High-Low Vs the Middle
I think anyone working at a university can tell you that the consistent effect of new rules regarding various "social justice issues"--"rape culture," racial insensitivity, "LGBT" and trans stuff--is to empower the administration at the expense of the faculty. Each new category of victimization requires new HR people, new deans specifically focused on that thing, and they are all answerable to the President.
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Within the university system as it exists, driven by the elite schools (Harvard et al), which are producing the "highs," and anti-discrimination law which encourages law suits that make traditional forms of academic freedom and faculty-faculty and faculty-student interaction increasingly risky, the administration is highly insecure--school ranking can go down, bad publicity can harm enrollment and lower prestige, law suits can cost millions.
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Within each school there is a high/middle/low, but it is also true that you could say there are high, middle and low schools. Power to the administration subordinates the middle of each school (the faculty) to the high; upward power to the admin allows the power of the elite schools to be conducted throughout the system.
The project of the admin is to fit in and move as high as possible within the system. When you say "fully cognizant that what they are doing..." the "they" is the faculty (but also more traditional organizations within the university like fraternities). Yes, of course the admins know that all kinds of interactions can lead to charges of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, "rape culture," etc.--they have lawyers who tell them this. And of course they assume that having strict and strictly administered rules regarding all interactions will at least mitigate the risk--such rules and regimes are often the result of lawsuits, so it makes sense to use them to try and pre-empt lawsuits. If the point was just to consolidate power, couldn't simpler means be found than unleashing mobs on "white supremacists"?
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Then the company as a whole would be the "middle" that is undermined, right? Or part of the larger middle (this kind of thing would be happening in many companies). In the case you imagine here, assuming the hostile "implant" doesn't destroy the company, isn't it most likely that a flow of power upward, to the executives who must now implement whatever new regime results, will result?
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So he's really questioning me here. Obviously we don't have to squeeze every situation into HLvM in order to make the concept work--things can happen in the corner grocery store that don't fit the model. Perhaps I'm overreaching in trying to see how the concept might work. But I do think that eventually even in the neutral company the company will eventually take the new rules on board enthusiastically--and when they do, even if the company was not directly an obstacle to any government plan previously, it will certainly be more compliant to government plans in the future. A lot of attacks on the 'middle" are just smoothing the path, not attacking that part of the middle in particular.
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Maybe there's really no alliance between Harvard as a "high" school and Evergreen or Brooklyn College as a "low" one--I'm not sure, although it does seem the "low" schools are more radicalized than "middle" ones like, say, Syracuse, Boston University, etc. But I can't be sure that's the case generally. The lower you are in the system, the more expendable, and the administration can be empowered even if the president is pushed out. But, more generally, what "projects" are being blocked so as to make power "unsecure"--that's really your question. What do the powerful really want, what are they after? The HLvM model is persuasive to me because the "middle," whether it be the demographic middle (white middle class, etc.) or the middle in the sense of autonomous institutions with their own criteria for excellence. In general, the middle stands in the way of centralizing power, but it also blocks the ideological/educational component of centralizing (and globalizing) power. The middle slows things down, it represents interests that might be better served locally, or by scaling down power. Even institutions that are a bit slower in adopting the new terms are useful targets, because they will come along and can be made examples of. There doesn't need to be a specific, identifiable project in each case, but the increasingly thorough introduction of legal equality is the common thread. Legal equality gives administrators and executives a governing strategy, but it doesn't do anything for scholars, teachers, engineers, etc., i.e., anyone actually working on something specific.
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This is an important question, and there may not be a good answer in each and every instance. It's a broader question of whether to adopt the "generous" reading of power, which presupposes that those in power accept at least a modicum of responsibility for those they rule over. What do "they" (the Davos crowd, for example) really think and want. I think it makes more sense to assume they're not Bond villains who simply want to rule the world through sheer joy of domination. Climate change may be a scam, in order to gather more state power and wealth for the wealthiest corporations, and "they" may even know this, but they may also believe that the industrial system, mass consumption and increasing population are out of control and destructive and that only they can take responsibility for such issues--even if it means embracing a "noble lie" and enriching themselves (so they can do more good). If you think about it this way, the sheer fact of people going their own way, having their own interests, defending their own borders, trying to improve their standard of living is in YOUR way, and you want to chip away at it wherever possible. And since you're trying to do this, you are insecure because you know that people see you doing it, and report on it, and object, and might vote for the occasional politician who can really get in your way. So, now you need to control opinion and information, which in turn leads to people developing conspiracy theories and more insecurity, etc.
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Well, that's a good analogy, and I could see why "this current iteration of absolutism" would look this way to you. The way I would think about it is to think, there should be a parent or teacher here. If we can find such an authority figure, then he will put order in things by first protecting the kids who want to play peacefully and then arranging for some more competitive and "edgy" (but still controlled) activities for the more combative kids. Maybe the fighter can be made a kind of deputy, and turned around. The man watching, if we are already postulating he can provide a baseball bat, can step into the role of teacher or "concerned citizen dealing with an emergency" or whatever and start to restore order.
The trickier question is how to imagine this working internally. We can think of it as an originary scene. We need some kind of sign--some recognition of a center, and given the differences in "leadership" ability someone will have to occupy the center. That toughest kid will have to be reckoned with. In your telling, the fighting continues to escalate because the high and low are in an unstable equilibrium with the middle. The equilibrium needs to be stabilized. For this to happen, sheer fighting ability can't be the deciding criterion. Whoever can come up with a settlement, some way in which the playground can be shared reasonably (a distribution of territory), and take the initiative to implement that settlement, should "rule." I actually think such a figure is more likely to come from the "middle," i.e., the bigger kids who don't submit. He would have to gain the respect of the toughest kid, which means getting the toughest kid to respect something other than strength, something outside of himself, something he doesn't quite understand. (The movie "Cool Hand Luke" actually shows something like this--interestingly, in part by the "resistant" prisoner standing up to the toughest guy and letting him beat the hell out of him without giving in. There's a bit more to it.) In that case the vicious and angry child can, in fact, become "well adjusted," as a kind of loyal deputy. Once this "primus inter pares" from the middle forms this alliance with the "alpha," the situation is "humanized" (we have transcended the animal pecking order) and a good order becomes possible.