Both pro and con can marshal vivid and compelling data and arguments and stories and case studies about bad things that happen, which, in their minds, are directly due to even some of the other side's "remedy" being in place.
Both sides are apalled and amazed at how blind and stupid the other side can be at not seeing the obvious relationship between cause and effect, and can only conclude that not only are their opponents demented, they are motivated by evil intentions.
Putting such people into the same room, whether brick and mortar or virtual chat room, results in much heat but little light, and results in everyone leaving even more persuaded than before that their own position is correct.
Sadly, more of this kind of thing is on the menu, with no hope in sight that more of the same will suddenly produce wisdom. Instead, as with the standard in US politics, what is hoped for is that a 50.02 percent margin can be obtained, even for a brief moment, during which the majority force can crush, disable, dismantle, or destroy the minority force. USA founder James Madison must be turning in his grave as the politics of the brutal majority becomes what he warned against in the Federalist Papers.
By alternating which of the two non-distinct parties is in power, each can take turns destroying the work of the other, which seems to be all politics can offer today - a viewer sport akin to professional wrestling or boxing. Great pride is taken in proving in public that one is vastly better at obstructionism than the other, and has totally blocked any motion on any social issue.
Meanwhile, very little or no "governing" is going on, no one is driving the bus, which is heading towards a variety of cliffs and trees with the screaming passengers in the back and the fistfight in the front. No progress is being made on dealing with the economy, lack of jobs, lack of innovation of anything worth exporting, loss of morale and spirit among the troops (both civil and military), the rise of mindless pain, hate crimes, and violence as subgroups of the population follow demagogues into the temporary joy of blaming some other subgroup for all that is wrong and all the pain.
Actually, I'd allege that things are both far worse and far better than that. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and all that.
(see my prior post - "Houston we have another problem" for a discussion of the limitations of human brains and corporate brains in dealing with issues.)
Things are worse, in the sense that the leadership in public and private sectors is doing its best to "focus" on "a few key priorities" amid all the 200 demands for action on fronts that seem to someone to be potentials for the end of the world as we know it if not addressed and soon. In my mind, this focus on priorities is losing strategy from the days in which there WERE a few key determinants of outcomes.
What we have today however, is akin to a lifeboat with 200 holes in the bottom, some larger than others. First, there seems to be joy in shooting new holes in the bottom of the OTHER sides part of the boat, while laughing at how now THEY are sinking more than our side is. Second, there is a total denial of the fact that, with so many holes, there are no "handful" of "priority holes" which, if fixed, will stop the sinking. It doesn't matter which 5 priorities are addressed -- the net impact of the remaining 195 will still sink our ship, as things are going.
Well, hmm. Is it time to shut off the news and go back to watching sports until we all die then? Or what? Drugs? Alcohol? Depression? How shall we cope as the world sinks away into ruin? Perhaps a jolly war against some newly perceived "enemy" the defeat of which will surely lift our spirits and the attacks on which will surely boost our economy and distract us from blaming, say, our system of non-government for mismanaging our resources and opportunities while, in some cases, absconding with the national treasury?
Judging from recent experience even large scale war does not seem to have that happy impact of killing off the unemployed and boosting exports of weapons that it once did.
I'm going to take a leap, or maybe a step, of analytic fashion and put forward the hypothesis that "Things are not working very well." In particular, the methods we have historically used for making sense of the world and taking action to avoid perils and acquire food and other resources are simply not doing the trick.
It is not that "capitalism" is broken, although it is, or that "communism is broken" (although it is), or that socialism is broken, although it is. Every "ism" appears to be broken and incapable of providing that closure between perception and action the living organism of our species needs to survive. There is no point, really, in shifting from one ism to another, or from one political party to another, because they are all flawed in the same way and provide no real alternatives.
What we have here is recognized in some circles, and I'll toss in with those, as being a problem of what are known as "complex adaptive systems". You can Google that term as well as I can, but, in short, our social structures have become so complex and intertwined and filled with "feedback loops" that their behavior is neither predictable nor controllable in the legacy sense that a horse, say, could be controlled and steered.
The world is, in point of fact, no longer "governable" from any central point. Every aspect of the core cybernetic loop of adpative behavior is broken. We don't perceive key variables. Information on what IS perceived is lost on translation to "the top" where "decision makers" live in some rarified atmosphere and alternative universe from the rest of us. The decision-makers don't between them have brilliance or wisdom sufficient for the task of transforming that collected sensory data into a plan of action, nor do they have the earned trust of the populace to toss in and follow said plan if they put it forward, which they don't even bother doing any more.
And, the plans they do have are so flawed that they fail out of the gate, causing us to decide we need to replace the decision makers with others, who only propagate the same thing happening again.
Meanwhile, not surprisingly, things are breaking down all around us, things that require some plan of action to address and that do not find such plans of action, ANY plan of action, to be forthcoming. The economy, jobs, educational picture, health picture, protection of our bodies and our crops from disease, all seem to have gone out for lunch a week ago and not returned and daily we see some shocking news about how much worse they are getting and how our resources need to be pulled from the other "priority tasks" and refocused instead on these priority tasks.
