Aleksei A. Navalny
Navalny
Aleksei A. Navalny
February 14
Seeing Addiction Clearly
Americans fundamentally believe that people who suffer from addiction are morally flawed, and somehow don’t deserve all the help that we can give them.
To be a man is to dominate others. This is what I absorbed as a boy: masculinity means mastery, power, control. To be socialized into manhood is to gain a love of hierarchy and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to preserve your own position within it. … (For Elon Musk these) avenues of escape…provided a terrain where the mandates of masculinity could be fulfilled, via conquests of a more cerebral sort.
“Ultra Hardcore” Ben Tarnoff
Larry Walker:
This group (Social Permaculture) seems to be aligned with what you are doing. [MY NOTE: “Social Permaculture” is the praxis of permaculture methodology applied to social relationships.] (Larry’s email included the following.)
In India, pioneers from 16 countries — ranging from billionaires to folks whose life’s possessions fit into a backpack — flew in for our Gandhi 3.0 retreat, to nuance that throughline from me-centered transactions to we-centered relationships to us-centered emergence…. If, however, the personal, interpersonal and systemic designs start to harmonize, the laddership hypothesis is that the collective emergence of that ecosystem bends its arc towards greater compassion…. how do we differentiate inner voice from ego voice?… How, ultimately, do we throw a better party and build a new paradigm? (read more)
Wade Lee Hudson:
Thanks for the heads up. I added “permaculture” and “social permaculture” to my website to-do list. I do see considerable alignment. However, this report says nothing about “domination” or “mutual support.”
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Re: “New Introduction”
Dan Brook:
One thing that the recent flare-up in the Middle East taught me, or rather reminded me, is that many people who want a fairer world, besides lacking nuance, also exhibit selective kindness, that is, being kind to one’s “us” and too often being unkind to one’s “them”. And it happens in our treatment of animals as much as in our treatment of fellow humans.
Wade: Indeed. Well put. Thanks.
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Dan Brook:
Re: “A Little Hole in the Global Left: Israel, Gaza, and Humanity, by Dan Brook. “I have been terribly disappointed in so much of the American and global Left that is so reflexively anti-Israel that they don’t care about [Hamas goals and violence]…”
Criticize Israel when appropriate, but in this case, start with criticizing Hamas for its homicidal desires and murderous rampage. This is not meant to excuse occupation, but to contextualize it…. I strongly oppose occupation and injustice — Israeli, American, Russian, Chinese, English, French, and otherwise
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Yahya Abdal-Aziz:
Your essay “Does “the System” exist?“ is a very clear explication of your thinking. I now have probably the clearest understanding of your concept that I’ve had in years. Thank you for writing and sharing it!
As a once (and forever) systems analyst, I’ve been thinking in “system” terms for most of my life. However, the use of the term “system” in philosophical, political and social theory can have quite different connotations than it does as a tool of business and information technology! Somehow, I’ve come to feel that the former (“social science”) fields’ use is more laden with moral value judgments than the latter (“business engineering”), which is, on the contrary, more concerned with objective and measurable facts … and this is, doubtless, an unwarranted bias.
All that my experience really shows is this: that some things are easier to measure meaningfully than others … Which of course I already understood, when during my studies and teaching, I encountered the fun task of devising appropriate measurement scales for psychological traits. (Including in the ’70s, a protracted, bemused and ultimately unsuccessful exploration of what kind of mathematics might support the concept of “latent variables”.) Humility, it seems, is a lesson that I am doomed to repeat, until – one day, I hope – it sticks!
Meanwhile, I have your fruitful analysis of the existing Top-Down System – and its contra-positive, the fabulous Bottom-Up System – as tools to help guide my thinking toward better ways of living and thriving together. Thanks again!
Wade: Especially considering your extensive experience with systems thinking, your comments hearten me considerably
Yahya Abdal-Aziz:
More analytical questions, then – if you will:
Wade:
Good questions. Do you want to offer answers?
