1 - Fr Andrzej Szpak and the Code of “Git”
Fr Andrzej Szpak began his pastoral work among young people in the environment, which could seem almost completely inaccessible from the point of view of conventional pastoralism. Among another things, they were young people associated with the environment of the so - called "gits" — a group with its own language, its own hierarchy, its own principles, and its own code of honor.
And this is where an highly interesting sociological problem arises.
Fr. Szpak helped these young people. He was not limited to preaching outside principles to them. He walked into their world, talked to them, tried to gain their trust and truly aid them.
Yet, as he said, he was robbed 3 times.
At first glance it seems a paradox.
Man helps another man, and in consequence he is robbed. Of course, they were demoralized people who could not respond thankfully to the good.
But that explanation is besides simple.
If we truly want to realize this event, we gotta effort to enter into the group's logic, not just from the outside.
"Death to Suckers"
The git environment had its own code. 1 of its basic principles was the slogan:
"Death to Suckers".
This was not simply about the literal meaning of those words. "Frajer" meant a man outside the group, a man who did not know or obey the code in force.
And this is where the fundamental difference between 2 systems of standards arises.
For Fr. Szpak, helping another man was a value in itself. If individual needed help, they had to be helped.
In the Gitowski Code, the situation may have looked completely different.
A man who was not part of the group and allowed himself to be utilized was not necessarily seen as a good man. He could have been classified as a loser.
And there was a different standard for a loser.
That's why these 3 robberies are highly interesting. They show that the act of goodness itself does not request to be read as goodness by a man functioning in another normative system.
He spoke his tongue.
The players answered according to their own language.
And both sides could realize words perfectly and at the same time realize their meaning completely differently.
Two Codes
So we can present this situation as a gathering of 2 different communication codes.
The first code may be simplified as follows:
“I aid you due to the fact that you are human.”
Two:
“If you let me usage you, you are a loser.”
In the first code, the weakness of another man should trigger help.
In the second, it can start using.
This is an highly crucial distinction.
It is not adequate to say to a man, “I am on your side.” We inactive request to know what it means to be on someone's side.
Why did Skapak come back anyway?
And this is where the most interesting part of the communicative begins.
If Fr Szpak had said, after the first theft, “help to these people does not make sense”, the communicative would have been trivial.
But he came back.
Despite being used, he continued to effort to establish a relationship.
This means that his strategy was not to simply argue the good of evil. She was trying to transform the relationship.
He didn't say:
"You have a bad code, so I want nothing to do with you."
Rather, he tried to enter into a relation with a man who functioned according to a different code, and gradually created a space in which a different way of interacting would be possible.
This is the fundamental difference between morality and pastoral work.
Moralizing says:
“You should be different.”
The account says:
“Let us effort to build something between us that will let you to become others.”
Three thefts as a social experiment
If you look at these 3 events from a sociological perspective, you can treat them almost as a natural experiment.
Every time Fr Szpak contributed the same basic code: trust, assistance and solidarity.
Each time, the another side could respond according to its current code.
And that's why the 3rd theft is peculiarly important.
It shows that a single act of goodness is not adequate to change the rules of the social system.
If the group has a established code, the entity may interpret fresh behaviour by old rules.
Aid can so be interpreted as naivety.
Trust as a weakness.
Openness as an chance to use.
However, this does not mean that change is impossible.
It just means that changing the code requires a repetitive relation over time.
The Most crucial Lesson
The communicative of Fr Andrzej Szpak shows something much deeper than a simple communicative about a good priest and juvenile criminals. It shows that man does not function exclusively as an individual individual making individual moral decisions. It besides functions inside the communication system.
And this strategy tells him what is honor, what is disgrace, who is "your own", who is "foreign" to help, who is not to be trusted, and who can be used.
Therefore, the very saying, “Be good” may not be enough. If we want to change human behavior, sometimes we besides request to change the structure of the relation in which that behaviour arises.
Perhaps that is why the experience of Fr Szpak is so interesting from the position of social systems theory. He did not effort to defeat the strategy by his own means. He tried to make an alternate relation in which a man ceased to be a ‘sucker’ or ‘gittalist’ and began to be simply a man remaining in a relation with another man. And possibly that's where the most crucial difference is between behaviour control and relation code change. due to the fact that you can force a man to do something. It's much harder to make him halt reasoning it's right.
