Relationships in Interest Groups
Human relationships form networks of different kinds. Societies, professional groups and international institutions all include various kinds of relationships. Each one of these bonds are different from another. Individuals entering into interactions with one another follow the value-judgements that the individual has alone, first. Starting of as a one-self, human beings both shape and are shaped by the environment they are in. An individual brings her own perspective into matters while internalizing the externally present perspective. This is an ongoing process; and one which has infinitely more moments tied into the present moment.
Unreflexive attitudes form due to merely repeating the currently existing social patterns. Many objects -abstract and concrete- are social: the individual ‘relates’ to others around her as a human infant first. The first carer is followed by others in the process of socialization. When the individual goes through the socialization processes, the life perspective starts to reshape itself. In many cases, these relationships form constellations circling around certain professions. Means of making money vary from one profession to another, quite like the benefits which can be provided through these relationships. Financial gain is the most important outcome which relationships in interest groups seek to attain. This pursuit can be more or less conscious depending on the context and the persons entering these relationships. And the regulations around these relationships are varied too. In matters relating to employment, others are present as groups and as individuals. Just like employment law is part of a broader set of laws, so are the individuals a set of other individuals. Groups form themselves, sometimes, without proof decisions being taken in part of those who form these groups. different forms of law work together for addressing different spheres of life. While employment law addresses the norms defining the human interactions within labor relations, civil law addresses a more private area of the human life. All areas addressed by law are, more closely or remotely, parts of the individual and the collective life. Just like the individual relating to the rest of the society, so does different form of law interact with one another.
Talking helps the individual to express herself. Through expression, she brings the ideas she has in her own mind into a space open to the other members of a group. This group, following the conventional ideas of a linguistic community, are members of ‘one’ language community who have access to that first (original) articulation to start with. An articulation serves the purpose of making the self-thought available for reception in the communicative space. It then goes into the comprehensive sphere of the recipient. Not all linguistically articulated ideas are aimed for communication, though. Exclamations, for instance, or art-work never being opened up for consumption, are articulating without a communicative end.
Networks form among individuals within given social circumstances. Groups address the needs that the individuals have. Groups of different sizes and purposes have different forms of bonds constituting those groups. A romantic couple, for instance, is a group of two addressing different needs of the individuals forming that small group than a political party claiming to address the social needs. The latter has the scope of a broader society. A given political party should claim to ‘win’ the elections thanks to the prior knowledge of the right path for the well-being of many. While this happens, those who vote for that particular party form a group of their own. Based on the exclusions of the undesired ideas and the holders of those ideas, politics understood in the conventional sense functions on this identity forming electoral sense. The ideal type of democracy, I maintain, must be there to remind both the citizens and the politicians of the struggle for better ideas.
Entering into a relationship with another person, if it is based on a conscious choice, is an expression of a need to relate. Human beings are social animals who need the presence of others. These others manifest themselves in ways which are visible and invisible: befriending a character in a novel because she or he so encapsulates our own place in the world is no less different from spending time with a friend in essence. The levels of the self and the different levels of profundity change the interpretations of this essential need. Prior to entering relations, human beings form certain ideas (partly on their own, partly through this relationship with the implied or immediately present others). The relationships we are in fit these needs we have. Psychological literature allocates space to ‘dysfunctional’ relationship as well as to health. The writings of Donald Winnicott give large space to relationships and socialization with a view to health. An expression of an idea, in a relationship to another, is an interpretation of a need. Need-interpretations govern the articulations as well as the formations of bonds between the Self and the Other. Starting of individually, these bonds multiply through maturational processes and the process of socialization.
Social circumstances are shaped by broader factors than the interpersonal relationships of individuals at the micro level. Economy is one important factor. The societies in which we live need to regulate norms addressing these structures which are multifaceted: what is economical has connotations for the everyday life as well as for the finance world. The everyday lives of individuals living under circumstances of capitalism does not allow them to reflect upon the social conditions in a systemic manner: immediately pressing worries of meeting the social requirements may easily supersede the quest for an ideal form of governance and of bonding in political terms. By this, I refer to a sense of directionality: from bottom to top nature of governments in democratic regimes. Groups are formed on a practical basis which ignores, or at best suspends, an understanding of the ideal. The social stratification manifesting itself in different classes within a society imposes different requirements and burdens onto the individual. These classes, for most cases, are formed by economic terms. How much (money) ‘one’ makes influences the social category within which one communicates with others. The cultural capital, on the other hand, is a different form of capital compared to the immediately financial one. (I borrow the Bourdieuian sense of cultural capital here). It does not directly provide the means with which an individual can change classes or jump a class. Under circumstances which stratification is solid, the desire for social mobility in the upward manner is bigger.