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Yahya Abdal-Aziz:
This was worth the read, and a bit of thinking about. It also links other articles on aspects of anger, which I may spend some time exploring.
“Three Reasons Why You Need Anger.”
While anger gets a bad rap, studies suggest it can help us achieve difficult goals, if used wisely.
By Jill Suttie
Anger is not usually a pleasant feeling. When we feel we’ve been wronged—by, say, a slow driver or a boss or a noisy neighbor—our heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature go up, preparing us to confront the challenge. While releasing that tension may feel good in the moment, the aftereffects can be harsh….
Excellent article from a superb project, the Greater Good Science Center. I added it to Daily Reflections and my to-do list for addition to the CHC site.
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Randy Thomas:
Remembering Mary’s MagnificatPoetry is one form of creative expression. In this our age, we need a diversity of creative words and inspiring images to change the current narrative. Poetry, prose, essays,plays, novels, rational analysis, dialogue and synthesis, art, music, Nature’s wisdom, astrophysics, cosmology, technology,
Ways of healing, integrating, and collaborative efforts of mutual empowerment to co-create more whole life affirming,sustaining emerging and evolving relationships. I appreciate your essays as words and meaning to better relate and understand this creative movement and potential to manifest and transform ourselves , systems, structures ,processes, in our world.
Wade: Peace. And thanks for suggesting “Mutual Empowerment” as the title for the newsletter and sharing with me the distinction between embodied and disembodied spirituality.
Rhonda Magee:
GOOD MORNING TO YOU
Rhonda sharing reflections – and a song! – onstage at “Wisdom and A.I,” hosted by Wisdom 2.0, October 30, 2023
Warm greetings to you. As we move into this new year, like many of you, I have been reflecting on how to make the most of this life, given all the challenges we face.
One thing seems certain: the times are calling – loudly – for greater capacity to hold together, as one, the things that appear to be separate, to make connections and common cause among things that appear different, or even seem to be opposed or opposite. Thinking of this, I am reminded that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thich Nhat Hahn agreed that doing so is an aspect of what they each, from their very different cultures, religious commitments and social justice locations, referred to as “Beloved Community.” As I’ve discussed in prior presentations, being Beloved Community today is an invitation to each of us to make this ideal real in our own life and times.
Of course, doing so is hard. I lean into practices that support us in the moment-to-moment work of cultivating a kind of grounded hope. This year, I’m focusing on sharing ways of deepening the roots of our wellbeing in support of this work, offering practices for moving through shadow and light, joy and pain in our own and in others’ experiences. I’m exploring more ways of deepening our ability to hold space for complexity and change, both individually, and in our relationships with others.
I look forward to re-energizing our resources together and joining with you again in beloved community in the coming weeks.
Book Cover Order a copy of
THE INNER WORK OF RACIAL JUSTICE here.
Links:
Listen now and reflect with Rhonda on the theme of “Being Beloved Community in a Time of Polarization.” (Dharma talk delivered by Rhonda V. Magee at the San Francisco Zen Center on January 14, 2023.)
https://www.sfzc.org/teachings/dharma-talks/being-beloved-community-time-polarization
And make a plan now to join Rhonda on March 17, 2024 at 10 am Pacific Time/11 am Mountain Time for reflections on the theme, “Leading with Clarity, Courage and Compassion.” Hosted by the Upaya Zen Center. For information and registration, visit:
https://www.upaya.org/program/gathering-dharma-with-hoshi-rhonda-v-magee-online-2024/
Wade:
Thanks for sharing. Great work. Carry it on.
“Today’s future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives,” writes Kristen Ghodsee. Even our most ambitious visions of utopia tend to focus on outcomes that can be achieved through public policy — things like abundant clean energy or liberation from employment — while ignoring many of the aspects of our lives that matter to us the most: how we live, raise our children, and tend to our most meaningful relationships.
Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life
The 2/6/24 Amanpour and Company episode concludes with a fascinating interview by Walter Isaacson with Brian Klass, author of Fluke, Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. I posted the complete transcript under Systemic/ Articles/Essays/Op-eds and linked to this comment on the Systemic/Books entry.
