Holotopia: Power structure
Contents
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.
The "fittest" systems are not the best
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!
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.
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.
power structure as evil doer
The enemy is us
"We have seen the enemy, and he is us" said famously Pogo, Walt Kelly's cartoon hero. A funny-enough idea for a cartoon; but could it be real?
Cruelty has been modernized
The cruelty in modernity has changed its form, observed Bauman. It no longer requires cruel people; "normal" people, "doing their jobs"—within the structure of a modern organization, will do just fine.
Perhaps the most daring of Zygmunt Bauman's aring ideas is that even the concentration camps were only extreme cases of cruelty that resulted in this way.
This has not been understood
The movie "The Reader" allows us to extend Bauman's observations. And indeed in several most interesting ways.
By telling the story of a woman who, as a concentration camp guard, was part of an unthinkable cruelty because she was "only doing her job", and because "otherwise there would be chaos", the movie gives a vivid confirmation of Bauman's ideas.
Then there is scapegoating. As this film showed, while the order of things or the power structure was as it was, people simply adjusted to it and obeyed it. When, however, the order of things changed, they woke up as if from a dream—and started looking for a scapegoat. The culprit ended up being XX—perhaps the most naive and relatively most honorable of them all.
Finally, and perhaps the most striking, were the critical reactions to this film. While its Wikipedia page listed a number of descriptions, and quotations of critical responses, there is not a single word about this film's real and all-important theme. An issue to which we've given the name power structure—and endeavor now to legitimize it as an issue, and perhaps as the issue.
Systemic innovation is the solution
Erich Jantsch's insight
Having delivered the opening keynote at the inaugural meeting of The Club of Rome, Erich Jantsch clearly saw what needed to be done, if the "problematique" was to be resolved (see it outlined here and here).
Our society needs a new capability—to update the systems in which we live and work. Jantsch called it "systemic innovation", and we adopted from him this keyword.
We let Jantsch be the symbol of a missing link between two bodies of work and lines of interest: cybernetics or the systems sciences, and the need to make our civilization "sustainable". In this present holotopia prototype, those interests are symbolized respectively by Norbert Wiener and Aurelio Peccei.
Ideogram
Power Structure ideogram
The Power Structure ideogram suggests that our institutions, or more generally the systems in which we live and work, determine what the results of our work will be. They form an environment by which our life quality is determined, and in which our human quality either grows or decays.</blockquote> </div> </div>