By a vote of five to two, this post's witty title will be . . .

. . . Socrates spoke as if political science regarded the inhabitants of the city as either "public craftsmen" or as "private persons, women and men." If the architectonic art were to come into operation, it would leave no room for the public life of "citizens" or "gentlemen." All important tasks would be directed by expert specialists, governed by the expert of experts—the practitioner of political science. —Thomas L. Pangle, The Roots of Political Philosophy

This has been a rock 'n' roll themed weekend of posting, which is why I can start a post on Poulos's Society article (Yale's journal subscriptions: so key) with the Iron Law of Supergroups: there will never be a good one, because creativity by commitee is not a thing.

This rule gets complicated when your own identity starts looking less like a unified self and more like a committee of identities. Take it away, James:

. . . This meta-self is rational only insofar as it understands that the psychic angst of choosing disappears when choices are not permanent. The therapeutic use of rationality is in keeping the individual always open to change, hedged in contingency against any commitment... If the self is irrevocably divided in its freedom from the perverse expectation of unity in a world built for diverse diversity, why not expect—indeed, encourage and respect—a reflection of diverse diversity within each individual? In this fashion, the individual ceases to be coextensive with merely one self. Within each individual thrive a contingent population of selves. The social individual is born.

What happens when having an identity starts to feel like (ugh!) management? For one thing, it makes selfhood a matter of technical expertise. For another, it locates all inspiration—which, even after we toss Romanticism out a tenth floor window, is still something that only an individual can have—in the managing meta-self, essentially killing it.

Also: any manager who thinks the road of teamwork leads to the palace of creativity needs to sit down and read the Phaedrus; I'm not sure what a communal "flash of inspiration" would look like, but it sounds unlikely.