Institutional thinking?

As children we are incredibly adaptable, we fit ourselves into any system that exists in our parents world and we become a part of it. It is the universal skill of fitting in, becoming part of the social creature that is human society, and as when we learn any skill, we copy what others are doing, we become competent, we gain understanding, practice and in time we become masters, which requires a lot of time and once that investment is made not many people want to start again, indeed they can even become hostile to the idea that there might be a better way. It is understandable and yet it one of the causes of society and institutional drag when the circumstances change whether that is environmental or technologically. There are many vested interests in maintaining the status quo, not just from those at the top of pyramid but every person supporting the structures of society, that have a benefit from the system that they are part of, even if that is just a pay check and a sense of routine. What interest me is freeing the individuals from that institutional thinking rather than tearing down the whole system, though without those individuals, the institutions die by themselves.

Not that all institutions are inherently bad, they can save lives, increase the quality of life and help society function as effectively as possible. However the size and power of institutions over time are decreasing and diluting from the control of the few, in the time of kings there was only one system, the kingdom, everyone was a part of it and had their place, the king's power was absolute and their subject were entirely institutionalised. The story of history has been people dividing that power up, church, army, specialist trades, unions, police, doctors, each institutions in their own right, indeed deliberately so as it takes an institution to protect you from other institutions, there is a good reason that the church had it's own court to protect it's citizens from the king's court, it was pure power politics and people were it's pawns.

Now there are more institutions than we can count, every single business is it's own institution, with it's own courts and rules, what is normal in one would be strange in another and yet each persons within a group will say that is the way it is, but it is not, it just the way it is in this business. Not that you are trapped forever in a single business like you were in a single kingdom, and there is more choice than ever, businesses are getting smaller and more efficient, they can do more with less, Facebook is ten times more valuable than Ford and yet it has a tenth of the number of employees, that is because they delivery more value for each employee. Our effective purchasing power has increased amazingly, we might still spend all of our income but we get so much more for it, mobile phones, internet, electric scooters, greener energy, cleaner air, food from every part of the world, coffee, good coffee made from Columbian beans and Italian expresso machines served in hand made Chinese pottery, combinations that were impossible expensive fifty years and simply impossible two hundred years ago.

We benefit from the institutions of the past, they bring order and organisation to tasks that are larger than the individual can manage, however the battle is to keep them relevant and useful, there is never just one way to do anything and institutions must evolve to better solutions or they become a hinderance rather than a useful service. Where ever there is a single, monopoly of service, it is in danger of becoming stagnate and self-interested to exclusion to those it is suppose to service, and in the face of nimble younger institutions they can lose their authority and relevance. Anarchy group can only look good when the institutions are failing, lawlessness is appealing when the police start acting like kings and demand absolute obedience with draconian punishment, and it does not matter who they target whether it is black, white, men, women, that group will start looking for alternatives and ways to avoid the attentions of dictators, that is the only alternative to policing with consent.

And it is quite possible to disengage when you know who the enemy is, but when you are being an enemy to yourself that is a lot harder to deal with or even to recognise it and logic alone will not save you, indeed it might even be what trapped you in the first place. What can seem logical can instead be based on a distortion in thinking, so your logic might be perfect all the way down to the foundations but if there is a fault underneath the whole house will fall down, and there are many distortions in thinking. Labelling is one of the most dangerous, it is the basis of divide and conquer tactics, you point out the differences and then say one group is good and the other is bad, that way you get to dismiss anything the other group says and demand loyalty to your group (if you do not recognise this in our world, you have not seen the news for a long time).

Logic can be dangerous because it needs to be perfect all the way down to your assumptions, because a single wrong assumption will bring the whole house of cards down. The only reliable alternative is your feelings, that is the human safety value that prevents all totalitarianism, when something feels wrong it must be pursued until the feeling goes away or is satisfied. It is not always right it can also be a distortion in thinking, just because you feel something that does not make it true, but it is sign that should not be ignored, and it is often felt most when dealing with hard cases those where you feel that the decisions is not easy, and if you are doing harm to others or yourself, you are probably right to be worried. That is the time that institutions start saying thing like it is for the good of the public, that the law needs to be certain, but if harm is being done that is wrong, it might be necessary but it is wrong and we should be humble enough to accept it, and seek better alternatives.

However it is not an easy process to de-institutionalise an entire world and where ever there is an imbalance of power there should be a duty of care that is proportional to the scale of that power dynamic. It requires people to think for themselves as they will no longer have an institution to give them guidance, as a small example, if work became truly flexible, you would no longer need an alarm clock, you could wake up naturally when rested. This freedom would be welcomed by some and would be disorientating for others, they might continue using it anyway or even become hostile, demand that we go back to the old days when people were not lazy and immoral, there would be a culture war between the owls and the larks, societies have been torn apart by less.

Freedom requires the desire to have it, understanding the need, the responsibility to maintain it and the tools to manage it, Maslow described the self-actualised person a century ago without knowing that it was a necessary evolution for a truly free society because when we do not care we have to have a central authority to care for us. For freedom to exist we must all be the police who protects that freedom whilst being able to question it, to engage in a continuous dialog with people we disagree with and find common ground and interests that we can all support. It requires a questioning curious awareness of what we want, how to live with others and what our values are and how are we act in alignment with them. This is what stoicism cares about, that ability of children to change and adapt with an adult ability to see clearly what is in their and others best interest, to build a free society of caring individuals that question themselves and the way in which we live, that is the kind of universal thinking that I want in the world.