In so far that there is social control, something or someone must arbitrate it. — thewonder

I hesitate, because it is a well misused argument; but indulge me in a crude consideration of evolution. It seems to me that a big brained tool-using social mammal has the advantage of fast (compared to evolutionary time) adaptation to an unstable environment, where such adaptation includes the manipulation of the environment itself. If it turns cold, instead of evolving thicker fur or heading South, clever monkey builds a house and steals the skin of other animals to wear. All this in the name of mammalian temperature control, just like the fur of polar bears.

Monkey likes bananas; clever monkey plants bananas. But clever monkey cannot think in global space, or evolutionary time. So temperature control is local and temporary. The adaptation to climate instability turns out to increase climate instability. There is no control mechanism for the control mechanism. Politics and government ought to, but don't seem to be able to deal with pandemics or climate change. The society that was supposed to allow adaptation has become rigid. That's why, in my previous analogy, they are like the riverbanks in a floodplain - they constrain the river, but arbitrarily and so temporarily. No one is in charge, and nothing is under control. Come back God, all is forgiven!

I like what you have to say about this, but still contend that there are apparatuses of social control. Deleuze and Guattari came up with abstract machines if you'd like to think of imaginary machines in a more positive light.

An aside:

I have a pretty out theory about how dishwashers are abstract machines. A good dishwasher controls the rhythm of the entire establishment. Generating a rhythm for it lets you and everyone else kind of zen out while at work. It's kind of a form of meditation. The dishwasher is, therefore, the last line of defense between common wisdom and ubiquitous false consciousness.

I met that dishwasher. But when the dishwasher breaks, Muggins can do the dishes in another rhythm. whereas when Muggins is off sick, the dishwasher sits there looking important and doing exactly nothing. Machines abstract and metal certainly exist. But they control nothing. We feed the machine because we want to, not because the machine dictates.

The machine teaches you how to generate the rhythm, though. The machine is the master that the pupil surpasses. In this case, considering an abstract machine as positive, the machine is like a serendipitous liberatory learning device. It's a catcher in the rye. That they exist is something that just keeps the world from being driven mad.

I question the mechanical metaphor.

Consider a river that has a course, and we see that the course changes by the oxbow lakes and so on, but the course is stable over a lifetime, most of the time. But there is a day of revolution when the bank is breached and the meander is short-circuited. There is no who and no apparatus either. The river operates on itself, and the river is the water and the course. A river is never broken.

Machinations are appropriate to political thought because thought is mechanical; but life is not. — unenlightened

Yeah, well, tell that to Foucault and the likes. Apparently, the apparatus is in all of our lives.

The machine teaches you how to generate the rhythm, though. — thewonder

The mountain teaches you how to climb. But it doesn't oblige you to climb.

Yeah, well, tell that to Foucault and the likes. Apparently, the apparatus is in all of our lives. — Caldwell

They don't talk to me, unfortunately. The apparatus of thought is in all our lives, and thought is mechanical; thought produces that wonderful machine for living, the panopticon, and so on. But if one lives in a machine and according to the machine, one lives a mechanical life - an oxymoronic non-life. But for all its potent impotence, it remains an anological construction and human relations are not mechanical relations except by performance. The scientific urge is to understand and control the world in mechanical terms, but there is nothing mechanical about understanding. The mechanical analogy is so pervasive, it sounds rather 'woo' to question it. But there is no evidence - gotta love the science-speak - that the world operates mechanically; on the contrary, there is much evidence that even machines do not: they breakdown precisely because they lack the caring relation to the world, as does thought.

But if one lives in a machine and according to the machine, one lives a mechanical life - an oxymoronic non-life. But for all its potent impotence, it remains an anological construction and human relations are not mechanical relations except by performance. The scientific urge is to understand and control the world in mechanical terms, but there is nothing mechanical about understanding. The mechanical analogy is so pervasive, it sounds rather 'woo' to question it. But there is no evidence - gotta love the science-speak - that the world operates mechanically; on the contrary, there is much evidence that even machines do not: they breakdown precisely because they lack the caring relation to the world, as does thought. — unenlightened

The analogy to a physical machine is apt, though. As you noted, machines breakdown, and so do political structures. Machines can function like well-oiled, and so can societal systems. After a while, it is self-regulated.

You might think that it is only an analogical construction and human relations are not mechanical. In this regard, the apparatus is working well. It is achieving what it purports to maintain. Because that is what the structures want you to think and behave. That you are not encumbered by rules, and laws, and orders. That there are personal and private lives -- and you can separate the two.

But to someone who is a scholar of social and political systems, the shape of the system reveals itself as something that can literally be explained in a formula. So, human interactions can be designed, controlled, and maintained such that the apparatus is not felt, or known.

Because that is what the structures want you to think and behave. — Caldwell

Machines that want?

That there are personal and private lives -- and you can separate the two. — Caldwell

But I don't think that. Do you?

So, human interactions can be designed, controlled, and maintained such that the apparatus is not felt, or known. — Caldwell

No they cannot. Psychology operates in the realm of statistical effects, and the power is undeniable. Nevertheless it is the psyche that designs and controls the psycho-social. But this conversation is out of control, because there are no statistics about who will convince whom of what, or what novel idea will perhaps be born of our interaction. Even Google does not know.

But this conversation is out of control, because there are no statistics about who will convince whom of what, or what novel idea will perhaps be born of our interaction. — unenlightened

No statistics needed. These are observations by the scholars who made it their business to analyze what's happening. I may or may not agree. And again, you are exhibiting the perfect subject syndrome. You are acting exactly how the structures are designed. You are providing your own observation, your own analysis, going against the idea of machinations.

And again, you are exhibiting the perfect subject syndrome. You are acting exactly how the structures are designed. — Caldwell

I am responding to you; you are not a machine. This is not a syndrome nor is it subjective.

Analysis is mechanical, but scholars are not, and because of this, their analysis is always out of control, and never complete. Even scholars do not know.