Scientific American April 11, 2012 Didn't you post this? John Warfield founded Interactive Management theory and product based upon the inadequacy of any individual, group or system to seriously problem solve in the Universe. Humans are just not that strong, smart, perceptive or moral. Computers help but the bottom line is that we all need each other in the search for solutions to problematic situations. The Scientific American article called "Cooperative Neural Networks Suggest How Intelligence Evolved" suggests cooperation as a tactic much deeper and earlier in the development of the brain from our current hubristic pomposities. Is it the water or the structure of the language?
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 9:24 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Vacant spaces of power Interesting, Keith. One form of business organization that has considerable potential for improvement in depressed times is the co-operative. A few years ago I spent a month in central Costa Rica working with a co-op that distributed electricity to a large rural area. It was one of several co-ops in the Los Santos area. Others ground coffee, undertook banking, provided health services, ran retail shops, etc. It seemed to me that, at a fundamental level, the co-ops were doing two things -- providing essential services and keeping people employed. These things would have happened to some extent without the co-ops, but not at the high level of quality and satisfaction that were apparent. I spent a lot my time in the Los Santos area wondering just what was going on. Why were people so inclined to help each other? My conclusion was that it had a firm ethical base. At the center of each of the major communities stood a huge Catholic church where, probably, people were taught to "love thy neighbor as thyself". In reading up on the co-op movement, I found that the largest co-op system existed in the Basque country of Spain. It had been founded by a Catholic Priest. In Canada, people important to the co-op movement of the 1930s included Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister and founder of our health care system, working in Saskatchewan, and Father Coady, a Catholic Priest working in the Maritimes. I'm not saying that one has to be religious to be part of the co-operative movement. What I am saying is the co-operatives, to function and thrive, do have to have a firm ethical foundation. Robert Owen, a Welshman, who is said to have founded the co-operative movement, was not especially religious, but held a deeply ethical view that people should be put into an environment, "co-operative villages", where they could be assured of a relatively good life. Much of what we encounter in contemporary thought suggests that economic action is based on greed, that people will only do things in their self-interest. Having spent that month in Costa Rica and having done almost a lifetime of work with our northern aboriginal people, I don't think that is the case at all. We can be better than that. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2012 4:12 AM Subject: [Futurework] Vacant spaces of power As we sink deeper into a 1930s-type depression and growing unemployment, particularly of the young, what Western governments ought to fear more than anything else is subversion from within, not riots, marches or street occupations. If the latter become too extreme or untidy they can be dealt with by rubber bullets and water cannons (or even armoured cars and light tanks, such as those Prime Minister Tony Blair caused to be parked menacingly at Heathrow Airport only a few years ago after a fit of paranoia). No, what's to be feared are conspiracies by young individuals with a deep and genuine concern for the unemployed who proceed over years to penetrate the highest levels of the power elites. In the 1930s, there was, apparently, a ready-made solution in the form of Russian communism, so there were communist spy cells in all the Western countries. In England we had intellectuals such as Blunt, Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Cairncross (the "Cambridge Five") and, in America, there were Greenglass, Fuchs, Hiss, White, Silvermaster, Browder and the Rosenbergs. In Europe, the communist parties of various countries became very powerful and, after WWII, some became voluntarily enfolded within the Soviet system while others, such as Italy and France, came close to voting for independent communist governments. Communism of the former totalitarian, top-down, highly centralized nature of the former Soviet Union or Chinese Republic doesn't seem to have found favour so far with young intellectuals today, although there was a brief flurry of excitement some years ago about a vaguely similar ideological movement that was known under the ponderous name of communitarianism. But this was, and remains, such a Liquorish Allsorts type of movement without any political consensus between its proponents that it has little direct influence. But there are stirrings of something similar to Marxism rising again in the Western world. The name of Marx is beginning to be mentioned a little more frequently than, say, ten years ago. Despite the predominant philosophy of the last 20/30 years that "Greed is OK" and the increasing corruption of politicians, officials and the banking sector there is still something about the ideas of communism or socialism that resonates. And, of course, this is likely to be the case. Millions of years of living on the African savanna have, for maximum efficiency and survival, shaped our species into living in small social groups and our genes into giving us quite detailed physiological and psychological specifications. As to the latter we are generally altruistic rather than tyrannical, although strong social stratification came to the fore at times when adolescent boys became too boisterous or if a neighbouring group tried to invade our food gathering territory or steal our pubescent daughters. This, and a great deal more about human nature, is now known by a still microscopically small proportion of evolutionary biologists. In order to describe ourselves realistically we no longer need the sort of philosophical debate of the last few thousand years, or the political ideologies of the last hundred years or so as highly centralized nation-states came into existence as byproducts of mass warfare (internal or external). I am not, of course, suggesting that "cells" of evolutionary scientists are going to secretly invade the various centres of political and business power within the elite, or what I term the 20-class, in order to carry out some form of coup-d'etat. But the children of this class, rather than the state-educated 80-class (increasingly innumerate and illiterate), educated in private schools (each competing for quality) are going to be the first to absorb the more realistic notions concerning our evolution, and thus best governance. Indeed, the more successful modern corporations are already paying attention. Able to recruit the creme-de-la-creme of the elite universities, they no longer pride themselves on massive multi-tiered organization charts but are learning to lateralize into smaller specialized groups. However, the new "movement", if it is not a conspiracy in the old-fashioned sense, will still keep a low profile for some time yet. Political correctness, which has rapidly advanced since WWII, is still too deep, pervasive and governmentally imposed, to be overcome directly. As always with defunct institutions, the old culture has to start breaking down first. But as almost all advanced governments are already technically bankrupt with no financial solution to hand, save yet more money-printing, we can assume that only those with realistic ideas will be drawn into the vacant spaces. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/> _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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