High Culture? WTF? Part Four

XVI

To understand the symbiosis of the Corporation and University, we need to give Culture a more precise definition, and also spell out the term aristocratic culture and its relation to wisdom, which we will do in Part Five. For now, however, a word on Culture.

To repeat somewhat differently what we said earlier, Human Behavior may be seen from two aspects, or it can be understood as a general category subsuming two further categories. One aspect or category is Culture, the other is Social Institutions.

If for the terms Culture and Institutions we substitute the terms Directions and Performance, respectively, it becomes reasonably easy to discover what we’re talking about.

The most obvious kind of directions is language. Language can not say what the world really is, it can only tell us how to find something, provided we have been trained to respond in an appropriate* manner to the directions - that is, to find what we are told to find. But language is merely the most obvious kind of directions. The world is filled with innumerable kinds of directions, and most of those directions are nonverbal.

*Appropriate in this case means appropriate in the judgement of the culture at any given time. The same use of the word appropriate holds for institutions and individuals.

A tool, for example, is a set of directions for how to grasp it and what to do with it. But like all sets of directions, it is inadequate.

It needs supplementing by further directions; that is, the individual needs to be trained to respond appropriately to the directions the tool gives, just as they need training to respond appropriately to the directions of language.

This supplementary training is all the more necessary because any configuration (including words) can be used to provide a great variety of directions. The universal characteristic of language is polysemy, or multiple meanings of the same word.

Innovation, more than anything else, is the generation of a deviant or inappropriate response - inappropriate, that is, judged by current standards. If such a response turns out to be useful and worth social validation, then it is called a creative response.

If for whatever reason it is not called a creative response, it is socially discarded by being labeled an error. We’ll return to another important function of directions in Part Five, but for now, let’s look at the character of performance or institutions.

XVII

An institution is a persistent pattern of interaction. This is true even of the private performance of an individual (which is why the quality of self-awareness is so important to us here at PRC).

Insofar as the individual gives themselves directions which they can then perform, they are a social institution. The process is no different from giving directions to somebody else. What we call consciousness amounts merely to learning the ability to give oneself self-generated directions. It is the internalization of directions first given by whoever is rearing the infant. Of course, this speaks to the importance of how parents treat their children.

The institutional interaction with oneself, therefore, is no different from the institutional interaction with another.

Of institutions there are five kinds, which are exhaustive and interdependent: Teaching-Learning Institutions, Value Institutions, Economic Institutions, Government Institutions and Idea Institutions.* The crucial kind for this entry is the Economic.

*Idea Institutions are the Arts & Sciences at any level that operate independently from more traditional Teaching-Learning Institutions. Anything from research institutes to think tanks, or from avant-garde to folk art, and even independent entities such as PRC International. The point is, such institutions offer what might best be categorized as special knowledges that may very well be useful to the larger culture and often are. For instance, good luck finding - anywhere - what PRC has to offer. Though no one would doubt for a moment that what we have to offer is extraordinarily useful.

The Economic Institution exists to provide goods and services and solve the problems involved in such activity. Such institutions, for reasons I will explain later, are invariably hierarchically structured and must be. They are characterized by two kinds of tension for the individual: the vertical tensions of exercising and challenging authority, that is, ambition: and the horizontal tensions - among peer groups at any hierarchical level - of rivalry and acceptance. The success of the individual in an institution depends on their ability to handle these tensions.

Such handling is learned and facilitated by two other kinds of institutions. One is a teaching-learning institution, or in this case a para-economic institution, the prime example being the family.

On the other side of the economic institution are value institutions, or relief institutions, or clubs. These are either hierarchically structured, so that the individual is relieved of the tensions of peer relationships, or they are horizontal in structure, so that the individual is relieved of vertical tensions.

It’s interesting and highly instructive that all visions of the good society are either hierarchical or horizontal (egalitarian). But even more interesting that even egalitarian societies have an inner group that makes the economic and other decisions for each of their institutions. Thereby making egalitarian - "egalitarian."

XVIII

The necessity for the hierarchical structure of economic institutions arises from the nature of culture, or directions.

This may be understood from two points of view.

1. Explanation

2. Power

Explanation proceeds by an Explanatory Regress.

We’ll give an illustration of this with a quick Q & A.

Q: Why are there stones in this pasture different from the rock outcroppings?

A: Because a glacier deposited them there.

Q: Why did the glacier happen?

A: Because of changes in the earth’s meteorological system.

Q: Why are there changes in the earth’s meteorological system?

A: My, aren’t you the curious one. Well, if you must know, because of the character of the solar system.

Q: Why does the solar system have such a character?

