Are you seeking any help?

Last Thursday (20060406), I became aware of the connection between specialization, hierarchy, and the disconnect between individuals (people).

In Political Science class, there was a class discussion about a recent on-campus rape. The teacher, Dan Faulk, removed himself from the discussion to see how the class would handle directing a discussion on their own. Overall, a very successful experiment. As Dan later said, the class conducted a repectul, productive, democratec, and gender balanced discussion about a potentially volitile topic.

Many things were discussed. I said that I felt that this "problem" of "what to do" was mostly one of disconnect between people. You see, one of the methods discussed was a small community's (tribal?) ability to ostracize the individual that commited the crime. This led me to my line of thought about seperation. I brought up that we in this current age, in the large, complex, disconnected system we live in -- we cannot use the method of direct ostracization that is available to the small tribe. We don't even know what's going on in the apartemnt next door.

After class, Dan Faulk and I talked about hierarchy and specialization and I realized that they go hand in hand. You cannot have a hierarchy without specialization -- duh!

And specialization is a beautiful, double-edged blade. Specialization is good for the overall system as an organism -- it allows the organism to function well as a whole. But specialization implies a hierarchy. By nature of their design, specialized units cannot be free of dependencies. To be a specialized unit menas to be dependent and to be depended upon. To be specialized means to exist within a hierarchy.

So now... thinking about all this, I'm riding home on my bike... when I ride past this lady catching her balance on the back of a truck. I turn around to see if she's alright. She asks if I can help her walk home -- "just around the corner". I say sure and as she takes off her backpack, I hear heavy bottles clank together, and... then I smell the friggin distillery. Well, I start walking and thinking "what am I doing? How am I gonna get out of this? I'm being an 'enabler'!" And then she starts stumbling out into the treet! I call her back over the the sidewalk and ger her to sit down on the curb. She says how come ya always have to go for the booze? I say it's 'cause life hurts. She says yea, but how come... and she holds up her hand and "drinks" out of her thumb-bottle-neck. And I say it's cause life hurts too much and you need to run away -- you need to bury the pain and alcohol makes the pain go away... for a little while at least.

Just then, a cop pulls up.
She says to me "oh shit! uh... what's your name?"
"Andrew"
"okay... uh, Andrew you're my friend and you are just walking me home and you are gonna take me home now okay?"
"... no, I can't do that. I can't lie for you"
"but please! come on, please!"
"no. You have to deal with this. You have to deal with the cop and I can't lie for you."

After the expected cop/drunk skit, I became aware that life was just putting me through a situation to make me understad the true scope of the disconnect problem.
You see before he arrested her, cuffed her, and took her away -- while he was still doing his cop-lecture shtick -- something he said really stuck with me.

He said to her "are you seeking any help yet?"

Notice the disconnect. In the theoretical small tribe -- the person with a problem like alcoholism would not have to "seek help" because the tight-knit (and largely parrallel) community would be the help. But in our large, complex, disconnected system, we say

"are you seeking any help?"