for a week I agree with you that the only thing that ties it to the first topic is a perhaps idiosyncratic personal issue. I'm going to do some research on a particular example of the mob phenomenon. That should produce a more focused and substantial essay.
-- PatrickCronin? , 16 July 2009
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> |
- Though this is evidently still a draft in transition, it seems to me that I ought to say something about its travel thus far. The essence of this essay and the first one has been a call for the recognition of the contingent and the irrational, rendered in a sufficiently loose and associative rather than logical style to create some discomfort in readers. Methods of construction less rigorous and classical, in which the style shares the contingency, irrationality or incoherence of experience can be made to function effectively in larger works, but—as you have commented yourself—they don't work easily or well at 1,000 words.
* On the substance of your draft as it stands, I have two
comments. The theory of the contradiction of self requires a
unitary self to be contradicted. I think it's therefore at best
unestablished and almost certainly wrong as stated. Crowd
psychology has been a subject of great interest since Gustave Le
Bon. I've mentioned before the impossibility of being a
cultivated lawyer today without a good knowledge of Freud. In
this case, the work is _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the
Ego_ (1922). What puzzles me about the theory advanced here,
aside from its choice to proceed as though no one else had ever
thought about these issues before, is that the theories it
resembles in emphasizing the irrationality of the crowd (from Le
Bon to Edward Bernays) conduce to a belief in the inevitable
necessity of propaganda: they lead directly to modern PR and
they are, to put it softly, not very democratic in their
political implications. So far, you haven't dealt with that
except by ignoring the issue and those who have raised
it. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 18 - 04 Aug 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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<
< | The Importance of Contradiction in the Constitution of Political Bodies | >
> | The Importance of Nonsense | | | The Mob | | | Thurman Arnold explains that we need our leaders and the organizations to which we belong to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successful politician because, not in spite, of his foibles. Organizations need to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." If nothing else, we need our organizations to reflect the full spectrum of our drives at all times. | |
<
< | Organization and Constitutional Crisis | >
> | Organization | | | Things become more convoluted if you want an organization to work towards a practical goal. Your ceremony needs to strike a balance between holding a group together and directing their activity towards that goal. You need a creed or a constitution. Arnold argues that as the practical needs of a group and their ceremonial image of themselves diverge, bodies of metaphysical learning and split organizations develop. But different actual needs will always diverge. So what Arnold is describing is a pathological state where a society's ideal image of itself isn't succeeding in reconciling the contradictory needs that animate it. This pathological state leads to a constitutional crisis. | | | Music is an excellent tool for forming an organized group out of a mob. Music works because it doesn't obey the law of non-contradiction. Thus music can (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group -- unifying them. In fact, music can be understood as an art of pure organization. Composers create anxiety and satisfaction by approaching and receding from the edge of the tonal worlds they create. The tension produced in the middle of a classical sonata is the fear that the composer wont be able to successfully "bring it back" to the tonic, and that it will all "fall apart". The satisfaction is created by the composer pulling it off. But music is never played in a vacuum. The tension felt in the middle of a piece is also the anxiety and excitement created by the possibility that the audience will turn back into a mob -- a group of pure contradiction. The first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is an instance of this reverse transformation of group into a mob. | |
<
< | What a Lawyer Can Do
Thought cannot directly create or even change groups of people -- since much of what we need is not logical: "Men--even learned men-- cannot 'think up forms of social organization". "The Politician does not attempt to change the mythology. He works with it unscrupulously to get results." Creeds and constitutions -- the glue that holds groups of people together cannot be created by any one person. This theory poses a problem for people who went to law school with the hopes of learning how to change the world. The world changes itself, and the most that lawyers can do is help facilitate that change. The law is supposed to hold groups of people together by mediating conflicts, but not one person can decide what those conflicts are going to be because they are the result of the natural contradictions that run through the social body. A budding lawyer cannot make up his practice out of whole cloth.
What we can do is keep an eye out for which conflicts are going to arise, and work to adequately reconcile the conflicting drives that animate them so that we avoid the pathological state that Arnold describes. There will always be contradiction and conflict. The goal is to skillfully work through the conflict as a musician keeps a crowd satisfied. Groups need tension. Lawyers can help to make sure all the contradictory voices in the social body are heard and more or less resolved. If the desires of a segment of the population are not being heard and ceremonially reconciled then the surface of the political body can become too lax and the social body will sicken. | >
> | The Law and Contradiction | | | | |
>
> | Some people go to law school hoping to obtain the tools that will allow them to change the world. Their first year they are met with the full array of intractable conflicts that run through social groups. They come face to face with Arnold's insight that
thought cannot create or even change groups of people -- since much of what we need is not logical: "Men--even learned men-- cannot 'think up forms of social organization". There will always be contradiction and conflict and the law cannot eradicate them or even determine what the conflicts are. Furthermore, law school pushes everyone towards consistency and rationality. We are thrown into the heart of these contradictions, and then tasked with the Sysiphusian labor of rationalizing them. This work can be deadly because of its sheer volume, and also because it removes the aesthetic and ceremonial apparatus that normally softens the contradictions. Perhaps the extinguishing of spaces where these contradictions are allowed to coexist without being rationalized explains the rigid hierarchies and alcoholism in much of the legal community. | | | | |
>
> | Lawyers need more nonsense -- both for their own sanity and also in order to be better lawyers. In order to get things done in groups of people, a healthy tolerance for irrationality and contradiction is essential. Groups are held together both by ceremonial nonsense and the actual satisfaction of the needs of their members. The nonsense element can never be eradicated, since people are always going to have contradictory drives. We need to be able to function on both planes in order to get anything done. | | | --PatrickCronin |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 17 - 24 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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<
< | WORK IN PROGRESS
This endless revision process feels like psychoanalysis -- there's something I want to write about and the last two versions of this paper have been more about barriers to writing about that subject than about the subject itself. I'm in the process of revising this paper a third time following my conversation with Anja at the bottom of the page. I'm trying to narrow my subject significantly. Once again, it'll look a little ragged for a while. I'm not sure what the schedule is for comments anymore (if there is such a schedule). | >
> | The Importance of Contradiction in the Constitution of Political Bodies | | | The Mob | |
<
< | This summer I witnessed the running of the bulls in New Orleans. A man dressed as a bishop with a bullhorn yelled from the balcony: "For he that drinks Sangria with me today shall be my brother!", and then hundreds of people dressed in white and red ran screaming down the streets of the French Quarter chased by roller-derby girls with curved horns and baseball bats. Men wore shirts that said "NOLA bulls 2009. Por Qué no?". | >
> | This summer I witnessed the running of the bulls in New Orleans. A man dressed as a bishop with a bullhorn yelled from the balcony: "For he that drinks Sangria with me today shall be my brother!". Hundreds of people dressed in white and red ran screaming down the streets of the French Quarter chased by roller-derby girls with curved horns and baseball bats. Men wore shirts that said "NOLA bulls 2009. Por Qué no?".
An essential feature of individuals is that they have an infinite capacity to contradict themselves. This capacity is only amplified when lots of them get together. The bulls are actually women on roller skates. New Orleans is not Pamplona. There is no danger of goring. And yet everyone becomes what they are not for a day and runs screaming down the street. The NOLA running of the bulls is a cathartic experience for its participants because it eliminates the practical needs of the group and opens up a space where its OK for the group to contradict itself. Pure ceremony -- Por qué no?
