For example, in conversation, if you are accidentally saying the wrong thing or insulting someone, the other person can softly correct you. If you are acting in good faith, and receptive enough, you can change your behaviors for a return to harmony. If you refuse to alter your behaviors, the feedback can grow stronger and firmer until you get the message, or until relations break off.
If in a conversation you slip up, and the first time this happens the person jumps all over you, it might be more difficult to maintain a relationship. If it is so easy to make a mistake in this way, the feedback isn't accomplishing anything other than a constant breaking of relations. Of course feedback is in a constant changing loop with how people behave in the first place, so things will get complicated pretty fast in this regard.
The set of relations in feedback systems correspond to the structural conditions that they arise in. We can look at the type of feedback often found in densely populated areas. Some restaurant owner in the city has such a massive volume of people moving through the space, and a certain proportion of those individuals are going to be doing things like screwing up the bathroom. The owner experiences those horrors in an amplified manner, as they may be a small proportion of the events that happen in the restaurant, but they all happen to the particular owner. So the collapse in social trust is broadly applied and a lock is placed on the bathroom door for all cases, and you have to prove your worth to get in.
The channel of communication collapses, and the feedback channel narrows from: "please don't do that and be respectful, whoever you are," to "no one gets in unless you're a customer and you can prove it."
Density is not the only input in this situation of course; there must be a density of bad actions, as opposed to good. Problems unaddressed by society on a structural level become amplified in this respect.
For example, the restroom discussion may sound strange to someone conditioned to suburban life, where populations tend to be more homogeneous and policed due to structural reasons. There one can wander into any public restroom one desires for the most part, but in an urban area that is situated next to major mass transit, where a large volume of homeless and other socially sanctioned groups pass through regularly, the bathrooms are virtually impenetrable.
I bring this up because I once nearly crapped my pants trying to look for a restroom near one of the BART stations in downtown Oakland. I don't draw attention to this to be crude; it was a very strange situation in which a variety of facts conspired against me at that moment, which revealed a set of systematic problems as a result. What happened was this: I emerged inside a BART station in the midst of travel, and suddenly had an urgent need to use the restroom.
There weren't any restrooms anywhere. The BART administration had made the decision not to provide access to public restrooms anywhere in the facility, using fears of terrorism as an excuse, though the subtext points to cost-cutting, and as implied, class prejudices.
I desperately made my way to a cafe nearby. Despite my clear state of discomfort, the cashier lied to me and told me there was someone in the restroom. So I bought a green tea, and absurdly, was told that the bathroom was probably open and then...given a key. Without a doubt, this cashier's job was on the line, and under no circumstances should she let the rabble in.
Density is not the only input in this situation of course; there must be a density of bad actions, as opposed to good. Problems unaddressed by society on a structural level become amplified in this respect.
For example, the restroom discussion may sound strange to someone conditioned to suburban life, where populations tend to be more homogeneous and policed due to structural reasons. There one can wander into any public restroom one desires for the most part, but in an urban area that is situated next to major mass transit, where a large volume of homeless and other socially sanctioned groups pass through regularly, the bathrooms are virtually impenetrable.
I bring this up because I once nearly crapped my pants trying to look for a restroom near one of the BART stations in downtown Oakland. I don't draw attention to this to be crude; it was a very strange situation in which a variety of facts conspired against me at that moment, which revealed a set of systematic problems as a result. What happened was this: I emerged inside a BART station in the midst of travel, and suddenly had an urgent need to use the restroom.
There weren't any restrooms anywhere. The BART administration had made the decision not to provide access to public restrooms anywhere in the facility, using fears of terrorism as an excuse, though the subtext points to cost-cutting, and as implied, class prejudices.
I desperately made my way to a cafe nearby. Despite my clear state of discomfort, the cashier lied to me and told me there was someone in the restroom. So I bought a green tea, and absurdly, was told that the bathroom was probably open and then...given a key. Without a doubt, this cashier's job was on the line, and under no circumstances should she let the rabble in.
