knotwell@eniac.seas.upenn.EDU ("Bradley P. Knotwell") (06/02/90)
In article <P19JSZ7@xavier.swarthmore.edu> sdk91@campus.swarthmore.edu writes: >-Message-Text-Follows- > > >In article <4094.2652c9b3@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>, w25y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes... > >> I think the idea is that while caring and consensus may be the best way >>for a bunch of people to live together, it's not the best way to get anything >>done. If the Army Corps of Engineers was busy keeping all of its members >>happy and giving everyone a sense of belonging and all that "nice" stuff, >> -- Paul Ciszek >Actually, if the Army Corps of Engineers put energy into making people's >job structure less hierarchical, they might not only enjoy it more, they >might get _more_ done. (I've raced on a sailboat that ran by consensus, >once - amazing!) Also, they might stop building bridges so that Army >Infrantry can go over rivers and kill people or roads so that >tanks can roll over hamlets or airfields so that the Air Force or >National Guard can spray defoliants on civilians. > >--Steve Karpf Ignoring Karpf's obvious anti-military statements, both posters are somewhat correct. Decision-making by consensus is the rule in Japan. In Japan, it takes much longer to make decisions but once made the decisions are _executed_ extremely quickly. In the military (and some business environments, most notably financial businesses in an extremely fast-paced environment), decisions must be made extremely quickly or people will die. Thus, consensus decision-making has no place on the battlefield (NOTE: I'm not saying consensus decision-making has no place in the military, just not on the battlefield.). On the other hand, decisions made independently are executed _much_ more slowly. Organizational behaviorists comparing the Japanese decision-process with the American decision-process have found the the Japanese process from start to finish is shorter. These results can be seen in _The Essentials of Organizational Behavior_. I'll post the reference later. ciao, brad
rreid@cmcl2.nyu.EDU (r l reid) (06/02/90)
Kathryn Huxtable wrote a wonderful article concluding:
>I think we will have to eliminate gender-specific pronouns.
And cites Mark Ethan Smith's proposal and Delany's system
from _Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand_. (Both of which
sound quite workable, if only we could get them into usage!)
I'd like to point out one other example - again from fiction, of course,
which is Marge Piercy's _Woman On the Edge of Time_. In this
future, gender cues are minimized, and "per" stands for "he", "she",
"his", or "her". e.g. "Per went home and forgot per book."
You also would distinguish between sweet friends and pillow
friends (the difference is whether you sleep with them).
Some friends and I who often discuss gender issues
find ourselves drawing quite a bit from fiction just to
be able to discuss some things. One friend had it quite right
when per said that we need poets to move the language forward.
r reid
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