Small Thinky - What we remember about institutions over time.

[silveradept]

Is there a word of phrase that indicates the situation of accidentally saying something that was offensive, but upon further examination, it also might be true? It's not merely a Freudian slip, revealing something about the author's thought processes, but that something that might turn out to have objective truth. Because I stepped very thoroughly in that one today, and I'm sorry about the offense I caused.

In a discussion with regard to the campaign to make people realize that Mormons are actually normal, sane people instead of polygamist nutjobs, I said the following:

"As with most religious things, people find out that the people in the institutions aren't usually the monsters the institutions themselves turn out to be."

I was pointedly reminded by the journal owner that it sounded like I had just called the entire membership of the LDS church monsters. Which was totally not what I was thinking at the point I wrote it. I was trying to affirm that the campaign idea was a good one - someone who thinks all Mormons are polygamist nutjobs has to reform their mental view when the friend they've had for years reminds or tells them that they're Mormon, too. People who believe Catholic priests are all pedophiles will have to adjust their idea when they meet one who isn't. So I walked that comment back - since I was dealing in perception when I wrote the original statement, I added that it should have been that people turn out to be different than what the institution is perceived to be. This is a true statement, and one much less offensive than the older one.

(Additionally, insulting the host in their house is an easy way to be shown the door unceremoniously. Since that was not my intent, apologies are needed.)

And then my self-flagellation mechanisms kicked in - since I hate to give offense unintentionally, and especially serious offense, I tend to analyze, and likely overanalyze, what I said. Perfect me, of course, could say exactly what he wanted to and not offend anyone. Imperfect me, however, has to deal with consequences and resolve to not do stuff like that again. (Yes, it's a bad think-loop - how can you stop yourself from unintentionally offending someone? Doesn't mean we won't try.)

This is the part where I may re-offend, or sound like I'm weaseling or otherwise trying to justify myself. It's totally not the case - this is just an insight that struck. I'm still sorry for saying the offensive thing when that was not what I meant.

And if I'm going to offend someone, it's going to be just about anyone who has faith in any institution, religious, secular, or otherwise. We're going for broader things. Because what I said above is true, not just for religion, but for every institution.

Call it Ozymandias's Second Principle: The longer institutions exist, the higher the probability is that they will do something monstrous.

It'll take more brilliant minds than mine to figure out the equation for the curve, though. The origins of the word indicate that monsters and monstrous things are there to warn people of something. (That would have been a cute dance to try to get out of apologizing, excepting for tha part where I'd hit myself for doing something like that.) And the longer an institution exists, the more likely it is to do something that will serve as a warning for others. Recently, the LDS church got heavily involved in Proposition 8, earning the institution derision from the opponents of the proposition - with the repeal currently underway, the church will join several other Christian institutions as being a place of "gays and lesbians not welcome". For some, that serves as a warning to stay away. The conservative movement that seems very interested in demonizing anyone not a WASP throws up monstrous things normally, like SB 1070. The Democratic Party and the Dixiecrats were monsters in the way they continued to advocate for segregation. Slave-owners, the government of the United States, the Inquisition, the pedophile priests, the sacking of the library at Alexandria, the persecution of Christians, the Jews, both in what happened to them in the Shoah and the killing and genocide they attempted in their own accounts when they took the land YHWH promised them, and the conquests, crusades, and wars fought across time and territory, using ever more destructive weapons, including atomic bombs. All of these things are monstrous and serve as warnings to all of us about why not to do them again or to do them differently so that lives are not lost and people are not killed.

The longer an institution lasts, the more likely it is that they will do something monstrous. Whether they are just following standard procedure at the time and later temporality finds their methods appalling and destructive, or they deliberately decide to do harm and people find out, or whether the winds of opinion shift on them so that they become the terrorists instead of the freedom fighters, institutions will always end up with at least one black mark on their record once they've been around for long enough. Corporations especially, considering the profit model is basically built upon being as monstrous as you can get away with. Strong belief systems can inspire their followers to act on the principles of the system - including the ones that say someone else is inferior and deserves to be treated with contempt or violence. (We are here to protect you. Do not trust the pusher robot.) Or an institution will get big enough that eventually a person who is a monster will do something big enough and the media will associate the person with the institution and the institution with the crime and make the institution the monster by linking what the institution did with what the person did.

Over time, those faults accrue, and get recorded into history, and passed on from generation to generation, kept as ammunition where needed, as reminders where wanted, and with enough time, the institution becomes a monster, the combination of all the bad memories given form. A warning to the future of all the things the past did that we want to remember. A monster capable of great cruelty and great compassion.

(Incidentally, if you wanted to know, Ozymandias's First Principle is entropy. All things, no matter how great, solidly built, famous, or otherwise, will eventually be destroyed and pass away.)

Comments

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with this, and I'll put it like this: the great temptation of institutions is to let their virtue - allowing superior collective judgment via specialization - to become their hideous vice - allowing abdication of moral responsibility by individuals, capable of moral judgment, to the institution itself, which is not capable of moral judgment. An institution is a collection of rules and that's pretty much it: the individual makes judgments, formed by those rules, but the institution itself cannot judge - it has no moral agency, and we enter into deep, deep hazards and temptations when we believe that institutions themselves - especially ones that have every incentive to be amoral, vicious predators (e.g. Goldman Sachs) - can exercise judgment. It doesn't even work for the freaking Catholic or Mormon Church, institutions founded on principles of judgment, that are explicitly there to guide moral judgment. The institution tempts us to release responsibility into a poorly defined ether - and such responsibilities virtually always go unmet, and produce suffering thereby.

[silveradept]

In some ways, though, that release of responsibility is what the institution is supposed to be - for corporations that one invests in, or religions to which one subscribes, there is not usually an insistence that each individual make decisions regarding that part of the company/religion - the clergy/CEO are supposed to be the ones making responsible decisions for the good of the institution, to continue it along the pathway that it was chartered for, be it profit or salvation.

I suspect this is where you remind me that CEOs and clergypeople are also individuals tasked with making moral judgment according to the rules of the institution, and thus your premise still holds.

So, to make sure I understand you correctly, the temptation of the institution is that a person that would normally make decisions for themselves is tempted into saying "It's someone else's problem." and then just blindly following whatever that Someone Else decides?