#system

This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter what the specific human story may be, told to remain emotionally disinvested as far as possible so as to avoid preferential treatment of one person over another - and needing to follow that advice to avoid being swamped by empathy for fellow human beings in distress. The functionary becomes a mixture of Zimbardo's prison guards and the experimenter himself, under siege from without while at the same time following an inflexible rubric set down by those higher up the hierarchical chain, people whose job description makes them responsible, but who in turn see themselves as serving the general public as a non-specific entity and believe or have been told that only strict adherence to a system can produce impartial fairness. Fairness is supposed to be vested in the code: no human can or should make the system fairer by exercising judgement. In other words, the whole thing creates a collective responsibility culminating in a blameless loop. Everyone assumes that it's not their place to take direct personal responsibility for what happens; that level of vested individual power is part of the previous almost feudal version of responsibility. The deindividuation is actually to a certain extent the desired outcome, though its negative consequences are not. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#bureaucracy #government #individual #life #power

While it is relatively easy to recognize the perennial grasses and seed-eating sparrows as characteristic of meadows, the ecosystems exist in their fullest sense underground. What we see aboveground is only the outer margin of an ecosystem that explodes in intricacy and life below. ↗

— Amy Seidl

#meadows #soil #life

Truth is the greatest of all national possessions. A state, a people, a system which suppresses the truth or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse. ↗

— Kurt Eisner

#deserves #fears #greatest #national #people

Whether it means prizing the value of lessons learned, building games into your creative process, or getting gifts upon certain milestones of achievement, self-derived rewards make a big difference…You cannot ignore or completely escape the deeply ingrained short-term reward system within you. But you can become aware of what really motivates you and then tweak your incentives to sustain your long-term pursuits. ↗

— Scott Belsky

#self-motivation #motivational

That was the trouble with formulating a system: what could you do but repeat it? ↗

— Peter Washington

#belief-system #madame-blavatsky-s-baboon #mystic #mysticism #religion

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system. ↗

— Walter Cronkite

#care #caring #health #health care #health care system

When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer. ↗

— Francesca Annis

#had #host #i #lawyer #now

I'm not such a big star. I am just a little planet. In Spain, people don't put so much attention on the star system. But here in America, I can feel it. Mostly, people are very, very nice. But there are also a bunch of fanatics behind the stars. ↗

— Antonio Banderas

#am #america #attention #behind #big

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems. ↗

— Desmond Tutu

#africa #cheap #doing #favor #get

From day one our next generation system will run all our exsisting software - so that gives us a head start. ↗

— Trip Hawkins

#generation #gives #head #head start #next