Jerry, Love this line: "The procedure says you matter. The structure says you do not get to act on what matters." That's a razor-sharp articulation of the mechanism, and you extended what I shared on LinkedIn. Grateful to be in this conversation.
I'm genuinely glad if something I'd been turning over turned out useful here.
Reading through the three floors, something from everyday life came to mind for each one.
For the procedural floor, maybe the "manager in name only." Someone given the title of manager so the company can stop paying overtime — handed the responsibility, but none of the authority to act on it.
For the contribution floor, the barista at the cafe and the children harvesting the coffee beans. Only the visible end gets recognized, while the labor upstream that made the cup possible stays out of sight.
For the consent floor, the "I'm doing this for your own good" move — pushing all kinds of things onto someone and then treating the absence of complaints as agreement. The silence of the side that can't refuse gets quietly rewritten as consent.
Lined up like this, it feels like they're everywhere in daily life.
Who in history has written about this — honestly, I have no idea, it's a complete blank for me. But it does feel like the kind of pattern that's been quietly repeating across time, just in different shapes.
Jerry, Love this line: "The procedure says you matter. The structure says you do not get to act on what matters." That's a razor-sharp articulation of the mechanism, and you extended what I shared on LinkedIn. Grateful to be in this conversation.
Thank you. We are grateful for your contributions and the work you do here on Substack.
I'm genuinely glad if something I'd been turning over turned out useful here.
Reading through the three floors, something from everyday life came to mind for each one.
For the procedural floor, maybe the "manager in name only." Someone given the title of manager so the company can stop paying overtime — handed the responsibility, but none of the authority to act on it.
For the contribution floor, the barista at the cafe and the children harvesting the coffee beans. Only the visible end gets recognized, while the labor upstream that made the cup possible stays out of sight.
For the consent floor, the "I'm doing this for your own good" move — pushing all kinds of things onto someone and then treating the absence of complaints as agreement. The silence of the side that can't refuse gets quietly rewritten as consent.
Lined up like this, it feels like they're everywhere in daily life.
Everywhere indeed. Thanks for this. I am going to have to sit with this for a while. I'm looking for the exploding brain emoji...lol
I'd love to see you write about this and work your way through it. What other writers throughout history have observed and written about this?
Who in history has written about this — honestly, I have no idea, it's a complete blank for me. But it does feel like the kind of pattern that's been quietly repeating across time, just in different shapes.
I'll give writing about it some thought.
Maybe we collab on a piece. I'll do some poking around this weekend and send some ideas.
Sounds good — looking forward to your ideas. Thanks, Jerry!