In LO21266 Maggi Linington wrote:
>> Surely if the individuals within that aggregate have a common goal
>> then the aggregate as such can do things. By their very nature
>> marriages and families are groups that can be effective because they
>> are "united" i.e. are committed, have common goals etc.
>> Theoretically from a christian point of view, in a marriage the "two
>> become one flesh", so is it an aggregate?
In LO21283 Robert Bacal commented:
>I hope Mr. Nichols will respond to both my post and yours. I'm not sure
>how completely accurate your characterization of families as "united" is
>in real life though.
I'll respond to both posts. For now, however, let me say that I believe a
group of people can indeed have a common goal, even if the degree of
commitment to that goal varies among the members of the group. Indeed, to
some extent, it is shared goals (or at least the commitment to work toward
some publicly held or articulated goal) that accounts for much of what I
call "collective human endeavor." However, saying something like "Company
X's goal is to increase market share by Y%" doesn't necessarily mean that
increasing market share by Y% is a goal shared by all, most or even many
members of Company X. Instead, it is more likely to mean that someone,
probably high up in Company X's hierarchy, has set that goal for others to
attain.
Maggi continues...
>> I think the ability of a group to "do things" would depend on the
>> characteristics of that group. Commitment to the common goal being
>> one of the highest. This is possibly why mission statements and
>> visions have become so popular - to try and make a cohesive unit of
>> a large number of people. Is not the US declaration of independence
>> is basically a national mission statement??
Robert replies...
>This makes sense to me until I match it against my understanding of the
>world, which tells me that there it is rare to find "real" commitment to a
>common goal except in the abstract. So, for example, we could find pretty
>much universal commitment to stopping genocide as a principle, but the
>meaning of that "commitment" would vary considerably.
I think my previous comments apply.
>So is the U.S. united, or not? And if not, does that mean that we can't
>speak of this organization (the U.S.) as "doing anything"? I don't know!
>
>That seems to follow if we say that aggregates or organizations don't
>actually do things, people do.
A case in point is the activity in Yugoslavia. The press is full of talk
about NATO doing this and that. Yet, a closer look suggests that certain
segments of NATO's member nations are doing things. On the part of the
United States, for instance, it seems to me that President Clinton is
authorizing certain actions on the part of selected military units, the
members of those units are carrying out the authorized actions, and many,
most or all the members of Congress (explicitly or implicitly) are
sanctioning these actions. The United States isn't doing anything.
Neither is NATO. "NATO" is, in this context, simply the name of an
organization of nations. NATO isn't bombing Yugoslavia and neither is the
United States. Lieutenant Smith and Commander Jones and Warrant Officer
Williams are bombing the city of Belgrade or selected targets in Serbia or
whatever, but no abstract entity is doing a darn thing.
Maggi observes...
>> I would suggest that "healthy" small groups (marriage; family
>> -departments?sections?) have the ability to "do things" while large
>> groups have too many individuals and don't - but the smaller groups
>> within the large do!!
Robert replies...
>But things still get done. In both situations things get done so who is
>doing them? In one instance the organization? In the other people?
>
>I can't make sense of these distinctions.
I assume Robert means that he can't make sense of the distinctions between
large groups as not doing things and small groups as doing things. Neither
can I. My point was and is that abstract entities don't engage in action;
people do.
If a husband and wife do something, it is the husband and wife who do it,
not "the team" or "the marriage" or "the family." These are shorthand
descriptions for groups of people and it is the members of the group who do
things, not the group, whether the group consists of two or 20 or 200 or
2000 or 200,000,000.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
Distance Consulting
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
nickols@worldnet.att.net
(609) 490-0095
--Fred Nickols <nickols@worldnet.att.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>