Thurman Arnold explains that we need our leaders and the organizations to which we belong to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successful politician because, not in spite, of his foibles. Organizations need to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." If nothing else, we need our organizations to reflect the full spectrum of our drives at all times. | | | | |
<
< | I've been fascinated by mobs, especially groups of people that get together seemingly for no other reason than just to be around other people. Pure groups. When large masses of people form, its not surprising that bizarre things happen. It's surprising when nothing abnormal happens. | >
> | Organization and Constitutional Crisis | | | | |
<
< | The base of a political theory has to, at base, join up with the way masses of people function. Thurman Arnold begins The Folklore of Capitalism with this premise: "Today, when sophisticated men speak of democracy as the only workable method of government, they mean that government which does not carry its people along with it emotionally, which depends on force, is insecure." The need to connect with the enthusiams of the body politic is a cold fact recognized by leaders across the political spectrum. | >
> | Things become more convoluted if you want an organization to work towards a practical goal. Your ceremony needs to strike a balance between holding a group together and directing their activity towards that goal. You need a creed or a constitution. Arnold argues that as the practical needs of a group and their ceremonial image of themselves diverge, bodies of metaphysical learning and split organizations develop. But different actual needs will always diverge. So what Arnold is describing is a pathological state where a society's ideal image of itself isn't succeeding in reconciling the contradictory needs that animate it. This pathological state leads to a constitutional crisis. | | | | |
<
< | Since our institutions are built to respond to the enthusiasms of masses of people, it would help to understand a little about the dynamics of groups of people. Arnold argues that since individuals are full of contradictory drives and goals, then the groups they form are full of contradiction. Thus, at heart, we want our leaders to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successfull politician because of, not in spite of, his foibles. Organizations need to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." | >
> | The end of Robert Altman's movie Nashville dramatizes the resolution of a immanent constitutional crisis. The movie is set in 1976, the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. During a concert sponsored by a political candidate the diva of Nashville's country music industry (who has been slowly disintegrating mentally) is shot. It looks like a riot is about to break out. The fallen diva's male counterpart, who has political ambitions, grabs the microphone and yells: "This is Nashville, you show 'em what we're made of. They can't do this to us here in Nashville. Okay, everybody, sing!" A young woman picks up the microphone and leads the crowd in singing: "You may say I ain't free. It don't worry me." | | | | |
<
< | Individuals have an infinite capacity to contradict themselves. This capacity is only amplified when lots of them get together. The bulls are actually women on roller skates. New Orleans is not Pamplona. There is no danger of goring. And yet everyone becomes what they are not and runs screaming down the street. Nothing is produced except enthusiasm. There is no ulterior motive. Por qué no? | >
> | Music is an excellent tool for forming an organized group out of a mob. Music works because it doesn't obey the law of non-contradiction. Thus music can (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group -- unifying them. In fact, music can be understood as an art of pure organization. Composers create anxiety and satisfaction by approaching and receding from the edge of the tonal worlds they create. The tension produced in the middle of a classical sonata is the fear that the composer wont be able to successfully "bring it back" to the tonic, and that it will all "fall apart". The satisfaction is created by the composer pulling it off. But music is never played in a vacuum. The tension felt in the middle of a piece is also the anxiety and excitement created by the possibility that the audience will turn back into a mob -- a group of pure contradiction. The first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is an instance of this reverse transformation of group into a mob. | | | | |
<
< | Organization | >
> | What a Lawyer Can Do | | | | |
<
< | A creed or a constitution. | >
> | Thought cannot directly create or even change groups of people -- since much of what we need is not logical: "Men--even learned men-- cannot 'think up forms of social organization". "The Politician does not attempt to change the mythology. He works with it unscrupulously to get results." Creeds and constitutions -- the glue that holds groups of people together cannot be created by any one person. This theory poses a problem for people who went to law school with the hopes of learning how to change the world. The world changes itself, and the most that lawyers can do is help facilitate that change. The law is supposed to hold groups of people together by mediating conflicts, but not one person can decide what those conflicts are going to be because they are the result of the natural contradictions that run through the social body. A budding lawyer cannot make up his practice out of whole cloth. | | | | |
<
< | The New Orleans running of the bulls as about as close as you can get to the abstract limit of pure-getting-together-without-an-ulterior-motive. In general the enthusiasm of groups is organized towards some end: "political realism about democracy was brought home to us by the success of the dictatorships in Russia and Germany. In these countries the revolutionary governments undertook deliberately to arouse the intense enthusiasm of their poples and to keep it at a high pitch. The method used was not rational; it was the rhythm of uniforms, salutes, marching feet, and national games..." As Arnold recognizes, an organized body can be formed out of a mob by using rhythm, music, and ceremony in general. The undetermined enthusiasm created by what William McNeil? calls "Moving together in time" -- marching, saluting, moving rhythmically with others -- is given content. Music, to take only one tool that can form a unified body out of a mob, works because, like drives that respond to rhythm, it does not know the law of non-contradiction. Whoever, or whatever, attaches himself to music can take on the ability to (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group. | >
> | What we can do is keep an eye out for which conflicts are going to arise, and work to adequately reconcile the conflicting drives that animate them so that we avoid the pathological state that Arnold describes. There will always be contradiction and conflict. The goal is to skillfully work through the conflict as a musician keeps a crowd satisfied. Groups need tension. Lawyers can help to make sure all the contradictory voices in the social body are heard and more or less resolved. If the desires of a segment of the population are not being heard and ceremonially reconciled then the surface of the political body can become too lax and the social body will sicken. | | | | |
<
< | The organization of a body of people by music is most clearly seen at a concert of purely instrumental music. There is no content to a Mozart symphony. The musicians are playing with pure organization. The anxiety and tension created by a piece of music is produced by the danger of it all "falling apart". A (classical at least) composer approaches the edge of what a listener can keep organized in their head, only to bring it back from the abyss. This pure organization creates a body politic without a goal, without a content. It can do this because it suspends the law of non-contradiction for a period of time. Sometimes, though, it can all "fall apart". Take the response to the first performance of Stravinski's The Rite of Spring as an instance of the composer leading a group of people to an organization that was just too foreign. Or for the reverse processs, take the end of Robert Altman's movie Nashville. During a concert sponsored by a political canidate the diva is killed. It looks like a riot is about to break out. The other star singer, who has political ambitions, grabs the microphone and yells: "This is Nashville, you show 'em what we're made of. They can't do this to us here in Nashville. Okay, everybody, sing!" And as a young woman steps into the fallen diva's shoes, everyone sings: "You may say I ain't free. It don't worry me." | | | | |
<
< | 3 | | | |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 16 - 22 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | The base of a political theory has to, at base, join up with the way masses of people function. Thurman Arnold begins The Folklore of Capitalism with this premise: "Today, when sophisticated men speak of democracy as the only workable method of government, they mean that government which does not carry its people along with it emotionally, which depends on force, is insecure." The need to connect with the enthusiams of the body politic is a cold fact recognized by leaders across the political spectrum. | |
<
< | Since our institutions are built to respond to the enthusiasms of masses of people, it would help to understand a little about the dynamics of groups of people. Arnold argues that since individuals are full of contradictory drives and goals, then the groups they form are full of contradiction. Thus, at heart, we want our leaders to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successfull politician because of his foibles. Whole organizations have to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." | >
> | Since our institutions are built to respond to the enthusiasms of masses of people, it would help to understand a little about the dynamics of groups of people. Arnold argues that since individuals are full of contradictory drives and goals, then the groups they form are full of contradiction. Thus, at heart, we want our leaders to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successfull politician because of, not in spite of, his foibles. Organizations need to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." | | | Individuals have an infinite capacity to contradict themselves. This capacity is only amplified when lots of them get together. The bulls are actually women on roller skates. New Orleans is not Pamplona. There is no danger of goring. And yet everyone becomes what they are not and runs screaming down the street. Nothing is produced except enthusiasm. There is no ulterior motive. Por qué no?
Organization | |
>
> | A creed or a constitution. | | | The New Orleans running of the bulls as about as close as you can get to the abstract limit of pure-getting-together-without-an-ulterior-motive. In general the enthusiasm of groups is organized towards some end: "political realism about democracy was brought home to us by the success of the dictatorships in Russia and Germany. In these countries the revolutionary governments undertook deliberately to arouse the intense enthusiasm of their poples and to keep it at a high pitch. The method used was not rational; it was the rhythm of uniforms, salutes, marching feet, and national games..." As Arnold recognizes, an organized body can be formed out of a mob by using rhythm, music, and ceremony in general. The undetermined enthusiasm created by what William McNeil? calls "Moving together in time" -- marching, saluting, moving rhythmically with others -- is given content. Music, to take only one tool that can form a unified body out of a mob, works because, like drives that respond to rhythm, it does not know the law of non-contradiction. Whoever, or whatever, attaches himself to music can take on the ability to (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group.
The organization of a body of people by music is most clearly seen at a concert of purely instrumental music. There is no content to a Mozart symphony. The musicians are playing with pure organization. The anxiety and tension created by a piece of music is produced by the danger of it all "falling apart". A (classical at least) composer approaches the edge of what a listener can keep organized in their head, only to bring it back from the abyss. This pure organization creates a body politic without a goal, without a content. It can do this because it suspends the law of non-contradiction for a period of time. Sometimes, though, it can all "fall apart". Take the response to the first performance of Stravinski's The Rite of Spring as an instance of the composer leading a group of people to an organization that was just too foreign. Or for the reverse processs, take the end of Robert Altman's movie Nashville. During a concert sponsored by a political canidate the diva is killed. It looks like a riot is about to break out. The other star singer, who has political ambitions, grabs the microphone and yells: "This is Nashville, you show 'em what we're made of. They can't do this to us here in Nashville. Okay, everybody, sing!" And as a young woman steps into the fallen diva's shoes, everyone sings: "You may say I ain't free. It don't worry me."
