Carman, I am so enjoying our dialogue and appreciate your posts here. The small details you add about your experience paints a picture of someone who already lives the experience of Partnership. I am looking forward to reading your post on “Organization as Theocracy.” These guiding metaphors really shape our realities, don’t they? Have a good week! Lisa
From Carman de voer:
Hi Lisa, Your compliment is both gracious and generous. It is such a privilege to share this sacred space. I love our ‘creative communion,’ if I may put it that way.
As I expected, your response to my post ignited a paroxysm of contemplation into which I was baptized while walking the Sea Wall today—(as an employee of the provincial government I am granted an extra day off every second weekend).
Actually, I experienced a wonderful synergy between the Sea Wall and your implied question, ‘What is it that prompts us to regard other people as objects?’ Or, to re-frame the question, ‘What is it that prevents us from regarding others as whole human beings?’
I expect to explore these issues when I hop off the hamster wheel this weekend (unfortunately, however, I will still be in the Iron Cage, according to Weber 🙂
When return I hope to create a new metaphor: “Organization as Theocracy”. As a ‘template of transmogrification’ I hope it will speak to the subject/object dichotomy ubiquitous in modern organizations.
Bye for now!
Hi Lisa,
I had fun originating the “theocracy” metaphor. Your question, ‘What are the dynamics that can lead us to imagine other people as objects?’ guided me throughout. As with all metaphors it both illuminates and obfuscates.
Organization As Theocracy
Theocracy: government by men claiming to know the will of God.
Etiology of Error
The Messianic [Christian] Scriptures are a record of rabbis disciplining rabbis. In-groups were those rabbis who accepted Jesus as Jewish Messiah; out-groups—rabbis who rejected Jesus as Jewish Messiah. “The world”—ancient Jewish society—was the arena of reclamation. All discipline was lateral –rabbi counseling rabbi–and only after the completion of the biblical canon became hierarchical [leader controlling “laity”].
Replacement Theology
In the ensuing centuries, an institution emerged calling itself “Christianity” borrowing concepts from the Jewish worldview and organic culture contained in the sacred scripts. Rather than leaders [rabbis] disciplining leaders and furnishing them lateral training, it conceived a learned group of [non-Jewish] men [clergy] communicating ‘higher’ learning to powerless men and women [laity].
In-groups became those who accepted the institutional interpretation of the Scriptures; out-groups became those who rejected such. The catholic [universal] leadership and institution became “the saved’’—“the world” became those outside of and [often] opposed to “the church.”
Protestant Ethic
A paradigm shift: from individual within the corporate to corporate within the individual.
Dimensions:
• Bi-polar partitioning of people into classes [“superior” and “subordinate”-“saved” and “unsaved”]
• Isolation
• Impersonality
• Systematic and detailed planning of activity
• Efficient and effective “good works”
• Motion economy with corresponding disdain for relaxation and “idleness”
• Time=money
• Patriarchy
• Wealth confirms divine favor
• “Spiritual” slavery to god
Implications for Organizations
The impersonal organization is exalted to divine status and becomes the unconscious projection of human needs and neuroses. Organization has a psychological profile: mission, vision, and values. It is feared and obeyed because “it” controls the material bases of life. Activity un-related to its “business” [idiosyncrasies, laughter, social interaction] is disloyalty to the deity. Object is supreme; subject is slight.
Management: Enacts the business [busy-ness] of the controlling entity. A priestly class “above” mediates between the “deity” and those “below” or “down” the hierarchy. These systematically plan the lives of “workers” to the last detail. Credentials, honor, status, and remuneration confirm their calling as a priestly aristocracy of labor.
Separation and secrecy [hence, ‘secretary’] sanctify them away from the potentially contaminating operatives. Workers are objects to be ‘reconciled’ to the deity [organization]. Management’s success is judged by melding the will of the organization and the will of workers. Obedience, submission and commitment are paramount.
Management Assumptions:
Non-managerial workers are in deficit [“sinners”]. Non-managerial workers exhibit the following characteristics:
• Dislike work and attempt to avoid it
• Have no ambition, want no responsibility
• Would rather follow than lead
• Are self-centered and therefore do not care about organizational goals
• Resist change
• Are gullible and not particularly intelligent
In fine, “workers” are “slaves of god” in that they experience a symbolic ritual of dishonor (social death) inflicted by both themselves and the enslaving organization. As slaves they are deprived of freedom of decision and action by means of force or enforced solidarity with a view to the utility of the enslaving organization. Self-manumission obtains when leaving an enslaving organization; slavery resumes when entering another. The brutal and brutalizing relationship is masked by a thin veneer of civility that is mitigated only by State “protection.”
The antagonism between “leaders” [shepherds] and “led” [sheep] can only be remedied by workers being “born from above” and “saved” [e.g., from unemployment]. Workers must “perform”—demonstrate unequivocal commitment [“everything not out of faith”—commitment—“is sin”] to the divine order—no matter how odious its dictates.
Servitude is insufficient–workers must repent of their own knowledge, repudiate their own identities, and adopt the new identity espoused by their “teachers.” As objects or instruments, workers must “demonstrate” complete and unequivocal submission [slavery] by surrendering to the higher power. In fine, they must “transform by making their minds over” [Romans 12:2] to prove to themselves what is the good and perfect will of the Power. The social pattern is re-enacted within each organization.
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