This principle can also be extended to poverty stricken areas, in which the architecture itself takes on the systematic shape of a fortress or warzone: all of the windows are barred and there is barbed wire everywhere, because a large enough volume of individuals moving through the area is considered dangerous to property owners. Numerous interconnected feedback loops finally produced an environment where not much cooperative feedback was possible at all.
This situation can be attributed to broad structural failings in society, on many levels, such as having to do with class, prejudices of all kinds, geographic segregation, private property regimes, market interest, wear patterns in capitalist society, and other factors.
This situation can be attributed to broad structural failings in society, on many levels, such as having to do with class, prejudices of all kinds, geographic segregation, private property regimes, market interest, wear patterns in capitalist society, and other factors.
So as soon as you enter a specific geographic area, the feedback landscape changes completely. Wherever you go, you are treated differently, and you have to interact with your environment and peers differently, depending on the structural actions of various types of volume on the landscape.
This state affairs is further complicated by the fact that feedback regimes are also modulated by the kind of person you are, and change along identity properties of class, race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, neurotype, and others.
What's more, a whole history of feedback progressions can be downloaded into a single individual within a very short space of time. Systematic change on this level can lead to entire quality changes, with a number of transformed individuals trading in feedback that leads to another quality of interaction altogether.
These principles crop up in vicious ways when it comes to draconian laws. A draconian law is a terrible mode of feedback; it exists only as a provocation, in contradiction to the intended effects of its authors. Here is a feedback pattern in which preservation of power is intended on one side, and the erosion and delegitimization of power come out on the other. Now, the erosion of power occurs over a long period of time, whereas the convenient preservation of power through fear and punishment happens instantaneously, which is partially why these laws happen. There are many other effects of course.
Draconian laws typically come from a centralized legislature that is far removed from its subjects, and thus has no real communication with them. If you combine this with the violent forces of capitalism and imperialism, and the attempts to stabilize the various sites of turbulence that are unleashed from these forces, you get a set of ham-handed laws indeed.
What's more, a whole history of feedback progressions can be downloaded into a single individual within a very short space of time. Systematic change on this level can lead to entire quality changes, with a number of transformed individuals trading in feedback that leads to another quality of interaction altogether.
These principles crop up in vicious ways when it comes to draconian laws. A draconian law is a terrible mode of feedback; it exists only as a provocation, in contradiction to the intended effects of its authors. Here is a feedback pattern in which preservation of power is intended on one side, and the erosion and delegitimization of power come out on the other. Now, the erosion of power occurs over a long period of time, whereas the convenient preservation of power through fear and punishment happens instantaneously, which is partially why these laws happen. There are many other effects of course.
Draconian laws typically come from a centralized legislature that is far removed from its subjects, and thus has no real communication with them. If you combine this with the violent forces of capitalism and imperialism, and the attempts to stabilize the various sites of turbulence that are unleashed from these forces, you get a set of ham-handed laws indeed.
Insulated, central authority has an impoverished feedback with its environment, and it therefore antagonizes it. But this is not something that has happened intentionally, or at least, out of direct intentionality. This is a state of affairs that is produced by certain patterns of development over long periods of time.
Let's say that I was homeless after a long chain of events, and I found myself at this same Oakland cafe, desperately having to go to the bathroom. I would surely be denied, and then would be in extreme pain. It would be impossible to communicate at this point. Feedback would become quite forceful. I may have an accident, and instantly become socially radioactive, or else I would have to find some place outside, which could cause all sorts of health problems.
Taken in one instance, this would be a small mishap that would elicit sympathy. However as a regular and voluminous occurrence, it would surely elicit movements on the part of some central authority to sanction that kind of behavior. Thus you have the steady criminalization of homelessness, which is occuring amidst a backdrop of a constellation of changing feedback patterns, perpetrated on the part of businesses and individuals throughout the land.
Many single instances in a given context contribute to the revision of law, which changes the context in which instances arise, and so new instances come forth. In a complex civilization, we can see that very serious and destructive feedback loops can arise rapidly and dramatically if unaddressed.
There are many other ways to explore this issue, and many other directions of analysis to take. In time.