3 | |
<
< | Arnold is emphatic that no one person can by pure force of will or pure creative power change the organization of a group. "Men--even learned men-- cannot 'think up' forms of social organization." Thus if you want to get anything done within a group of people, you need to abandon the dream of changing them: "The politican does not attempt to change the mythology. He works with it unscrupuosly to get results." The interia created by a group of people is too great to move by pure force of will or intellect. So a lawyer certainly doesn't create things from nothing. The idea is that the contradictions that animate a body of people must be respected. They need to be both spiritually and practically satisfied. On a spiritual level the contradictions are temporarily resolved by cathartic ceremony. And more or less behind the scenes the contradictory practical needs must be met by effective institutions. Right now
| | |
--PatrickCronin |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 15 - 22 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | This endless revision process feels like psychoanalysis -- there's something I want to write about and the last two versions of this paper have been more about barriers to writing about that subject than about the subject itself. I'm in the process of revising this paper a third time following my conversation with Anja at the bottom of the page. I'm trying to narrow my subject significantly. Once again, it'll look a little ragged for a while. I'm not sure what the schedule is for comments anymore (if there is such a schedule). | |
<
< | May 1968 | >
> | The Mob
This summer I witnessed the running of the bulls in New Orleans. A man dressed as a bishop with a bullhorn yelled from the balcony: "For he that drinks Sangria with me today shall be my brother!", and then hundreds of people dressed in white and red ran screaming down the streets of the French Quarter chased by roller-derby girls with curved horns and baseball bats. Men wore shirts that said "NOLA bulls 2009. Por Qué no?".
I've been fascinated by mobs, especially groups of people that get together seemingly for no other reason than just to be around other people. Pure groups. When large masses of people form, its not surprising that bizarre things happen. It's surprising when nothing abnormal happens.
The base of a political theory has to, at base, join up with the way masses of people function. Thurman Arnold begins The Folklore of Capitalism with this premise: "Today, when sophisticated men speak of democracy as the only workable method of government, they mean that government which does not carry its people along with it emotionally, which depends on force, is insecure." The need to connect with the enthusiams of the body politic is a cold fact recognized by leaders across the political spectrum.
Since our institutions are built to respond to the enthusiasms of masses of people, it would help to understand a little about the dynamics of groups of people. Arnold argues that since individuals are full of contradictory drives and goals, then the groups they form are full of contradiction. Thus, at heart, we want our leaders to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successfull politician because of his foibles. Whole organizations have to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time."
Individuals have an infinite capacity to contradict themselves. This capacity is only amplified when lots of them get together. The bulls are actually women on roller skates. New Orleans is not Pamplona. There is no danger of goring. And yet everyone becomes what they are not and runs screaming down the street. Nothing is produced except enthusiasm. There is no ulterior motive. Por qué no?
Organization
The New Orleans running of the bulls as about as close as you can get to the abstract limit of pure-getting-together-without-an-ulterior-motive. In general the enthusiasm of groups is organized towards some end: "political realism about democracy was brought home to us by the success of the dictatorships in Russia and Germany. In these countries the revolutionary governments undertook deliberately to arouse the intense enthusiasm of their poples and to keep it at a high pitch. The method used was not rational; it was the rhythm of uniforms, salutes, marching feet, and national games..." As Arnold recognizes, an organized body can be formed out of a mob by using rhythm, music, and ceremony in general. The undetermined enthusiasm created by what William McNeil? calls "Moving together in time" -- marching, saluting, moving rhythmically with others -- is given content. Music, to take only one tool that can form a unified body out of a mob, works because, like drives that respond to rhythm, it does not know the law of non-contradiction. Whoever, or whatever, attaches himself to music can take on the ability to (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group.
The organization of a body of people by music is most clearly seen at a concert of purely instrumental music. There is no content to a Mozart symphony. The musicians are playing with pure organization. The anxiety and tension created by a piece of music is produced by the danger of it all "falling apart". A (classical at least) composer approaches the edge of what a listener can keep organized in their head, only to bring it back from the abyss. This pure organization creates a body politic without a goal, without a content. It can do this because it suspends the law of non-contradiction for a period of time. Sometimes, though, it can all "fall apart". Take the response to the first performance of Stravinski's The Rite of Spring as an instance of the composer leading a group of people to an organization that was just too foreign. Or for the reverse processs, take the end of Robert Altman's movie Nashville. During a concert sponsored by a political canidate the diva is killed. It looks like a riot is about to break out. The other star singer, who has political ambitions, grabs the microphone and yells: "This is Nashville, you show 'em what we're made of. They can't do this to us here in Nashville. Okay, everybody, sing!" And as a young woman steps into the fallen diva's shoes, everyone sings: "You may say I ain't free. It don't worry me."
3
Arnold is emphatic that no one person can by pure force of will or pure creative power change the organization of a group. "Men--even learned men-- cannot 'think up' forms of social organization." Thus if you want to get anything done within a group of people, you need to abandon the dream of changing them: "The politican does not attempt to change the mythology. He works with it unscrupuosly to get results." The interia created by a group of people is too great to move by pure force of will or intellect. So a lawyer certainly doesn't create things from nothing. The idea is that the contradictions that animate a body of people must be respected. They need to be both spiritually and practically satisfied. On a spiritual level the contradictions are temporarily resolved by cathartic ceremony. And more or less behind the scenes the contradictory practical needs must be met by effective institutions. Right now
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< | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He dissolved the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic movement by a group of people, but more mundane examples exist. | | | | |
<
< | its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." | | | | |
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< | There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. | | | | |
<
< | Something basic to human nature is happening here -- some herd-mentality that lies dormant in everyone. In searching for the mechanism to explain collective desire, | | | | |
<
< | Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?". | | | |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 14 - 17 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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< | Ok, this is my redo. | | | | |
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< | The Key to All Mythologies | >
> | WORK IN PROGRESS | | | | |
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< | "You don't have to change the world." -- Eben during one of our last classes | >
> | This endless revision process feels like psychoanalysis -- there's something I want to write about and the last two versions of this paper have been more about barriers to writing about that subject than about the subject itself. I'm in the process of revising this paper a third time following my conversation with Anja at the bottom of the page. I'm trying to narrow my subject significantly. Once again, it'll look a little ragged for a while. I'm not sure what the schedule is for comments anymore (if there is such a schedule). | | | | |
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< | The Dream | >
> | May 1968 | | | | |
<
< | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He dissolved the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic movement by a group of people, but more mundane examples exist. Take the substance of the entertainment industry, exemplified by the life and death of Michael Jackson. In both these examples its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Millions and millions of people watched Michael Jackson's memorial service on the 7th, and new channels still spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. These people see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson. They're moved by him, but it would be hard to explain why. | >
> | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He dissolved the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic movement by a group of people, but more mundane examples exist. | | | | |
<
< | In each of these examples there are other people that, while they don't participate in collective desires, know how to control them. They destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson). | >
> | its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." | | | | |
<
< | Think of the power I would have if I could understand how mobs worked! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. If I could understand how this process worked, then I could change the world. | >
> | There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. | | | | |
<
< | Black Holes | >
> | Something basic to human nature is happening here -- some herd-mentality that lies dormant in everyone. In searching for the mechanism to explain collective desire, | | | | |
<
< | Something basic to human nature is happening here -- some herd-mentality that lies dormant in everyone. In searching for the mechanism to explain collective desire, I've been drawn to what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?". I studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises a rational explanation for everything, and assures me that when I get to the bottom of something I will discover my own power to act. The idea is that since this herd-behavior is so fundamental, I simply need to get a handle on it and then the steps I need to take to harness it will fall into place naturally. And yet, I still don't know how to change the world. | >
> | Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?". | | | | |
<
< | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for a lever and a place to stand that will allow me to move the world with minimal effort. I've assumed that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would teach me how to act. Now I'm embarrassed to say that his theory is a variation of an old theory I adopted in high-school: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) there must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge.
But looking at what these theories actually do, rather than what they say they could do (if only I knew the secret formula!), it becomes clear that Grand-Unified-Theories that try to reduce the world to one fundamental process, be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes whose main function is to suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects.
