The Machine

every now and then something happens which reminds me of the difficulty of dealing with "the machine", and how being part of the machine turns nice people into ... well ... machines themselves.

If you've ever read The "BIOLOGY OF COGNITION" by Humberto R. Maturana you might be more comfortable with the idea that evry organisation is perhaps also a kind of living thing, an organizational organism.

Since the organism does not really exist (only its rules and governance policies), we tend to see only the people themselves who form the substance of the machine. Yet these people (while in their roles, following the rules which are its stuff) are not only doing the work of the algorithm that defines The Machine they are also giving it an ability to interact with the world (our world) and function.

Normally people are oblivious of this fact, but occasionally "things happen" which bring it to your attention. You might have had a clerical error in an accounting system in a large organisation or had a moderator remove your post from a list. If you don't think of it in these terms its easy to get confused and think that some person is causing you trouble. After all, we're all people, we're used to dealing with people, and its a person we see who is representing the organization. A good example of this is brought up in the documentary "the Corporation" (if you have not seen it I recommend it).

A classic example of this is Terry Gilliams movie "Brazil", in which the 'hero' finds himself fighting against people who are just regular policemen and civil servants carrying out their duty dispassionately, and unaware of why it is that anything is wrong.

So when problems occur, the people who are parts of the machine appear to take a contrary stance to another person. Their personal reactions cause them to feel uneasy in being contrary to another person (whom they often don't know) and so they react defensively by "sticking to the rules" (which compounds the situation).

Conciliation and compassion go by the way and we find that previously smiling neighbours can become our hated enemy. At times like this its hard to maintain composure and not feel something against that person who (now) represents the organizational organism and not just a person we know.

The temptation to "rage against the machine" is high. But just as the officials in Brazil aren't guilty of torturing an innocent man ("I got the wrong man delivered to me as the right man ..."), you have to remember that the representatives of the organizational organism are also bound by their association with it, and can be duly punished b it if they don't follow the rules. The reverse however is not true, we as humans have no way to send any message to the machine by punishing it, for it can't feel or perceive that. All we can do is perhaps reprogram the machine (which is much harder than it sounds).

I believe that the root of the problem is that the organisational organizations need to learn how to structure themselves to allow their people to be people and perhaps we'll get along better.

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PS: I just found (March 2018) that a quote from a book I read many years ago may have indeed spawned this theory:

“A government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back.”

– Ben Caxton (Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land)

Same is true of sufficiently large corporations. They are all living machines just running a program (their corporate system) like a cell runs the program of its biology. Further reading on that topic in my article Its life Jim but now as we know it.