Hello, and welcome to episode 33 of Structure Pisions. Structure Pisions is a space where I explore new ways of thinking about social structure. My name is Jadi Clark, and I'm very grateful that you're listening today. You are very welcome here.
Now if you listened to the last podcast, I know exactly what you're thinking. Honestly, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you're thinking, Jody. What you did is absolutely impossible, and we don't believe you did it.
So what you said you were going to do is to call society up, you were going to personify society, you were going to call it up, you were going to ring it on your mobile phone, you were going to invite it to a cafe for lattes, and you were going to have discussion with it. And you're saying to me, I'm sure you're saying this, you can't do that. You can't just get into dialogue with society. And there's lots and lots and lots of reasons why you can't do that.
Now you're right, you can't. I did it anyway, but the reason that I did it is because I have special privileges that you might not have. And my special privilege is I've got a little bit of an idea about how society works. And I'm going to share with you that idea of how society works because once you have a little bit of a glimpse of how society works, then you can put society, you too can put society on speed dial, ring it up and invite it out for lattes.
So let me just give you an idea of how this works. And in order to understand this, you are going to need to at least watch the first film in the Matrix series. So I don't know if you've seen the Matrix. So if you haven't seen the first film, you might have to stop the podcast, go watch the film and come back and then you'll understand what I'm talking about.
So watch the Matrix. I must have been like the early 2000s when the first Matrix came out and I was in Strasburg directing study abroad program and I went with a bunch of the students. And we had such a good time, we watched that film. And it was one of those films where you leave, well, I will say you, we left the cinema and we were acting out the parts.
We were having such a good time that we got really goofy with it. It reminds me of the time that I went and saw Apollo 13 with my brother and we left, which is some films, the structures, we just got stuck in your head and after Apollo 13, he had driven us there. So he got in the car and we just started doing that goofy thing, lights affirmative. Okay, you're still in reverse now.
You're still in, we're now taking a left turn. So we did that with the Matrix. We got on Ninja. We were sort of like waltzing around Strasburg pretending to be the characters in the Matrix.
So anyway, we had quite a goofy, but I certainly had a goofy response to Matrix. So I'm just going to put an image in your head from the Matrix, which I haven't actually, I don't think I've seen it again since the early 2000s. So my memory of this might not be crystal clear. But there was a scene where, so you've got this idea that there's this reality that's a virtual that feels like the real world, but it's not the real world.
Nobody really knows what the real world looks like and you take a pill if you actually want access to the fact that this is this virtual reality, et cetera. And you can see the world working in one of two ways. You can either see it in all of its contextuality. Meaning you can see it in terms of its characters.
You can see it in terms of the scenes and the images. So you can see it as a character walking down the street, looking at other characters, engaging in conversations with them and moving through the world. But another way that you can see it is by looking at a computer screen with, and as I remember these green screens, it harkened back like to the 1980s, where anyway, they're these green screens with nothing but computer code just descending from the top of the screen down. That's my memory of it.
And so there was all this computer code just symbols and numbers just dripping down in a hypnotic way down the computer screen. And there were like a couple of guys, like these sort of computer geeks, and they were the ones who could tap into, they could stare at these screens. And while the rest of us were seeing numbers, they were actually seeing the visualizations. They were actually, that's what they said, oh, it gets to the point where you can't see the numbers anymore, you see, whatever.
But the idea was that the reality existed in two different perspectives. One perspective was the kind of living, breathing, we're walking through it. And the other perspective was that it was a code. And so, you know, that was supposed to be the big thing that's being exposed to reality is just a code or it's a series of codes or whatever.
So let's just put that, let's use that as our metaphor or our image. And the one I'm going to say is that the social world, if we imagine that kind of world of code, and if we say the social world can be experienced, so society can be experienced as individuals and selves and walking through the experience and seeing things and experiencing things, or it can be experienced as a kind of grammatical code that's floating down your screen. Now, I know that's kind of a little bit absurd, but it's not totally crazy because I was just reading in my book about systemic functional grammar by Holiday and Mathison. And one of the things I always says is, he uses this, here's the quote, grammar is the central processing unit.
