Why employ a person? LO24492

From: Roger Key (roger.key@onet.co.uk)
Date: 04/27/00


Replying to LO24468 --

Hi All
Hi At, interesting thoughts - thanks.

>I am extraordinary struck by this sentence because a little earlier today
>I had a discussion with a biologist on the shift from prokaryotic cells to
>eukaryotic cells 4 billion years ago.

?Do mitochondria employ the cell or vice versa - yes I know it is a
symbiotic relationship by in the light of your original question real
interesting.

>What have become of organisations in which people participate
>"voluntarily", i.e. without any employment contract? They are becoming
>less and decrease in members. Why? Is it because of organisations based on
>employment which overtake them, indicating that the employement based
>organisations are fitter?
>
>I think it is because employment involves some Systems Thinking whereas
>voluntary associations nowadays seriously lacks it.

I am not sure how much systems thinking goes on in many employment
relationships, as to voluntary organisations, what about families? - Are
they getting less, I guess they are in the UK with the fragmentation of
the nuclear family and the non-partisipation in local community.

>Yes, I experience it most painfully in our local parish. If money is not
>involved, people do not want to get involved. Make something more
>attractive by increasing the monetary gains in it and the number of people
>who participate increases dramatically. Since this happens in a parish
>where Mammon ought not to be served, it is a great concern to me.

Have you read / listened to Alfie Kohn? He has some interesting thoughts
on the damage wrought the replacement of intrinsic motivation with
extrinsic motivation and I guess what you say indicates that this
replacement is contagious.

>In fact, I find your evolutionistic approach rather refreshing when
>compared to the algorithmic driven contributions which I have to work
>through. It is crazy how many people and in how many walks of life they
>want to live by recipes. When almost every student at university wants to
>learn by recipes, has it not become close to midnight?

Returning to Schumacher - he quotes someone else but I have lent the book
so do not have it at hand. Convergent solutions to divergent problems are
just plain dumb! Yup the clock may be chiming.

>I see that you are also thinking along the lines of "deep evolution" by
>seeing evolution not only in nature, but also in culture. Making use of
>Darwin, Schumacher and the Whananu in one contribution to make your point
>makes my point. I suspect that your awareness to the importance of
>wholeness increase almost weekly. To say that wholeness is $important$ to
>evolution is one thing, but to realise that it is $essential$ shifts one
>to a new level of consciousness.

I like the phrase deep evolution and I here by steal it! I also like the
phrase deep ecology rather than system thinking (stolen from Fritjof
Capra) I think it holds a lot more for me, but may be more confusing for
the lay person.

>When people at different levels of conciousness begin to communicate, it
>is then when human nature reveals itself authentically.

Somewhere around here is Pirsig's assertion that the individual is not the
pinnical of evolution, society is a higher level of evolution that the
individual and interlect is a higher level that society. Whilst Dawinism
and Neo-Darwinism would balk at this I think "deep-evolution" would say,
"well of course - that is obvious" - Is some of the issue that a lower
form of evolution - the individual - sought to kill off the higher level -
society? Or do we actualy have a number of manisfestations of society, or
interlect fighting for the survival of their genes and the right to breed?

>In my search for understanding "Why employ a person" I often look at
>nature rather than culture, trying to see if I can make sense out of
>symbiosis by depicting it in terms of employment. There are four kinds of
>symbiosis in nature: commensalism, inquilinism, mutualism and parasitism.
>I need not to spell out which kind of symbiosis is predominant among human
>organisations and how they are geared on employment.

Just tripping back to the evolution and that society is a higher level of
evolution that the individual. I keep bees. If I seek to look after them
as a hierachy of individuals I have to manage 1 queen (usually), 5000
drones and 50,000 workers per hive (plus unfortunatly many hundreds of
Varroa mites - man is soooooo cleaver!), currently a total compliment of 4
queens, 20,000 drones and 200,000 workers (ish) however if I concider that
none of these bees can live without the others, not even the queen I have
a differnt view. I have 4 societies to manage, 4 interdependent systems
the job is far more rewarding and easier.

Is employment an evolutionary stage? Most societies have passed through
tribes to employment via slavery, and I know all system thinkers will
agree, we have to see the employment unit as a whole, a hive, not a group
of people employed by another.

>When parasitism take control of an ecosystem, usually by some ignorant
>intervention by humans, the degradation of the ecosystem is a sad sight
>for sore eyes. Nature's answer to this kind of parasitism is to let it
>take its full course so that it INEVITABLY will destroy itself. When we
>look at human culture over a time span long enough to study the history
>(rise and fall) of civilisations, parasitism again takes the main toll.

>Perhaps I am wrong. If not, then we will soon have to bring a
>significant change about. Rampant parasitism is deadly.

Have you read the novel, "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn? (isbn 0-553-37540-7)
It takes an interesting look at the parasitism of the Earth by man. He
also raises the interesting suggestion that famine is not caused by over
population, over population is caused by famine! and as a well structured
systemic argument it worked for me.

Thanks for the thoughs.

R
        Roger.

---------------------------------oooOOOooo--------------------------------------
Roger C. Key mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk
Prescient - The Whole as One
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Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk>

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