Won't help. The boat will still sink at this rate. Whatever 5 holes we chose to patch, the other 195 extant ones will sink us, let alone the ten new ones we decide to punch through the floor under our "opponents" end of the lifeboat we are all in.
WOULD something help then? Yes. We desperately need the core cybernetic loop to be fixed and working -- we need to close the loop from sensing our environment to making sense of the flood of data from our senses to using that wisdom to know where to push and pull or wait in some coordinated fashion and then to adjust that intervention so, overall, we move away from peril and towards both safety and food and shelter for us all.
We need, in other words, to have THINGS under control, but we need to get rid of the crippling legacy concept that we can achieve such control by using PEOPLE -IN-CHARGE who think they are going to provide that control for us. So, both sides are right. We do need more in the way of SOMETHING that coordinates our actions, and at the same time FEWER politicians and government functionaries who claim such purpose and take our money but don't deliver on that promise.
I'm not advocating anarchy here. I'm advocating a very specific state of things where the social system CONTROLS ITSELF, without the need for "leaders" to do the controlling. This in some ways is the dream of those who believe in Adam Smith's "invisible hand" that would provide emergent wisdom overall if only, on the small scale, each person behaved rationally and selfishly. Well, it's the same idea that large-scale-wise-emergent-results can occur based on small-scale-stupid-greedy actions.
Fortunately, there is a great deal know these days about "emergence" and how many small scale behaviors can "add up" to larger scale behavior. This can be captured in computer simulations and even designed to accomplish specific goals. To my knowledge, of course, none of this theory about how emergence occurs has been fruitfully applied to redesign of our own social governance systems.We are in desperate need of such emergence, but at a truly wise level, not at a stupid level. We could use guard-rails on our cliff-side highways, but are tired of governments which put the guardrails sideways across the road instead of along it -- speaking of the way regulations are designed and delivered, causing many to say we'd be better with NO "help" from the government at the rate of wisdom we've seen lately and at the rates government is charging (taxing) to fund such repeated folly.
But, emergent wisdom and emergent control IS possible, and is frequently used in small scale complex adaptive systems. The model DOES scale up and, in theory, could be applied on a global scale.
And, yes, we CAN do better than a pure "hands off" approach, but only if we have some underlying well-tested theoretical principles on which to decide when it is of value to lay hands on, and where.
IN other words, it IS possible to have "governance" while getting rid of "government". On a smaller scale, it is possible to have business worlds well-managed while at the same time getting rid of "management". it is the same problem, writ small.
This transition in the corporate world is what the transition from "Theory X" management to "Theory Y" management is about.
Now, not too surprisingly, many of those IN government and management, who might be faced with finding alternative employment involving fast food or heavy lifting, are not overjoyed about this concept that they can all be removed.
In the US, top corporate executives now get paid something astounding, like 500 times what low-level employees make, because of the "invaluable leadership" they provide. I'm saying, they could be paid ZERO, and put out to pasture, and the companies could have BETTER economic performance -- and it's time to explore THAT end of the spectrum.
What do "self-managed" groups, organizations, and people look like in practice? How does this work?
More in my next post. It's time to pack for today's real journey across the planet.
Peeking ahead, however, it's time in the development of true self-supporting world governance to start getting rid of world governMENTS, at least the ones that seem to be adding no value to our ability to cope with social issues.
It's time to become "agile" and utilize the power of social network technology to make our own decisions and make our own sensemaking and get rid of concepts of governments left over from the days when it took 3 months for news to get to outlying districts so that "representative government" was required. We don't really need that intermediate any more -- we can work in the large in real time now.
There is just a transition period ahead to transition control LOOPS of regulatory value while diminishing controlling PERSONS who are not adding value. We can expect said persons to resist and fight back of course, and this has the risk of producing its own level of misunderstanding and violence, by those who mistake the search for TRUE authority in government to be a search for either anarchy or a DIFFERENT set of PEOPLE to "run things" and "make decisions for us".
Central planning cannot possibly work in a complex adaptive system, except that it can work, under some constraints that can be made explicit and tested in computer simulations to demonstrate that they keep the baby while discarding the bathwater. Central PLANNERS = bad. Central emergent planning == GOOD, but it won't look like what we do today that we call "planning".
The solid basis for all of this is the core cybernetic loop of sensing, sense-making, and action-taking with good intent and open eyes. This is the core, irreducible structure of all life, and even defines living versus dead. We need to have MORE of that structure and control loop in place, but with FEWER people comprising it, in the limit, with zero people necessary "at the top" because we are all, in a holographic sense, truly part of the "control loop." That is the ultimate "democratic government"as well as the most cost effective.
(prior post on a "gentle introduction to feedback loops" here.)
Incidentally, for those religious friends reading this, this model of how governance can work would imply that you would see
(1) a growing decentralization of decision making as planning and action are moved increasingly to local levels in order to respond to local conditions, and
(2) ultimately, in the limit, no need for any central managing team of people because everyone has picked up the burden of managing, so it is irrelevant if they are all males, since their light touch, in the limit, "drops out" of the equation.
I think those aspects of change, at least those trends, are already evident.
Wade
No comments:
Post a Comment