A few days ago I held a presentation about the concept of action. For some sociologists human actions are the base for explaining social life (in contrast to other for whom communication is) and as that it is obviously very important. The presentation was held along a text by Uwe Schimank, who apparently is inspired by Luhmanns systems theory (which is quite funny since without knowing I also connected him to Luhmann).
I laid out an argumentation arc for my presentation. The presentation was supposed to begin with the problem of operational closeness (“Operative Geschlossenheit” in German). This concept originated (as far as I know) in cybernetics and was adopted by Luhmann for social sciences. In Luhmanns theory of systems, operations are the most basic forms of actions of systems. Depending on what you want to observe, sociologist observe communication as the most basic operation of social systems, while biologists observe life as the most basic operation of nature, trainers observe sport as a means of building muscles and so on. Systems do not have to be physical and get constructed by observers, thus two observers observing the same physical occurrences can see two different systems.
The closeness in operational closeness describes the idea that every operation has to happen inside the system. Though this might sound simple at first it does have some huge consequences. For example, unlike the elves in Lord of the Rings, life can’t be easily transferred to others (have not watched it, but I could imagine that elves can do that). Maybe you can externally introduce energy to a system, for example with an artificial lung, but the core operation has to happen inside the system.
This is a problem. Since all thinking operations are happening within the brain, and since two brains can not just connect to each other, humans have to rely on other means of ‘thinking externalization’. To circumvent that, humans (and probably other animals, though I do not know whether one would call it communication in animal land) have created communication. Communication is not perfect. The main problem is that thinking and communicating can diverge. This is a problem in all fields of social life, one could think of a marriage where one partner swears they have not cheated, while the suspicious other partner can only rely on external cues, like a red face, some stuttering and so on. Another problem is that communication does not make sense out of itself. Basic forms of communication like talking is in its physical dimension only a vibration of air particles, resulting in electronic stimulations in humans brains. Money as well is just paper with some numbers printed on it. In a sociological manner, sense is something located outside of human brains. It is not individualist, rather it is shared across societies and also it can be created and destroyed by actors, ideas and organizations.
I had a lot of fun creating this presentation because it was based on a very fundamental sociological text, creating the possibility to talk about every aspect of social life (I even prepared a discussion questions about communication with aliens. With the advances in technology humans send out messages to space. I argued that this is a social action similar to a live streamer who does send messages to the void without knowing who watches). One aspect I liked about my presentation was when i began talking about sense makers and sense thieves.
This is not a concept directly talked about in the text, but I think it is one of its necessary consequences. Under sense makers I subsumed people like Donald Trump, Churches or the family concept. Under sense thieves I included Friedrich Merz, Doctors and Nikolaus Kopernikus. The first group supplies societies with sense of the world. When Trump talks about the deep state, he supplies his fans with templates through which they can observe the world. Similar a priest in the church, through whom everything becomes a will of god. I also included the family as I feared that the concept could be seen as somewhat traditionalist or right, which it is not. I would argue that children in families play a huge role in supplying their parents with sense, but obviously the opposite is also the case since children need parents to make sense of the world.
The second group on the other hand ‘steals’ sense from societies. In general I would conclude natural scientists under this group since they oppose a human centric world view. Nikolaus Kopernikus who replaced the human centred world approach by a sun centred world approach could be seen as its first representative. I also concluded persons like Friedrich Merz. Initially I intended as a joke when comparing him to Trump, but the more I think about it, the difference between Trump and Merz is also a difference between a charismatic leadership on the one hand and a legal/bureaucratic leadership on the other.
While I think bureaucratic leaders have higher likelihoods of being seen as ‘sense thieves’, it can turn also turn into its opposite. Especially here in Germany there is a long tradition of upholding values like boringness and bureaucraticness (though recently more challenged).
Another argument worth thinking about is that persons do not need to be liked in order to become sense supplies. The war against a shared enemy can for example unite people under shared hostility (as seen in probably every war). There are some interesting side ways to explore, for example that there is in some way close interaction between enemies, while on the other hand there is no need to have a real enemy as fantasy enemies can always be constructed. While the concept of Talibans always played a crucial role in everyday Americans lives, the majority never had any real contact to one. They were artificial sense makers, in many ways created by media.