Create the Organizing Conditions
Social groups and environmental fitness
This is philosophical dribble that I’m publishing for fun because working out ideas can be fun, and that’s all I’m up to in this post. Enjoy if you like esoteric academy babble. Skip this one if that’s not your thing. xx. <3 -a.
There’s always the cool friend, right? The lead singer of the band. The one who takes selfies while you’re setting up the group shot. They got an idea about the best spot to park, buy seats for, or table to sit at the restaurant.
There’s the funniest person slaying all night long, stacking bodies. There is somebody who’s done crimes, maybe, or it could be a story, and not knowing which is why it’s always a little angsty when you chill. Ultimately, this person has the most integrity in the group.
We probably all have one in the crew who’s a complete trainwreck, but there isn’t a chance they ever get left behind. In the zombie apocalypse, I’m running after them and busting zombie heads with a Louisville slugger on my way. The group would never function without the trainwreck. The trainwreck is the moral compass.
Strangely, the one who possibly commits crimes has integrity, and the trainwreck is the moral compass. Breaking with societal norms is an ethical good.
There was a villain for a while. Our bad for letting them in.
Unlike the train wreck, the villain sucks energy from the group. You’ve tried to integrate the villain a few times, but you need to trust your gut and draw boundaries.
We all gotta get in where we fit in, within that group. And hear this. We’re one of those people, or we’re the one observing those people, in which case, each of those people is also observing us, and they have an identity they’ve imposed on us.
You are observing, and everyone else is, too.
Meta, right?
But we don’t need to be caught up there. I remember learning about the concept of the “looking-glass self,” which fits in here: You view yourself in a constructed mirror to align your self-perception with how you imagine others perceive you.
We don’t have time for this.
Back to the task at hand.
That solid group, when everyone fits, and those tropes sort of play out, you’ve organized a ‘thing,’ a something, an entity, an object, maybe an event. I started thinking that an event could be a ‘thing’ when I saw Tom Pashby present this paper at a philosophy of science conference, and my mind was so blown they didn’t get the security deposit back on the convention center rental. Pashby submits that the furniture of the world includes different probabilities for things happening that are localized in space and time. Like the world is made up of probabilities of shit happening, and when that shit happens, it’s an event. Because the constituent parts that compose the event are localized in space and time, so must be its summation: events are things that arise from localized probabilities of things happening. Damn.
WTF?
I saw Pashby give a paper on Dirac twice before this conference, where he presented his object ontology. I saw him give the Dirac paper on predicting the positron at Case Western in a small conference room and another time at another Phil Sci conference in a fairly large room. That dude is fucking smart. My quantum mechanics doesn’t exceed the classic entanglement experiment, Bohr’s ”shut up and calculate,” and a good paper I read positing realism for the wave function, which I also didn’t understand but had good vibes about.
I always accept realist shit as a guide to the world, but I’m skeptical that science can describe the world in a way that’s accurate down to its fundamental building blocks. Even the phrase ‘building blocks’ assumes a sort of structure. I suspect a block is not the structure we’d find.
I guess I’m asking what sort of thing is a social group. Just any collection of people? Is a group a particular thing, or is a group no more than its people? Is a social group an event? Because maybe an event is a thing?
WTF again?
So, a social group, the cohesive one with the tropes, can play a social role bigger than its members. That’s all I’m trying to say. That is the thing: the event ontology. This is my assertion, my claim. The proposition that I’m arguing for. A social group is an event, a thing in the world that is time-bound and defined by the relations held between its constituent parts: the people that make up the group!
I have in mind that relations held between group members govern the individual social positions fulfilled by the tropes assigned to us: the cool friend, the comedian, the criminal, and the train wreck. We fit ourselves into the group, and our roles are dynamic.
We tend to flex our traits to fit a group, and we can flex or withdraw these traits, given the social context the group encounters. I’m exploring the idea that the group influences our sense of dynamic traits to know when to advance and retreat the traits we naturally express. The event that is our group is dynamic, given its matrix of communication that exists nonverbally in the relations held between us. We are in constant nonverbal feedback as a group. We are an event that shapes its fitness to the environment. Sometimes, the comedian is the criminal, and sometimes, the cool friend is the train wreck.
Not only does an individual have the capacity to adapt to fit a group, but the group also modulates individual traits to fit a circumstance. Individual adaptability and code-switching are conferred onto the group, and the event fits into its environment—chords in harmony.
I think a lot of trouble comes from insecurity when folk don’t feel like they got a place to fit. We naturally express certain traits, which feels like a non-controversial thing to say, that each of us has a certain constellation of attitudes and experiences that express the tropes like those I’ve suggested, and to affirm our attitudes and experiences, we join in relation to other group members, and the group becomes an event that is not only the constituent parts. The social group is adaptable and dynamic in ways that transcend our individual capacity. This group can then be directed toward some aim.
The aim is the part I’m still unsure about. How does a social group select its aim? Perhaps part of fitting the group to its environment produces its action-alignment. If that is right, then the environment influences teleology. In other words, the environment plays a role in directing the group. If we fit a group into an environment, it would make sense that the environment calls the shots, not the group. The group only responds to the environment to maintain its fitness.
The picture would then look like this: Individuals tend to express traits, and the traits we express define our relations with others. When these relations create cohesive bonds, the group becomes event-like. The dynamic group will flex to fit an environment which influences the group's aim. Put another way, the material conditions of the world shape group consciousness. Our consciousness does not shape the world; we are shaped in light of our environments.
Should we want to redirect the aims of our social groups, we should first look at the environment before looking at the traits that individuals express. Change the environment, and group goals will accordingly shift.
“In an election, we choose the conditions under which we organize.” I’ve written a version of this line in this newsletter, and it’s back again. If we’re trying to change the attitudes of people we’d like to move closer to our positions, we should look first at the environment before considering the individual.
I suggest that creating environments where basic needs are met will produce different group aims than environments that include scarcity, fear, or threat. Building relationships is critical to organizing cohesive groups, but the group's aims are contingent on the conditions. Creating environments where needs are met is a better way to organize than focusing only on individuals. We affirm individuals in relation to us, which is important, but partnership and progress are realized only when we create the proper conditions.