OFFICER

Authority that is compulsory and attention that is not reciprocated. The school is the densest single setting for involuntary one-sided attachment on this site and the least discussed anywhere.

• The people who are supposed to be reachable2015 · A term or conceptThis entry is the definition of the OFFICER category and it names every sub-category in it, from the teacher to the doctor's receptionist. Filed under the first and most common, and flagged here because a category-defining entry does not belong to one of its own branches.
• The coach1900 · A mechanism or tacticAn adult with authority over a child for years, remembered partly by how they made them feel at nine. The compulsory version of the same attachment as the teacher, and the entry that shows the category is about asymmetry of power rather than about proximity.
• The teacher1900 · A mechanism or tacticAn authority figure seen daily for years who knows your name, your mood and your home situation. The densest single setting for involuntary one-sided attachment, and the least discussed anywhere.

A person you attend on purpose, repeatedly, with something at stake, who is professionally obliged to be unavailable in the way you need.

• Is it good for you?1990 · A term or conceptIs a parasocial bond wellbeing, a substitute for it, or neither. That is a clinical question that went in circles for forty years, and it belongs where the clinical literature sits.
• Parasocial interaction disorder1985 · A term or conceptA clinical category. It exists because a clinician encountered it, and it sits with the professional role that named it.

Judges, landlords, employers, the state: a person holding a decision about you and a routine that leaves no room for a relationship. The asymmetry is the entire design of the role.

• The landlord1900 · A mechanism or tacticA named individual with access to your home, your deposits and your address, met in person, repeatedly, under stress. A duty, a door, and no room in the role for reciprocity.

The person who has been in the same place for a very long time and is therefore part of the furniture of your life. Attachment accrues from proximity rather than from attention.

• The Macy's counter1955 · A personA sales clerk who remembered, and had the right thing ready when you came back. Proximity rather than attention, which is what makes it an officer case: a person with a role, a counter and a door.
• The counter sits between1985 · A mechanism or tacticThe person who knows you is also the person who profits from you. The relationship has an employer, and that sentence is the reason the clerk belongs with the officer rather than with the brand.
• The retail clerk1950 · A mechanism or tacticA person who recognises you, remembers what you wanted, and has the right thing behind the counter when you come back. The site's own counter-argument to the algorithm, and it belongs with the officer rather than the brand because the person is the point.
• The local news anchor1950 · A mechanism or tacticOne person on your own television, in your own town, for twenty years, who is leaving and everybody is upset. Proximity, not charisma, and the clearest case of the attachment accruing from duration.
• The neighbour1950 · A mechanism or tacticSomeone whose kitchen light you can see, whose bin day you know, whose life you have tracked for years without ever having asked. Proximity without duty, which makes it the purest local case on the site.

Where the asymmetry is supposed to be reciprocal and is not. The site treats this as a category because it is the case every reader is standing inside and therefore the hardest to see.

• Mourning a person you met1990 · A term or conceptGrief vocabulary borrowed from bereavement practice, used about a public figure. The register is archive; the category it actually borrows from is the domestic one, because the reference class is someone you met.
• The quarterly audit2010 · A mechanism or tacticAn intervention the reader performs on themselves. The only officer here who is not another person at all - which is precisely why it is filed with the domestic register rather than dropped.
• The audience1600 · A mechanism or tacticA room of people responding to a performance. The tie here is the one every reader is standing inside - the reciprocal is supposed to be total and is not. Domestic, not cosmology.

An individual whose standing is personal rather than appointed: older, more established, or simply the person a younger or more junior person looks up to. There is no office, no institution and no duty of care, which is precisely what makes the tie unprotected. The Greek erastes is the type case - a private individual with informal authority over someone younger, who is under no obligation to notice and who usually does not.

• Think of nothing but the guru1650 · A mechanism or tacticFiled officer/senior, on the shelf's test: "Do they hold a role, or do they hold standing?" and its second half, "If they hold only standing, the relationship runs on age, seniority or reputation, and this is the shelf." The lama holds no office over this disciple - the entry's instruction does not assign a post, it assigns an object of attention, "Moving, walking, sleeping, sitting, happy or miserable, continuously think of nothing but the guru!" - and the shelf's def is what that describes: "There is no office, no institution and no duty of care, which is precisely what makes the tie unprotected." The relation is, in the field site's own words, "inherently hierarchical", and the senior's asymmetry is the mechanism's: "No institution stands behind the tie, so nothing constrains it", which is why the tradition carries fifty verses of instruction rather than a contract. The counter is officer/teacher, whose test asks "Could the person have declined to know you?" It loses on the teacher's own not: "The teacher's attachment is the only one on this site that is legally compulsory, and that is what distinguishes it and what makes it difficult to discuss." Nothing here is compulsory: no law requires the attention, and this shelf defines itself as the one where "nothing obliges this person to treat the attachment at all" - the tie runs on standing and can be met with silence. The second counter is institution/faith-body, and it is the stronger of the two, because Capper's field site has a building, a schedule and a sangha: "All Buddhist practices at Siddha Gompa revolve around this devotion." It loses on that shelf's own def, "A parish you are in rather than a figure you follow", for what the entry's instruction addresses is a figure, followed by one person in private; and on its mechanism, "Attendance as the substrate. A relationship sustained by physical presence on a schedule, with witnesses", which is precisely what the formula refuses - attention is demanded while "moving, walking, sleeping, sitting", attendance abolished and replaced by continuous private thought. The tradition "makes it indispensable to the path rather than optional", and the path is walked alone. Contestable, and recorded as such.
• The craft of the sage Adapa-660 · A mechanism or tacticA sage whose teaching reaches a reader intact and whose person never does - standing without a role and without a meeting. The same gap that produced this shelf for the Greek erastes produces it again here, two centuries earlier and in writing rather than in life.
• Shag-eared and deaf-370 · A workThe shelf this entry opened. The erastes holds no office and runs no institution: his authority is personal, age-based and wholly unaccountable, which is why the tie is unprotected. Filed under officer/teacher it would have looked tidier and been false, because a teacher has duties and he has none.