I would like us to see all of our problems as the outcomes of quite simple to understand human behaviour. To…
I would like us to see all of our problems as the outcomes of quite simple to understand human behaviour. To rediscover societies for what they are - 100% social. Not political, not economic.
Social. Ordinary meetings show this, the same principles operate at every scale. /1 https://t.co/jvfAlAwVft
If you work in a larger organisation, a critical metric to understand the health of that organisation is its meetings.
An organisation that is constantly meeting, in my experience, is failing. It means the actual work is secondary to the social relations in the workplace. /2 https://t.co/Rpa69enVW0
It means to get anything done at all, you’re having to negotiate a path through all of the social groupings in the organisation.
The more social, the more meetings. The more gridlocked the organisation becomes. I changed career about 5 years ago. /3 https://t.co/gSX9wVpuDZ
Moving from a large organisation that literally did not much else except meet, all day every day. Nothing was getting done.
I moved to an organisation where I’d rarely have more than a single meeting in a week. The change has been profound. /4 https://t.co/5rBPstDFo8
Things get done. And not just that, but the atmosphere of work is much more relaxed. Because the workplace is not transacting its work, through its social relations.
As I post about for politics, we misunderstand sociality as warm togetherness. But sociality is violence. /5
Not because humans are violent, but because humans desire. And sociality is then the clashing of desires.
You can see it literally - not analogously - in workplaces as well, and in clubs, families etc. The more social they become, the more impotent and violent they become. /6
Who’s been part of running a local sporting club, where local fiefdoms are set up and eventually it’s all-out war between competing rivals?
And little material work actually gets done, because the passion and attention is on the rivalries? /7
The same basic social behaviours recur at every scale of society, in all groups. Rivalries between competing groups/teams, battling for status.
(I prefer ‘teams’ to ‘groups’, because it captures the intrinsic rivalry of groups.) /8
And to go back to meetings, actual action grinds to a halt. Replaced by intensifying toxicity of clashes between rival groups.
When you ‘connect’ people, you are literally tying them in knots, in terms of action they can then achieve. Sociality is NEVER a tool for action. /9
Successful companies and successful societies ruthlessly separate social relations from work to be achieved.
It also makes them far more peaceful and happy places. But what are we doing instead, everywhere? /10
We’re hyper-socialising everything. Through social media platforms. Everywhere from our most intimate personal lives, through workplaces and into politics.
All major companies have people working ‘the socials’ now. As do all politicians. /11
In other words, we’re tying ourselves in knots, bogging down any action in endless team sport rivalry.
And at the same time then continuously increasing the level of violence in our societies, at every level. Through these same team sports rivalries. /12
Unless we separate being social from doing work, our societies will implode and explode. Which they are, right now.
Unfortunately we never learn this from history, when these implosions and explosions happen we get a grace period of apparent new freedom. /13
It clears the battlefield just long enough for us to forget what caused the catastrophes. And to start up the same social rivalries all over again.
Social media is a new lethal weapon though in these wars. Insinuating itself into every single pore of our societies.
/end