THE CONVERSATION OF DEMOCRACY
A Metalogue on Synergetics and Cybernetics
Supporting the Ecology of Mind
And Hence the Ecology of Choice, of Will,
And of Feedback-Cultivating,
Knowledge-Harvesting,
Wisdom-Accumulating, and Evolution-Affirming
Excellence in Governance
Worldwide
Copyright © by Barnabas D. Johnson
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Looking ahead, no human should focus on the rise or fall of this or that nation, empire, or global region. Our only useful datum of analysis should be the success of all humanity — within deepest ecological, intellectual, and nomospheric context — premised upon "human nature" that is inseparable from freedom of inquiry.
Our starting point must be to examine and comprehend this logically-inescapable human nature — and how it is interwoven with human nurture ... indeed, with a culture of nurturance supporting the perennial goal of Regenerative Intelligence Still Evolving, or RISE. Our only useful datum of analysis, in effect, is RISE.
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Humans are "rational animals" by nature; the discovery that this is so constitutes the most far-reaching journey of exploration in all human history. And what we have discovered, and must perennially rediscover, is that, when properly nurtured and acculturated, we can reason our way towards understanding ourselves, the human condition, and our Universe. Doing this, we must integrate ontology (what is?), epistemology (how do we know what is?), and teleology (so what?), thereby integrating wisdom with choice, will, action, feedback, and further wisdom, etc.
This integration requires us to cultivate, above all, freedom of evidence-based inquiry favoring "better arguments" leading to "better actions" by individuals and societies. That is the purpose of the Conversation of Democracy, without which RISE will perish. That is the purpose of this essay: illuminating societal intelligence, thereby enhancing global competence.
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The evolution of our distributed knowing and doing composes an Ecology of Mind calling forth an Ecology of Values. Corrupt and thought-deficient engagements in society, the economy, governmental processes generally, and political discourse specifically, feed upon each other and impair our capacity to live as free, rational, responsible Homo sapiens. Dumbing-down constitutional governance, subverting evidence-based reasoning, and negligently or knowingly distorting the "marketplace of information and ideas" harms the Conversation of Democracy and endangers liberty, justice, rationality, accountability, and similar "Open World" values so crucial to global peace and sustainable progress.
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Part One: Digging Deeper
1. Introduction
A. The ecology of life-stuff has over time given birth to an ecology of mind-stuff, including ideas about fundamental values and the goals they aim to promote. This "Ecology of Mind" is — or ought to be — cybernetic: focused on finding and pursuing the truth about the good.
Seeking truth or wisdom or understanding about how we should live, etc., requires deepest consideration of how such "truth" emerges. This is largely the province of what the ancient Greeks came to call "Nomos" — cultivating feedback processes linking ontology, What is?, and epistemology, How do we know what is?, with teleology, So what?
Seen in retrospect, the cultivation, harvesting, and further cultivation of Nomos has, over many centuries, refined our ontological and epistemological understandings, thereby changing them and us. But not enough. Specifically, although the history of ideas is important, and although ancient thinkers were often profound, reliance on "holy books" whose assertions are immunized from criticism by faith, dogma, and similar "received" authority, demeans us and insults our "God-given" biological and cultural inheritance as Homo sapiens, as systematic thinkers.
I place "God-given" in quotes because, as I will detail, this phrase is a place-marker for further inquiry, etc. It is hubris to presume that we know how life and evolution started, or why, or even whether there is a "why"! The fact that others have assumed a "why" is interesting but insufficient, in my view.
Acknowledging ignorance, celebrating the fathomless, is the first step to acquiring truth, wisdom, understanding. Surely the worst kind of hubris, and nothing more noble, condemns that most probing of assertions:
"The map is not the territory."
See Saying What Needs to be Said.
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Goals and their underlying values are central to what is here called "third-nature" evolution — conscious global commitment to Regenerative Intelligence Still Evolving (RISE) — of which Constitutional Democracy aimed at securing Ordered Liberty is the essential seed element.
True, in an important sense, "the child is parent to the adult"; nothing that has a history can be comprehended in isolation from its history and, arguably, from all history; every event is "defined" in terms of everything that touches and influences it; yet our use of history must not become a fetish. Some things are truly "new under the sun"; what we call "synergetics" maps territories of irreducibly-unpredictable novelty.
Our current capacity to think systematically about the requirements of RISE is such a novelty, and possibly the most staggeringly significant in human history. The issue is not whether we "play God"; we have been doing that, initially unconsciously, for thousands of years (just think of all the varieties of dogs); no, the issue is, How can we get better at "playing God" ... at participating in, well, "Creation"?
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Because the child is parent to the adult with reference especially to institutions, including the institutions of constitutional governance, it is better that some be wholly free than that all be partially free. World progress would be greatly advanced if all competent adults were wholly free, and hence were equal in their liberties and equal in the constitutional restraints upon their liberties (see Isonomia), yet it is even more essential that at least some be wholly free — in inquiry, association, expression, democratic participation, etc. — else the integrity of the idea of RISE will perish.
Try to be wholly free, governed only by the Rule of Law based on the Rule of Reason — a special kind of reasoning: synergetic, cybernetic, feedback-harvesting, self-transforming, teleologically-sound ... Nomos.
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Unless at least some are wholly free — that is, governed in a constitutional democracy by the Rule of Law — there will be none to assert the power of the proposition that when the rights of even one are trampled the rights of all are imperiled. Individual liberty is the other side of the coin of societal wellbeing, responsible citizenship, and the Rule of Reason. Just because we have the right to do something does not mean it is the right thing to do.
As percept is the foundation of concept, so the reality of RISE "writ small" by pioneers will be essential to extending the blessings of liberty to all, worldwide. In that sense, these Jurlandia essays are dedicated to the pioneers of constitutional democracy, generation after generation.
See Note Regarding Research on Democracies, Ancient and Modern.
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This essay outlines why constitutional democracy is so vital, while also providing contextualized "entry points" for other Jurlandia essays, etc., as well as selected materials on other websites, all of which seek to illuminate the dependence of RISE and constitutional democracy upon the Rule of Law based on the Rule of Reason.