The points that struck me most strongly include
KLAAS: A fluke is a highly consequential event that happens by chance or is arbitrary or random. And so, I argue in the book that our world is shaped by these and our lives are shaped by these much more than we imagine, but we just pretend otherwise because it’s much nicer to imagine that we have neat and tidy stories to make sense of our world and our own lives….
I think this is the sort of way that our world works, is partly between order and disorder,… A single thing can tip you over that edge and create an extremely consequential event that shifts how the world works….
we have designed a world that is particularly prone to these avalanches because the sand pile is extremely high by design.
And what I mean by that is that you have this sort of system that operates with optimization and efficiency as its main priorities. And this means that we have no slack in the system. (Emphases added)….
If we had dealt with the problem of the lingering resentment in the American public, then Trump might have (failed)….
ISAACSON: How can an understanding of the role of flukes lead us to have a more resilient society, and let me even add a more resilient personal life?
KLAAS: Yes, I like this question because, you know, I think differently about the world and my own life, having written this book. I was not the same person three years ago. And the reason for that is because…I grew up in the U.S., where I was sort of told you have to sort of just make your own path. This sort of individualist mindset, the American dream, and so on. And it’s a culture that is extremely focused on control, right?
And I describe in the book how I was living, you know, what I described as a checklist existence. And I think when you start to think about the role of these forces that are sometimes arbitrary, accidental, and random, and also the chaos theory, the ripple effects of our decisions, it starts to liberate you a little bit, right? It starts to make you feel like, you know what, it’s maybe OK if I don’t have so much top-down control. And that’s what I’ve internalized as a lesson from the book.
In terms of society, I think the main lesson is resilience. I think that we have the tools to give us the illusion of control more than ever before. Because we have so much predictability and stability in our daily lives that we start to think that our world is also stable. And in fact, it’s the opposite. The stability in our daily lives is happening at the same time as the world is changing faster and more profoundly than ever before in human history.
So, in my view, this is something where politicians, economists, et cetera, need to understand that they are creating a world without slack, and the flukes are always going to be there. So, instead of imagining that we can have this top-down control, I think we have to have a little bit less hubris and also accept the limits of what humans can and cannot control. And I think that’s true for ordinary citizens as well as for politicians who are calling the shots.
Two points in particular strike me. First, Klaas’s reference to “a system that operates with optimization and efficiency as its main priorities” is intriguing. I’ve said that “the Top-Down System” is driven by people climbing social ladders to look down on and try to dominate and exploit those below and submit to those above. The drive to optimize and maximize efficiency seems consistent with my analysis. I want to get his book and see if and how these two drives overlap. I may need to modify my formulation.
Secondly, his comment about the drive to establish top-down control in personal lives suggests he has a holistic approach,. This comment encourages me to believe that his framework is consistent with mine, and I may be able to complement my analysis with his. Regardless, his assertion that we need to accept chaos in our personal lives is one I haven’t addressed before and will do so now.
In saying that the domination/submission paradigm lies at the basis of many of our contemporary ills, I do not say that all of our ills can be traced to it, nor do I say that it is productive only of ill. In fact, I hold that certain versions of it can be useful and appropriate in various limited, specific, functional situations… However, in our culture we have tended to award to the functionally dominant persons and institutions a total value of superiority, privilege, and power that has often led to injustice, damage, and suffering.
I am suggesting that domination is basic to a great many ills from which our culture does suffer and that it may be possible to replace it with an alternative paradigm that would afford some improvement. I think that each of these paradigms lies at a sufficiently deep level in our consciousness to be a unifying principle for a great many particular behaviors, and therefore if we deal with the matter on a deep level, we could thereby effect alterations in the relatively superficial attitudes and actions much more efficiently than by trying to change those feelings and events piecemeal.