Other People
The desire to change the world, all by myself that is, is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb.
So how to think without trying to find a theory of everything? And what does it mean to not have to change the world all on your own? Let me start by rethinking the phenomenon I was trying to understand in the first place. The spontaneous desire formed in crowds is first of all a desire to be with other people and to feel that other people exist. It is also the desire to feel the inherent power that is present in a mass of people. So I don't have to change the world, but the world still needs to be changed -- and it is only going to be changed by a lot of people. The task then, is to participate in a movement, rather than to control one. | | |
--PatrickCronin | | | Hope you're having a good summer!
--AnjaHavedal, 14 July 2009
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | Yea, I see what you mean Anja. Thanks for the honest criticism. I've been really struggling with narrowing down my topic in these 1,000 word assignments. I'm going to cut out the "theory of everything" stuff. Although it was cathartic to write, after looking at it for a week I agree with you that the only thing that ties it to the first topic is a perhaps idiosyncratic personal issue. I'm going to do some research on a particular example of the mob phenomenon. That should produce a more focused and substantial essay.
-- PatrickCronin? , 16 July 2009 |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 13 - 14 Jul 2009 - Main.AnjaHavedal
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| | | Andrew, I'll take a look at that article. Just looked at Wikipedia on Flash Mobs. Looks interesting.
--PatrickCronin, 8 July 2009 | |
>
> | Patrick - While I really enjoyed reading this, and I think you've got some really interesting thoughts, I kind of feel like you have two essays going here - one on mob mentality, and another one on your realization that changing the world does not require you to first develop a theory to explain everything. In my opinion, you're not really doing either one justice. I think the connection is that your wish to understand the workings of collective desires has previously served your wish to change the world by yourself (right?) but this is not a self-evident connection. You lose me on the logical leap from mob mentality to theory of everything. Why does mob mentality have to explain everything? Is it not valuable to understand even if it only explains SOME workings of the world? At the end of your essay I am left a bit confused.
On a completely different note: I'm not sure that the Michael Jackson hysteria fits into your analysis - are you sure that this is an example of mob mentality, or is it rather just a bunch of individuals each mourning Michael Jackson because they feel like they have a personal relationship to him? (maybe you've read that study about how we care about celebrities because our brains are tricked to think that they are part of our "tribe")
I think exploring the "herd mentality that lies dormant in everyone" would be a valuable excercise. What brings it out? Under what circumstances does it spread? How do we prevent those who know how to manipulate it from using it for detrimental purposes (think Nazis or Pol Pot)?
Hope you're having a good summer!
--AnjaHavedal, 14 July 2009 | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 11 - 09 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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< | * [Redo in progress. I'm redoing this essay over the next two days. I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and I'm not happy with it. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.] | | | The Key to All Mythologies -- A Confession of Delusions of Grandeur
"You don't have to change the world." -- Eben during one of our last classes
The Dream | |
<
< | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He dissolved the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic instance of a spontaneous movement by a group of people, but more mundane examples exist. Take the daily work of the entertainment industry, exemplified by the life and death of Michael Jackson. Or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In each of these cases its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Millions and millions of people came to Michael Jackson's memorial service on the 7th, and new channels still spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. They gather simply to see and hear about "The King of Pop". These people see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson. They're moved by him for whatever reason. | >
> | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He dissolved the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic movement by a group of people, but more mundane examples exist. Take the substance of the entertainment industry, exemplified by the life and death of Michael Jackson. In both these examples its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Millions and millions of people watched Michael Jackson's memorial service on the 7th, and new channels still spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. These people see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson. They're moved by him, but it would be hard to explain why. | | | | |
<
< | In each of these examples, there are also people that, while they don't participate in collective desires, know how to control them. They destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson). | >
> | In each of these examples there are other people that, while they don't participate in collective desires, know how to control them. They destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson). | | | | |
<
< | Think of the power I would have if I could understand how mobs worked! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. If I could understand how this process worked, then I would be a super-ant in Arnold's anthill. I could change the world. | >
> | Think of the power I would have if I could understand how mobs worked! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. If I could understand how this process worked, then I could change the world. | | | Black Holes | |
<
< | Something basic to human nature is happening here -- some herd-mentality that lies dormant in everyone. In looking for the mechanism that would explain this phenomenon, I've found myself reading authors that I thought attempted what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?". I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises a rational explanation for everything, and assures me that when I get to the bottom of something I will discover my own power to act. The idea is, since this is something so basic, then I simply need to get a handle on it and then I can wield it. And yet, I still don't know how to change the world. | >
> | Something basic to human nature is happening here -- some herd-mentality that lies dormant in everyone. In searching for the mechanism to explain collective desire, I've been drawn to what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?". I studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises a rational explanation for everything, and assures me that when I get to the bottom of something I will discover my own power to act. The idea is that since this herd-behavior is so fundamental, I simply need to get a handle on it and then the steps I need to take to harness it will fall into place naturally. And yet, I still don't know how to change the world. | | | | |
<
< | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for a lever and a place to stand that will allow me to move the world with minimal effort. I've assumed that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would teach me how to act. Now I'm embarrassed to say that his theory is a variation of an old theory I adopted in high-school: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) There must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. | >
> | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for a lever and a place to stand that will allow me to move the world with minimal effort. I've assumed that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would teach me how to act. Now I'm embarrassed to say that his theory is a variation of an old theory I adopted in high-school: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) there must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. | | | | |
<
< | But if I look at what these theories actually do, rather than what they say they could do (if only I knew the secret formula!), then I see that all Grand-Unified-Theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes whose main function is to suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | >
> | But looking at what these theories actually do, rather than what they say they could do (if only I knew the secret formula!), it becomes clear that Grand-Unified-Theories that try to reduce the world to one fundamental process, be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes whose main function is to suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | | | Other People
The desire to change the world, all by myself that is, is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. | |
<
< | So how to think without trying to find a theory of everything? And what does it mean to not have to change the world all on your own? Let me start by rethinking the phenomenon I was trying to understand in the first place. The spontaneous desire formed in crowds is first of all a desire to be with other people, and to feel that other people exist. It is also the desire to feel the inherent power that is present in a mass of people. So I don't have to change the world, but the world still needs to be changed -- and it is only going to be changed by a lot of people. The task then, is to participate in a movement, rather than to control one. | >
> | So how to think without trying to find a theory of everything? And what does it mean to not have to change the world all on your own? Let me start by rethinking the phenomenon I was trying to understand in the first place. The spontaneous desire formed in crowds is first of all a desire to be with other people and to feel that other people exist. It is also the desire to feel the inherent power that is present in a mass of people. So I don't have to change the world, but the world still needs to be changed -- and it is only going to be changed by a lot of people. The task then, is to participate in a movement, rather than to control one. | | |
--PatrickCronin |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 10 - 09 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| | | The Dream | |
<
< | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He accomplished this dissolving the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic instance of a spontaneous movement by a group of people, but less dramatic and more examples exist. Take the entertainment industry, epitomized by the life and death of Michael Jackson. Or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In each of these cases its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Millions and millions of people came to Michael Jackson's memorial service on the 7th, and new channels still spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. They gather simply to see and hear about "The King of Pop". I'm not sure what to call this other than a "movement" -- a mass of people that see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson, and are moved by him for whatever reason. | >
> | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He dissolved the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic instance of a spontaneous movement by a group of people, but more mundane examples exist. Take the daily work of the entertainment industry, exemplified by the life and death of Michael Jackson. Or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In each of these cases its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Millions and millions of people came to Michael Jackson's memorial service on the 7th, and new channels still spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. They gather simply to see and hear about "The King of Pop". These people see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson. They're moved by him for whatever reason. | | | In each of these examples, there are also people that, while they don't participate in collective desires, know how to control them. They destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson). |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 9 - 09 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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* [Redo in progress. I'm redoing this essay over the next two days. I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and I'm not happy with it. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.] | |
<
< | The Key to All Mythologies | >
> | The Key to All Mythologies -- A Confession of Delusions of Grandeur | | | "You don't have to change the world." -- Eben during one of our last classes
The Dream | |
<
< | For the last few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up an unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students by dissolving the representative assembly, an action that exposed the divisions in their ranks as they were forced to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! A less dramatic but more omnipresent example of the group-wide production of desire is the music and film industries. | >
> | For the past few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, a spontaneous movement that ended then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up the unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students. He accomplished this dissolving the National Assembly, an action calculated to expose the divisions in the strikers' ranks by forcing them to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! May 1968 was a dramatic instance of a spontaneous movement by a group of people, but less dramatic and more examples exist. Take the entertainment industry, epitomized by the life and death of Michael Jackson. Or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In each of these cases its unclear what the mob wants. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Millions and millions of people came to Michael Jackson's memorial service on the 7th, and new channels still spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. They gather simply to see and hear about "The King of Pop". I'm not sure what to call this other than a "movement" -- a mass of people that see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson, and are moved by him for whatever reason. | | | | |
<
< | I'm interested in spontaneous desires that form in large groups of people. The two examples I mentioned above illustrate what I mean by the vague term "desire". In each case the crowd wants a nebulous constellation of things. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Michael Jackson is a good example of collective desire captured by the entertainment industry. Millions and millions of people came to his memorial service on the 7th, and new channels spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. What content can we give the desire to see "The King of Pop". I'm not sure what to call this other than a "movement" -- a mass of people that see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson, and are moved by him for whatever reason.
