Yesterday I wrote about the irrelevance of politics and gave a broad brush introduction to my argument. I realize that my discussion of "systems" might seem almost mystical to some, especially those totally indoctrinated in the reductionist world view. Let me try to give a few things to chew on. I mentioned Helen Keller, a great Socialist, and I want you to understand how well she saw what we have now mostly forgotten. I also gave a brief sketch of the ideas behind the alternative to the reductionist world view and will elaborate a bit on that idea. I have spent a lot of my last few years of research on this and think I have understood finally. As a 75 year old scholar I find that gratifying and want to share it here because you are good people. I think you have gone off track from our movement of the sixties and seventies and would ask you to consider that possibility with an open mind. Please read on below and I will elaborate.
Let us start with a simple observation and the important question that it raises.
The two partys are are at odds on most issues and have been for some time. Both believe the other to be wrong. Is it possible that in this one thing both are correct? If so how do we explain the fact that our politics is based almost totally on such magnificent errors?
Among thge many things Helen Keller could see more clearly than most sighted people was the reality of this She said:
Our democracy is but a name. We vote. What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real — though not avowed — autocrats. We choose between ‘Tweedledum’ and ‘Tweedledee’.
In recent times George Lakoff has examined the two world views and the value systems they generate and given us insight into them based on modern neuroscience and cognitive linguistics. He does it from "inside" as a progressive and it has an "us vs them" flavor but he takes us deeper into understanding the matter.
Lakoff brings causality into the picture and speaks of two distinct kinds of causal explanations for the events we observe. He points out that right wing conservatives tend to believe in "direct cause": Events occur due to a single agent acting.
A-->B
where A is the causal agent and B is the effect.
He claims that progressives understand that causes are complex. That is multiple agents bring about effects through networks of interacting causes. Being the essence of our notions of complex systems theory, this excited me very much. I was quick to project my understanding on to Lakoff's and made a mistake in doing so. This was when I was under the spell of the Obama campaign so I needed it.
For me the smoke has cleared now. Complex systems don't work the way our political models portray them and therefore we tend to serve the very system we oppose. Keller knew this in very insightful way. I suggest that most of the people here have no idea what Keller contributed to our political knowledge. If I am correct, that says a lot. She was brilliant and insightful as well as creative. What she lacked in sight she had many fold more in vision.
The system is stable and has been. It has been named and analyzed to the nth degree. People have used words, force, non-violence, etc. to try to control, influence, direct, manipulate it but are always kidding themselves about that imagined ability. Here they call the system they are part of Capitalism, but other isms have been there too. Our particular manifestation locally in the US and Western Europe has been capitalism of one form or another. It is evolving all the time and its recent survival techniques are being worked out in Asia at the moment.
Things have evolved but not changed in essence. Exploitation, greed, and other similar motivations make it work. Individual leaders and governments come and go but the struggle remains the same. Helen Keller would find Wisconsin very familiar.
This is the nature of complex systems. They are not machines whose behavior is predictable from their parts. Their parts are the substrate for function and it is function that makes them what they are. Replacing or even destroying parts does not affect a system if they are adaptable and have other ways of realizing the functions involved.
Meanwhile read the titles of the diaries here and you see how we think. Issues, parts, manipulations, arguments over these are what we believe in. It is a fictitious world like the surrogate world created by our science. Science has a big role in this all, but not the role we imagine. Science feeds the system's growth and adaptation and these contributions are manifest in technology. Technology has its own systemic nature. It is out of human control and humans have become its servant. Our minds and creativity go to making things we can sell so the profiteers can get even more. Luxury boats abound as medical devices remain scarce. Whom is to blame? Can it be fixed? Can we prevent eating and consuming ourselves to death? Try these questions. You may be depressed by the answers you arrive at.