The powerhouse where meanings are created. So you think, okay, so if we imagine that grammar exists as this kind of virtual code, it's a system, and that's the term that Holiday uses when he's describing grammar, that language is a system. And each system is very, very complex, and at any moment in the system a new type of meaning can emerge that creates all kinds of ways of representing things, if you like, meanings. Not even ways of representing things, but meanings.
It creates meanings or it allows for the possibility of the creation of meaning. So if we imagine that the code that's kind of dripping down the computer screen is grammatical processes or a grammatical system, then we can imagine that certain meanings might pop up out of that grammatical system in the same way that the images pop out of the code in the matrix, right? And so, you know, you can walk for instance, you can walk into a classroom, and you can construe the experience as a massive people, or you can construe the experience as individual people, or you can construe the experience as two sets of people, et cetera. So there's all different ways of constraining the experience and the difference is how the code is manipulated, if you like.
And so the question then becomes, so let's just think about that, let's just pretend that we're going to accept that for a while. So let's go back into our matrix, we're going to have this central processing unit, which is this computer, or whatever the server, or whatever it is. And we can say, okay, how can effectively serve as just a bunch of wires, right? I don't know anything about computers, so feel free to dispute any of this.
So you're a computer or a server, so it seems like just a bunch of wires. And you say, how can with electric currents going through them? You say, how can these wires, which are stupid? They're dumb.
You've got these dumb wires, they don't know anything. How can they construct, how can meaning emerge from them? So in the matrix, if we had all these dumb wires, how can a whole virtual reality emerge out of that? And then we can ask that question similarly of grammar.
It's a dumb system, right? Grammar is a dumb system. It kind of doesn't have any intelligence in its own, let's say. How can meanings emerge from this central processing unit that is language?
And so in the computer metaphor, we'll say, okay, well, actually the way we do this is we input quite a lot of information from the start, and we set up a system. And we can make this system massively complex, or we can make it simple, you know, so we can make it really simple or it's stick figures, or we could make it more complex where it's three-dimensional looking people, and we could put clothing on them, we could give them colors, there's all kinds of things we could do with that. We can make it as complex or as simple as we want, but in order for it to work in terms of building up complexity, the trick is that at every point of potential complexity, so at every time that you want to increase the level of complexity, you have a choice about which way you want to go. And what you need to do is at every point you make the choice as simple as possible, right?
So if you imagine a kind of flowchart, right, so system is like a flowchart, and the computer system is like a flowchart, and the grammar system is like a flowchart, and you start at point A, and you say, okay, I'm at point A, and I don't know where I'm going to go next, so it's like, do you want to go to point B, yes or no? If yes, then here, if no, then here. And you can put as many of those little nodes in as possible as long as at every single node the choice is simple, yes or no, on or off. And just to give you any, if you give too many choices at that particular point, the system becomes overloaded too soon, you don't get to build up your complexity.
So here's your example. Our news was visiting a while back, and we asked the question, would you like to go to the local farm, very farm for ice cream? Would you like an ice cream? Now that, for a two year old, is a simple yes, no.
And you could probably guess that the answer was yes. So I thought that was a success, right? At that level of complexity, that particular node, simple, yes. Now the next question my partner said to his niece, what flavor would you like when we get there?
And I'm thinking, oh, no, we're in trouble now. Because now we're asking a two year old question that might possibly overload her systems, right? Because that means that she's got to dream up all of the possible flavors. And then out of those, she's got to choose one.
And what's more, we've got hope that the ice cream shop has that flavor. And it doesn't have that flavor. Then we could be an absolute meltdown, central processing bang tantrum, who knows. And sure enough, as we're walking through the car park to the ice cream shop, and he says what flavor?
And I'm like, oh, no, no. He says what flavor? And she says, nana, banana. She says, but I'm going to my scream.