I perceive this website as a sort of hologram. Its contents (and those to which it links) can be viewed from many perspectives. This essay is one of them.
But more:
This website is an experiment in progress. Some of the tools for making and viewing this "hologram" do not yet exist. I am aiming my arrow to intersect a "reality" that (a) is a moving, evolving target, and (b) will doubtless change that "arrow" as they approach each other. This is a poor metaphor, but will have to suffice for now. At the end of this essay (in Part Two, under construction) I will propose a better metaphor.
See Note on Construction.
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B. As there has been a coevolution of physical, chemical, and especially biological phenomena on our planet, so too, starting with the dawn of civilization, there has been a coevolution of ideas, ideals, narratives, traditions, speculations, theoretical frameworks, and unarticulated and perhaps unarticulable insights and anticipations regarding those natural phenomena and the metaphysical "life of the mind" — indeed, life of the global "soul" or planetary "self" — which they sustain.
See Note on Punctuation.
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Societies, no less than individuals, are products of both nature and nurture. Such nurture is often called second-nature. Many animals exhibit second-nature or "culture" in rudimentary forms, passing "know-how" from generation to generation ... a phenomenon we call "time binding" — based on the writings of Alfred Korzybski. Of course, animals do not write and do not have libraries, etc., including the Internet.
See Note on Searching the Web.
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Through humans, second-nature has been forming increasingly-complex ideas, institutions, cultural know-how, and time-binding networks of distributed intelligence — including law — which, together, compose our emergent global civilization. It is already quite extraordinary, and has the potential to become far more so. But, is it good?
Or, perhaps more relevant: How can we guide the coevolution of matter, mind, choice, and will to keep this remarkable process healthy, self-correcting, aimed at "improvements" that do not — in their ultimate results — outsmart humanity?
The Great Question emerges: Is the evolution of intelligence on this planet evolutionarily viable? Will hubris outpace empathy and the Advancement of Learning?
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C. Evolutionary "advancements" are not necessarily "improvements"; whether they are depends on what we make of them. These choices go beyond "facts" to embrace "values"; hence my first sentence:
The ecology of life-stuff has over time given birth to an ecology of mind-stuff, including ideas about fundamental values and the goals they aim to promote.
The distributed intelligence on which we all depend includes moral, ethical, teleological understandings, as already discussed. The Ecology of Mind coevolves with an Ecology of Values.
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2. Invitation to the Metalogue
A. Through humans, nature and second-nature are being embraced within a form of advanced life and intelligence, a "much-of-a-muchness" that (as already suggested) composes "third nature": something as "unpredictable" — based on our knowledge of second-nature capabilities — as second-nature capabilities are "unpredictable" based on the capabilities of quarks, atoms, molecules, cells, multi-celled organisms, and multi-organned organisms coordinated by the interplay of complex limbic and nervous systems, etc.
No matter how well you understand quarks, in isolation, you cannot predict the results of their "dancing": atoms, molecules, mitochondria, Bach, and (gasp!) you.
But ... are you good?
Can you help guide the coevolution of matter, mind, choice, will, and societal determination to keep this remarkable process self-correcting, ever improving?
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Of course, nobody would dream of trying to think "quark" in isolation from "atom" or "mitochondria"; these words are tools of thought and communication, "heuristic concepts" intended to facilitate further inquiry about a reality which (1) we know we don't know much about, and (2) most deep thinkers are convinced cannot be "reduced" to atoms and mitochondria and all other emergent, synergetic, cybernetic phenomena, including our biosphere and the memesphere it is becoming (see below).
Quarks, atoms, biospheres, and memespheres are "place markers" for what we do not claim to comprehend adequately, yet (being human) we cannot help but try to comprehend better.
Of this I am certain: Quarks don't care what they are made of, but they (in a manner of speaking) "form" humans who do. And that is splendid!
That is worth our further dancing!
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On deepest reflection, we see that many of our words are essentially "explanatory principles" for what remains deeply mysterious, like gravity, matter, energy, electromagnetics, electromgnetic thermodynamics, coevolution, life, constitutional democracy ... and metalogues, cybernetics, and synergetics, or synergy, or synergism.
See Note on Synergetics.
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Both enthusiasts and opponents of "intelligent design" must acknowledge that the very words "intelligent" and "design" are (mere?) cultural software, tools that we shape and are shaped by. The fact is, we just don't know all that much. If gravity were slightly weaker, our solar system would not have formed; if gravity were slightly stronger, our solar system would have collapsed into itself, whatever that means; calling that something a "black hole" does not make it less mysterious. The laws of nature seem "perfect" for us; but does that mean the universe was designed by an intelligence "just so" for us? If yes, and we are next year wiped out by a clever virus, does that mean the universe was designed "just so" for clever viruses?
In a sense, we are engaged in a metalogue with our contingent future(s). Some of these are potentially glorious yet staggeringly problematic. See, for example, Nick Bostrom's essay, History of Transhumanist Thought. The Jurlandia Institute is devoted to addressing these contingent futures within broadest multi-disciplinary contexts which focus especially, however, on their implications for emergent global constitutional jurisprudence.
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B. Changes of degree can result in changes of kind, and when second-nature mind-stuff works on first-nature physics, chemistry, and biology, and works also on itself — and does so on a global scale, using instant communications and instantly-available libraries of accumulated knowledge and wisdom, etc. — the result can be a change of degree that "gives rise" to what some have called a "singularity": a change of kind, something wholly different from anything that could have been predicted: a synergism in which the behavior of whole systems is unpredicted by (indeed, is unpredictable based on available knowledge of) the behavior of constituent sub-systems.
But here is what is most fascinating: The discontinuity we are here focused on is currently generating, as its most significant attribute, attention to the nature of "synergetics" and "emergent phenomena" and "discontinuity" as such, and is thereby focusing our attention on the question: What abides, what continues, what governs synergetic "worlds where all things are possible" to arrive at a world, a universe perhaps, where only some things are likely and even fewer things are good?