There are also people that, while they can't create collective desires, can destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson). | >
> | In each of these examples, there are also people that, while they don't participate in collective desires, know how to control them. They destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson). | | | Think of the power I would have if I could understand how mobs worked! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. If I could understand how this process worked, then I would be a super-ant in Arnold's anthill. I could change the world.
Black Holes | |
<
< | In looking for the mechanism that would explain this phenomenon, I've found myself reading authors that I thought attempted what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" -- kind of a really big version of What's the Matter with Kansas?. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises a rational explanation for everything, and assures me that when I get to the bottom of something I will discover my own power to act. And yet, I still don't know how to change the world. | >
> | Something basic to human nature is happening here -- some herd-mentality that lies dormant in everyone. In looking for the mechanism that would explain this phenomenon, I've found myself reading authors that I thought attempted what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?". I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises a rational explanation for everything, and assures me that when I get to the bottom of something I will discover my own power to act. The idea is, since this is something so basic, then I simply need to get a handle on it and then I can wield it. And yet, I still don't know how to change the world.
I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for a lever and a place to stand that will allow me to move the world with minimal effort. I've assumed that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would teach me how to act. Now I'm embarrassed to say that his theory is a variation of an old theory I adopted in high-school: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) There must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. | | | | |
<
< | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for a lever and a place to stand that will allow me to move the world. I've assumed that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would teach me how to act. Now I'm embarrassed to say that I recognize this implicit theory as a disguised version of an old high school theory I had. I thought that it stood to reason that: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) There must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. But if I look at what these theories actually do, rather than what they claim they could do (if only I knew the secret formula!), then I see that all Grand-Unified-Theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes whose main function is to suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | >
> | But if I look at what these theories actually do, rather than what they say they could do (if only I knew the secret formula!), then I see that all Grand-Unified-Theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes whose main function is to suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | | | Other People | |
<
< | Linked to the grand-unified theory mentality is the desire to change the world -- by myself that is. This idea is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. And yet the world still needs to be changed. | >
> | The desire to change the world, all by myself that is, is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. | | | | |
<
< | So how do you think without trying to find a theory of everything? And what does it mean not to have to change the world all on your own? Well, the world seems more child-like. The unexpected can happen again. It's OK to desire without worrying about what evil forces are creating or exploiting that desire. There are things that I do not know, and that's OK. There's a freedom to try things without completely understanding them yet. Most importantly though, there are other people. If the world is going to change, then they will only be changed by the combined efforts of lot of people. | >
> | So how to think without trying to find a theory of everything? And what does it mean to not have to change the world all on your own? Let me start by rethinking the phenomenon I was trying to understand in the first place. The spontaneous desire formed in crowds is first of all a desire to be with other people, and to feel that other people exist. It is also the desire to feel the inherent power that is present in a mass of people. So I don't have to change the world, but the world still needs to be changed -- and it is only going to be changed by a lot of people. The task then, is to participate in a movement, rather than to control one. | | |
--PatrickCronin |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 8 - 08 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | The Dream | |
<
< | I’ve been chasing a dream for the last few years. I've been obsessed with how mobs work. Think of the power I would have if I could get my hands on that piece of knowledge! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once an intensely personal and collective. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where then Prime-Minister Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences as they were forced to chose representatives. Now there's someone who knew how collectives behaved and how to control them! On a slower and more omnipresent plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. | >
> | For the last few years I've been interested in mobs. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where then Prime Minister Georges Pompidou broke up an unlikely coalition of worker's unions and students by dissolving the representative assembly, an action that exposed the divisions in their ranks as they were forced to chose new representatives. Now there's someone who knew how groups behaved and how to control them! A less dramatic but more omnipresent example of the group-wide production of desire is the music and film industries. | | | | |
<
< | I understand that there is are a number of differences between these two examples, but nevertheless they are both comprised of two elements: 1) There is a spontaneous desire by a large group of people. Its hard to get more specific than "desire", because in each case the what the crowd wants is a nebulous constellation of things. In the case of 1968, no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't return to work and school after the government gave into what it thought their demands were. For example, one piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." In the case of the entertainment industry, take Michael Jackson. Millions and millions of people came to his memorial service on the 7th, and new channels spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. I'm not sure what to call this other than a "movement" -- a mass of people that see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson, and are moved by him for whatever reason. 2) There are people or organizations that can't create the mass movement, but they can destroy it or shape it so that it becomes profitable for them. They use the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement in the case of May 1968, or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association in the case of Pepsi or MTV. If I could understand how this process worked, then I would be a super-ant in Arnold's anthill. I could change the world and usher in a new age where people's desires where no longer exploited or destroyed. | >
> | I'm interested in spontaneous desires that form in large groups of people. The two examples I mentioned above illustrate what I mean by the vague term "desire". In each case the crowd wants a nebulous constellation of things. In 1968 no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't call off the strike after the government and the union representatives agreed to a %25 increase in the minimum wage and a %10 increase in average salary. One piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." Michael Jackson is a good example of collective desire captured by the entertainment industry. Millions and millions of people came to his memorial service on the 7th, and new channels spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. What content can we give the desire to see "The King of Pop". I'm not sure what to call this other than a "movement" -- a mass of people that see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson, and are moved by him for whatever reason. | | | | |
<
< | Black Holes | >
> | There are also people that, while they can't create collective desires, can destroy them if they become dangerous, or shape them so that they become profitable. They exploit the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- either forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement (in the case of May 1968), or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association (Pepsi or MTV in the case of Michael Jackson).