While the group one inhabits helps define, or from another perspective-limit- the subject matter of communication, it adds meaning to the recurring social affirmations. It is not only for the self but also for the others that the group is carrying out a given aim at a given moment in time. In our time, production relations have already taken shape over a long period of time. These oscillations have formed for reasons which served those who could make financial gain from them. Similar to a language evolving over time, a language of economic and social relations have ossified over centuries. A game with a global scope has many more actors, winners and losers compared to a system which has limits (be it national or supranational limits). Individuals and groups entering these relations require reflexive thinking and a way of contemplating about the well-being of many.
Relationships which have been constructed without former contemplation and ongoing critical reflection following the formation of the group form problematic clusters. The dissolution of these clusters require a perspective which did not take part at the formation of the group. Ideas which may be present during such formative moments may loose impact, or fail to have more impact, depending on the demographic structure of a group. This demographic structure includes, but is not limited to, the world views which the individuals bring into the group. Marx talks about the specters which capitalism has brought that cannot be sent back now. He likens the capitalistic system to a sorcerer who has called these spirits which are now uncontrollable.
The very essence of the networks which have crystallized over a long period of time is based on a simple principle of identification: the other group has carried out a certain act or maintained a set of beliefs which were different from the first one. The logic of a network, especially one which prefers to hide itself, rests upon a presumption about exclusion. The ongoing process of dialogue among the members of a (future) group helps the individuals to feel understood in the public space created within this group. This intro-group space offers safety at varying levels. Those who believe in it the most feel most reassured enjoying the comfort of the common shared space. The emotional process leading up to the formation of the group is ignored by the collective rationale at a stage which the ideas have lost their connections with the origins. At the origins, each individual had a separate but perhaps similar life story leading to the moment of admission to the group. Following a period of collective action defined by the members, or the leaders of the group, the reasons impacting the individual life story take a ‘We’ turn. It is after this stage that reasoning, an activity by definition human, can only be carried out through a discourse limited to a network.
Another important component of networks is their separate functioning from one another. While a small group has firmer bonds among the members of that group, groups functioning at much larger levels require a different rationale of their own. In the latter rationale, the smaller groups of a bigger archipelago carry out their own duties. They either accept these smaller roles for them, in the narrative of the large scale, or they wait for another moment for their own group to jump into the higher level of importance. Conspiracy theories which are almost always discredited in professional academic disciplines talk of an ‘illumitati’. This idea is that a rich group of people manipulating politics. A news item about Brexit can be an example.
Lack of transparency shadowing the nature of relationships within and among groups which constitute networks- small and big. The scale of these networks are determined by the social ethos at their formation as well as each and every single moment of questioning the cause of their existence without leaving to the dismantling (either of the group or a part of the bonds constituting that group). Accountability is what fair representatives ought to have vis-à-vis the individuals forming those groups. Lack of transparency, accumulating in a localized area over time, leads to higher levels of corruption. This corruption may include impunity or changing the law following the wishes of the networks sitting at the top of the seemingly democratic regimes.
Interest groups seek their own selfish interests. The financial profit being ensured through the monetary exchange they will enter clutters a critical perspective into the ways in which they define themselves through their relationships with other members of the group. The degree of lack of critical normative thinking can be so high that students may even be taught to ‘network’ for their professional success. A business rationale without attention to the inside of relationships and identities -individual and collective- supersedes a profundity with a reflexive touch which can bring or maintain meaning. “Wisdom is what you need to understand in order. To live well and cope with the central problems and avoid the dangers in the predicament(s) human beings find themselves in” (Nozick, 1989, p.267).
Life itself paves the way for these predicaments in which human beings find themselves in. Talking about life as a concept, broadly, adds a more general reading to what can be experienced by fewer people. An anthropological approach goes into greater detail of what happens in the interpersonal space in smaller groups of people whereas different fields of social science would focus on different aspects of ‘life’ and ‘predicaments’. Whether we really make these predicaments or merely find ourselves in them is not easily determined sometimes: an interpretation and understanding may change depending on the person thinking upon a given issue, the time in history in which the ‘predicament’ was, or the degree of objectivism going into the evaluation of a given predicament.