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I think the answer is "cybernetics" — as already discussed — but, again, both "synergetics" and "cybernetics" are mere place-markers for what is to be explored rather that for "what is" in any concrete, satisfactory, sense.
Synergism and cybernetism undergird a "belief system" whose main characteristic is skepticism: An exploration beyond all certainties, intended to tease out those facts, insights, and wonderments that are most probable ... and those values that are most precious.
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Thoughts about all this are not new.
Such thoughts have already, I believe, generated civilization-invigorating enhancements of understanding and communication. I can trace such thoughts back to the mists of time. That, itself, is comforting: For all the "newness" of our predicament, it is not entirely new.
Yet some of the resulting insights attain special urgency in our time, I think.
See "Original Meaning" of the Constitution.
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C. High on our list of most-precious insights is staggeringly-powerful reinforcement of the realization that not all ideas, etc., are civilization-invigorating enhancements of understanding and communication. Many are dysfunctional. Perhaps most.
How do we judge?
How do we separate fact from fiction in an era when almost anybody can blog and almost everyone can read, albeit not always well ... let alone critically?
Our "better world" must hearken to those better angels that summon it to become a superb learning organism: a self-reflective, self-knowing, self-governing, and self-transforming "something" that is its own best metaphor, its own best lens for viewing ... beyond all metaphors, beyond any language.
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The Conversation of Democracy is a "metalogue" — a dialogue whose subjects include not only various ideas, facts, values, theories, and points of view, etc., but also (1) the adequacy of all languages and other tools of thought and communication, (2) the relationships among those involved in this metalogue, and how such relationships can be made more creative, intellectually rigorous, culturally responsible, and supportive of the further worthwhile evolution of choice and will, and (3) how we can best determine whether ideas and opinions, etc., are good or bad, healthy or dysfunctional, worth pursuing or unworthy of further serious consideration.
The term "metalogue" was coined by Gregory Bateson. See Note on Gregory Bateson. It is self-referential, thereby making that "self" complex — somewhat like a chameleon in a mirrored box trying to distinguish itself from its apparent environment. Inevitably, all discussions of the human condition are self-referential. That does not make them impossible. But it does make them ... harder ... deliciously more flavored with piquant possibilities.
Metalogues invite tastes that invoke bouquets, shades of meaning, touches of ineffable consequence. Embrace them, or let our world be damned!
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Anything that is self-referential encounters the so-called self-referential paradox, "deliverance" from which generates not a duality but a trinity of "actors" engaged in (for lack of a better term) a metalogue.
The Conversation of Democracy is, and must remain, a metalogue.
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3. E Pluribus Unum: The Many as One
The idea of a planetary "self" is a metaphor — ultimately an invitation to further exploration. Our planet is what it is, and includes our ideas, etc., about what it is. It is like many things we know, or at least know of, yet is fundamentally different from them all.
Everything is both similar to and different from everything else. Even the polar opposites of "everythingness" and "nothingness" are similar in this respect: They are human concepts, tools of thought and communication. As Aristotle noted: Only similars can be usefully contrasted.
The fundamental structure of thinking is examined in First Trinity.
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We should be amazed — from many standpoints — that we can apprehend our planet as a sort-of "self".
Among the most intriguing aspects of the Conversation of Democracy, I submit, is that we can — indeed, we must — share standpoints, including the perspectives and world-views of others, and of earlier times, and ... arguably ... of potential future times.
In some fundamental sense, indeed, we must try standing in our planet's shoes — transporting ourselves into our planet's "contingent futures" and thinking deeply about what those futures might require of us today.
Doing so, we will find that our emerging global civilization "thinks us" and thereby composes us as much as we compose it.
Yet free will remains.
See Ordered Liberty.
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4. Genes and Memes, Metaphors and Framustans
A. As genes are the basic building blocks of biological life, so (by an illuminating analogy referenced below) "memes" are the basic building blocks of mental life.
And as all living, past and present, has formed the biosphere, so (in theory, at least) all thinking, experimenting, evaluating, and pondering, if shared and propagated, has formed the "memesphere" — the InfoSphere — the Ecology of Mind. I emphasize that by "thinking", etc., I mean also, perhaps especially, the interplay of "schools of thought" over time, as well as the work of institutions like universities, parliaments, publishing houses, etc. But I also mean something more subtle: the accumulation of know-how, of institutional memory, and of "knowledge" that is not contained in any individual brain and cannot be spelled out adequately, if at all. This is cultural knowledge, cultural software, distributed intelligence evolving and accumulated over time, indeed centuries and millenniums.
Consider how much historical trial-and-error, and resulting accumulated insight, is contained in the following passage from Friedrich A. Hayek's book, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), at p. 32:
The benefits I derive from freedom are thus largely the result of the uses of freedom by others, and mostly of those uses of freedom that I could never avail myself of. It is therefore not necessarily freedom that I can exercise myself that is most important for me. It is certainly more important that anything can be tried by somebody than that all can do the same things. It is not because we like to be able to do particular things, not because we regard any particular freedom as essential to our happiness, that we have a claim to freedom. The instinct that makes us revolt against any physical restraint, though a helpful ally, is not always a safe guide for justifying or delimiting freedom. What is important is not what freedom I personally would like to exercise but what freedom some person may need in order to do things beneficial to society. That freedom we can assure to the unknown person only by giving it to all. ... The argument for the freedom of some therefore applies to the freedom of all. But it is still better for all that some should be free than none and also that many enjoy full freedom than that all have a restricted freedom. The significant point is that the importance of freedom to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the number of people who want to do it: it might even be in inverse proportion.
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As suggested, the cultural phenomenon of distributed thought and centuries-spanning communication is less a dialogue than a metalogue, for the "topics" of emergent global civilization are by order and dimension self-referential: We are constructing not only information and ideas, etc., but also relationships among ourselves, and with the past and future, as we daily "remake" the Cradle of Culture, and hence of Creation (or at least of our little corner of Creation).
See Note on Cultural Software.