Beatrice Bruteau. a pioneer in interspirituality and contemplative thinking
How can we be kinder and fairer? This constantly updated digital book explores this question.
The principal answer is to promote positive changes in every sector — social, personal, cultural, economic, environmental, and political. Changes that move in the same direction and reinforce each other in an upward spiral.
The hope is that these efforts will coalesce in a new, powerful grassroots movement that unifies the many forces cultivating a more compassionate society — including the civil rights, electoral reform, #MeToo, human rights, call-in, anti-war, environmental justice, climate action, union, living wage, police reform, holistic democracy, immigrant rights, gay liberation, human potential, and interfaith movements.
This website envisions how this movement might emerge. It presents a framework that might help a strong organizing committee of community leaders make it happen.
Whether or not this movement crystallizes, compassion-minded people can advance its goals informally. They can use ideas presented here to enhance their efforts and plant seeds for cultural change.
This site has grown out of collaborations with many associates. Now I sum up my conclusions and invite you to help improve them.
The movement envisioned here would correct root causes of personal and social problems. It would promote fundamental reform throughout society. It would establish new structures to empower the powerless and control the powerful. It would establish public policy reforms and nurture improvements in how people treat each other in their daily lives. It would encourage soulful conversations, self-examination, active listening, and mutual support for self-development. It would unify everyone in the compassionate humanity community — those individuals and organizations who relieve suffering and promote justice.
This movement would include a political component that would regularly mobilize massive numbers to demand new, compassionate public policies and, if necessary, engage in nonviolent civil disobedience to promote its goals.
Most compassion-minded people focus on single issues, help others cope and thrive, spread humane values with mutual dialogues, and vote for candidates who support policies that enhance the common good. These activists could complement their efforts with some simple, not terribly time-consuming, methods that would enhance their effectiveness.
Widespread fragmentation is a major problem. Many people are isolated. Some have only one or two people with whom they discuss personal problems. Others have none. A compassion-minded movement must address this and other personal and social issues.
Political campaigns focused on a particular issue fade when the issue is resolved. The next campaign must then build a new organization, which is time-consuming and results in costly delays. A unified force that moves from issue to issue could accomplish more together than its components can achieve alone.
Making explicit commitments, they could support each other with their personal growth and join with others to engage in unified political action. This site suggests some such tools.
What could be the unifying goal of this movement?
My associates and I crafted a one-sentence mission statement: to serve humanity, the environment, and life itself. This focus could unify a wide range of concerned individuals and organizations. You can post suggested amendments or alternatives on “Our Mission.”
What’s the primary problem we face? Agreement on the nature of our primary common problem could help unify the movement.
Our society trains everyone to climb social ladders, look down on, and try to dominate and exploit those below — and submit to those above. Our institutions, culture, and ourselves as individuals are woven together into a single, self-perpetuating social system — the Top-Down System. You can suggest amendments or alternatives to this description on “Our Primary Problem.”
Hyper-individualistic conditioning is deeply embedded. People keep quiet, hold back, and fail to assert themselves in order to avoid negativity or boost their prospects for advancement. They button up, conform, and submit.
People compete for seats at the table, but there aren’t enough seats for everyone. When one person wins, another loses. As people calculate how to advance or protect their interests, they become overly concerned about what others think about them.
Society defines leadership as the ability to get others to do what the leader wants. Bitter power struggles tear apart organizations. Collaboration and mutual empowerment become difficult. Society inflames divisive impulses.
Societies need a stabilizing social system that holds them together. Destroying the Top-Down System is no solution. Neither is waiting for it to collapse. Instead, we can keep healthy traditions, improve society where we can, and create new structures to better achieve our mission.
We can reform the Top-Down System into a Bottom-Up System that nurtures individual and community empowerment throughout society. We can develop collaborative leadership and democratic hierarchies that enable workers and members to hold their leaders accountable to their commitments.
What shall we call this movement? My inclination is to call it the “systemic reform movement.” This phrase refers to our primary problem: the Top-Down System. Other options include the pro-democracy movement and the compassion movement. You can comment on “The Name.”
