Difference between revisions of "Holotopia: Power structure"

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<p>What should we, really, learn from Darwin about cultural and <em>social</em> evolution? Richard Dawkins answered this question in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene". His point, which subsequently led to a variety of applications and a new research field called "memetics", was that the survival of the fittest favors <em>the fittest</em> or best adapted gene (or the fittest "meme", when it is cultural or social evolution we are talking about); not any sort of utility or perfection.</p>  
 
<p>What should we, really, learn from Darwin about cultural and <em>social</em> evolution? Richard Dawkins answered this question in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene". His point, which subsequently led to a variety of applications and a new research field called "memetics", was that the survival of the fittest favors <em>the fittest</em> or best adapted gene (or the fittest "meme", when it is cultural or social evolution we are talking about); not any sort of utility or perfection.</p>  
  
<p>What <em>systems in which we live and work</em> did this sort of evolution leave us with? [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/CONVERSATIONS#ThePSposter The Paradigm Strategy Poster] (which was one of the forerunner <em>prototypes</em> to Holotopia) we used the [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/CONVERSATIONS#Chomsky-Harari-Graeber homsky–Harari–Graeber <em>thread</em>] to answer this question.</p>  
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<p>What <em>systems in which we live and work</em> is this sort of evolution likely to produce? [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/CONVERSATIONS#ThePSposter The Paradigm Strategy Poster] (which was one of the forerunner <em>prototypes</em> to Holotopia) we used the [http://kf.wikiwiki.ifi.uio.no/CONVERSATIONS#Chomsky-Harari-Graeber homsky–Harari–Graeber <em>thread</em>] to answer this question.</p>  
  
 
<h3>The "fittest" is not the best</h3>  
 
<h3>The "fittest" is not the best</h3>  

Revision as of 13:27, 27 June 2020

H O L O T O P I A:    F I V E    I N S I G H T S




Powered by ingenuity of innovation, the Industrial Revolution revolutionized the efficiency of human work. Where could the next revolution of this kind be coming from?

System.jpeg
System ideogram

We look at the systems in which we live and work. Imagine them as gigantic machines, comprising people and technology. Their function is to take people's daily work as input, and turn it into socially useful effects. If our work has become incomparably more efficient and yet we've remained busy—should we not see whether they might be wasting our time? And if our best efforts result in problems rather than solutions—should we not check whether they might be causing those problems?

Furthermore—as the above image may also illustrate—the systems in which we live and work determine our life quality most directly. How well are they serving us in that role?


Power structure wastes resources

A costly oversight

While the ingenuity of our innovation has been focused on small gadgets we can hold in our hand—those 'gigantic machines' constitute a proportionally more important, and yet overlooked creative frontier. How much is this oversight costing us?

On Page 4 of the article The Game-Changing Game–A Practical Way to Craft the Future we answered this question by giving a summary of our Ferguson–McCandless–Fuller thread, of which we here highlight the main points.

As always, our stories are intended to vividly illustrate rather than rigorously prove the proposed views.

Billion Dollar-o-Gram 2009.jpg
David McCandless: The Billion-Dollar-o-Gram 2009

A quick look at David McCandless' Billion-Dollar-o-Gram 2009 will show that the costs of two issues ("Worldwide cost of financial crisis" and "Iraq & Afganistan wars total eventual cost") dominate the image so dramatically, that the costs of familiar "global issues" ("to lift one billion people out of extreme poverty", "African debt", "save the amazon"...) seem insignificant in comparison.

Largest costs are systemically caused

We tell the story of Charles Ferguson's two award-winning documentaries to highlight—as he did in his films—that those two issues were systemically caused. Or in other words that they were "inside jobs", as the title of Ferguson's second film suggested.

Fuller may have been right

In the late 1960s, Buckminster Fuller predicted that by the end of the century science and technology would have advanced enough to enable us, the people on the planet, to put an end to scarcity. And that our core challenge would be to reconfigure the use and distribution of those resources—which now sapped through scarcity-based competition.

What we have just seen suggests that Fuller may have been right.

In 1969 Fuller proposed to the American Senate a computer-based solution called the World Game. Its whose purpose was to enable the global policy makers to see the world as one, and collaborate on allocating and sharing its resources, instead of competing.

Power structure causes devolution

Competition vs. collaboration

But what is really the power structure? While our understanding will gradually deepen throughout this walk of our initial sketch of the holotopia, what's we've just seen might already suggest that power structures are the systems in which we live and work, or simply the "structures", that emerge when we are pursue egotism instead of wholeness, when we compete when we should collaborate, when we rely on "the invisible hand" and shun the awareness of purpose.

This popular myth, that competition (rather than informed co-creation) leads to the best possible world, seems to follow from Darwin's evolution theory. Isn't that the way in which the nature does her creation?

"Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory", warned Norbert Wiener.

What should we, really, learn from Darwin about cultural and social evolution? Richard Dawkins answered this question in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene". His point, which subsequently led to a variety of applications and a new research field called "memetics", was that the survival of the fittest favors the fittest or best adapted gene (or the fittest "meme", when it is cultural or social evolution we are talking about); not any sort of utility or perfection.

What systems in which we live and work is this sort of evolution likely to produce? The Paradigm Strategy Poster (which was one of the forerunner prototypes to Holotopia) we used the homsky–Harari–Graeber thread to answer this question.

The "fittest" is not the best

We used the real-life history of "Alexander the Great" as a parable, as told by David Graeber, because it has all the elements we may want, to illustrate our points: The "fittest" system of its era (Alexander's army, with its corresponding "business model") was turning free people into slaves, destroying societies and cultures, homes, monasteries and palaces... and it even had "financial innovation" as one of its core elements!