Criminological contributes to law and legal practice. Sociological and social scientific contributes to academic thought. Academic thought can be more or less useful at times. Turning to finance for the resolution of an issue which, at the immediate distance, lies in biology (such as a problem in medical studies) for instance, may offer very little solace at the micro-level. At the macro-level, however, an interpretation of patterns and an intellectual exercise may prove to be more fruitful than an area which the problem (or the predicament) is, verifiably, micro-level. The micro-level may be an area in geographic place in time, for instance. Networks often include patterns which are not visible. The invisibility of the pattern, or the supposed ‘confidentiality’ or ‘security’ surrounding it excludes a mechanism aiming at the improvement of intra-group relations; this exclusion takes place mainly when the mechanism seeking justice and its practical aspect realizing itself is a mechanism outside of that one particular group.
The identity of the body which has the capacity to impose justice is of importance. It is this person or group who can reflect upon the issues at hand and balance emanating from the relationships regarding the networks. Identity matters for evaluations of social and political kind as the enforcement mechanism, which I conceptualize in an impersonal manner, relies on an interpretation which has emotional and personal perspective. This can be shared or limited, past or present. The individual or the body of jurors can take part of this perspective internally or externally. The formation of jurors, and the culture which feeds this formation, paves the way for the general perspective which renders a crime acceptable within the norms of that particular society.
It was merely a form of exchange for human beings. Before that, there was bartering as a means of exchange. In our day, it went far beyond this function of facilitating exchange; exchange could allow someone to have something that she did not have by offering what she or he does have. In the century which we inhabit, money has forgotten its origins. The origin of money is labor. One terminology maintains that this labor is, always, ‘extracted’. The process of extraction entails employment. Employment like any other human exchange, has rules about it which regulates a fair process of human interactions in the social domain. The social domain, that is the human life, has several components of it.
Politics based on a democratic representation means including relationships of all sorts: those among men and women, those among citizens and those among countries including a multiplicity of relationships. The role of women under circumstances which fairness has not developed in social relationships.Virginia Woolf wrote in a room for ones own that a woman needs a room to write. She was left an inheritance by her grandmother of an amount equating 200 pounds per year- which she requested her to use wisely. Not being able to have financial independence impacts a woman’s writing career substantially. Simon de Beauvoir expresses this by referring to the notion of economic freedom in her conceptualization of an emancipated woman.
https://youtu.be/ETxmCCsMoD0
Unreflexive attitudes form due to merely repeating the currently existing social patterns. Many objects -abstract and concrete- are social: the individual ‘relates’ to others around her as a human infant first. The first carer is followed by others in the process of socialization. When the individual goes through the socialization processes, the life perspective starts to reshape itself. In many cases, these relationships form constellations circling around certain professions. Means of making money vary from one profession to another, quite like the benefits which can be provided through these relationships. Financial gain is the most important outcome which relationships in interest groups seek to attain. This pursuit can be more or less conscious depending on the context and the persons entering these relationships. And the regulations around these relationships are varied too. In matters relating to employment, others are present as groups and as individuals. Just like employment law is part of a broader set of laws, so are the individuals a set of other individuals. Groups form themselves, sometimes, without proof decisions being taken in part of those who form these groups. different forms of law work together for addressing different spheres of life. While employment law addresses the norms defining the human interactions within labor relations, civil law addresses a more private area of the human life. All areas addressed by law are, more closely or remotely, parts of the individual and the collective life. Just like the individual relating to the rest of the society, so does different form of law interact with one another.
Talking helps the individual to express herself. Through expression, she brings the ideas she has in her own mind into a space open to the other members of a group. This group, following the conventional ideas of a linguistic community, are members of ‘one’ language community who have access to that first (original) articulation to start with. An articulation serves the purpose of making the self-thought available for reception in the communicative space. It then goes into the comprehensive sphere of the recipient. Not all linguistically articulated ideas are aimed for communication, though. Exclamations, for instance, or art-work never being opened up for consumption, are articulating without a communicative end.
Networks form among individuals within given social circumstances. Groups address the needs that the individuals have. Groups of different sizes and purposes have different forms of bonds constituting those groups. A romantic couple, for instance, is a group of two addressing different needs of the individuals forming that small group than a political party claiming to address the social needs. The latter has the scope of a broader society. A given political party should claim to ‘win’ the elections thanks to the prior knowledge of the right path for the well-being of many. While this happens, those who vote for that particular party form a group of their own. Based on the exclusions of the undesired ideas and the holders of those ideas, politics understood in the conventional sense functions on this identity forming electoral sense. The ideal type of democracy, I maintain, must be there to remind both the citizens and the politicians of the struggle for better ideas.