Think of the power I would have if I could understand how mobs worked! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires and inhibitions -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once intensely personal and collective. If I could understand how this process worked, then I would be a super-ant in Arnold's anthill. I could change the world. | | | | |
<
< | In looking for the mechanism that would explain this phenomenon, I've searched for authors that I thought attempted to create what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" -- kind of a really big version of What's the Matter with Kansas?. But after slogging through Anti-Oedipus and studying parts of Thousand Plateaus, as the authors recommend, and reading more understandable commentators and scholars, I must confess that I'm none the wiser, at least as far as having a clear and practical sense of how collective movements work. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises that there is a rational explanation for everything, and that to get to the bottom of something intellectually is discover your own power to act. So if I could get to the bottom of this problem, then I would know what I needed to do in order to change the world! And yet, here I am and I don't feel that my power to act has increased to the level that would change the world. | >
> | Black Holes | | | | |
<
< | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for that lever that will allow me to move the world with minimal effort. The assumption was that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would both free me from the grasp of collective desires and those that exploit them, and allow me to act. I'm embarrassed to say that this implicit theory is a version of a naive belief that I've held for years. When I was younger, I thought that it stood to reason that: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) There must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. But if I look at what this theory actually does in the world, rather than what it says it could do, then I see that all grand-unified theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes that suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | >
> | In looking for the mechanism that would explain this phenomenon, I've found myself reading authors that I thought attempted what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" -- kind of a really big version of What's the Matter with Kansas?. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises a rational explanation for everything, and assures me that when I get to the bottom of something I will discover my own power to act. And yet, I still don't know how to change the world. | | | | |
<
< | Thought and Other People | >
> | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for a lever and a place to stand that will allow me to move the world. I've assumed that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would teach me how to act. Now I'm embarrassed to say that I recognize this implicit theory as a disguised version of an old high school theory I had. I thought that it stood to reason that: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) There must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. But if I look at what these theories actually do, rather than what they claim they could do (if only I knew the secret formula!), then I see that all Grand-Unified-Theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes whose main function is to suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | | | | |
<
< | Linked to the grand-unified theory mentality is the requirement that I change the world. The idea that I have to “change the world” is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. And yet the world still needs to be changed in many respects. | >
> | Other People | | | | |
<
< | When I remove the desire for a grand-unified-theory and the commandment that I change the world by myself, I'm left with a more child-like world where the unexpected can happen again, and where it's OK to desire without worrying about what evil forces are creating or exploiting that desire. There are things that I do not know, and that's OK. There's a freedom to try things without completely understanding them yet. And most importantly, there are other people. If there are things in the world that are going to be changed, then they will only be changed by a lot of people. Barack Obama rode into office on the collective desire of a lot of people -- not his Columbia or Harvard degree or even his status as President of the Harvard Law Review. | >
> | Linked to the grand-unified theory mentality is the desire to change the world -- by myself that is. This idea is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. And yet the world still needs to be changed. | | | | |
<
< | So where does thought fit into this? What does intelligence look like when its not in the service of a Grand-Unified Theory? Well, to take the example of GUT thought that I started with -- the problem of collective desires -- instead of trying to master it with knowledge, we need to do it. The result of such thought wouldn't be a book that explained everything once and for all, but rather an unending discussion among people that engages collective desires rather than seeking to explain them away or study them "objectively". This is just a speculation right now. | >
> | So how do you think without trying to find a theory of everything? And what does it mean not to have to change the world all on your own? Well, the world seems more child-like. The unexpected can happen again. It's OK to desire without worrying about what evil forces are creating or exploiting that desire. There are things that I do not know, and that's OK. There's a freedom to try things without completely understanding them yet. Most importantly though, there are other people. If the world is going to change, then they will only be changed by the combined efforts of lot of people. | | |
--PatrickCronin |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 7 - 08 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | The Dream | |
<
< | I’ve been chasing a dream for the last few years. I've been obsessed with the question of how mobs work. I would have so much power if I could get my hands on that piece of knowledge. There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a more detailed understanding of Freud's super-ego that is at once an intensely personal and collective entity. If I could understand how groups of people created collective desires, then I could act intelligently in collective movements. I would be like an ant in Arnold's anthill that understood how it all actually worked. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences by forcing them to chose representatives. Now there's someone who knew how collectives behaved and how to control them! On a slower and more repetitive plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. If I could understand how collectives behaved, I could change the world for better or worse. | >
> | I’ve been chasing a dream for the last few years. I've been obsessed with how mobs work. Think of the power I would have if I could get my hands on that piece of knowledge! There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a practical understanding of Freud's super-ego, that institution that is at once an intensely personal and collective. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where then Prime-Minister Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences as they were forced to chose representatives. Now there's someone who knew how collectives behaved and how to control them! On a slower and more omnipresent plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. | | | | |
<
< | Black Holes and Other People | >
> | I understand that there is are a number of differences between these two examples, but nevertheless they are both comprised of two elements: 1) There is a spontaneous desire by a large group of people. Its hard to get more specific than "desire", because in each case the what the crowd wants is a nebulous constellation of things. In the case of 1968, no-one knew what the strikers wanted. They wouldn't return to work and school after the government gave into what it thought their demands were. For example, one piece of graffiti read: "We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy." In the case of the entertainment industry, take Michael Jackson. Millions and millions of people came to his memorial service on the 7th, and new channels spend all day reminding us that he's still dead. I'm not sure what to call this other than a "movement" -- a mass of people that see or hear something that they desire in Michael Jackson, and are moved by him for whatever reason. 2) There are people or organizations that can't create the mass movement, but they can destroy it or shape it so that it becomes profitable for them. They use the undetermined nature of the desire to their advantage -- forcing it to define itself within a pre-existing political structure and thus diffusing the movement in the case of May 1968, or adding their own content to the desire and profiting from the association in the case of Pepsi or MTV. If I could understand how this process worked, then I would be a super-ant in Arnold's anthill. I could change the world and usher in a new age where people's desires where no longer exploited or destroyed. | | | | |
<
< | I've been drawn to authors that attempt to create what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises that there is a rational explanation for everything. I realize that I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading them -- looking for that lever that will allow me to move the world. In any case, now I feel like someone who's tried to lift way too much without training. My new thesis is that grand-unified theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – are actually black holes that suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | >
> | Black Holes | | | | |
<
< | Linked to the idea that there is a grand-unified theory of any discipline is the notion that if you just knew it, you could change the world. As if there were one switch that you could push that would subvert the entire world order. The idea that I have to “change the world” is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. | >
> | In looking for the mechanism that would explain this phenomenon, I've searched for authors that I thought attempted to create what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" -- kind of a really big version of What's the Matter with Kansas?. But after slogging through Anti-Oedipus and studying parts of Thousand Plateaus, as the authors recommend, and reading more understandable commentators and scholars, I must confess that I'm none the wiser, at least as far as having a clear and practical sense of how collective movements work. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises that there is a rational explanation for everything, and that to get to the bottom of something intellectually is discover your own power to act. So if I could get to the bottom of this problem, then I would know what I needed to do in order to change the world! And yet, here I am and I don't feel that my power to act has increased to the level that would change the world. | | | | |
<
< | What Remains of Thought | >
> | I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading. I've been looking for that lever that will allow me to move the world with minimal effort. The assumption was that I could understand masses of people like Newton understood gravity, and that this knowledge would both free me from the grasp of collective desires and those that exploit them, and allow me to act. I'm embarrassed to say that this implicit theory is a version of a naive belief that I've held for years. When I was younger, I thought that it stood to reason that: 1) the world is made up of matter organized into particles; 2) There must be some smallest particle; 3) there must be some laws that govern this particle's movement. Therefore, if I knew what the smallest particle was and how it moved, then I could reconstruct and completely understand the world. I could master the entire world through knowledge. But if I look at what this theory actually does in the world, rather than what it says it could do, then I see that all grand-unified theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – easily become black holes that suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects. | | | | |
<
< | So I need to relax and learn to play well with others. | >
> | Thought and Other People | | | | |
>
> | Linked to the grand-unified theory mentality is the requirement that I change the world. The idea that I have to “change the world” is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb. And yet the world still needs to be changed in many respects.
When I remove the desire for a grand-unified-theory and the commandment that I change the world by myself, I'm left with a more child-like world where the unexpected can happen again, and where it's OK to desire without worrying about what evil forces are creating or exploiting that desire. There are things that I do not know, and that's OK. There's a freedom to try things without completely understanding them yet. And most importantly, there are other people. If there are things in the world that are going to be changed, then they will only be changed by a lot of people. Barack Obama rode into office on the collective desire of a lot of people -- not his Columbia or Harvard degree or even his status as President of the Harvard Law Review.
So where does thought fit into this? What does intelligence look like when its not in the service of a Grand-Unified Theory? Well, to take the example of GUT thought that I started with -- the problem of collective desires -- instead of trying to master it with knowledge, we need to do it. The result of such thought wouldn't be a book that explained everything once and for all, but rather an unending discussion among people that engages collective desires rather than seeking to explain them away or study them "objectively". This is just a speculation right now. | | | | |
<
< | Of course, I don’t need to give up on thought either. Simply belonging to a group that claims to like justice doesn’t necessarily make justice happen. Labeling what I do or what I want to do “public interest” doesn’t make it good either. | | | --PatrickCronin | | | Patrick - I too think that there is much to learn here. I think that the turn away from 'grand theories of everything' is very productive. A rejection of grand unifying theories is one of the underpinnings of the Pragmatism movement itself, which formed the foundation of much of the early reading this semester. If you are looking for curious pieces on group thinking and how it gets manipulated, I would recommend Bill Wasik's article describing how and why he invented flash mobs. There is a link here but Harpers charges for content so I would go to a library and get the March 2006 issue; the article is short. The world is changed by small courageous acts, not by grand unified theories.
--AndrewCase, 8 July 2009 | |
>
> | Thanks for the support. Anja, I'm not sure how we can maintain our ability to act intelligently in groups. There's probably not a simply answer. But I don't think the answer is to completely forgo group thinking. I just don't think that that is something we can do. I think that we are inevitably part of a social body, and if we cut ourselves off from it in the name of reason or intelligence we will die. So the answer must lie within the group itself. Perhaps the distinction is between good and bad group thinking. I wonder what kind of horrible but subtle change in the way those farmers communicated caused them to kill their neighbors.
Andrew, I'll take a look at that article. Just looked at Wikipedia on Flash Mobs. Looks interesting.
