in case you haven't seen it, the third vignette strongly reminds me of the section of The Gervais Principle talking about group status legibility:
"Andy doesn’t belong, and it frustrates him to the point that he punches holes in walls. He can’t get into the Finer Things Club (a lunch group comprising Pam, Oscar and Toby, devoted to occasional elitist indulgences) despite his best efforts, while Jim can drift in without even trying. Andy’s life is about joining clubs. And Marx provides the core idea we need in his famous line, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”
There is a deep truth here. Social clubs of any sort divide the world into an us and a them. We are better than them. Any prospective new member who could raise the average prestige of a club is by definition somebody who is too good for that club.
So how do social groups form at all, given Marx’s paradox? The answer lies in the idea of status illegibility, the fuzziness of the status of a member of any social group. This is governed by what I will call Marx’s laws of status illegibility.
Marx’s First Law of Status Illegibility: the illegibility of the status of any member of a group is proportional to his/her distance from the edges of the group.
Marx’s Second Law of Status Illegibility: the stability of the group membership of any member is proportional to the illegibility of his/her status.
So the status of anyone who is not the alpha or the omega, is necessarily fuzzy (and yes, it is related to James Scott’s idea of legibility in Seeing Like a State, but never mind that).
Read the laws carefully. This is a tricky concept. The laws imply that in a group of ten people it is much easier, both for insiders and outsiders, to identify numbers 1 or 10 (alpha and omega) than it is to identify number 4 unambiguously. They also imply that alpha and omega are weakly attached to the group, while the obscure middle is stably attached (the two-way attraction/repulsion expected-value math is straightforward; work it out)."
This story does well to highlight the complexities of social dynamics and the impact they can have on individuals. It's unfortunate that the characters in these situations were faced with challenges related to social expectations, vulnerability, and acceptance.
in case you haven't seen it, the third vignette strongly reminds me of the section of The Gervais Principle talking about group status legibility:
"Andy doesn’t belong, and it frustrates him to the point that he punches holes in walls. He can’t get into the Finer Things Club (a lunch group comprising Pam, Oscar and Toby, devoted to occasional elitist indulgences) despite his best efforts, while Jim can drift in without even trying. Andy’s life is about joining clubs. And Marx provides the core idea we need in his famous line, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”
There is a deep truth here. Social clubs of any sort divide the world into an us and a them. We are better than them. Any prospective new member who could raise the average prestige of a club is by definition somebody who is too good for that club.
So how do social groups form at all, given Marx’s paradox? The answer lies in the idea of status illegibility, the fuzziness of the status of a member of any social group. This is governed by what I will call Marx’s laws of status illegibility.
Marx’s First Law of Status Illegibility: the illegibility of the status of any member of a group is proportional to his/her distance from the edges of the group.
Marx’s Second Law of Status Illegibility: the stability of the group membership of any member is proportional to the illegibility of his/her status.
So the status of anyone who is not the alpha or the omega, is necessarily fuzzy (and yes, it is related to James Scott’s idea of legibility in Seeing Like a State, but never mind that).
Read the laws carefully. This is a tricky concept. The laws imply that in a group of ten people it is much easier, both for insiders and outsiders, to identify numbers 1 or 10 (alpha and omega) than it is to identify number 4 unambiguously. They also imply that alpha and omega are weakly attached to the group, while the obscure middle is stably attached (the two-way attraction/repulsion expected-value math is straightforward; work it out)."
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/10/14/the-gervais-principle-iv-wonderful-human-beings/
This story does well to highlight the complexities of social dynamics and the impact they can have on individuals. It's unfortunate that the characters in these situations were faced with challenges related to social expectations, vulnerability, and acceptance.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥💀💀💀 more, MORE
so did it work
sitting in a circle always works. it's antihierarchical
may all beings
i like this kind of writing from you
you’re on fire