Encounter: Jingle-raaj and Jungle-raaj.
Encounter: Jingle-raaj and Jungle-raaj.
Summary: There is the Black Lives Matter Movement sparked by murder. There is close-home Gangster-Encounter. And in some sense, all of us are involved in daily murders or encounters. At individual level. At inter-personal level. At inter-group level. And that is getting played out in heinous ways sometimes and we feel shocked. Thats because of our own blindspots and our own treadmills. Time for Justice 2.0
Discretion and Weaponization aren't strange bed-fellows. Some theorists in evolution, civilization, governance, organization structure and development and more would argue its need in society. And they would cite the inextricable need for going beyond process (the very "bureaucracy" that renders many a project ineffective or stalls innovation or "whatever it takes" scenarios). However, what one can surely argue is "is there an adaptive form of discretion and maladaptive forms of discretion?". How can one discern and depict that a civilization is moving towards more right forms of "discretion"? Questions are embedded in question and answers are embedded in an answer.
Where does discretion come from?
From etymology and origins, it comes from Latin "discemere" meaning "discernment"..."to discern"...to see beyond the obvious and rote and seize deeper context and purpose...and it comes from practices of "deepening one's reflection and insights". And it can be seen when people (leaders) talk from first principles, and engage in healthy argumentation and are able to demonstrate "explanatory depths of what they cite as few first statements". We hardly see this in leadership. If anything, we hear most people rattling "rhetoric" or "convention" or "popular jargon or phrase" or if their speech writers have given them a new "portmanteau" (a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others, for example brunch made from breakfast and lunch, or some new phrase to make them sound so "intelligent"...
Human Individual Functioning and Discretion
Who says we live in a three dimension universe? The last i checked i have five senses. And each sense gives me different data for different experience. And within each of these senses there are sub-dimension. The popular conversation and science talks about three dimension of space and time (which by the way are already been modified by some leading scientists of our times). And if we observe then each sense provides a different information...take food for example: you can see its color and smell its fragrance and taste its flavor and touch its texture and hear its smooth/crispness...five dimension of information already (and there are more deeper in food ...but that for another day).
As we get this information, and we also have self-appointed-compulsory-
If we are not being reflective, chances are we are committing "murder" of reality in some sense.And may be peddling "reptilian brain" or "tribal instincts". By "reifying" (or bringing to life) only some of the many possibilities of our human potential. Or by sheer unintentionally causing harm to our self in unknown ways in future.
Human Organizations and Hierarchy
Human organizations come in various shades. Family, friendship, reciprocal relationships (interaction or transaction), communal or groupish, and more. Pooling-Trading risks and rewards....implicit or explicit...with various currencies and not restricted to money. And then one find edge of one form of an organization interaction with another edge of another organization...example a member of a family interacting with a customer service rep from a company.
World over there are various experiments happening in order to question the role of "hierarchy"...Like "holacracy" or "teal" or "circles formats" or "sociocracy" or "deliberative democracy" or "blockchain democracy". These structures are being looked at for application in various environments, right from combat related roles (military and police) or market organizations or political structures or civic structures or sheer inter-personal spaces.
A key question that comes up is about "differential power" and "discretion" of the various roles/actors. What is "power"? Sometimes its "information", sometimes its "decision", sometimes its "opportunity or incentive distribution", sometimes its "adjudicating differences". These are being looked at as to how people use their "power" in an adaptive way (for civilization) rather than adaptive for their own self or their groups. How do human biases play a role in these? How do people weigh in past or similar experience in the "now" and be discreet or in "vivek"?
These matters have not been solved yet. But there is hope that there could be some better mechanism coming in the future.
Interpersonal Wicked problems and Weaponization
(((for part 3 and 4 of this please visit https://www.instagram.com/1947parttwo/ and look for the post on 30th September 2019)))
For two or more people to develop understanding of each other's states and intentions and roles and action, it requires a great great deal of practice. The popular default mode is "blind faith" or "blind detest" or "tribal allegiance" or "past heuristics".
Wicked problems are problems that when attempted to solve actually aggravate themselves or the solving actually aggravates something else. In my reflection of last eight years, through use of 2 by 2 grids, i have been astonished to the scale and complexity of human interactions and my own biases and limitations. In fact, "its easier to misunderstand than to understand"...and in some way the entropy principle applies in human interaction...human interactions are becoming more and more, complex and hence more reflection and or effort is required to maintain order (not going into disorder).
The complexity has increased because of "interpersonal subjectivity" led exchanges, co-emergence of "interconnectedness and interdependencies" with "atomization of tasks and sheer number of things and choices and interactions".
The challenge is that most leaders are busy "outsmarting" "outdoing" their selves or the others. And also by nature of their position, under constant watch and threat of displacement. Also the case that their rise has not been easy and bad-blood-free in most cases. And we see a demonstration of their choices and action in forms of "vengeance" or "pre-emptives".