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Whether things, ideas, and relationships result from "nature" or "nurture" ("second-nature") remains an ancient debate. Obviously, much results from both, and the human brain's biological evolution over the past million or more years probably occurred (and is still advancing) to accommodate the increasing complexity of human relationships and institutions, including language and culture, science and cybernetics, law-making and (in a manner of speaking) earth-shaking.
Whether, in turn, this second-nature evolution is giving birth to a fundamental discontinuity that merits a new name, third-nature, is worth exploring.
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There are few things we know of that are more complex than a human brain. One of them is two humans thinking together, even more so when aided by a third, or by libraries linked over the internet, etc.
Another is a civilization that aspires to understand itself and to shape its future based on that understanding.
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A much-of-a-muchness of biological and cultural hardware and software — including will and whimsy, hubris and zealotry, double-binds and double-takes, wrong turnings and brilliant side-steppings, wisdoms galore and stupidities astonishing, together with lessons learned and (of greatest accomplishment) future lessons humbly anticipated — is coevolving to form a "not-this-not-that" world-self of genes, memes, languages, cultures, and emerging self-images that constitute, for lack of a better word, a culguage: a new kind of primordial soup whose most evolution-affirming characteristic is its growing capacity to enjoy thinking of itself as a new kind of primordial soup.
Its next most evolution-affirming characteristic is its comfortable acknowledgement that it is a framustan: a "place" known by what it is not ... a place-marker inducing successive generations to further inquiry, new orders of complexity, unpredictable synergies and enhanced capacities for determining which potential futures should be welcomed, and why, as well as which should be shunned, and why. The best of all possible framustans, whatever that might be, is the "objective" of Regenerative Intelligence Still Evolving (RISE) — at least in our planetary neighborhood — and, humans being makers of culguage, this objective deserves a name. I call it Katchalpolis.
Nature and second-nature are giving birth to a third-nature meta-intelligence that, as RISE, is "thinking things through" with us and through us. Calling it "Katchalpolis" is like calling a new-born human a blind biped — somewhat true, but mostly a parental challenge to "help the world along" towards something better.
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B. The Conversation of Democracy reflects the necessity, in our time, to examine and promote ways to "give voice" to an evolving Ecology of Mind as it calls forth an Ecology of Values ... aimed at further worthwhile evolution towards Katchalpolis.
Granted, those values must remain largely tacit, unspoken. For example, the strands of history, thought, and purpose, which link (1) why "the unexamined life" is not worth living, (2) why "being human" requires freedom of inquiry, expression, and association, (3) how to "grow" competent and sustainable constitutional democracies, (4) the goals of Due Process of Law — perhaps the most beautiful phrase in our language, yet defying merely-linguistic definitions — and (5) the often-unarticulated "major premises" undergirding the Rule of Law ... and all that these five worthy subjects of inquiry imply ... all, together, compose questions and premises that compose a much-of-a-muchness whose moral and intellectual linkages compose their own best metaphor. They "are" us, yet we are more.
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5. Transcending Logos with Nomos
A. The concept of the "memesphere" originated with Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene (1976), but is essentially what Teilhard de Chardin called the "noosphere" in a 1925 essay entitled Hominization: "And this amounts to imagining, in one way or another, above the animal biosphere a human sphere, a sphere of reflection, of conscious invention, of conscious souls (the noosphere, if you will)." Teilhard's "noosphere" was a neologism based on the Greek word nous, meaning "mind." See Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (rev. ed. 1948). As with so many ideas, we can find much older relics. Regarding this "noosphere" concept, John of Salisbury (c. 1110-1180) comes especially to mind, but he was not the first to speculate along these lines.
Both the memesphere and the noosphere are essentially what Gregory Bateson called the "Ecology of Mind" in his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1971). Bateson's examination of the Ecology of Mind — as illuminated by cybernetic theory (as then advanced) — is very deep. But cybernetic theory has not stood still. Its healthy advancement is a major purpose of this website. Cybernetic theory raises fascinating questions about "scientific causality" and advances the thought-provoking concepts of synergism, already discussed.
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The Conversation of Democracy undergirds the Ecology of Mind checked and balanced by the Ecology of Values to the extent that "the rules of the game" by which the Ecology of Mind remains dynamic, healthy, sane, etc., are law, enforceable law, remedy-providing law — including the enumerated constitutional guarantees, still not adequately secure, of free inquiry, association, expression, etc., the unenumerated fundamentals of Liberty, and those evolving standards of Due Process of Law, Equal Justice under Law, and Nomos: the Rule of Reason.
As science swallows logic whole, then goes beyond, so cybernetics — Nomos — swallows science whole, then goes beyond.
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B. My reasons for seeking to subordinate "science" to "cybernetics" are primarily practical: During many years of law-reform effort in what is now the former Soviet Union, I have had much occasion to ponder "Soviet legal science" and its roots in what is often called "German legal science"; and I have become convinced that our world must tackle head-on the very notion of law as "science"; this notion is pernicious; see Theory of State and Law.
The scientific enterprise of knowledge-generation and wisdom-ascertainment is of supernal value, but — in those "sciences" focused on our world and the human condition — science, the quest for the Truth, must be anchored in cybernetics, the goal-oriented quest for the Good: areté.
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Law is "science" only in the astonishing sense that we humans are engaged in a long-term "controlled experiment" testing whether the evolution of Intelligence — and of the capacity to choose based on knowledge, including self-knowledge — is evolutionarily viable. This Ecology of Mind "calling forth" an Ecology of Values (and all that this implies) is powerful indeed, allowing us to eradicate all forms of intelligent life on this planet, but also, perhaps, all forms of human mayhem and all impediments to RISE.
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C. Some say our world is a single living organism. Some say it is poised to "flash" its Intelligence throughout the universe. Some say it is God's play-pen, others say it is Satan's. Silly notions compete with profound. Metaphors abound. Let's be clear: Lots of things have been said of our little water-blue "Earth" floating lovely and mysterious in the twinkling black-velvet of space-time. But, truly, our planet is fundamentally unlike anything else we know of — its own best metaphor ... and ours, too.