Entering into a relationship with another person, if it is based on a conscious choice, is an expression of a need to relate. Human beings are social animals who need the presence of others. These others manifest themselves in ways which are visible and invisible: befriending a character in a novel because she or he so encapsulates our own place in the world is no less different from spending time with a friend in essence. The levels of the self and the different levels of profundity change the interpretations of this essential need. Prior to entering relations, human beings form certain ideas (partly on their own, partly through this relationship with the implied or immediately present others). The relationships we are in fit these needs we have. Psychological literature allocates space to ‘dysfunctional’ relationship as well as to health. The writings of Donald Winnicott give large space to relationships and socialization with a view to health. An expression of an idea, in a relationship to another, is an interpretation of a need. Need-interpretations govern the articulations as well as the formations of bonds between the Self and the Other. Starting of individually, these bonds multiply through maturational processes and the process of socialization.
Social circumstances are shaped by broader factors than the interpersonal relationships of individuals at the micro level. Economy is one important factor. The societies in which we live need to regulate norms addressing these structures which are multifaceted: what is economical has connotations for the everyday life as well as for the finance world. The everyday lives of individuals living under circumstances of capitalism does not allow them to reflect upon the social conditions in a systemic manner: immediately pressing worries of meeting the social requirements may easily supersede the quest for an ideal form of governance and of bonding in political terms. By this, I refer to a sense of directionality: from bottom to top nature of governments in democratic regimes. Groups are formed on a practical basis which ignores, or at best suspends, an understanding of the ideal. The social stratification manifesting itself in different classes within a society imposes different requirements and burdens onto the individual. These classes, for most cases, are formed by economic terms. How much (money) ‘one’ makes influences the social category within which one communicates with others. The cultural capital, on the other hand, is a different form of capital compared to the immediately financial one. (I borrow the Bourdieuian sense of cultural capital here). It does not directly provide the means with which an individual can change classes or jump a class. Under circumstances which stratification is solid, the desire for social mobility in the upward manner is bigger.
While the group one inhabits helps define, or from another perspective-limit- the subject matter of communication, it adds meaning to the recurring social affirmations. It is not only for the self but also for the others that the group is carrying out a given aim at a given moment in time. In our time, production relations have already taken shape over a long period of time. These oscillations have formed for reasons which served those who could make financial gain from them. Similar to a language evolving over time, a language of economic and social relations have ossified over centuries. A game with a global scope has many more actors, winners and losers compared to a system which has limits (be it national or supranational limits). Individuals and groups entering these relations require reflexive thinking and a way of contemplating about the well-being of many.
Relationships which have been constructed without former contemplation and ongoing critical reflection following the formation of the group form problematic clusters. The dissolution of these clusters require a perspective which did not take part at the formation of the group. Ideas which may be present during such formative moments may loose impact, or fail to have more impact, depending on the demographic structure of a group. This demographic structure includes, but is not limited to, the world views which the individuals bring into the group. Marx talks about the specters which capitalism has brought that cannot be sent back now. He likens the capitalistic system to a sorcerer who has called these spirits which are now uncontrollable.
The very essence of the networks which have crystallized over a long period of time is based on a simple principle of identification: the other group has carried out a certain act or maintained a set of beliefs which were different from the first one. The logic of a network, especially one which prefers to hide itself, rests upon a presumption about exclusion. The ongoing process of dialogue among the members of a (future) group helps the individuals to feel understood in the public space created within this group. This intro-group space offers safety at varying levels. Those who believe in it the most feel most reassured enjoying the comfort of the common shared space. The emotional process leading up to the formation of the group is ignored by the collective rationale at a stage which the ideas have lost their connections with the origins. At the origins, each individual had a separate but perhaps similar life story leading to the moment of admission to the group. Following a period of collective action defined by the members, or the leaders of the group, the reasons impacting the individual life story take a ‘We’ turn. It is after this stage that reasoning, an activity by definition human, can only be carried out through a discourse limited to a network.