What methods shall we use to achieve our mission?
One key method is mutual support for self-development. Social and political activists can help each other become better human beings by controlling or unlearning impulses that fragment unity. Open confidential dialogue with trusted colleagues can be profoundly rewarding.
Unfortunately, however, honest self-examination often hurts. Self-exposure can be embarrassing. Even worse, others can use your admissions against you. The reluctance to pay the price required to grow more deeply is understandable.
To drop your mask, pause your routines, look below the surface, and consider how to better nurture your self-development is difficult and complicated. It’s tempting to stay on auto-pilot, go with the flow, conform to established norms, submit to expectations, and suppress your instincts and your desire to engage in right action. It’s easy to just seek comfort, enjoy life, deal with daily struggles, care for yourself and your family, do a little bit here and there to help people, and vote for your preferred candidate.
However, the need for holistic and systemic reform is overwhelming. The selfish pursuit of power and the willingness to defer to power, as promoted by the Top-Down System, weakens organizations. Dealing with these personal issues that affect interpersonal dynamics is essential if we are to reform our society fundamentally.
You can nurture personal growth alone, by yourself, in the privacy of your mind. You can discuss these issues with your significant other. You can discuss them with a therapist, counselor, or spiritual leader. However, it’s also helpful to engage with peers.
Discretion is advised. Total honesty would be foolish. Nevertheless, considerable personal growth is essential. Small teams composed of compassion-minded people could help with this effort.
Peer support is powerful and important. In fact, we may learn more from our peers than from parents and teachers. Mutual aid is usually informal, but formal structures, such as study, support, and prayer groups, can also help.
This book suggests many ways people can organize intentional activities to enhance personal and collective growth. A compassionate movement could use these methods to strengthen its activities and promote fairness, compassion, and democracy throughout society. My associates and I have experimented with some of these tools.
Based on these experiments, my primary suggestion at the moment is that at least once a month, movement members 1) open small team meetings with a moment of silence and 2) confidentially report on their recent efforts to undo or control the desire to dominate and the willingness to submit for personal gain. This shared experience could nurture a sense of community among those teams who use these tools.
You can suggest an alternative primary method with a comment on “The Primary Method”
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The movement envisioned here could unify the compassionate humanity community. Change in each arena is equally important. Improvement in one impacts the others. If these changes move in the same direction, they reinforce each other and integrate the outer and inner realms.
We compassion-minded people can celebrate our unique identities while also seeing ourselves as members of the human family. As global citizens, we can work together for our shared interests, live in harmony with nature, appreciate the invisible spirit that animates life, and promote holistic and systemic reform — reform that is holistic because it addresses the whole person and the whole society and systemic because it addresses the Top-Down System.
We can grow a kinder and fairer society. We must.
I suggest this desired direction for the sake of discussion. The organizers of a new movement would surely modify them, or start from scratch.
In the meantime, I welcome suggested improvements in these proposals as I regularly edit them. You can comment on the blog posts or email me.
“Under the law, any Russian, even those in exile, found to be engaged in “crimes against national security” — including criticizing the invasion of Ukraine — could have their assets confiscated.”
Anton Troianovski
Reader’s Comments on “New Homepage and Preface”
Larry Walker
All the Best for Your New Website Approach
I read your piece in Wade’s Wire describing your new approach. It sounds promising to me, so all the best as you go down this path. Cheers
Wade: Good to hear. Thanks much for the feedback.
Freddi Fredrickson
I just read your “Wire” and Preface which I enjoyed. It is hard trying to get people to organize for a better society. I don’t know if it ever will happen as a large movement. I guess I think that the goal will be for more and more people who care about others to infuse their ideas in smaller groups, and then have this spread.