And it is even harder to make a community where the old code no longer needs to be created.
2 - From “death to losers” to “peace and love”
After experience with guitars, Andrzej Szpak faced a question that could not be solved by moralizing itself.
If a individual tries to build a relation based on trust with a group whose interior code allows to exploit a individual outside the group, the same display of good may not be enough. So Szpak turned to another youth environment — hippies. And here comes an highly interesting change. If the primary motto of the Gitovian culture was "Death to Suckers", then 1 of the main messages of the hippie movement was "Peace and Love". So we have 2 highly different ways of organising relationships. On 1 side: his — alien, honor — shame, strength — weakness, usage — being used, “death to losers”.
Two:
Peace, love, freedom, community, rejection of violence. So the star did not just go from 1 youth group to another. You could say it went from 1 relation code to another.
And this is where his experience becomes highly interesting. 2 opposing experiments
In the Gitowski community, he tried to enter into a relation with people whose basic group code was constructed around the distinction: ‘his own — loser’.
His own code was different: “man — man.” This collision turned out to be very difficult.
The hippies were a very different case. If their primary message was peace and love, then the values which Szpak brought to the relation — care, help, acceptance, community — were much more consistent with their own way of communicating. So there was a anticipation that was missing earlier. It was not essential to first convince the another organization that the relation itself is simply a value. This value was already present in their own code. So it was not “good” and “bad” people. This discrimination is very important. We do not request to presume that the runners were simply “bad” and the hippies were “good”. That explanation doesn't say much. The question is much more interesting:
What code did they have for their relationship? For man can behave completely differently depending on the strategy of standards in which he participates. The same individual can fight for position in 1 group, care for others in another, and in another, submit to the rule of common assistance. Therefore, changing the group may not only mean changing the social environment.
It could mean changing the rules by which man interprets another people's behavior.
The chick discovers something very important. Experience with guitars may have led to a simple conclusion: “These people cannot be worked with.” But Szpak did something else.
He's changed the environment. And thus changed the terms of communication. In the hippie community, his message was no longer completely foreign. “Peace and love” met with “the love of their neighbor.”
This did not mean, of course, that hippies automatically became people who followed Christian ethics. However, it meant that there was a common space of meaning. And the common space of meaning is simply a prerequisite for a lasting relationship.
From code conflict to their convergence
So we can see this communicative as 2 more experiences.
First experience: the jocks. The star brings aid and trust to the relationship. The group interprets them through its own code. Result: usage and theft 3 times.
Second experience: hippies. The chick brings help, acceptance, community and love. This time, part of his message meets the group code: "peace and love". This is where the anticipation of dialog arises.
Not due to the fact that they all abruptly became the same. But due to the fact that there was a common mention point.
The most crucial change This communicative leads to a very interesting conclusion: A man can't always change directly. Sometimes you gotta change the space of the relation in which man functions.
The star was not just trying to tell young people, "Stop being what you are."
He tried to find a way into their planet so that communication could arise between its values and their own experience. With guitars, this experimentation encountered a very strong normative barrier. With hippies he found much more contact points. That is why the past of the transition from "death to suckers" to "peace and love" can be read as more than an anecdote from the past of youth pastoralism. It can be read as a small, natural sociological laboratory showing that the relation is not created solely by the individual's intentions. It arises erstwhile these intentions can be recognized and sustained by the communication code of the another party.
Pilgrimage of hippies as an example of homeostasis strategy with compatible codes
Here the communicative of Andrzej Szpak leads us even further.
If we treat the social group as a system, we can ask not only who belongs to it, but above all: what allows it to continue? In cybernetics, this would be a question of homeostasis — the ability of the strategy to keep a certain state despite the constant changes in its elements and surroundings. In this sense, the pilgrimages of hippies are peculiarly interesting. At first glance, it is simply a paradox. After all, the hippie movement associated with rejecting institutions, conventions and organized structures. Meanwhile, people operating outside conventional social structures were able to make a comparatively sustainable form of joint action: they met, moved together, formed a community and submitted to certain minimum rules. However, it was not an organization in the classical sense. She didn't request an extended hierarchy. She didn't request formal membership. She didn't even request a unified worldview. She needed something much simpler: adequate compatibility of the communication code.
