Structure

Blech. I feel like shooting myself in the face.

So, in one of my earlier posts of the year, I said that I would be writing a short piece of something every day and posting it up on my scribble blog. And I felt like writing something a little more substantial today, so something along the lines of writing for 30 minutes from a prompt, way up from the usual 10--12 minutes that I use, while using WriteThis.

I was almost done when the timer went off, and I was typing a word with the `n' character, which promptly told WriteThis to discard the text that I had in the text box. And so, I lost a 30 minute piece of writing. Since WriteThis doesn't have any form of back-up mechanism, and I stupidly did not use a safety copy-to-clipboard save, I've lost that story forever.

I was ready to rage quit. But instead, I just started on a ten minute piece to post as a means of fulfilling today's quota. Such a stupid action on my part. Bah.

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On slightly less trivial matters, I have been thinking a little on the whole notion of the corporate entity with respect to social, economic and political spheres. I don't think this concept is new, but it is an interesting perspective to think about nonetheless.

I think that at some fundamental level, structure is the basis of nature. The problem with ``optimising'' nature is the issue of choosing the right structure with which to organise the objects involved.

Starting at a not-so-low level, humans are multicellular organisms. Each of us have roughly the same archetypal structure that makes us human, something that anatomy can easily show us. Yet each cell that makes us up is individual and unique. Such combinations also cause each of us to be individual and unique in the way we behave and in the way we think.

But on an even more macroscopic level, we organise ourselves according to structures as well. Socially we organise ourselves into groups of families, clans, villages, towns, cities, countries. Economically we organise ourselves as sole proprietorships, partnerships, small/medium enterprises, corporations, conglomerations, consortia, trade blocs. Politically we organise ourselves as cells, sects, races, councils, parties, strategic blocs, nations.

There is but one major difference: unlike cells, we can simultaneously be a part of multiple such structures across the three different categories of structures. If there is anything that separates the artificiality of separating artificial from natural, I think this would be the best candidate.

It was once the case thta the three different categories were treated as one. Within a single localised structure of say a village, the social, economic and possibly political groups are one and the same. But as we increase the number of people and increase the scope in which we allow ourselves to travel (both metaphorical and literal), we find that such homogeneity is no longer common. For example, someone may be a staunch ally of the United States (political group), be a part of the Mitsubishi corporation (economic group) and yet be a devout wife in a biracial family (social group). This is a natural outcome from having increased globalisation. Ideas and information are intangible but infinitely reproducible goods, and once a good idea or good piece of information ``escapes'', they tend to reproduce rather quickly and almost without limit.

The problems of the world come about when the membership of each of these groups start clashing. With a cell in a body, it is obvious that it belongs to the body and therefore its loyalty stays with the body. But what about people who belong to different groups across the social, economic and political spheres? What should they do if one or more ideals from their various groups suddenly clash? Who will they side? Who should they side? These are not readily apparent.

In the old days, loyalty was easy---you are loyal to your country, or more specifically, you are most loyal to things that are in close proximity to you. Thus the whole notion of nationalist pride, and calls of defending one's home and all the other brave words that many a warrior had shouted out in the past. But with multi-national corporations being the norm these days, such loyalty becomes murky, since physical location is no longer the determining factor, but ideological alignment is. Should one be loyal to one's country if one discovers that the entity that gives them the most benefits is the corporation that they are associated with? What about one's loyalty to one's country and corporation under the influence of one's religion?

I don't have an answer to the question that I have so posed, but it will be an interesting line of thought to consider with respect to the way the world works. Maybe I might have something new to contribute on this some time in the future as and when I sort out my thoughts on the matter.