Life as a zoo

I learned a lot this week, by observing facets of life through different perspectives. People seem genuinely interested in doing things that give them some sense of control over a situation or action sphere. When they share knowledge from point of interest, people perk up and get excited sharing what they know. Civil discourse in civil society however is meant to posture - to work out acceptible positions to carry back to the groups that people represent. But nobody seems to represent anybody but themselves.

Current individual leadership of organizational groups are constricted by the goals and wills of the board of directors, which set the tasks and the missions. Generally this is where money talks louder than action. So while a ground swell effort of individuals that are willing to take action can be parlayed by successive organizations as a motivator to action, the governance often benefits by inaction, especially when it shares ideas of the leaders at the table of leaders across different social group bounds - this in itself becomes a different social group with the new limits, but the same boundary conditions.

Individuals like to hang out with similar individuals, who share interests, emotions and learning styles. Group leadership should feel obligated to find a means for those individuals to contribute in their own chosen patterns to the group effort, rather than have the group leaders choose the specifics and then cajole the membership to action. Most groups don't really carry the depth of true actors and the leadership fails to do much beyond sustaining fund-raising and propaganda on one side of one issue. Hierarchical structures continually add work for tracking effort and counting both money and performance goals, while missing the time value of the volunteer resource. And there always seems to be another group of individuals counterbalance with the opposite view-point, with a similar support structure. All to ensure that nothing progressive gets accomplished - within a backdrop of bread and circus.

Time keeps on slipping into the future. Perhaps we need to look at group theory and get back to working in small numbers, rather than en masse. Many small influentual groups with different ideas and approaches would be very much more fulfilling for individuals than either/or. There are alot more political animals than donkeys and elephants, but no system for novel individual expression. Time for a new zoo review.