--PatrickCronin, 8 July 2009 |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 6 - 08 Jul 2009 - Main.AndrewCase
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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| | | Patrick - I just read this paper for the first time. I really think you're onto something, and I look forward to reading and discussing your final version. Like you, I have been thinking a lot about "mob thinking" or group mentality over the last few years, and I agree that understanding this better is the key to a lot of societal problems. In my third paper, I tried (but so far failed, will rewrite this weekend) to explore this issue as it relates to crime. What fascinates me about this is that a seemingly minor change in social norms has the power to trigger a surge in mob thinking. Our personal code of ethics is flexible and changes depending on our environment. I recently read the book "Machete Season," which is a fascinating exploration of the Rwandan genocide from the eyes of the killers - mostly farmers who were somehow "mobbed" into hacking their neighbors to pieces with machetes. How is it that most people tend to lose their capacity for independent decision making when swept up in a collective movement? How can we, as individual members of a collective society, maintain our ability to act intelligently?
--AnjaHavedal, 8 July 2009
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | Patrick - I too think that there is much to learn here. I think that the turn away from 'grand theories of everything' is very productive. A rejection of grand unifying theories is one of the underpinnings of the Pragmatism movement itself, which formed the foundation of much of the early reading this semester. If you are looking for curious pieces on group thinking and how it gets manipulated, I would recommend Bill Wasik's article describing how and why he invented flash mobs. There is a link here but Harpers charges for content so I would go to a library and get the March 2006 issue; the article is short. The world is changed by small courageous acts, not by grand unified theories.
--AndrewCase, 8 July 2009 |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 5 - 08 Jul 2009 - Main.AnjaHavedal
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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Of course, I don’t need to give up on thought either. Simply belonging to a group that claims to like justice doesn’t necessarily make justice happen. Labeling what I do or what I want to do “public interest” doesn’t make it good either. | |
>
> | --PatrickCronin
Patrick - I just read this paper for the first time. I really think you're onto something, and I look forward to reading and discussing your final version. Like you, I have been thinking a lot about "mob thinking" or group mentality over the last few years, and I agree that understanding this better is the key to a lot of societal problems. In my third paper, I tried (but so far failed, will rewrite this weekend) to explore this issue as it relates to crime. What fascinates me about this is that a seemingly minor change in social norms has the power to trigger a surge in mob thinking. Our personal code of ethics is flexible and changes depending on our environment. I recently read the book "Machete Season," which is a fascinating exploration of the Rwandan genocide from the eyes of the killers - mostly farmers who were somehow "mobbed" into hacking their neighbors to pieces with machetes. How is it that most people tend to lose their capacity for independent decision making when swept up in a collective movement? How can we, as individual members of a collective society, maintain our ability to act intelligently?
--AnjaHavedal, 8 July 2009 | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 4 - 07 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="ThirdPaper" |
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<
< | [Redo in progress. I'm going to be redoing this essay during this week (at least). I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time. I'm not happy with it. Of course, I'd appreciate any comments while I am working on this revision. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.] | >
> | * [Redo in progress. I'm redoing this essay over the next two days. I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and I'm not happy with it. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.] | | | The Key to All Mythologies | |
<
< | "You don't have to change the world" -- Prof. Moglen during one of our last classes | >
> | "You don't have to change the world." -- Eben during one of our last classes | | | | |
<
< | 1 | >
> | The Dream | | | | |
<
< | For the past few years, I've tried to figure out how to understand how groups of people function together. There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a more detailed understanding of Freud's super-ego that is at once an intensely personal and collective entity. If I could understand how groups of people created collective desires, then I could act intelligently in collective movements. I would be like an ant in Arnold's anthill that understood how it all actually worked. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences by forcing them to chose representatives. There's someone who knew how collectives behaved. On a slower and more repetitive plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. If I could understand how collectives behaved, then I could act effectively within them. I could change the world. | >
> | I’ve been chasing a dream for the last few years. I've been obsessed with the question of how mobs work. I would have so much power if I could get my hands on that piece of knowledge. There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a more detailed understanding of Freud's super-ego that is at once an intensely personal and collective entity. If I could understand how groups of people created collective desires, then I could act intelligently in collective movements. I would be like an ant in Arnold's anthill that understood how it all actually worked. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences by forcing them to chose representatives. Now there's someone who knew how collectives behaved and how to control them! On a slower and more repetitive plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. If I could understand how collectives behaved, I could change the world for better or worse. | | | | |
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< | The upshot of this obsession is that I've been drawn to authors that attempt what George Eliot calls "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaberation between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics which promises a rational explanation for everything. | >
> | Black Holes and Other People
I've been drawn to authors that attempt to create what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises that there is a rational explanation for everything. I realize that I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading them -- looking for that lever that will allow me to move the world. In any case, now I feel like someone who's tried to lift way too much without training. My new thesis is that grand-unified theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – are actually black holes that suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects.
Linked to the idea that there is a grand-unified theory of any discipline is the notion that if you just knew it, you could change the world. As if there were one switch that you could push that would subvert the entire world order. The idea that I have to “change the world” is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb.
What Remains of Thought
So I need to relax and learn to play well with others.
Of course, I don’t need to give up on thought either. Simply belonging to a group that claims to like justice doesn’t necessarily make justice happen. Labeling what I do or what I want to do “public interest” doesn’t make it good either. |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 3 - 07 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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> | [Redo in progress. I'm going to be redoing this essay during this week (at least). I wrote the first draft in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time. I'm not happy with it. Of course, I'd appreciate any comments while I am working on this revision. In the past I've done my work on a word processor and then imported it into the wiki all at once. This time I'm going to try working mostly on the wiki, so it may look a little ragged.] | | | | |
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< | Orienting My Professional Life | >
> | The Key to All Mythologies | | | | |
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< | [revision in progress. I wrote this in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and now that my summer job is a bit slow, I'm trying to make it closer to what I was actually trying to say.] | >
> | "You don't have to change the world" -- Prof. Moglen during one of our last classes | | | | |
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< | A Strategic Perspective | >
> | 1 | | | | |
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> | For the past few years, I've tried to figure out how to understand how groups of people function together. There must be some way to understand the feedback loop between individuals and the large groups of people that somehow produces collective desires -- something like a more detailed understanding of Freud's super-ego that is at once an intensely personal and collective entity. If I could understand how groups of people created collective desires, then I could act intelligently in collective movements. I would be like an ant in Arnold's anthill that understood how it all actually worked. I've been fascinated by the May 1968 strikes in France, where Pompidou broke up an coalition of worker's unions and bourgeois students by dissolving the representative assembly, which reminded the members of the coalition of their differences by forcing them to chose representatives. There's someone who knew how collectives behaved. On a slower and more repetitive plane, there's the entertainment industry that creates and profits from collective desires through movies and music. If I could understand how collectives behaved, then I could act effectively within them. I could change the world. | | | | |
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< | In the past I oriented myself either religiously or politically. I thought that if I did unto others as I would have them do unto me, then the big picture stuff would all work itself out. Politically, if I voted democrat and I was a good liberal, then eventually the world would realize its mistakes and “progress”. But I’ve gradually lost faith that if I do the right things on a micro-level the larger things will fall into place naturally.
My first paper explored an alternative to these smooth and teleological ideologies by embracing the irreducible complexity of the real world. There’s a certain nihilistic joy in bathing in chaos – “complexity so intricate, none can fathom it” as Wylie puts it – but while necessary for creativity, such aesthetic disorganization can become impotent and aimless when taken to the extreme.
Rather than burying my head in facts or steering by faith alone, I need to learn how to see things strategically from a global perspective. I need some way to structure the flood of information from the outside in order to orient my work in the world. How can I do this in a livable way, so that I’m not a martyr to the real? How can I avoid just sticking my head in the sand and plowing ahead with whatever practice I end up having – hoping in the end that it will serve a good purpose?