Yet saying that is not the end of the matter. Let us look at our planet through the eyes of the "ancient-child" Billiken, the "God of things as they ought to be." Let all human history instruct us, yet let us also be as children, seeing as if for the first time.
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As Isadora Duncan explained, "If I could say it, I wouldn't have to dance it!" Yet she said this; she did not dance it.
Her famous quotation is easily found on the internet. Perhaps films of her dancing are, too. Her dancing and her spoken reflections thereon leave us doubly blessed. Yet, I submit, they inspire us to rise beyond all previous art.
Trying to discuss something that is ultimately beyond words can add "values" that are themselves hard to spell out. They enrich us all. They go without saying. Yet the Conversation of Democracy seeks to give them voice.
Articulating our most fundamental understandings and values is possibly humanity's most challenging — most splendid — art form.
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6. Conclusion
The genius of constitutional democracy is that it institutionalizes feedback-cultivation and feedback-harvesting — free inquiry, a free press, periodic free and fair elections, etc. — the lifeblood of the Conversation of Democracy based on the Rule of Law.
A competent constitutional democracy has, as its principal object, the goal of keeping that Conversation ongoing, unfinished, still young, yet — generation upon regeneration — well-rooted in "history told with fidelity" ... including that of the Mythos which, on examination, retains authentic value.
The "good society" is not a supposed utopian plateau of perfection that can ever be reached, but is instead an unending process of reaching, of becoming, of perfecting.
Utopia gained is, by definition, utopia lost.
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Failure to understand this lies at the root of all theocracies, dictatorships, and "absolute" states, and leads to their eventual intellectual, moral, and material collapse.
Fundamental human rights such as freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression are fundamental precisely because, without them, we cannot be "fully human" — conscious carriers of evolution, conscious participants in the coevolution of matter and mind. We are participants in co-creation; we "play God"; and we have to get better at it. As President Kennedy said, "Here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own." See Note.
We build, maintain, improve, and "grow" constitutional democracy as a tool, a vehicle, that can carry our memesphere — our experiment in participatory co-creation — to loftier heights of self-reflection, new dimensions of self-governance, improved realizations of the democratic ideal. We seek to know ourselves better that we may govern ourselves more wisely. As individuals and societies, we seek to cultivate and harvest reliable self-knowledge to enhance the areté of wisdom, choice, will, action, and feedback leading to further wisdom. This requires a viable Conversation of Democracy.
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Corruption in society, the economy, and governmental processes generally, and of political discourse specifically, feed upon each other. Dumbing-down constitutional governance and ginning-up facts, arguments, and other components of the Conversation of Democracy are contemptible expedients that endanger the long-term health of liberty, justice, accountability, and similar "Open World" values so crucial to global peace, prosperity, and sustainable progress.
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Keep the Conversation of Democracy alive!
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Go to Part Two, "Rising Higher"
(Not currently available; under construction.)
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Notes
Metalogue Defined and Explored:
As used in these Jurlandia writings, a metalogue is a dialogue or discussion in which the "topic" includes the following:
(1) Simple linguistic or denotative messages, as in "the cat is on the mat" or "look before you leap";
(2) More complex metalinguistic messages, as in "the word 'cat' is not on the mat" or "when I say 'look before you leap' I'm offering a metaphor that endorses thinking before acting";
(3) Highly complex metacommunicative messages about all mediums or tools of thought and communication, including, especially, the people producing the suppositions of facts and values under consideration, as in (from my perspective) "how nice of me to warn you not to take metaphors too literally" or (from your perspective) "I think you are making too much of linguistic, metalinguistic, and metacommunicative distinctions, but I'll 'play along' for a few more paragraphs to see whether you can carry your burden of persuading me that these distinctions are worth highlighting."
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Yes, you have been "doing metalogues" all along. And, yes, people are "tools" of each other's thinking, communicating, and even "perceiving" (see below) — instruments of collaborative enlightenment or, too often, the fog of faith, dogma, and "received authority" which, being merely received, cannot possibly render us wise. To "know" without "inquiry" — trusting our world's future to the hubris of those who proclaim that their faith-based knowledge is the best kind — is foolish, a contradiction in terms, like a fried snowball. It takes courage to say this, especially to oneself.
Wise or foolish, we belong to the "human family" and, hence, to one another. When wise, we take on noble responsibilities towards each other's enlightenment; when foolish, we perpetuate unexamined living, the feeblest excuse for clinging to relic conceptions of "civilization" that collide — potentially calamitously — with others' equally-unexamined zealotries. It is a boringly-prevalent malady to believe that one belongs to a "chosen people" whose faith-based certitudes shall, with divine endorsement, trump the certitudes of all others who, believing themselves to be chosen too, are deluded infidels.
That we serve as one another's tools in the metalogues that "make culture" — and thereby distinguish us as humans — should be evident, indeed obvious; even so, we can benefit from self-reflective examinations that explicitly state what hitherto remained tacit, implicit. The Conversation of Democracy, dedicated to enhancement of Regenerative Intelligence Still Evolving (RISE), is by order and dimension a metalogue whose metacommunicative elements require conscious attention. Bringing them to consciousness can be interpreted as "insult" to some, perhaps many. No insult is intended in these Jurlandia explorations. The capacity to give and take gentle but firm criticism is essential to humanity's healthy future.
Feedback is the "engine" ("engineer"?) of cybernetics; well, it is what it is, a metaphrand in search of its own best metaphere. (See Note on Cultural Software, below.) Yet, whatever it is, this "metaphrand" is essential to the governance of self and society. President Jefferson was asked which he preferred, a polity with a constitution but without a free press, or a polity with a free press but without a constitution; he was inclined towards the latter; but the point of this story is that both are essential. Institutionalizing feedback requires freedom of inquiry and expression, periodic free and fair elections, and everything we think of when we ponder establishing and maintaining healthy constitutional democracies.
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By drawing attention to the linguistic, metalinguistic, and metacommunicative "tools" of thought and communication, I hope to make these Jurlandia contributions to the metalogue of Constitutional Democracy more palatable, less painful. It is not enough to identify and turn away from ignorance; one must have something better to turn towards. Some find "must" in this context too overbearing; they would rather contend with respectful suggestions. To welcome them into the fold, I shall whisper that they might wish to embrace not only information but also inspiration. I shall not beat them over the head by insisting that humanity must wed wisdom with meaningful choice and energetic will. Yet I must shout from the rooftops that the unexamined life is not worth living.