And I turned to her mother and I said, well, I hope she has a second choice. I don't know whether they serve that nano flavored ice cream. She's pretty much banked on chocolate or vanilla. But who knows whether they have a nano?
And then her mother says she's never asked for banana before. So how could we have made that process more simple? So we could do simpler. So we say, OK, do you want ice cream?
Yes, no. If yes, then we go to the next level of complexity where we move to flavors. But we do each flavor one at a time. Do you?
So not do you want chocolate or vanilla? You say, do you want chocolate? And if the answer is no, you can say do you want vanilla? Yes, no.
And if the answer is no, you can say do you want strawberry? Yes, no. And however, at any point, if there's a yes, you just stop. It might be a long system.
But it's easy at each note, at each potential choice, the choice is only yes, no, on or off. Now, because I know you're dying to know, clearly my niece has got some kind of connection with the matrix because they didn't have an ice cream. I've never seen them have an ice cream at this place again. But for whatever reason, she clearly had this system now.
So she got an ice cream, she seemed to enjoy it. So anyway, that business of yes, no, on or off. You've probably identified, if you know anything about computers, which I know very little, inside and about to tell you everything that I know about computers, which is mostly wrong. You probably identified that what I'm talking about is a binary system.
So a binary system is a number system that rather than forcing you to choose between numbers between say one and nine or zero and nine, the only numbers that use is zero and one. And that's it. And effectively to a computer, zero and one is the choice, either off, zero or on one. So you've got your circuitry and zero says turn it off, one says turn it on.
And that's how if I understand this correctly, you could have a big, vast system that at each point is simplified to the simplest that it can be made. Yes, no, on off one zero. Now I feel very, very privileged because I was walking down the street once and I saw a guy wearing a black t-shirt with white lettering on it, very simple black t-shirt with white lettering on it. And it said, there are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. And I got to feel like one of the privileged few, probably not that few, who understood the t-shirt. And maybe you understand the t-shirt and maybe you don't. But if you do understand the t-shirt, then you get to join in the ranks of the privileged few who understand binary.
Now the reason I understand binary is not because I've ever taken a sophisticated computer class. In fact, my understanding of binary is limited to what I learned in Girl Scout camp when I was about 11. Which is obviously the place where you go and learn binary, systems of binary numbers, systems of Girl Scout camp. You learn kayaking and you learn surfing and you learn how to tie knots and you learn binary.
But bizarrely, for whatever reason, they had introduced in this Girl Scout camp that I used to go to every summer. They'd introduced a program where you could learn about computers. Now this was in the 80s. So computer, like the personal computers that you used were so unsophisticated that you could learn them in a week long when you go on Girl Scout camp.
It was great because in the morning, you'd get up in the morning the first thing that if you were in the computer class, you'd go in and in the morning you'd get up and after you're singing your songs and then the flag up and pledging a lead and so whatever else you did. You went and sat in a room and if you did computers it was the only time you got to be in an air conditioned room because they had to keep the room air conditioned because they were computers in it. And that was such a relief because it got very, very, very hot and then the summer. It was like, you walk into this gust of cool air which was keeping the computers cool and it was keeping our brains cool and we sat in front of these Commodore 64 computers and we learned the aspects of the type of programming language that you might know if you're my age on basic programming where you learn how to program a computer using this computer language called Basic.
Now the thing I remembered, I don't even know why we did this but the very first day, and I don't even know why I remember it but whatever, on the very first day we were taught how to count using a binary system and the way they did that was to give us a piece of paper and probably a crayon. And they said okay, start, make a grid so you can do this if you don't understand binary yet. And move from the right side of the page to the left, so draw one line, one horizontal line and move from the right to the left and start on the right and make the number one. And then double that number and put the new number which is two to the left of the one.
And then to the left of the two, put two twos which is four and then double it again and put that to the left which is eight and then double that again and put that to the left which is 16. And then to the left you'd have the numbers one, two, four, eight, 16 and you just keep doubling as you move further and further, leftwards along the page. And then you draw a line underneath that and you make it into a grid so that the numbers are on the top. And then you say now your only choices are one and zero.
