[From Rick Marken (930422.2000)]
Dan Miller (930421.1145)--
I think that the "control is right; conflict is wrong" principle
is not very helpful for the very reasons Rick states earlier.
Not all actions are perceived and defined in the same way.
That's precisely WHY it's a useful approach to evaluating behavior!
It doesn't matter how people perceive and define actions (their own
or those of others); what matters is whether these actions result in
control of all the perceptual variables the system the system is
trying to control.
I think that there is this
social quality, that of understanding how others perceive our actions.
In this way we make ourselves accountable to others.
The "control is right; conflict is wrong" principle doesn't leave out
accountability to others. Accountability must be a perception that is
at least potentially controlled by the individual, right? It must be a
perception because you yourself perceive it. It is a "social perception"
to the extent that other control systems take action toward you based on
the level at which you control it; if you act like you are not accountable
to some person, that person may do something to you to try to get you
yo act like you are. Whether the actions of the other system "work" on
you or not is not really important; what is important is that your efforts
to control a variable influence the actions of other control systems,
because your actions are disturbances to variables they are controlling.
In order to maintain control of certain variables (like how often
we are sent to jail or beaten up) we have to learn to control (or appear
to control) variables like "accountability" at certain levels under
certain conditions. Other control systems are just part of the perceptual
world that a control system must deal with; a control system cannot be
in a state of grace (zero error thoughout the hierarchy) unless it
can deal with the social environment (other control systems) as skill-
fully as it deals with the the non-social (inanimate) environment. The
only thing that is special about the social environment (from the point
of view of the control system) is that it is the only part of the
environment with which it can get into conflict.
Bill Powers (930422.2030 MDT)--
Our real freedom lies in the ability to try on
any organization we please and to judge it in terms of how it
suits the most fundamental requirements of homo sapiens. We lose
our freedom when we lose this ability to change.
I like this idea quite a bit; I just don't see how it fits into the
model as I currently understand it. I understand how conflicts
can exist and create inflexible goals in the perceptual control
hierarchy. I can also understand how the hierarchy can build
systems that help it avoid situations where the conflict comes
into play -- so that the individual is never driven to conflict-
resolving reorganization. But you seem to be suggesting above that
certain conditions can prevent reorganization itself. I think it would
be very intereting to those with a clinical bent if you shared more
details of your thoughts on this. I think what you are talking about
is the phenomenon that Freud called resistence; when confronted with
their own inflexibility (a symptom of conflicting goals) people seem
to actively resist moving their consciousness to the level of the
conflicting goals. What's going on here?
Flexibly yours
Rick