RISE depends on this.
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Metacommunicative elements focus on building healthy relationships among present as well as contingent-future participants — relationships to each other and to these linguistic, metalinguistic, and metacommunicative elements coevolving — including their interdependent histories and their potential future participatory co-creation of new inquiries and, hence, new ways of being, of governing, and of co-creation.
As an example of such metacommunicative discourse, I pose (as my opening gambit, as it were) this question: "Why is it necessary that I share with you about cats and 'mats' and the triune nature of metalogues and hence of self-knowledge and self-governance based on an emergent planetary reconceptualization that ought to enlighten no less than it might discomfort?"
Answering this question in our time requires going beyond the information, insights, and inspirations of earlier times. Our capacity for empathy — standing in others' shoes — emerges as a key to any answer worthy of our past, present, and potentially-bright future.
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Some call this capacity "love"; it certainly partakes of the Golden Rule, the quintessential endorsement of empathy and, hence, of altruism. Far from being oblivious to "self-interest" — indeed, "self" calls forth "other" (see First Trinity) — empathy originates, I submit, in the quest for self-knowledge as the foundation of self-governance.
Seeing others seeing us seeing others, etc., invokes above all a "theory of mind" — the recognition of others' possession of consciousness and, by extension, conscience. This subject is highly speculative, of course, and relies on imperfect metaphors and analogies, etc. With this caveat, I propose that each individual's capacity for empathy can also generate a "theory of mind" which perceives our world, as such, as evolving something akin to a "mind" that "chooses": our world possesses something akin to consciousness and conscience; but of course it only "has" this if it has us and we have it. Again, "thinks" and "chooses" and "consciousness" and "conscience" are place-markers, metaphorical pointers to what our "theory of mind" gropes towards comprehending.
To carry that metaphor into even more tantalizing territories, note that children develop a "theory of mind" (usually before age seven); much of the research to date involves their acquisition of "skills" associated with "lying"; yet at a deeper level what they are acquiring is empathy; and what is most fascinating here is that empathy has as its main objective, or at least result, the "institutionalization" of personal skills and social manners aimed at avoidance of self-deception.
As we get better at seeing ourselves as others see us, we come to appreciate that others do this too. And in somewhat analogous manner, our world is developing the capacity — as a world — to "see" other, contingent, future "selves" ... and to choose among them. In this, our world is the principal and we are its agents. We are fiduciaries of our world's future.
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Metacommunication require candid sharing about consequences. As mentioned, one should be as gentle as possible, as firm as necessary. The most unpalatable consequence for many, it seems, is unavoidable: "disrespect" (by whatever name) of faith-based refusals (a) to address fact-based arguments and (b) to abandon dogma-based conclusions and resulting ways of being, etc.
As Socrates said long ago, the unexamined life is not worth living. Likewise, unexamined dogmas are dysfunctional to the worthwhile survival and continued evolution of our emerging global civilization.
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In a metalogue, I must risk "insulting" others if the alternative is "respecting" untenable assertions and values which, the evidence demonstrates, endanger our prospects for elevated existence.
Mere existence, being locked within a changeless Orwellian "perfection" that has immunized itself against genuine inquiry, evidence, illumination — has vaccinated future generations against "contaminating insults" to reigning dogma — stunts health, trivializes happiness, and cramps horizons.
In metalogue mode, I must state candidly: "As I refuse to respect your faith-based belief that cats fly on mats, so too I cannot see how regenerative intelligence can continue evolving in healthy ways if Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other 'true believers' continue asserting that their particular holy books provide inerrant truths about cats, mats, linguistics, metalinguistics, the tools of scientific inquiry, and the means by which a globalizing civilization can best advance towards goals that are worthy of our loftiest potentials ... as distinct from goals reflecting the necessarily limited capacities — including vast scientific blunderings — of visionaries, philosophers, theologians, and potentates who lived, worked, and preached thousands of years ago."
Dare I step outside the above quotation and take personal responsibility for my gathering conviction that firmest words are needed? Yes, I must: True believers' methods of obtaining and ascertaining their so-called truths, and of generating their so-called wisdoms based on such flimsy foundations, constitute a terrible and potentially-fatal impediment to humanity's prospects for developing, ah!, words fail!, but try: a global constitutional democracy — a "learning organism" that remains gloriously uncertain about its ultimate ends and, therefore, truly celebrates Ordered Liberty and all that this implies.
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The triune enterprise of messages, mediums, and human relationships should compose all human communications and permit the healthy development of a superstructure of nurture and culture — second-nature, the "memesphere" (as discussed in this essay) — to grow out of the substructure of nature, including the biosphere. This, in turn, allows (but does not "cause") a sort of third-nature construction, the focus of this essay. This structure requires the development of "virtual interlocutors" to guide humanity: candid commentators who, addressing us from the standpoint of contingent futures, some good and others bad (including non-existent futures brought on by present-day absurdities) force us to confront out present predicaments squarely, based on facts, not faith. Our best contingent futures obviously shame us to the extent we fail to heed their needs and do the work of bringing them into existence.
This future-guiding cultural enterprise carries into "internal communication" or thinking as conventionally defined. Both internal and external thought and communication depend on many unarticulated and even unarticulable elements, the experience of shame — of moral inadequacy — being a good example: it might be hard to define, but we know it when we feel it. Such knowledge is what we call enlightenment. It includes eschewing the arrogance, the hubris, of faith-based certainty that one is among some elect — a chosen people — whose Holy Book is the Word of God, immune from free inquiry, immune from disrespectful commentaries regarding elements that (in all fairness) should evoke shame. Such frank exchanges, as already noted, are of the essence in constructive criticism, an essential part of human discourse; such healthy candor, enhancing the future-guiding enterprise of global metalogues, provides the best foundation for reconceptualization of the human condition.