And so what you do is you take the one, two, four, eight, 16 and you build up your numbers by counting. So you start on the right, so okay I need the number one so I put a one in the one column. Okay so that's fine. So the number one in binary is the same as the number one of the eight and system number one.
But then when you get to two you say okay well under the one column the only choice I have is one or zero so I'll put zero and under the two column I'll put one. And then if you look at it from left to right then you have one zero and that's ten but ten in binary means two. And then when you try to do three you think okay well I'll put one in the two column I'll put one in the one column and I get eleven but that's actually three. And then for four I put one in the four column and zero in the two column and zero in the one column and I get a hundred which is four.
So one, two, three, four is one, ten, eleven, one hundred. I don't know if you followed along with maybe it makes sense. But in any case out of your ones in your zeros you can build up the numbers that we know from the base ten system. But from a computer perspective those, so there we go, ten people in the world, ten in binary means two which means it only two people in the world understand binary.
And then you don't have any joke. So in any case each of those ones and zeros the reason that that's used as far as I know in computer systems is because at any point in the network you want to keep the choice as simple as possible yes no on or off one or zero. Okay so the type of grammar that I use when I'm looking at conversations because I said that I study conversations and I study the grammar of conversations because for me it's like getting a sliver of social structure. It's like how society manifests itself at one particular point in time.
And for me it feels like oh wow cool this is like looking through a microscope. It's like I get to see this one little snapshot of how society is characterizing itself. How it is personifying itself at any point in time. And when I see it in terms of grammar I get to see it as a system network.
And so not only then do I get to see how it's construing itself personifying itself characterizing itself at any point in time. I get to see all of the choices the meaning choices it didn't make. So if I see society as a strand of ones and zeros at any point in time I can look at it and say I'm going to see what happens if I were to change that zero into a one what other picture would have been present at that point. And of course because it's such a complex system and it's not just zeros and ones and grammar something called delicacy so there's different layers.
But nevertheless you know if you see all of its complexity if you can break it down and see how things are construed at that moment and you don't believe that it's reality because that's kind of you know you have to say this is one version of a representation of a construal of a social world and therefore at any moment you can imagine something else and the way you imagine is by changing the ones to zeros so you need to be able to sort of see the code. And if you can do that then you get a flavor for how society characterizes itself how it personifies itself how it creates its world and you can think to then you can turn to society and say huh what about that why don't you have a look at that or you can see it out of the matrix of code if out of the matrix emerges a particular way of seeing the world and a particular personification then you can say what about this other character you haven't looked at and then society gets a little nervous and the system gets a little bit dis of the different concepts that exist in language drawing upon for the non-desistures ideas about language here I won't go into too much detail but I'll just give you an example you can see each concept within the language system as fitting in with a system so it's not so much like you look out in the world and the world presents its images to us and you name them instead you say you know the naming emerges from a set of systemic choices okay that is a bit bizarre so let's take words in the language so let's take the word girl okay last week we looked at a we looked at a transcript where the first line of it was there's a girl existential clause and then the substantive the noun is girl so let's take that word girl and rather than saying that the word girl is a label for a particular thing that exists in reality let's say instead the word girl is a choice from a number of different other semantic representations so for instance we can say okay what what else could we have chosen rather than girl girl is actually made up of a set of plus or minus is right so as said what we might call semantic features so we could say okay a girl is a living thing right okay so why did we say living thing well because living thing is only one of the attributes of the girl is okay so we could say living things so you know plus living thing also the girl is a human being so okay plus human being but okay why didn't we just say there's a human being okay well there's other attributes you want to say so plus human being and then we say okay this human being is the human being let's draw on another systemic question is the human being male no zero minus so minus male okay so it's not male so the realization of a non-male human being now there's a whole bunch of them could be girl could be woman could be matriarch it could be it could be actress so then we say okay non-male human being adult or not adult not adults so minus adult okay so then we we have okay it's not an adult so we that it's sort of woman so therefore we have girl so girl is like a systemic choice among all of these different polarities or binaries okay and the thing is the binaries are part of the structure or the code or the system and they are meaningful as part of the system that particular bundle of impressions