Template:M intro systems financialisation: Difference between revisions

[[David Graeber]]’s “''social'' indebtedness” — the nebulous set of cross-pollinating reciprocal favours we do to each other that both define our “community of interest” and bind it together, with a view that ''our debts to each other are never discharged'' — versus “''monetary'' [[indebtedness]]” — specific, delimited obligations that have a defined value, time cost and term, and whose price must be paid in full. (It is if course an irony that the very continued existence of a financial indebtedness depends on ongoing “social” indebtedness — exactly the sort of unmeasurable, ineffable trust relationships that financialisation would seek to eradicate with devices like the [[distributed ledger]] and permissionless [[Blockchain]])

 

In which JC reminds us of Robin Williams’ great scene in {{br|Dead Poets Society}} and invites us to, well, take it [[metaphor]]ically. [[Peotry]], right?

 

''There is no machine for judging commerce either''.

 

Any [[metrics]], balance sheet, [[org chart]], projection or discounted cashflow analysis — ''any'' [[formal]] accounting for the intensely human activity of doing business jettisons much of what is important about it. The [[map]] can never be more than a schematic. It cannot convey the grandeur — or the ''horror'' — of the [[territory]]. The jettisoning is part of the exercise: it is, itself to make a judgment about what is and is not important. It is to extract a [[signal]] from [[hubbub|noise]]. That signal is ''ad hoc'', imaginary, a creative work, and by no means exclusive to the hubbub: there are ''infinite'' array of signals we could take out of the hubbub; the ones we do are determined by our cultural fabric, which is made of all the decisions, signals, and institutions we have already built. This relativity terrifies “right thinking people”, but there is no way around it: it is best just to [[ignorance|ignore]] it.

 

In a world where every communication is tracked, kept, logged, stored and discoverable, where “[[what you see is all there is]]” we should not underestimate the perfidious power of ''[[ignore|ignoring]]'' things. The {{poh}} refers: the number of smoking gun emails that went unacknowledged, unresponded to, that left their recipient with the cloak of [[plausible deniability]] — I did not see it, I did not read it that way, ''I just don’t recall'' — could fill volumes.

 

The culture of fear in organisations leads to two kinds of ignorance: the canny will not respond on the record at all — any pretext for not doing so (an inappropriate tone, hyperbole, anger, however justifiable) — buttresses that decision. In a perfectly  [[passive aggressive]] organisation with an uneasy peace, the discontented are discouraged, on pain of censure, from even raising objections, whereupon no need for silence as a strategy even arises.

The plausible deniability afforded by silence therefore informs a ''culture'' of silence. It becomes an attribute of advancement — knowing where your off stump is; mastering the art of the ''judicious leave''.