Trying to make these usually-implicit elements of the human condition explicit does not debase their value — so long as we continue to honor life's fathomless mysteries, and hence the sacred nature of elevated thought and communication, choice and will, and conscience. Indeed, our efforts to give voice to our tacit or unarticulable insights — if done with gentle humility — can enhance our appreciation of complex topics like history, economics, the Rule of Law, Ordered Liberty, and the future of civilization.
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As discussed further in this essay, I credit Gregory Bateson for coining the term "metalogue" and for his insights into linguistics, metalinguistics, and metacommunications. But my focus is somewhat different: distributed intelligence, where many participants each know some things yet no participant can possibly know all things ... albeit all can benefit from the fact that those things are probably known, and hence — given the right socio-economic, constitutional, and "traditional" foundations (especially, "tacit" understandings about what humans mean to each other) — the totality of human knowledge can be put to good use, indeed best use.
See http://www.oikos.org/angelsmetalogue.htm.
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In simplest terms, synergetics denotes the behavior of whole systems not predicted by the behavior of their subsystems, as discussed further in this essay. See especially Note on Synergetics. See also my essay, Synergetics.
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Cybernetics, properly understood, is the theory of self-organizing, self-correcting, feedback-dependent phenomena in which the concept of "self" is at issue and the concept of "goal-orientation" becomes central. Cybernetics is less ontological (asking What is?) and epistemological (asking How do we know what is?) than teleological (asking So What?), and as such is inescapably preoccupied with ethics. Cybernetics is further discussed in this essay and in The Cybernetics of Society, and is central to all Jurlandia writings.
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Note Regarding Research on Democracies, Ancient and Modern:
A superb compilation of recent scholarship on the history of the idea of "democracy" is Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick, eds., Demokratia: Conversations on Democracies, Ancient and Modern (1996). One is struck by how much more seems known now than was known even recently about the origins of Nomos, isonomia, and demokratia. But one is also struck by how many points remain shrouded in linguistic and historical fog.
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Being under construction, this essay is still struggling to compose that better metaphor. As this arrow gets closer to its target, the arrow will change in ways that allow improved descriptions of this "hologram" — and, hence, of differences that make a difference and similarities that make a "difference"... that is, make a significance. This website seeks to explore the nature of "significance" and, hence, of information. The ultimate goal is to create a sort of "wiki" encyclopedia of constitutional democracy, focused on "Open World" values. The necessary hardware and software for that does not presently exist. See First Trinity.
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Good writing requires consistent use of the final serial comma. Some assert that this comma should only be used where it is essential to avoid confusion — as where someone undertakes (confusingly) to "thank my parents, Joan Sutherland and God." But that rule itself invites confusion — or at least requires the brain to process a sentence "both ways" before deciding whether there is a confusion that needs to be resolved — and this gets in the way of the brain's already-formidable task: processing as-clear-as-possible sentences regarding unavoidably-complex matters. If, in speaking, we would provide a "brain-pause" that makes it clear we are thanking our parents, Joan Sutherland, and God, then that brain-pause should be "cued" when one is writing this thought. Thus, for my overnight camping trip I packed supplies that included bacon, brandy, coffee, eggs, juice, milk, and sugar. Next morning I enjoyed a breakfast of juice, eggs and bacon, and coffee with milk, sugar, and a tad of brandy.
While on the subject of punctuation, let me also note that hyphens and dashes should be distinct. Hyphens draw words together, and should not have spaces on either side, except when linking concepts like computer- or internet-mediated phenomena. Unlike hyphens, dashes — specifically, "M-dashes" — separate words or strings of words, and should have spaces on either side. Such spaces are especially necessary because, when writings travel from one computer- or internet-mediated platform to another, the M-dash often gets "converted" (debased?) into a hyphen-length "dash" (but it is still a dash); those spaces on either side usually survive such travel. If so, not all is lost; significant information is retained; those spaces can make all the difference.
Generally, M-dashes (the width of an "M") set off text that is not parenthetical; for parenthetical text we have parentheses. Dashes should not be used where parentheses should be used. Dashes serve to induce brain-pauses of a more complex kind than those induced by commas, and are aimed not only at separating elements but also at highlighting or emphasizing an element ... although, hmmm, especially-thoughtful brain-pauses are often best induced by three dots, called ellipses. N-dashes (the width of an "N") do not travel well from one computer- or internet-mediated platform to another; whether they will survive currently-evolving communications protocols is unclear. This is a good example of ways in which our tools "make us" as much as we make them; they and we coevolve; grammar, punctuation, vocabularies, and our capacities to use them well, are co-creative. Hotlinking has changed writing. Good writers have always been "composers"; now, all writing must attend to enhancing the power of co-creative composition. The dew is fresh upon the leaf of hyper textual metalogues.
Imparting complicated ideas as clearly as possible requires many tools of thought and communication, including emerging tools to facilitate "societal thinking" — especially cross-cultural dialogues that become metalogues whenever their focus is upon enhancing societal thinking. Some of the tools used by the Jurlandia website, such as dashes, are used quite differently in other languages; for example, Russian does not have "is" and therefore often uses a dash to impart what in English "is" imparts. But one of the main purposes of this website is to model good English-language writing, including punctuation, because English is attaining a special place within the emerging Ecology of Mind. Among its many assets, English is a language which (with the exception of dashes) travels well from one computer- or internet-mediated platform to another.
Two final points:
First: Jurlandia essays often place quotation marks (called inverted commas in England) around a word or phrase when first introduced, followed by a definition or other contextual pointers regarding that word or phrase. It is not always clear where this device should be employed. This website probably errs on the side of overuse. It does so in hopes of combating the tendency towards "over concretization": thinking that maps are territories, names are the things or relationships named. I plan in due course to take up this subject — first introduced by Aristotle and recently advanced by Korzybski — in far greater detail.
Second: I follow Friedrich A. Hayek and others in using initial capital letters for "Rule of Law" and similar fundamental concepts in order to denote that they are "elevated" terms of art.
Not every "rule of law" reflects the Rule of Law.