that makes us want to point to that person and say it's a girl we could have pointed to that bundle of impressions and given it any well any number of other labels but girl represents a set of choices so even in that one word there's a whole system of choices going on plus minus plus minus plus minus now it's not the language is not obviously it's not just a list of concepts that have names that are plus and minus with different features and different semantic features there's lots and lots and lots of different levels beyond just the words that comprise a language and in fact anytime there's any extended speech or writing then there's a huge number of different network choices that are being made and it's not like we see this as just as an example okay there's a girl that was from last week there's a girl that at the clause level is first of all it's like okay you can choose which words you're going to use but you can also choose how you're going to represent the process so I said it's an existential process you could have represented differently you could have represented as a mental process I know a girl in which case you've got to realize it through different you know two different ways you could have said it you could have represented as a relational process she is a girl rather than there is a girl you know so you've got all these different choices resulting different manifestations because the system sets it up that way if you like and then at the level of the clause there is a girl you've got other systems in place like polarity so they call polarity so you could say that's positive polarity we could make it negative there is not a girl and then even within negative you could change there's this is what holly calls level so delicacy you know so in his system it's not just plus or minus there's different ways of representing negative there is there is not a girl there's never a girl there is no girl you know different ways of representing negative polarity okay so here's the thing if we say that the grammar and the language and the texts that emerge out of grammar and language as these meaning making systems out of all of these possible systemic construles the world gets construed constructed made a particular type of world gets made at any given point and so it's almost like and it could be represented in a totally different way as long as it follows the systemic you know possibilities but the system is complex you know there's lots of different levels of choice making if you like not necessarily conscious choice making by the way in fact very rarely conscious choice making you just speak you don't think oh I'm gonna make it a positive polarity it's very rare that there's that real level of conscious choice but instead the world gets represented made out of this system and so when I'm talking to society when I'm personifying society I kind of am pretending that social structure is personifying itself it's creating cells it might create an eye first person you know which would potentially be coincidental with whoever happens to be speaking it might create a third person a she or a genit or a it might create a third person plural they it might create a generic self you know how you walk in it's like this it might create a collective self the mass the group the crowd so at any given point society emerges according to this picture from this vast complex of possible meanings to create different types of self and if you want to speak to society you generally don't you're right you generally don't get to speak to the whole system because the system speaks through the emergence of the speaking self so the speaking self emerges out of all of this code that is grammar that is choice that is meaning and then you get to speak to that personification of the social structure or that particular character when you're speaking to that particular character it cannot think outside of itself it's so identifies with that self that has emerged from this grammatical system that it can't think outside of itself and so what I said to society last week was what about the things that trouble you what about that person you don't want to talk about and then the person's like okay I'll talk about this other person and so then you're talking to this bit of society that is itself and another self emerges that society is not identifying with this person who is left out who is seen as a problem who's seen as disruptive who's seen as not normal who's seen as an abnormality who is seen as problematic and so what I do is I talk to society and I say okay I know you're identifying with this one character I would like you to talk about that person you don't identify with and when those two characters come together the person society is personifying at one moment and then the other right the other person the other manifestation of society and you say to society I know you're identifying with person A what about person B and that other person to me matches up with what a manual of an us calls the other or the face of the other this other person and well this is not me this is not leaveness this is me this other person that emerges that society has not accepted and something new emerges for me in that encounter between the self that society is identified with at any slice of time and the other that society has not has disadowed has disidentified with at any slice of time and that's where I say ooh society this there's this disruptive moment where you're recognizing a part of yourself you hadn't recognized before okay so it got a little bit some it got a little bit nice today when i'm trying to get you think in terms of the matrix we're doing it for fun i did have a few examples that i wanted to share with you and i will share them with you next week where hopefully we can ground it a little bit more in the world of conversations and people thank you so much for listening and i look forward to talking with you next week