I wanted to tell you I bought the new book by David Brooks on how to really get to know people. I saw him on a couple of shows and thought he reminded me of what you have said about people knowing other people. I’ll let you know if I think it’s useful. Take care and many hugs, Freddi
Wade: Yes, I believe small groups can help educate and inspire each other to be more proactive. My hope is that somehow someday these groups, and issue-oriented organizations, will unite and accomplish more together than they can alone…. I look forward to hearing what you think about Brooks’ book, including points that resonate with you most strongly.
Mary Hudson
Great job! Would this picture work as a replacement for the Cultural picture?
Wade: I think it works well. What do you think? Thanks.
I think it looks great! I’ll look for a replacement for the “Political” picture.
Wade: Sure.
Yahya Abdal-Aziz
I appreciate the countless hours you have put into thinking and writing about how to achieve “a global society that’s fair and kind,” which is exactly what I’d love to see on the global scale, mirrored at every scale in communities both large and small, physical and virtual, that are also both kind and just.
We may have different perspectives on how to get there. You talk of unity, and I hear a faint whisper of conformity. Because, as we all know, people can be coerced into following an easier path when loaded words make them feel guilty for wanting to go their own way. Still, I trust, that you’re really talking about “unity in diversity”. I value diversity much more than I do unity. So, it appears, does nature, as countless varieties of organisms evolve into ever-new and unexpected forms.
We all have overlapping circles of family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and other practical relationships, such as business, medical, official, political, etc. Every one of us is a member of at least two distinctly different kinds of community, and it would be impractical to combine or unite these communities in any meaningful way. However, all these communities do intersect, and we, individual persons, are the points of intersection.
I remember the fun I had at my 21st birthday party, introducing dozens of people from very different circles to each other, and enjoying observing their interactions. The musicians, the chess players, the linguists, the mathematicians and scientists, the literary people, the politicians, and family members all received a present at my party: a chance to meet and converse with people they’d never normally bump into. Some received their gifts gratefully and gracefully; others were bemused. To this day, I still enjoy a smorgasbord better than a three-course set dinner!
Let’s compare the two formats: online encyclopedia vs. book. The second offers us a set menu of courses. The first offers us endless, web-like hyperlinks. Very much as envisioned by Vannevar Bush, in his prophetic article “As we may think”, the source document for the notion of hyper-text and a direct inspiration for Wikipedia.
Guests circulating at my party weren’t tied to their previous decisions; they could sample a little here, nibble a little there; and feast on what they found to their taste and abilities. I guess you can sense which way this analogy is heading, right?
Yes, I do prefer the collaboratively-edited, somewhat amorphous, potentially chaotic, and patchy structure of the encyclopedia, to that of the carefully curated, architecturally-designed, and professionally-constructed book.
Not that I don’t appreciate the design and construction skills behind the book format! But it does throw too much responsibility on its architect, to see the project through to a usable state. Whereas the other approach lets everybody muck in. So what if somebody gets it wrong? Others can jump in to fix any problems that arise.
How many readers of Wikipedia know the name Jimmy Webb? How many of its editors do? But does it matter? No. Wikipedia wasn’t built by Jimmy Webb; an impossible undertaking for one person. It was started by him, for which I’m extremely grateful. And his effort deserves to be recognized as the great game-changer it is. Yet the value of what he started has been amplified many thousand-fold, by his slipping the reins and letting the horse follow its head. (Mixed metaphors, perhaps!)
So, I hope that I’ve left you something to chew on. (As if you were the horse!) It may be nutritious oats; it may only be chaff; taste it and see. Regards.
Wade: I, too, prefer collaboration.
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Does “the System” exist?
References to “the system” are common in advertising, political commentary, popular culture, and elsewhere, but few people define what they mean by the phrase.
Wikipedia says, “A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole.”
This description leaves open the question of whether any one element controls or dominates a particular system. Concerning human societies, for instance, who rules? Who’s to blame?
In its “Jungles” episode, Our Planet declares “No one species can ever dominate, protecting the jungle’s incredible diversity.”
But don’t humans dominate nature? The Oxford Dictionary defines the “Anthropocene” as the geological age. “during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” Dominant means “ruling or controlling.”
