Hi Rob,

Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
how do you better leverage existing, and naturally occurring "means" that result from some of the factors I mentioned in the post above? For example, if technology and interconnectedness are more frequent, is it possible to apply the same philosophical tenets of "by", "with", "through" to people engaged in inter-communications?
The short answer is yes and no, the long answer is much longer.

Basically, the form of the modern bureaucratic state is predicated on two things: control over access to scarce resources and control over information. Given the radical changes in productive and distributive technologies, the states have been loosing control over the access to resources part of their power base for years. The deployment of interactive communicative media exemplified by the 'Net, cell phones, IM systems, etc. has pretty much smashed their second power base.

This leaves them with a "brute force" approach to maintaining power, and that can be economic (e.g. government spending and manipulation of markets), ideological (i.e. trying to control the symbol system rather than the means of communication), or overt force. The problem is both perceptual and ideological. On the perceptual level, how many people actually "trust" politicians and bureaucrats to be working for them? On the ideological level, what individual "good" does the state provide to its citizens and how much actual power does it have to do so?

Let me toss some of his in an historical context. 100 years ago, most people in Canada and the US were pretty blase about their governments - they didn't "get in your face" too much and, I suspect, that Joe Public was quite happy with a minimalist government were most social services were provided by "intermediate organizations" (ref to Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society, 2nd edition in the preface). Governments were, on the whole, viewed as a necessary component of maintaining general order and keeping the social system running by making sure people "played by the rules" (hooray for the Scottish Enlightenment ).

After the Collapse in '29, the state moved more and more to replace these intermediate structures in the provision of social services - basically, they were "buying" public support while, at the same time, creating public dependencies (think Rome in the late Republic). Increasingly, the State in the West as a whole worked its way more and more into the lives of individuals gaining power and control by appearing to be a "fair broker" for scarce resources and, also, by indirectly (or directly) controlling information media. In part, actually a large part, this was because of a shift towards centralized broadcast media technologies (Paul Levinson's The Soft Edge does a great job of detailing this shift). And, as long as things were generally perceived as "okay", people accepted that.

Now, what does this have to do with "by", "with" and "through"? Simple, the modern bureaucratic state is based on a very specific form of social relation: it's a modification of the Authority Ranking form (cf Alap P. Fiske on Human Sociality). The "social contract" or, rather, the structure of the social contract for this social form is based on the right to "command" held by the State and the right to receive "benefits" held by the people - in its extreme form, we get the "Nanny State". Part of the effect of this is a sub-conscious assumption about technique - the "by", "with" and "through" that you talk about. In its simplest form, it frequently takes the expression of "The Government needs to DO something!" (often said in a whiny voice ). When enough people say things like that, politicians listen and the pressure to "DO" something is immense, even if what they do is idiotic.

The problem with "doing" something is that it's form is predicated on the assumed technique, so when a modern bureaucratic state "does" something, it is always in a manner that follows that technique. Before about 1985 or so, that technique mandated some new government regulation or agency, while after that it could be either an new regulation or agency or hiring private organizations to fulfill the perceived need (it was actually a rather slow shift in frequency distribution between the two options from about the end of 1968 when the bubble burst to today).

Now, both of these assumed techniques are "adaptive" for bureaucratic organizations: the first extends the bureaucracy, while the second extends their resource base while, at the same time, giving them a whipping boy if the effort fails. What is not adaptive for bureaucratic organizations is the technique that underlies and informs the primary social relationship inherent in highly interactive technologies: reciprocity.

Let me expand on this a bit. If we look at the job search situation in North America for the past 40 years, we can see that organizations used the techniques of bureaucracy to hire people (i.e. increasing regulation and standardization and outsourcing of hirings). There are very good reasons why this happened, but I won't get into them here (I've written them up elsewhere). What happened was that individuals got increasingly frustrated with these two techniques and learned how to bypass them using a third technique - "networking" (BTW, the same thing happened on the other side). As a technique, networking is based on information reciprocity and information sharing. "Power" in this technique derives from the provision of information and the provision of a community "space" for information exchange. You can imagine how this was speeded up with the deployment of the interactive 'Net technologies .

Once we move into the current world of high interactivity, we have a real problem for many bureaucrats as bureaucrats (not as individuals): "power" as information, flows freely between members of the populace without bureaucratic control over any of it. Needless to say, this is not a technique that is adaptive for bureaucratic organizations. This tends to lead to an increasing perception that first, they are not as efficient as the networking system and, later, they are a parasitic drain on the social system. It's that "everyday life" effect - if the Government can only help me find a crap job and it takes them 50 weeks to do so, and I can get a good job in 5 weeks using my network contacts, which do you think I am going to use and what technique will I place my trust in?

This "everyday life" effect has a spreading effect out into their areas of lived experience as well. If, for example, I need ideas and information fast will I use the bureaucracy or will I use my network? The more I bypass bureaucratic technique, the more likely I am to bypass or discount things associated with it. Which brings me to your next comment...

Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
but by and large I think there is room to create a narrative or policy in which our actions fall within the narrative - we just need to be very clear about our narrative, and we need to be engaged in strategic (inter) communications.

In my view this can occur by more leaders (uniformed, government civilian, religious, academic and private sector) being more engaged with both each other, and the general public.
One of the properties of an information reciprocity system is "trust" in the validity of the information (and the person providing it), including statements about the limits of that information. Part of this is, as you note, combining action with story.

The question of "leaders" is an interesting one. At present, I would tend to agree with you about increased engagement. At the same time, many of these leaders are "leaders" solely by virtue of offices held within a bureaucratic system, so the level of "trust" in the individual and the information they provide is often related to the level of trust in the organization they represent. With the rise in interactivity, we are also seeing a concomitant rise in "information leaders" (for want of a better term) who operate outside of formal bureaucratic organizations. A really good example of this is in the open source software community. This means that, in the interactive environment, you have differing types of "leaders" operating based on differing assumptions of technique, which brings us to

Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
Certainly there are also the more accepted and very important components of "by, with, through" as they relate to BPC, but to build capacity (and in some cases capability ) in our available means commensurate to the scale and scope of the "end", and means that help us put into action our desired, or optimal "ways", we need to explore how the enemy is leveraging existing means, and in some cases tempting us to use our own weight/strengths against ourselves (I've heard it described as "cultural judo"). Does that make sense?
Yup, it does make sense. One of the key ways that our opponents are practicing cultural judo is by pointing to the problems in everyday lived experience as they are being articulated in our own societies. They are leveraging a reciprocity technique against us by supporting the many narratives that oppose the bureaucratic techniques (e.g. globalization = job loss, etc.), and there is not really much "trust" at home in the bureaucratic narratives.

Anyway, I did tell you it would be a long answer .

Marc