I need to develop my ability to read large-scale events. Let me try to use the methodology of this class by applying different disciplinary approaches in a conciliant manner. | >
> | The upshot of this obsession is that I've been drawn to authors that attempt what George Eliot calls "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaberation between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics which promises a rational explanation for everything. |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 2 - 07 Jul 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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< | | | | | | | Orienting My Professional Life | |
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< | As I finish my 1L year, I can’t make my response to the “in order to change the world you have to know what you want and how to get it” mantra much more precise than "in general I want to do satisfying work that helps others and at some point I’d like to be in a position to help musicians". So in this paper I’d like to assess what I need to do in order to have a more precise answer to that question, so that I can plan the rest of my time at Columbia. I feel that what I’m missing is sense of where I will stand as a lawyer in relation to large-scale social problems. I need some way to orient myself and my work. In my first paper I tried to get a grasp of the type of thinking lawyers do from an ethically neutral position. My second brought back an ethical perspective – concluding that I need to have actual clients and to be able to see the effects of my work on actual people. Now I’d like to explore what I need to do in order to make my work fit into an overarching strategy that is adequate to large-scale social problems. | >
> | [revision in progress. I wrote this in a hurry at the end of the semester with very little time, and now that my summer job is a bit slow, I'm trying to make it closer to what I was actually trying to say.] | | | A Strategic Perspective | |
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< | In the past I oriented myself either religiously or politically. If thought that if I did unto others as I would have them do unto me, then the big picture stuff would all work itself out. Politically, if I was voted democrat then I was a good liberal, and eventually the world would realize its mistakes and “progress”. But I’ve gradually lost faith that if I do the right things on a micro-level the larger things will fall into place naturally. | >
> | In the past I oriented myself either religiously or politically. I thought that if I did unto others as I would have them do unto me, then the big picture stuff would all work itself out. Politically, if I voted democrat and I was a good liberal, then eventually the world would realize its mistakes and “progress”. But I’ve gradually lost faith that if I do the right things on a micro-level the larger things will fall into place naturally. | | | My first paper explored an alternative to these smooth and teleological ideologies by embracing the irreducible complexity of the real world. There’s a certain nihilistic joy in bathing in chaos – “complexity so intricate, none can fathom it” as Wylie puts it – but while necessary for creativity, such aesthetic disorganization can become impotent and aimless when taken to the extreme.
Rather than burying my head in facts or steering by faith alone, I need to learn how to see things strategically from a global perspective. I need some way to structure the flood of information from the outside in order to orient my work in the world. How can I do this in a livable way, so that I’m not a martyr to the real? How can I avoid just sticking my head in the sand and plowing ahead with whatever practice I end up having – hoping in the end that it will serve a good purpose?
I need to develop my ability to read large-scale events. Let me try to use the methodology of this class by applying different disciplinary approaches in a conciliant manner. | |
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< |
A Collective Event – Cannibalism and the Common Law
The trial of Dudley and Stephens, reconstructed in Cannibalism and the Common Law provides ample material for such an analysis.
The trial of Dudley and Stevens was an inflection of the application of the public force. It was an orchestrated clash between what a subgroup of the English people thought the English people should be, and what they actually were. On the level of social psychology, we can understand the trial as an effort of a collective super-ego to reconcile the harsh reality of what happened in the dingy with the English imperial self-image. The historical reality of the situation is that this event takes place in the middle of European colonial exploitation of Africa. In the end, the government succeeded in reinforcing the notion that the English are different from the cannibals that they were killing elsewhere.
What if Dudley & Stevens v. Regina came out the other way? On an individual level, two individuals would have been spared the collective opprobrium of the English People. Some pompous opinion writing would have been avoided. More importantly though, the acquittal of two English cannibals would have poked a hole in England’s conception of itself as a superior race. It wouldn’t reveal a pretty part of reality (cannibalism), but it would work in a small way towards a people having a more just understanding of who they are. There would be no drastic or immediate change, just a small release of the grip of a damaging ideology on the collective mind.
A defense lawyer could have knowingly brought about this outcome. He would have had to orient himself in the political context – making the connection between the killing of “mere cannibals” and this trial. He would have needed to have correctly read the forces he was up against and what they wanted. He would have needed to have understood the real “legal problem”, in Robinson’s sense of the term, that was driving the actual trial. If he would orient himself in this way, and if he was as skillful a defense counsel as Robinson, then he would stand a chance of opening up a crack in the English self-image – a significant accomplishment.
Going Forward
So it is possible for lawyers to consciously and strategically affect collective thought, so long as they can correctly read social events. What do I need to learn, in addition to simply more law, in order to understand my world? Looking at the layers we saw the first day of class, I’m weakest on history. While I’m at Columbia, I need to learn how to place legal events in a historical context, so that I can do it on my own later. I should take some history courses both in the law school and at Columbia. I should talk with professors about the how their practices (if they have them) fit into a larger strategies of social change. If I can do that, I think that I’ll be in a much better position to know what I need to do with my license when I get it. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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PatrickCroninThirdPaper 1 - 19 May 2009 - Main.PatrickCronin
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Orienting My Professional Life
As I finish my 1L year, I can’t make my response to the “in order to change the world you have to know what you want and how to get it” mantra much more precise than "in general I want to do satisfying work that helps others and at some point I’d like to be in a position to help musicians". So in this paper I’d like to assess what I need to do in order to have a more precise answer to that question, so that I can plan the rest of my time at Columbia. I feel that what I’m missing is sense of where I will stand as a lawyer in relation to large-scale social problems. I need some way to orient myself and my work. In my first paper I tried to get a grasp of the type of thinking lawyers do from an ethically neutral position. My second brought back an ethical perspective – concluding that I need to have actual clients and to be able to see the effects of my work on actual people. Now I’d like to explore what I need to do in order to make my work fit into an overarching strategy that is adequate to large-scale social problems.
A Strategic Perspective
In the past I oriented myself either religiously or politically. If thought that if I did unto others as I would have them do unto me, then the big picture stuff would all work itself out. Politically, if I was voted democrat then I was a good liberal, and eventually the world would realize its mistakes and “progress”. But I’ve gradually lost faith that if I do the right things on a micro-level the larger things will fall into place naturally.
My first paper explored an alternative to these smooth and teleological ideologies by embracing the irreducible complexity of the real world. There’s a certain nihilistic joy in bathing in chaos – “complexity so intricate, none can fathom it” as Wylie puts it – but while necessary for creativity, such aesthetic disorganization can become impotent and aimless when taken to the extreme.
Rather than burying my head in facts or steering by faith alone, I need to learn how to see things strategically from a global perspective. I need some way to structure the flood of information from the outside in order to orient my work in the world. How can I do this in a livable way, so that I’m not a martyr to the real? How can I avoid just sticking my head in the sand and plowing ahead with whatever practice I end up having – hoping in the end that it will serve a good purpose?
I need to develop my ability to read large-scale events. Let me try to use the methodology of this class by applying different disciplinary approaches in a conciliant manner.
A Collective Event – Cannibalism and the Common Law
The trial of Dudley and Stephens, reconstructed in Cannibalism and the Common Law provides ample material for such an analysis.
The trial of Dudley and Stevens was an inflection of the application of the public force. It was an orchestrated clash between what a subgroup of the English people thought the English people should be, and what they actually were. On the level of social psychology, we can understand the trial as an effort of a collective super-ego to reconcile the harsh reality of what happened in the dingy with the English imperial self-image. The historical reality of the situation is that this event takes place in the middle of European colonial exploitation of Africa. In the end, the government succeeded in reinforcing the notion that the English are different from the cannibals that they were killing elsewhere.
What if Dudley & Stevens v. Regina came out the other way? On an individual level, two individuals would have been spared the collective opprobrium of the English People. Some pompous opinion writing would have been avoided. More importantly though, the acquittal of two English cannibals would have poked a hole in England’s conception of itself as a superior race. It wouldn’t reveal a pretty part of reality (cannibalism), but it would work in a small way towards a people having a more just understanding of who they are. There would be no drastic or immediate change, just a small release of the grip of a damaging ideology on the collective mind.
A defense lawyer could have knowingly brought about this outcome. He would have had to orient himself in the political context – making the connection between the killing of “mere cannibals” and this trial. He would have needed to have correctly read the forces he was up against and what they wanted. He would have needed to have understood the real “legal problem”, in Robinson’s sense of the term, that was driving the actual trial. If he would orient himself in this way, and if he was as skillful a defense counsel as Robinson, then he would stand a chance of opening up a crack in the English self-image – a significant accomplishment.
Going Forward
So it is possible for lawyers to consciously and strategically affect collective thought, so long as they can correctly read social events. What do I need to learn, in addition to simply more law, in order to understand my world? Looking at the layers we saw the first day of class, I’m weakest on history. While I’m at Columbia, I need to learn how to place legal events in a historical context, so that I can do it on my own later. I should take some history courses both in the law school and at Columbia. I should talk with professors about the how their practices (if they have them) fit into a larger strategies of social change. If I can do that, I think that I’ll be in a much better position to know what I need to do with my license when I get it. |
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