Power structure insight

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Seeing things whole leads to making things whole. The holoscope begets the holotopia.

We come to the holotopia when we pursue a theme of interest with the help of the holoscope. First we see that the way we normally look at that theme left something large and essential in the dark. When we illuminate that with the help of the holoscope, the result is an insight, and a reversal of the ways in which the interest is normally understood and pursued. The federation of the insight begins with a story, which is typically a vignette revealing the insight of a person who discovered it. It is completed by weaving that story with other related ones.

The Power Structure insight, which is introduced here, is really a combination of three closely related insights.


Interests

  • Contemporary issues
  • Democracy
  • Innovation


Scope

System.jpeg

"The whole" here – as illustrated in the above ideogram – is the socio-technical systems we are part of. We see them as large-size 'machines', whose purpose is to take our daily work as input, and turn it into socially useful effects. If in spite of all the time the machines saved us, we still seem to be as busy as ever – should we not look at those 'machines' and see if they might be wasting our time? And if the result of our best efforts are problems rather than solutions – should we not see if those 'machines' might be causing those problems?


Insight

The view – how misconstructed, wasteful, defective, damaging... – our systems tend to be is breathtaking!

We considered calling this insight "The systems, stupid!", which is a paraphrase of Bill Clinton's 1992 successful presidential campaign slogan, "The economy, stupid!". It's not the economy. It's the systems!


Reversals

  • Contemporary issues: We just cannot solve our problems by working within the systems that created them!
  • Democracy: Imagine a bus with dysfuncti9onal steering and braking controls, and with candle headlights. That's our democracy... It's not only that we the people are not in control; nobody is!
  • Innovation: Scales to the systems in which we live and work. And not only – we also innovate on the small scale in ways that first of all secure that those large systems are alive and well.

Story

The story here is about Erich Jantsch, in the context of the Club of Rome's quest for the solutionatique. Norbert Wiener comes in first, to put the ball in play.


Prototypes

The GcG and The CoZ