However, “The irony of the Anthropocene: People dominate a planet beyond our control,” argues, “It appears that nature…may have some tricks up its sleeve. Despite humans’ pervasive influence on the planet, our actual control over natural systems remains limited.”
In “The Limits to Human Domination of Nature,” Steve Cohen writes,
There is little question that human activities have damaged and sometimes dominated nature. But dominating nature is proving to be a little more difficult than some might have thought. The forces of natural environmental systems have proven to be more than current technologies can handle…. What is missing from our economic system and its technological base is humility and reverence for a universe that may, well, in some measure, always be beyond scientific understanding.
National Geographic likewise takes a more qualified position. It states, “The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems (emphasis added).”
Whether human society functions as a system is another question. In its introduction to sociology, Lumen reports:
Functionalists view society as a system in which all parts work — or function — together to create society as a whole. In this way, societies need culture to exist. Cultural norms function to support the fluid operation and continued stability of society, and cultural values guide people in making choices.
As summarized by Graham Scammbler, Talcott Parsons and other sociologists have seen society as a system composed of interconnected parts, where each part has a specific function that contributes to society’s overall functioning. Specialized institutions that perform specific functions help maintain social stability. Society socializes individuals to internalize norms and values, which guide their behavior, constrain their freedom, and reinforce social order.
If successful, this socialization results in norms and values becoming internalized by individuals. When people pursue their own interests, they also serve the needs of society as a whole. Unity with diversity sustains stability over time. Otherwise, societies fall apart.
Whether one element controls or dominates is a related question. In the February 5, 2020, Ezra Klein Show podcast about Klein’s book, Why We’re Polarized, Jill Lepore comments, “In some big structural way in the book there’s a quite notable absence of villains,” and asks Klein, “Why no villains?” He replies:
I’m trying to tell you how a machine works. I’m just trying to tell you what happens to almost everybody in it… I wanted to call some players and institutions villains, (but) I had trouble figuring out a chain of causality… Every time I tried to trace [blame] down to the place where I could prove it, I would fail… I have trouble assigning the causality or even figuring out where it begins. All these things seem to be in a dynamic relationship with each other. It’s hard to figure out how if you replaced a player or even the institution how different of a result you would get… The thing I’m trying to build an idea of is a machine with different pieces all working together.
In the Introduction to his book, Klein talks about “the system” and writes, “We collapse systemic problems into personalized narratives.”
Commentators most often merely refer to “systems” that are not integrated into a single social system. I’ve concluded, however, that our society weaves together all sectors — social, cultural, personal, economic, environmental, and political — into a single self-perpetuating social system — the Top-Down System.
The next question is what is the Top-Down System’s function? As I see it, its driving force is programming people to selfishly climb social ladders, look down on those below, and try to dominate and exploit them — and submit to those above. Our institutions, our culture, and ourselves as individuals are woven together into this social system. As individuals, we reinforce it with our daily actions.
Whether you call it hyper-meritocracy, rankism, elitism, technocracy, or some other label, this Top-Down System assumes that a select few with superior abilities should rule society.
Domination and submission can be justified as a means to a higher end, but when they become the goal, the be-all and end-all, structural reforms are needed to establish a Bottom-Up System that holds leaders accountable to those they serve.
Bob Anschuetz, a former college English teacher, told me:
I think all references to “the system,” whether within or without quotes, should be changed to “the System.” That’s because you use the word in a special sense, as developed in your booklet. You need to distinguish that special sense for the reader by, in effect, representing it as a “proper name” — which in turn requires an initial capital letter…. This still represents my opinion on the use of an upper-case “S” in “the System.”
Proper nouns are capitalized words for a particular person, place, organization, or thing. The Top-Down System is a specific thing.
How to reform it into a Bottom-Up System is a challenge. This website suggests methods for how to move in this direction and grow our society into a compassionate community.
Whether this systemic focus is the wisest path is uncertain, but it’s the best I can do so far. Suggested course corrections are welcome.