Getting Together

WHEN PEOPLE GATHER TOGETHER and form organizations, the organizations themselves take on a life of their own, so to speak, somehow they become an individual themselves with a personality, and all. Undoubtedly many if not most people have noticed this, particularly in the white collar world where professional and other organizations are ubiquitous, and certainly in every other segment of society, people form groups, often organized hierarchies, sometimes not. Corporations have such obvious personalities that for over two hundred years we Americans, and every other country in the world, has been debating whether corporations are actually living, breathing human beings. You'd be surprised at the most widely agreed upon answers. Basically, ever since the Constitution was installed in the United States in 1787, corporations have been in court, arguing for their right to be granted the official social status as legal individuals". And, for the most part, they have won this right, to the extent that corporations have the same basic legal human rights as the rest of us do. There is a certain convenience to this economically, and it allows for a thriving, powerful, wealthy, corporate economy and political power base we have today. Today corporations own, control, and operate the United States of America, and we the people might wish to consider whether we might wish to change that, to put it mildly. I am not a fan of corporations and hierarchical organizations; never was a joiner. And, in truth, since I was in first grade I have not been too terribly fond of administrators and folks in authority in general. Oh well, that's just me, I guess. They somehow seem to always take on a personality malevolent to people. Deeply entrenched, complicated, huge bureaucracies are everybody's favorite. Mindless, soulless, heartless snaky things, they tend to control and rush people. Government, particularly government overseeing a vast socialistic web of social programs, like the United States government, tends to encourage such unpleasant organized hierarchies. So, we must blame both capitalism and social, both ends of the political spectrum for the unpleasant fact of large, mindless living entities called "organizations". To keep them simple and no larger than necessary, with a clearly defined purpose and clearly defined rules of conduct, and democratic distribution of power whenever possible, and we might be able to learn to live with our organizational selves.