Another important component of networks is their separate functioning from one another. While a small group has firmer bonds among the members of that group, groups functioning at much larger levels require a different rationale of their own. In the latter rationale, the smaller groups of a bigger archipelago carry out their own duties. They either accept these smaller roles for them, in the narrative of the large scale, or they wait for another moment for their own group to jump into the higher level of importance. Conspiracy theories which are almost always discredited in professional academic disciplines talk of an ‘illumitati’. This idea is that a rich group of people manipulating politics. A news item about Brexit can be an example.
Lack of transparency shadowing the nature of relationships within and among groups which constitute networks- small and big. The scale of these networks are determined by the social ethos at their formation as well as each and every single moment of questioning the cause of their existence without leaving to the dismantling (either of the group or a part of the bonds constituting that group). Accountability is what fair representatives ought to have vis-à-vis the individuals forming those groups. Lack of transparency, accumulating in a localized area over time, leads to higher levels of corruption. This corruption may include impunity or changing the law following the wishes of the networks sitting at the top of the seemingly democratic regimes.
Interest groups seek their own selfish interests. The financial profit being ensured through the monetary exchange they will enter clutters a critical perspective into the ways in which they define themselves through their relationships with other members of the group. The degree of lack of critical normative thinking can be so high that students may even be taught to ‘network’ for their professional success. A business rationale without attention to the inside of relationships and identities -individual and collective- supersedes a profundity with a reflexive touch which can bring or maintain meaning. “Wisdom is what you need to understand in order. To live well and cope with the central problems and avoid the dangers in the predicament(s) human beings find themselves in” (Nozick, 1989, p.267).
Life itself paves the way for these predicaments in which human beings find themselves in. Talking about life as a concept, broadly, adds a more general reading to what can be experienced by fewer people. An anthropological approach goes into greater detail of what happens in the interpersonal space in smaller groups of people whereas different fields of social science would focus on different aspects of ‘life’ and ‘predicaments’. Whether we really make these predicaments or merely find ourselves in them is not easily determined sometimes: an interpretation and understanding may change depending on the person thinking upon a given issue, the time in history in which the ‘predicament’ was, or the degree of objectivism going into the evaluation of a given predicament.
Criminological contributes to law and legal practice. Sociological and social scientific contributes to academic thought. Academic thought can be more or less useful at times. Turning to finance for the resolution of an issue which, at the immediate distance, lies in biology (such as a problem in medical studies) for instance, may offer very little solace at the micro-level. At the macro-level, however, an interpretation of patterns and an intellectual exercise may prove to be more fruitful than an area which the problem (or the predicament) is, verifiably, micro-level. The micro-level may be an area in geographic place in time, for instance. Networks often include patterns which are not visible. The invisibility of the pattern, or the supposed ‘confidentiality’ or ‘security’ surrounding it excludes a mechanism aiming at the improvement of intra-group relations; this exclusion takes place mainly when the mechanism seeking justice and its practical aspect realizing itself is a mechanism outside of that one particular group.
The identity of the body which has the capacity to impose justice is of importance. It is this person or group who can reflect upon the issues at hand and balance emanating from the relationships regarding the networks. Identity matters for evaluations of social and political kind as the enforcement mechanism, which I conceptualize in an impersonal manner, relies on an interpretation which has emotional and personal perspective. This can be shared or limited, past or present. The individual or the body of jurors can take part of this perspective internally or externally. The formation of jurors, and the culture which feeds this formation, paves the way for the general perspective which renders a crime acceptable within the norms of that particular society.
It was merely a form of exchange for human beings. Before that, there was bartering as a means of exchange. In our day, it went far beyond this function of facilitating exchange; exchange could allow someone to have something that she did not have by offering what she or he does have. In the century which we inhabit, money has forgotten its origins. The origin of money is labor. One terminology maintains that this labor is, always, ‘extracted’. The process of extraction entails employment. Employment like any other human exchange, has rules about it which regulates a fair process of human interactions in the social domain. The social domain, that is the human life, has several components of it.
Politics based on a democratic representation means including relationships of all sorts: those among men and women, those among citizens and those among countries including a multiplicity of relationships. The role of women under circumstances which fairness has not developed in social relationships.Virginia Woolf wrote in a room for ones own that a woman needs a room to write. She was left an inheritance by her grandmother of an amount equating 200 pounds per year- which she requested her to use wisely. Not being able to have financial independence impacts a woman’s writing career substantially. Simon de Beauvoir expresses this by referring to the notion of economic freedom in her conceptualization of an emancipated woman.
https://youtu.be/ETxmCCsMoD0
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