Common code If the basic slogans were: peace — love — freedom — community,
it was the individual appearing in the group that could be recognized as being “his” not due to the fact that he had a certain status, but due to the fact that his behaviour was compatible with the group code. That's what made the community possible. You shouldn't have known all the contestants. You didn't gotta control all man. It was adequate that the participants were able to admit the behaviour according to the basic code. In this sense, the pilgrimage was a strategy with comparatively advanced self-regulation capacity.
Homeostasis without central control
This is peculiarly interesting from a cybernetic point of view. classical organization keeps order with the control center: regulation → command → control → correction. The pilgrimage community can function differently: code → designation → group reaction → behaviour correction → code maintenance. So you don't gotta have 1 central regulator.
The regulation may be distributed between participants. If individual behaves according to the code, the relation is maintained. If it starts acting in a way that is grossly contrary to the code, the group reacts. In this way, the strategy maintains its condition without the request for continuous command.
That's what you call social homeostasis.
Spoon as a regulator element
The function of Fr Szpak besides becomes interesting in this model. He was not just an outside hippie observer. If he managed to establish a relation with them, his presence could become 1 of the elements stabilizing the system. Not by imposing external order, but by strengthening values that were already partially present in the group. So the star did not gotta make a completely fresh code. He could have acted through his shift and deepening. The hippie said, "Peace and love." Christianity said, "Love your neighbor." These are not identical claims. But their partial compatibility created a communication space that was not in the case of the "death to losers" rule.
Stability through compliance, not identicality And here we come to an crucial distinction. Homeostasis does not require all elements of the strategy to be identical. On the contrary.
The strategy can be unchangeable precisely due to the fact that its elements are different, but their differences do not destruct the basic relationship. The hippie and priest could disagree in almost everything: outfits, lifestyles, worldviews, attitudes towards institutions or religions. And yet they could communicate through a common passage of code: peace and love. That was adequate for the relation to be maintained. So we can compose this rule in a very simple way: stableness of the strategy - identicality of elements
but: stableness of the strategy = adequate compatibility between the elements.
Pilgrimage as a dynamic system
Pilgrimage is simply a peculiarly good example, due to the fact that its participants are inactive on the move.
People change.
Places change.
Things are changing.
There are conflicts, fatigue, differences in interests and fresh people.
Yet the continuity of the community can be preserved.
This is the essence of homeostasis:
elements and conditions change, but the strategy retains a certain scope of its essential properties.
It is so not essential for the strategy to be stationary.
On the contrary.
Homeostasis is the ability to preserve identity through change.
Two cases: gyms and hippies
This way we can put together 2 experiences of Szpak.
Gici:
"Death to Suckers".
Starfish:
Help, trust, relationship.
There's a strong code incompatibility.
Result:
use and theft.
Hippies:
"Peace and Love".
Starfish:
Help, community, love.
Partial code compatibility is created.
Result:
the anticipation of unchangeable communication and the creation of a community.
This does not mean that the hippies were "better" than the git in a moral sense.
It means something more interesting:
Their code was more compatible with the relation code that Szpak tried to enter.
And erstwhile 2 systems have sufficiently compatible codes, they can enter a relation without having to completely subjugate 1 strategy to another.
This could be 1 of the mechanisms of relational homeostasis.
From homeostasis to field L
And here comes a direct transition to our concept of Field L.
Field L would not require all participants to have the same beliefs.
It would only require that differences between them stay reversible and communicateable.
In the case of gigates, the difference between the Szpak code and the group code led to the usage of 1 side by the other.
The relation was losing the anticipation of correction.
For hippies there was a larger space of common code.
The differences remained negotiable.
The hypothesis can so be put forward:
The homeostasis of the social strategy is possible erstwhile the differences between its elements stay within the scope of the compatibility of its relation code.
And erstwhile the difference exceeds this range, there is something in our model that we would call the failure of the consistency of field L.
Then the strategy must either find a fresh regulator, either change the code, or exclude an component whose behaviour has become incompatible with its reproduction.
That is why the communicative of 1 priest, 1 group of young people and 1 pilgrimage can become an interesting example of a more general problem:
how the social strategy retains its identity erstwhile its elements are constantly changing.
Leszek Smyrski
