My situation, in which I am - to put it in a legal way - in breach of the agreed terms of brethren membership, is one which they are obliged to deal with. In times past, the course of action was well-defined: specific offences had known penalties, and once the facts were known, the case was essentially solved. Now, with the retrospective adjustment of the rules, the emphasis is more on the person and less on the offence. The question to ask is "what can be done to get this person happily back in line?"
So, as that is a tall order in my case, the methods and personnel shift around me. As I've said before, that's kind of unsettling.
My question is whether that is deliberate, a machiavellian ploy that somebody has decided is the most likely to result in success for those who wish me to stay. The cynical answer would be "yes", but it doesn't feel that way.
To digress a little, I have often found it helpful to think of the brethren group as a single organism. Looking at it that way, and ignoring the individuals, gives a clearer view of some of the actions. An organism's main aim is its own survival. It will seek to order its circumstances so as to thrive, it will modify its behaviour to suit the circumstances, and it will react if threatened. That may be rational, it may be instinctive, or it may be learned behaviour. Observation of the brethren over time will show this pragmatic adaptation to environment in action, and some find that very willingness to change somewhat disturbing.
In the same way that a hive of bees can be considered to be a single creature of more than usually separated components, so I think the brethren's actions make more sense seen as the result of collective intelligence rather than the masterplan of certain individuals. Obviously there are instructions from individuals, and the overall process is managed and guided, but in my opinion the more managed changes are the least successful. Where there are many individuals with a common aim, but free to act as they see best, that aim is more effectively reached. It's not unlike Adam Smith's "invisible hand".
By whatever means, the brethren seem to have hit on a very effective combination of authority and collective experimental method, with an unusually strong common focus. In that sense it isn't surprising that it remains successful.
And in my case?
I think there are many people who wish me to stay among the brethren, and they all have different ideas about how to accomplish that. If somebody is not effective, somebody else has a go. It's not sinister, it's not deliberately manipulative, it's just what happens when a group of people are trying to achieve the same thing. I think they're mistaken, but I'm quite touched by their efforts to do what they are sure is best for me.
3 comments:
your observations, dear survivor, are as usual perspicacious.I'm reminded of the recent research which has shown that the way schools of fish uncannily move as one away from predators is not due to a clever form of unseen communication which we have been unable to detect but simply to each adjacent fish responding to the next, influenced in the first place by the self preserving behaviour of an individual or two. I for one don't think that the controlling that goes on in EB is machiavellian, I think it is one particular manifestation of ordinary human group behaviour.I find it completely understandable, survivor, that your brethren family would be turning every trick to try to keep you, for no other reason than that you are widely loved.
"I have often found it helpful to think of the brethren group as a single organism. Looking at it that way, and ignoring the individuals, gives a clearer view of some of the actions. An organism's main aim is its own survival. It will seek to order its circumstances so as to thrive..."
The Brethren as prime examples of Darwinian theory! Bang on, but highly ironic!
Though I'm not entirely convinced that the Sydney-based inner circle haven't read, digested, and further developed the principles enunciated in "The Prince".
I think many churches and sects have been torn between two alternative survival strategies. Either, on the one hand, you are very evangelical, and engage with outsiders a lot, and attract them to join you, which runs the risk that they might attract you instead, or else, on the other hand, you become inward looking and cut off links with outsiders, build barriers that make it difficult or painful to leave, and tell everyone to breed like bunny rabbits.
Both strategies can work, but a compromise between the two, as in the mainstream churches, seems much less successful, if success can be judged by membership trends.
If your teachings and practices are attractive to most Christians or would-be Christians, the evangelical approach is likely to work. If not, then an iron curtain may be the only way for the organisation to survive.
Like Survivor, I find it difficult to decide to what extent this survival strategy originated by (a) mutation and natural selection, or (b) by conscious planning or (c) by learning from other closed sects.
The concept of collective intelligence is explored quite brilliantly by Douglas Hofstadter in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach. See, for example, the chapter on Aunt Hill.
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