A: Ah, er, um. Well, at one stage in the development of science, the answer was, because God willed it so. In this case the word God merely terminates the regress, which could go on forever.

Q: Do you believe in God?

A: I believe in terminating Explanatory Regresses.

Q: What's the difference?

A: None. Now, can we get on with it?

The important point here is that Explanation proceeds by subsuming less explanatory or more exemplary sentences.

The further along a regress an explanatory statement is, the more exemplary statements it can subsume, but also the less precise directions it gives. An explanatory regress is constructed not merely by simple subsumption, but by reconciling apparently incoherent statements or by rejecting a statement in favor of another parallel statement that is incoherent with it.

Now the interesting thing about explanatory regresses is that they are hierarchical in structure, and therefore have the same structure as economic institutions (and, in fact, all institutions).

The reason is not difficult to find. Because of polysemy, the fact that two or more responses to any direction are possible, a subsuming direction is necessary to eliminate inappropriate and divergent responses. But subsuming statements do not come into existence all by themselves. They are uttered by human beings.

Same goes for incoherent or rival statements. So it is not rivalry between incoherent statements that a subsuming human being resolves, but rivalry between human beings whose responsive statements to the same stimulus situation are divergent and incoherent. Whenever two human beings are interacting, dominance and submission pass back and forth more easily.

But when three are interacting, dominance is more rapidly stabilized on one of the three and submission on the other two.

The nature of language, of directions, of culture, is such that decision making involves interactional subsumption, or stabilized dominance and submission, in other words, hierarchy. You can no more change the hierarchical direction and structure of Explanation than you can change the direction and structure of the human body (though the thought does have its charms).

In passing I can’t help but share from my own experience that I have yet to meet a single person who values egalitarian systems who can explain any of this - at all. Nor have I met anyone who values hierarchy who can explain hierarchy itself adequately, like I just did, with the help of Peckham, of course.*

*Unfortunately, almost no one knows his name, let alone what an extraordinarily valuable resource his work is for anyone interested in understanding The Irreducibles and Social Management.

This is another way of saying that neither one can explain what it is they believe in and claim to have dedicated their lives to. The reason for this is that neither one knows much about explanation and behavior. And now we’re back to the value of and justification for PRC. Because that’s exactly why we’re here.

We're here not to praise hierarchy or egalitarianism, but to understand them, how they work and how we can use them.

In any event, all efforts since the 19th century and continuing till today, to assert that economic institutions can be egalitarian are but another instance of what has happened so often throughout Western history. At a time of severe cultural crisis, like now, an effort is made to impose the organizational pattern of egalitarian relief institutions on economic institutions. Such an effort is not a solution to the cultural crisis but merely a symptom of such crisis.

The structure of explanation, then, is identical with the structure of our social institutions, and both are capable of indefinite regress, depending upon the complexity of the situation with which the explanation or the institution is attempting to deal and on the amount and kinds of information available.

What’s this have to do with anything?

Well, during the 20th century the Corporation became a far more efficient information-processing institution than the Government ever was. The result? The Corporation simply and easily outmoded and transcended the Nation-State. And now we’re back to the second of the two points of view needed to understand the structure of economic institutions and, in fact, of all institutions.

XIX

As the hierarchical stabilization of three-member interactional situations indicates, dominance or Power is the stabilizing factor.

The reason for this again lies in language and other directions.

It is impossible to disprove a statement to someone who does not accept your methods of disproof.

It is a sad fact of human existence, and one that explains much of human history, that the only way to get rid of a proposition one disapproves of is to kill those who hold it.

This is the basic reason in culture itself for the fact that social organization depends upon naked power. Furthermore, the higher the level of hierarchy, the greater the necessity for naked power, because, as we have seen, the higher the level of explanation, or the farther from the real world the explanatory regress, the more exemplary statements or information can be included but the less precise the directions for performance. To put it another way, the higher the level of explanatory and hierarchical regress, the wider the range of situations in which the directions can be used, and therefore the less precise the directions.

This explains, for example, the difference in military organization between strategy and tactics. Strategy consists in general directions, given appropriately enough by generals, but tactics, the directions for the execution of the mission on the fighting front, are left up to captains and corporals. Thus a corporation may assign a salesman a territory as part of its sales strategy, but the tactics of selling are left up to the salesman. If they fail, power is exerted and they are either retrained or dismissed.

Directions, as we have seen, need to be supplemented by additional directions. But, there is another kind of directions, an understanding of which will bring us back to the very subject of this entry - High Culture. Why?

Because that other kind of directions is absolutely essential for an understanding of High Culture and not just High Culture. So, to a discussion of that in Part Five, we shall turn. Until then!