[ nope, it's not leaving my mind. ]

[ i'll have to get back to this later. ]

THE "STAR" SYSTEM summary
- society and the press want to hear one person summarize the opinions and feelings of a group
- the movement has not selected any person to provide such a summary
- when one person's personal opinions and feelings are broadcast, this latent desire results in that one person's perspective being seen, or held up as, such a summary
- inaccurate summaries make people mad at each other
- in particular: {the person whose opinions and feelings have been broadcast, or the "star"} and {those who feel misrepresented by outsiders' acceptance of this person's opinions and feelings, or the "movement"} lead to "stars" and "movements" cutting ties with one another.

- elites are covert and informal. they are not invisible. others can see that the elite exists (they listen to and treat one another better) and feel the consequences of not being part of the elite.
- friendships are covert and informal. they are not invisible. others can see that the friendship exists (they listen to and treat one another better) and feel the consequences of not being part of the friendship.

[ i'm not sure how to summarize this best: elite and friendship seem to be almost synonymous, the author uses them nigh interchangeably, although they have wildly different connotations to me. i will try to use the arguably neutral 'friendship-elite' from here on ]

- friendship-elites generally formed around traditional female characteristics
- friendship-elites formed more easily between women married to New Left men
- these common requirements have changed over time (this article written in 1971)
- each individual friendship-elite has standards that don't tend to change
- friendship-elites' standards tend to concern one's "background, personality, or allocation of time"
- an effective movement's standards should concern one's "competence, dedication to feminism, talents, or potential contribution to the movement", but friendship-elites generally do not (see previous bullet point)
- it takes too much time and effort for an overworked person to join a friendship-elite, but it is necessary to do so in order to have power (Jo writes, "to have a voice in the decision-making", not "to have power")
- Unstructured groups are totally governed by friendship-elites, which may be bad because then the group is not a meritocracy

THE NATURE OF ELITISM summary
- an elite is a small group of people who have power over a larger group of which they are a part
* usually: elites are covert, and have no accountability to the larger group
- elites are not conspiracies and are not deliberate attempts to take a group over for their own ends
- elites are friendships ("networks of friends")
- when only one friendship exists in an otherwise unstructured group, they may not want to be elites, but they are elites
- a healthy situation is two friendships competing for formal power under some structure

[ AN ASIDE: Reading this is so frustrating. Is this essay seriously something people take seriously? I'm using the words that the author put onto the page: "In a Structured group, two or more such friendship networks usually compete with each other for formal power. This is often the healthiest situation[..]" Like WHAT AM I READING??? How is that situation healthy or desirable? "[..] as the other members are in a position to arbitrate between the two competitors for power and thus to make demands on those to whom they give their temporary allegiance." This sounds like hell on earth. Who writes an essay against friendship? ]

FORMAL AND INFORMAL STRUCTURE summary
- "structureless" groups are impossible
- they allow the strong or the lucky to gain power over others by emergent, unconscious, or intentional informal structures
- informal structures are not transparent, and may be confusing to those to whom they are not apparent
- for everyone in a group to be able to participate, the structure must be transparent
- explicit structure will not erase the informal structure
- "structureless" is in quotes because it is impossible: rather, it refers to a group's sole structure being "informal, or covert"
- informal or covert structure forms the basis for elites.

intro summary
- the desire for "structurelessness" arose as a reaction to "the over-structured society in which most of us found ourselves"
- the "structureless" group (and related(?) "informal conference") has limitations, is not good for all things a group might wish to accomplish
- for the women's liberation movement to "grow beyond these elementary stages of development", structure is necessary

I read this once before. I'm reading it again more closely.

Regarding Jo Freeman's
"The Tyranny of Structurelessness"

End of Chapter Two.
I'm not sure I will read more, but I might.

