If you prefer learning by reading, this section will present
a quick outline of the topic. I will not cover everything in the video
resource, however, and recommend watching it for fun as a supplement.
Let us begin. You and I live in a modern society, but how does this society function? The answer lies in ‘social systems.’ These are large, complex patterns of social behaviour which provide a crucial role in day to day life: they organise and sort information. They sort information using a special labelling scheme known as their ‘code.’ There are numerous examples. There is the legal system, which uses labels such as ‘illegal’, or ‘liable’ as its code. Then there is the education system, which uses the code of ‘correct/incorrect’ to assess your ability to carry out its exams. Or the economic system, which operates according to ‘value/no value’, and is capable of putting a price tag on anything. These codes are pervasive, powerful, and control virtually every aspect of your life.
Consider a simple example: you walk into a store to buy some eggs. You pick up the eggs and take them to the counter, but you don’t have ‘enough money.’ We are in the economic system: the code says you have insufficient economic value to make the exchange. Perhaps you run out with the eggs without paying. Now we are in the legal system: the law gives you the code of ‘thief.’ The headmistress sees this label and you are excluded from school; you cannot sit your exams. We are in the education system and you have been coded F for failure. Now you try to get a job, but the legal code of ‘felon’ and educational code of ‘failure’ make you unemployable: you get the economic code of ‘valueless.’ Your labour has no value and you cannot exchange it for money. Return to start.
This was a short walk through the code system: you can see how even the simplest of transactions can implicate a range of codes, many of which intimately determine how your life goes. The key to understanding a social system is to understand how it applies its code. We call this guideline its ‘algorithm.’ Each social system has a unique algorithm: the legal system has legal sources, such as statutes and cases; the economic system uses a market to set prices and values; the education system uses marking criteria. According to a social system, only things with its code matter: you cannot go to court and make purely moral arguments, or try to pay for your eggs using your family lineage, or score highly in an exam by being brave or kind. The algorithm - the guide for how to apply the code – is therefore crucial. The key to understanding algorithms lies in how they transform and ignore things. The market only cares about what it can put a price on. You cannot get points in an exam for your skills or personality if the marking criteria cannot measure them. The legal system will not recognise defences – or alternative arguments – disconnected from the legal sources. The algorithm is selective.
This is a simple but profound fact. Perhaps now you will see how artificial these codes are; how much of the world their algorithms cut out and distort. You take art in high school. Now you must do an ‘art exam’, but it only measures your abilities in terms of quantifiable numbers. You can get a 6 for creativity. You can get a 3 for the connection of the art to your personal experience. If you spend long enough in the system, you might start seeing the world in terms of its code. You stop caring about being original and start fixating on getting ‘originality points.’ You ignore different mediums because the marking criteria does not include them. Or you enter the economic system with an intention to live a happy, fulfilling life, but find these have no clear price tags. What does have a price tag is your ability to do a certain job, and over time you start seeing everything – your value, the value of others – in terms of this price tag. Having a code applied to you externally can feel disempowering, but internalising it, letting it subtly shape and control everything you see and do, is a more complete form of submission.
What then is to be done about social systems? You have a variety of options. You can reject social systems and their codes altogether. Quit school, break the law (or ignore it, which, in the eyes of the law, is often the same thing), and abandon the notion of money. This is option ‘FIGHT’, but keep in mind the social and personal cost of doing so can be immense. Another approach is to ‘opt-out’ of the social system and join a different one: you can home-school your children, live on international waters, and live in a communist commune. Consider this option ‘ESCAPE.’ Or you can try to change the social system. Perhaps we can make exams fairer and more holistic? Or we can reform the law to bring it closer to morality? This is option ‘REFORM.’ Choosing which you prefer is one of the most important decisions in your life. If you choose the third one, as most do, remember this simple message above all: if you enter the system to change it, over time it may change you. Five years in corporate law becomes ten, and soon, under the immense workloads and hefty salary, you start asking the question ‘how much are my moral convictions really worth?’
This is a quote from the pioneer of systems theory Niklas Luhmann:
"We have to come to terms, once and for all, with a society without human happiness and, of course, without taste, without solidarity, without similarity of living conditions. It makes no sense to insist on these aspirations, to revitalize or to supplement the list by renewing old names such as civil society or community. This can only mean dreaming up new utopias and generating new disappointments in the narrow span of political possibilities.”
