Who is running the show?

[Sato]

This post is an off-shoot from the themes introduced in Woland's post entitled 'Russia, Europe & America.'

Since this is a 'Russia' BB, the tendency here is to discuss global politics in terms of nation-states. But this is simplistic, as are conspiracy hypotheses based on fixed ideas about final ends.

Modern occurrences of people organizing themselves to change some aspect of society are manifested as segmented polycephalous networks. An organizational chart of such a network would look like a badly knotted fishnet with a multitude of nodes or cells of varying sizes, each linked to all the others either directly or indirectly.

Some of those cells within the network would, in themselves, be hierarchically organized bureaucracies recognized by the public as regional, national, or even international organizations. Examples from the environmental movement in the US could be the Audubon Society or the Sierra Club. The multitude of nodes or cells within a movement structure can be loosely lumped into segments which hang together ideologically or in terms of preferred tactics.

This factionalism functions to escalate the speed with which the movement grows and to bring about changed responses from the "establishment" more effectively than any one segment could do alone. In addition, factionalism prevents takeover by any one segment through the mechanism of temporary conditions between other segments to offset attempted control by one.

What has been emerging planetwide is a form of organization, qualitatively different from rational attempts to invent such a structure (e.g. the United Nations), that is ALREADY functioning to make large-scale warfare impractical, therefore obsolete, and is in fact allocating global resources and managing global productivity.

Just as participants in grassroots movements often fail to recognize the organizational genius of the segmented polycephalous network within which they are operating, and call for more centralized control, so many individuals who are participants in the global management network also fail to recognize it as an organizational structure.

None of the networks has emerged as a result of rational planning. Like any other evolutionary novelty, each has emerged out of FUNCTIONAL NECESSITY. Only after the fact can we bring reason and logic to bear in understanding what is happening. If this model of the emerging paradigm has any validity, the organizational structure of the future is already being created by the most as well as the least powerful within the present paradigm. Perhaps one of the crucial tasks in the immediate future is to clarify and expose the underlying assumptions that provide the ideological continuity for networks emerging at various levels of the global social structure. The key to the future may well be conceptual rather than organizational.

A systems-theory image of humankind may be the most compatible with the future described above. The person is a special case in system thinking because of his self-conscious awareness and use of symbolic-conceptual systems to guide his behavior; he is a goal-directed, "adaptive" learning system or "holon" (from the Greek 'holos' -- whole -- with the suffix 'on' -- suggesting a part). The properties of general systems seem to apply even to our conceptual activity. That is, owing to our social nature, our concepts must include the concepts held by others; and they must be "Janus-faced," incorporating more specialized concepts, just as they themselves are incorporated by more generalized ones.

Nonson brought up religious concerns, and though, as Octavio pointed out, religions are in great part the fossilized remains of dead civilizations, they are also vessels of distilled values. In the Buddhist vein, I would like to imagine a truly modern Sangha (sacred community) that would seek to become the most comprehensive unifying coherence available for the formulation of a meta-network of many segmented systems.

There seems to be a growing gap between a generalized "popular mind" and a "professional mind" in modern society that is not unlike the separation between peasant and patrician in the ancient world. The religious and political heritage seems dominant for the "popular mind," while increasingly the scientific heritage is dominant for the "professional mind."

If science increasingly displaces the religious heritage as formative in modern culture (and it will, barring a turning back to the 12th Century favored by some minorities), will this not be differently true with these two "publics," and possibly not very true at all with the "popular mind?" If this is so, we face a social engineering gap in the culture, where the democratic heritage operates increasingly without power or impact on the direction of change. It is important to continue efforts to make public debate more informed, legislatures more responsive, and administrators more accountable. Outside advisors, adversary procedures, and efforts by scientists to inform the public can help to resolve the tensions between democracy and expertise.

The above concerns are completely ecumenical, and ideological rigidities are melted when one participates in the crucible of actual management of the planet.

[Ronald_Barbour]

Very Good, Sato!

I'll call this one, "Zen And The Emerging New World Order."

Sincerely, Ronbo

P.S. Have you read, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintaince?"

[rodneymackinnon]

"Yeah, big-time!"

[Jimmi]

Hello there!
What is this topic about? And what are "Ronbo" saying. (I don´t think I like you, Ronbio)It seems you are comparable to a boy from my class. In danish it´s "Taber". It means the opposite of a very clever fellow!
Never ment to hurt you

[Nonson]

Sato, it seems that anything on the higher order of thought finds no home here. Peace

[Nonson]

Sato, you presented the Thesis and partial Anti-thesis. What is a rational Synthesis? Peace

[Reza_Rahmani]

Nonson,

The synthesis will have to contain another important element that has an antique hue, namely some kind of syncretistic virtue philosophy.

I have a great appreciation for the robust functional strength of Neo-Confucian teachings (Chu Hsi is a good example). No treatise here, but some basic concepts are:
Jen, Li, Yi, and Chih. Jen is fundamental human capacity for commiseration; Li is an appropriate code of conduct; Yi is righteousness, in the sense of capability for feeling shame in the presence of wrong-doing; Chih is wisdom, in the sense of knowing right from wrong.

We could find these topics covered in Western philosophy, but not acted out in quite the fashion as in medieval China. There is something succinct and dynamically intuitive about the Chinese approach. Ethics is always at the heart of Chinese philosophy in a special way.

Well, I am not out to advance a Sinophile theory; I always look for functional value.

It could be said that since the collapse of Victorian virtues, the West has been disintegrating with regard to virtue. This is not to say of course that Victorianism is the ideal we should seek; but nothing has really been established to take its place. In fact, viewing American families, schools, and civil society in general, I find an appalling collapse taking place. I dare say that the same could be said for Europe and Russia.

I will end by saying that without some attention to virtue, political innovation and technical advance will not be able to forge a lasting order.

S