Alexander proposes that "every part of a building . . . has its degree of life" or that "the degree of life of different things and places [exists] in every single thing there is".
At this point I am entirely convinced that the problem here is one of projection, but on an extremely large scale. Alexander is not projecting his feelings about an object into the object, but rather a statistically salient number of people's feelings about an object into the object. He has a great wealth of experience, no doubt.

He places these common human feelings "into" the objects, when in fact they lie in the eye of the beholder, or the billion eyes of a half-billion beholders, or at its greatest extent the countless eyes of every human beholder to have ever existed or who ever will...
This is such an important topic to me that I've thought about a lot, which is why I keep repeating myself, and why I've read as far as I have. I want to be able to get it out correctly, to say it right.

Christopher Alexander, inescapably human, claims that a "degree of life of different things and places [exists] in every single thing there is." But he is simply describing his judgement, simple as that. It is only natural that the owner of a brain that is capable of judging some value of any object will come to believe that such a value might not exist within themselves but within those objects...

In some ways I wish I could have faith in his particular belief about how the world works, rather than my particular belief about how the world works. But I've already mourned that above.

It is "merely" an artifact of our cognition, but that "merely" is hurting me.
It is an artifact of our cognition, and that truth must be beauty enough.

Alexander has brought up religion and objectiveness enough so far that I strongly suspect that he believes his life to be some objective value that humans are detecting within the universe. This is the perspective I cannot side with.

It is perhaps a deeply profound shared human value, something that runs to the core of every or near every human being, but it is at its core anthropocentric, or perhaps somewhere between anthropocentric and biological, something that is valued commonly by living things on earth. I still believe we are machines. Perhaps the misery there is that I hold a belief that itself is not one valued by life; my perspective is incompatible with biological comfort; my viewpoint is itself not alive.

Alas. I will try to work my way out of this one, but never backwards. Only through.

Hmm. I'm reading through the next bit, and I feel again as though I, we, are returning to this same place, this same double-ended disagreement, agreement from opposite directions. Repeating but not repeating.

Alexander says that the degrees of life are "not merely an artifact of our cognition but is an objectively real physical phenomenon in space which our cognition detects". I almost, almost, almost agree with this, but my agreement hinges upon a condition I may never have confirmed or denied: the objectively real physical phenomenon is defined by the particular detection our cognition performs upon it.

Some examples:

- The colour red
"Red" is an objectively real physical phenomenon which can be mathematically described (though not perfectly -- people can disagree on whether certain orange-like shades are red or not) but such a description is completely dependent on an artifact of our cognition!

- A happy smile
The mouth that wears a smile is an objectively real physical phenomenon (etc etc), but the boundaries and definition, the value of a smile, these are completely dependent on an artifact of our cognition...

To revisit Alexander's "the different degree of life we observe in every different part of space is not merely an artifact of our cognition but is an objectively real physical phenomenon in space which our cognition detects.":
Fine, perhaps our cognition is detecting some physical phenomenon which you have labelled life -- its value is likewise objective, based on an objective artifact of our cognition, an arbitrary consequence of whatever processes produced our very existences.

The phenomenon... The problem I have been having is that I do not believe the boundaries were created objectively. The label. If I have a universe that is a series of numbers, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, can I describe the sub-series of numbers "3 4 5" as a phenomenon? Is it an objective phenomenon within the universe of that series, in that it exists, or must a phenomenon have some meaning or value? It certainly is a piece of the universe. Hmm.

P. 64
. . . I want to . . . persuade the reader that . . . the different degree of life we observe in every different part of space is not merely an artifact of our cognition but is an objectively real physical phenomenon in space which our cognition detects.
//
As previously stated, I REALLY cannot get on board with this, haha. Still... I'm waiting for the point where Alexander stops saying what he intends to do and attempts to do it. Come on, dude.

I can't get completely on board, as usual, but one of the last things he says, still, is "The deep order which produces life . . . can be described and understood."

So describe it, Alexander! I want to understand it, as a fellow Alexander!!!