Holotopia: Power structure
H O L O T O P I A: F I V E I N S I G H T S
Power structure
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 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.
While the ingenuity of our innovation has been focused on small gadgets we can hold in our hand—we have overlooked this incomparably more important creative frontier.
We will here be taking about the very heart of our matter: Innovation, understood as "using our creative abilities", is what drives our civilization or 'bus' or societal and cultural evolution forward. The value or the rule of thumb we are using to direct our creativity is to rely on free competition, or the market. How well does this serve us?
Stories
Power structure costs
A costly oversight
How much is ignoring "the systems in which we live and work" costing us?
On Page 4 of the article The Game-Changing Game–A Practical Way to Craft the Future we answered this question by a summary of our Ferguson–McCandless–Fuller thread, of which we here provide highlights.
The costs are systemically caused
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 issues such as "to lift one billion people out of extreme poverty", "African debt" and to "save the amazon" seem insignificant in comparison.
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 "inside jobs", as the title of Ferguson's second film suggested.
Fuller may have been right
Having predicted that by the end of the century science and technology would have advanced sufficiently to enable us, the people on the planet, to "end scarcity" and scarcity-driven competition. The other two stories in this thread suggest that Fuller may have been right.
In which case our real problem would be the system by which the use of our resources are directed. And the very values or the rule of thumb used.
In 1969 Fuller was proposing to the American Senate his a computer-based solution called the World Game, whose purpose was to enable the global policy makers to see the world as one, and collaborate instead of competing.
Power structure devolution
Competition vs. collaboration
We rely on "the survival of the fittest" or the "free competition", to direct our creative efforts, give direction to our 'bus', and even decide how the systems in which we live and work are to be structured. How well does this serve us?
On The Paradigm Strategy Poster (which was one of the forerunner prototypes> to Holotopia) we used the homsky–Harari–Graeber thread to provide a poignant answer to this all-important question. Once again we provide only highlights.</p>
<p>The real-life history of "Alexander the Great", as told by Graeber, has all the elements we may want from a parable: The "fittest" system of its era (Alexander's army, with its corresponding "business model") was destroying freedom, culture, and life itself. It even had "financial innovation" as one of its core elements!</p>
<p>We supplemented a reflection on Joel Bakan's "the Corporation", to show that while today the most powerful power structure may look entirely different than it did twenty-five centuries ago, its essential nature has remain unchanged.</p>
<p>The stories of Noam Chomsky and Noah Yuval Harari allow us to deepen our understanding of the dynamics that underlie the power structure devolution. We'll return to them when discussing the socialized reality insight.</p>
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The "fittest" systems are not the best
We are the enemy