The stories associated with the names of Noam Chomsky and Noah Yuval Harari allowed us to point to the dynamics that underlie the power structure devolution. We'll return to them when discussing the socialized reality insight.

Are you working for a psychopath?

We supplemented a reflection on Joel Bakan's "The Corporation", to show that while today the most powerful power structure may look different than it did twenty-five centuries ago, its essential nature has remain unchanged.

As a law professor, Bakan explained how the modern corporation with time evolved to become the most powerful institution on the planet. And how—through a few centuries of legal maneuvering—it acquired the legal status of a person, but without the corresponding accountability. If the corporation is a person, then what sort of person is it? In his documentary, and the book that preceded it, Bakan showed that the corporation has all the characteristics that qualify a psychopath.


Power structure is us

"We have seen the enemy, and he is us!"

Pogo, Walt Kelly's exceedingly cute cartoon hero, said this long ago; and it stuck.

But could it be real?

What we must know about the Holocaust

Bauman-PS.jpeg

In modernity, Zygmunt Bauman observed, cruelty and evil morphed. They became systemic; they became "an emergent property" of the systems in which we live and work. All that is needed for cruelty and evil to happen is that perfectly ordinary and well-intentioned people, folks like you and like us, "do their jobs".

Bauman is credited for observing that even the concentration camps were only extreme cases of this much more general tendency, which manifested itself in a variety of places and forms throughout the 20th century.

Bub Bauman was alone to see that. Historian Omer Bartov wrote:

"There is a common tendency to view the Holocaust as a well-ordered plot, in which antisemitism led to Nazism, Nazism practiced genocide, and both were destroyed in a spectacular ‘happy end‘. This is a tale most people would like to believe, university students and filmgoers, book readers and television viewers."

"Bartov would prefer that we do not believe this," A. D. Moses commented in a book review, "because it 'fails to recognize that this extreme instance of industrial killing was generated by a society, economic system, and civilization of which our contemporary society is a direct continuation'. It leads to a 'false understanding of the present', and thereby 'legitimize(s) inaction and indifference, conformity and complacency'.”

A bold new meme is ready to emerge

Toward the end of his career, nearly ninety years old Zygmunt Bauman was invited to give a high-profile lecture at the University of Oslo. He interrupted a long applause by which the overfilled university's largest auditorium greeted him, to solemnly declare that he had nothing of value to tell us. When he was a young man, Bauman explained, he believed that the grave problems the humanity was facing could be solved. But now that he's grown old, he sees the problems getting worse; and no solution in sight.

We shall see now that things only take time. That Bauman's all-important insight is catching on. Not only in academia, as we have just seen, but also in the arts.

The way of the artist is different from the way of the philosopher. The artist does not analyze; she simply sees what goes on, what is "in the time" and struggles to find a voice, and acquire citizenship rights.

And the artist has a different way to reach out to the public. The philosopher speaks to a community of the elect; the artist speaks to everyone—by rendering ideas directly, in ways that make them palpable, visible, and real.

"The Reader" is a case in point

The movie "The Reader" is a case in point.

We meet Hanna, The Reader's main character (superbly brought to life by Kate Winslet's Academy Award winning role), when she helps Michael (the main male protagonist), who just contracted scarlet fever, to return home. A bit later we get to know that she's also a tram conductor, about to be promoted for her spotless performance. Who would in her character recognize a former concentration camp guard?

Hanna also performs admirably during the high-profile court trial where she is one of the defendants. She's the one who answers truthfully, without scheming to improve her image, and reduce her sentence. The passions of the daily news readers and the court audience were inflamed by the image of concentration camp prisoners burning to death in a burning church. "Why didn't you unlock the doors? Why didn't you let the people out?"

Hanna is the only one to answer; and she does that in the manner of pointing to the obvious: "We were guards; our job was to guard the prisoners. We couldn't just let them escape. We were responsible for them. (...) If we'd opened the doors, there would have been chaos. How could we restore order?

"If people like you don't learn from what happened to people like me—then what the hell is the point of anything?" This was told to Michael by his law professor, who had obviously been a grownup in the war; and who obviously shared Bauman's insight, and undertook to share it with a mere handful of students, who signed up for his seminar. But the same could have been told by Zygmunt Bauman; and by Sidney Pollack, who co-produced "The Reader". We did not learn, The Reader warns us. This warning is issued by the closing scenes of the film, when the only survivor of the church event, who was then a girl, rejects Hanna's humble plea for forgiveness or reconciliation. The woman proclaims that "nothing" was to be learned from the concentration camps. As a Holocaust surviver she deserves all compassion. And respect. And yet the setting she's in—a New York mention loaded with antiques—suggests that she might be part of some contemporary power structure. No, there is is no room for suspicions of antisemitism; Pollack, just as Bauman's, is ethnically Eastern-European Jewish. Something far more profound, and more important, is at play.

If you are in doubt whether the unfortunate condition that the power structure condemned us to was Pollack's real interest, see this trailer of his first directorial success, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They". In The Reader—which was hislast Academy Award nominated project—Pollack naturally aimed at a deeper understanding of causes.

Pollack's movie, just as Bernhard Schlink's novel on which it was based, was criticized on the grounds of presenting the culprits in an unjustifiably positive light. Bauman's—and the movie's—point was entirely missed.

So yes, Bauman's meme is ready to emerge. But it did not emerge yet. It is an issue without a name; a cause without citizenship rights.

This meme can make a difference

Tangled up in yesterday's worldviews, issues, and rights and wrongs, we are about to commit a completely new, and history's largest, kind of cruelty. Not a genocide—but of a biocide; and a geocide!

Can we help Bauman's insight be seen in the light of day? And make a difference?