And because they haven't been able to solve for inter-personal wicked problems for themselves and also structurally in organizations they have been or are in now, they end up using their "discretion" in hierarchy many times as weaponization for self-perpetuation and self-preservation.
Justice 2.0: Reimagining Judicial, Military, Police
 |
| published two years back |
Where we are coming from, where we are and where we want to go and how do we get there? These questions have been the bone of contention amongst individuals and groups. And a lot of it has been embroiled in "justice" or "fairness". However, various researchers have show the challenges around getting agreements on the reasons of justice (why) and conclusions of justice (what).
There have been not so public accounts of war veterans and police combat officers who have vouched for "weaponization". However, they sigh in hoplesslness of "systemic" nature of this. If one cites Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now and the statistics pointing to decline in violence, there are thinkers like Jamie Wheel who cite the "simmering frustation and violence potential" waiting to get erupted. Which is what Francis Fukuyama calls the "politics of resentment"...fanning sentiments of people who have been "left behind" or "discrimination".
While matters of military, judiciary and police are nation and state subjects, the lurking of potential of technology enabled violence, would mean that efforts need to be at the level of international, national and local.
Sometimes there is "weaponization". And sometimes there is "weaponization" of calling something as "weaponization" which may not be the case. However, our current human discourse is unable to parse them. There seems to be a lot of lack....of information, of language, of accountability, of room for failure and admission of it, and more.
There needs to be #SearchDialogueAction of an #Interdisciplinary nature to #Reimagine justice, military and police and its independence. There are efforts happening in forms of Police Equity in Berkeley University or Harvard's Law and Mind Sciences, and many more labs across the world looking at from the lens of political science, anthropology, neuroscience, AI, ethology and more. There are also various reforms pending in various countries towards some of these areas.
Metaphorical Vs Real
Yes, I agree. You may argue that i am stretching the argument. And then i would ask of myself and invite you for a healthy inquiry, as to "how do we develop discernment, connection and disconnection between events at one scale and form and context and its import in another scale and form and context". For sure, some of the imports of metaphorical explanation could be jarring or sheer "weaponization of argument". But my intention here is to highlight the fact that we are 7 bn+ humans on the planet. And our daily choices and decisions are acting "as if" subscribing to some values and actions. And these play out in strange manners. It is important to see and reflect the micro-action feedback-forwarding to macro-actions.
Individual Responsibility Vs Structural Change
I am not advocating that individuals are to be held responsible and they only have to reform. And i am also not saying that structural reforms or revolution is the only answer. The thing is that both are required and its application differs from individual to individual.
Depending on one's capacity and "threat-staving-priorities", one can initiate oneself into self-reflection and participating in some evolved group. In words of Yuval Harari, given the complexity of our various systems, it could be prudent to join discerning and evolved groups who look at creative and adaptive ways to solve global challenges or local challenges.
The simple test about groups is to see if the leaders are busy building "cult" and "doling out insights" rather than providing tools to think for yourself & are they enabling the build up of more leaders. You can read this in conjuction with another article written here http://blisstarang.blogspot.com/2020/04/you-are-being-drafted-into-war-you-dont.html
Where we are in 21st Century #ExponentialTech and #TightlyCoupled #InterdependentSystems?
9/11 required hijacking of a place and causing the devastation. In some sense, it has become cheaper now. By some estimates, in about USD 100,000 one can have an AI coupled with drone to blast off anything. And this could be to build communal riots or as a revenge or bring down stock market to buy on precipitous sell. There are many more technologies available to cause exponentially high damage today. Hence, we live in different times today...one where the possibility of a few people causing mass harm is far cheaper and easier.
This was about physical violence. There is the "public shame" violence or "reputational violence". It takes a few people to peddle wrong information about someone and destroy their reputation in no time. And if one is not have scenario planning and response mechanism, one can get caught off-guard. We are in a #PsychoSocialsavanna...there was a savanna that is said to have been our origins...we are in it again...a jungle...a mesh of psychological and social jungle. And our #InformationJunkDiets are destroying the #InformationEcology ... which means creating more and more confusion or withholding information or misinformation or disinformation....basically polluting the information system.
And participating as a citizen is no longer an option. Its a necessity.
The more one remains passive, the more these things have possibility of asserting and thus making it difficult for you or your future generation.
At Individual level, here and now, what can one INITIATE?
Ask yourself, in what way you have some powers more than others. How do you use them? How do you use your discretion in your teams or interactions? Do you have reflection built in for reviewing aspects of human interactions and how to curb the maladaptive use of biases or motivations? Can you start doing #DailyTinyAct to improve or enable or empower someone?
If we aren't doing these and are indulging in arm-chair commentary, the day is not far when the same "discretion" can be weaponized against you in the various inter-personal wicked problems that we are locked in our civilization at this juncture.
And if we aren't doing this, we shall constantly see more and more of "Jingle-raaj and Jungle-raaj"...
Comments
Post a Comment