My initial-cap usage throughout the Jurlandia website reflects the crucial distinction, for example, between so-called "laws" and that fundamental Rule of Law by which any law — or governmental action taken "under color of law" — must be judged.
In this regard, I quote an early work by Hayek, Road to Serfdom (1944, 50th anniv. ed., Chicago, 1994):
Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand — rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one's individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge. Though this ideal can never be perfectly achieved, since legislators as well as those to whom the administration of the law is intrusted are fallible men, the essential point, that the discretion left to the executive organs wielding coercive power should be reduced as much as possible, is clear enough. While every law restricts individual freedom to some extent by altering the means which people may use in the pursuit of their aims, under the Rule of Law the government is prevented from stultifying individual efforts by ad hoc action. Within the known rules of the game the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts. [Hayek, Chapter 6, p. 80.]
The above includes the following footnote:
According to the classical exposition by A. V. Dicey in The Law of the Constitution (8th ed.), p. 198, the Rule of Law "means, in the first place, the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of government.
I should note that, for Dicey, "regular law" is also a term of art. His "law of the constitution" is about a specific model, that of England, in which "the constitution" and "the rule of law" are essentially identical. They start with the 1215 Magna Charta, the "law of the land" by which "due process of law" is secured. In addition to that "absolute supremacy" of regular law, Dicey notes that there must be "equality before the law" and a recognition that "the law of the constitution ... [is] not the source but the consequence of the rights of individuals." (p. 199)
Interestingly, while Dicey's text does not use initial-caps, his "side notes" accompanying the text do. His side note to page 198 is "Summary of meanings of Rule of Law" and his side note to page 199 is "Influence of 'Rule of Law' on leading provisions of the constitution." The first edition of Dicey's classic was published in 1885. The eighth and final edition was published in 1915
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Throughout these Jurlandia essays, I provide numerous links to other writings inside and outside the Jurlandia website. But, obviously, the discerning reader is encouraged to follow "leads" without my supplying a hyperlink. For example, Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) has generated a huge literature; readers who are unfamiliar with Korzybski can easily find references to his work, whether through Google or Yahoo, etc.; and these references suffice (on the assumption that readers can distinguish sense from nonsense). I don't suggest hotlinks for Korzybski or Adam Smith or Aristotle, etc. Trying to be sparing with hotlinks, I supply them only where I think my proposed links might enhance efficient, intelligent inquiry. (Go back)
Note on Distributed Intelligence:
Every person knows many things, including that many things we do not personally know (or do not know well) are known by others (or known better by others).
Constitutional democracies are "learning organisms" that enhance the opportunities for each "me" to become the best "me" possible, each of us following our bliss (well, whatever we think is worth following!) and, accordingly, learning — as best we can — about what most interests us.
This requires that we become humble, recognizing our dependence on those who know more than we do about some subjects. As we do this, of course, we come to respect the processes that allow — indeed, encourage — each human to contribute fractionally to the whole of human knowledge ... without (let us hope) fragmenting "Knowledge" — the Advancement of Learning (see next Note) — as such.
Friedrich A. Hayek provided the classic analysis of "distributed intelligence" — although he did not use that phrase. He asserted that in economics, for example, a huge number of individual choices based on each individual's fractional knowledge of the whole (of competing products, services, prices, etc.) provides a vast feedback system that processes vast amounts of information ... far more than economic planners and Soviet-style commissars could ever be able to know and process.
A modern example of this phenomenon is the blogosphere. The limited knowledge that each blogger possesses, added to that of all others, filters vast pools of information in ways that the conventional, centralized media (newspapers, television networks, etc.) cannot compete with. Of course, the topics of the blogosphere often include issues first raised by the mass media; increasingly, the converse is also true. Individual bloggers and mass-circulation opinion-leaders become mutually co-dependent; none (other than the truly disconnected) can exist and think and write in isolation from the Ecology of Mind.
Yet I think we need to be careful: The nascent error-correction processes associated with the blogosphere can result in informational "perfect storms" that go haywire, insane, drawing all into a vortex of misinformation that "informs" public-policy formulation, and commentary thereon, with "reliable" (almost everybody believes it) nonsense. Where a government intends to deceive, or institutionalizes a reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of its claims, a well-functioning press and blogosphere, etc., aided by conscientious whistleblowers, will eventually ferret out the truth; but much damage may have been done in the meantime.
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Distributed intelligence is a fact of life; but we need to examine it's strengths and weaknesses very critically. Doing so, however, we must make use of distributed intelligence; we have no choice. No individual can possibly know enough to safely unplug from the Ecology of Mind.
This is the fascinating challenge: We must use distributed intelligence (a) to discover what it is (and where it is heading), and (b) to counsel together about how to make it work better.
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Understanding anything requires our growing appreciation of its connections with everything. Human intelligence becomes increasingly distributed and decentralized. Understanding becomes increasingly emergent (see Note on Synergetics, below). (Go back)
Note on "The Advancement of Learning":
This is an ancient phrase, and also the title of a major work by Francis Bacon on the scientific method.
It is clear from Bacon's essays that he conceived the "advancement of learning" as an "embodiment" with a sort of life of its own, borne forth by history, science, jurisprudence.
It is synergistic, emergent: the whole being unpredicted by its parts. See further discussion, next Note.
Some claim that Bacon wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Bacon's coat of arms showed the Goddess of Wisdom shaking her Spear of Learning at the Serpent of Ignorance.
"Will Shake Spear" conjures ancient Greek commitments. (Go back)
I have been puzzling over synergy, synergism, or synergetics for a long time. My "Third Year Written Work" (a sort of thesis), required for my graduation from Harvard Law School in 1970, was entitled Cosmic Synergism and the Global Village Discontinuity. One of the goals of the Jurlandia website is to delve further into synergism and discontinuity. Modern synergetics teaches that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts or, more specifically, that the behavior of whole systems is unpredictable based on "full knowledge" (whatever that means) of the behavior of constituent subsystems. You cannot "predict" a molecule based on "full knowledge" of atoms. Of course, nobody tries to "understand" atoms from the standpoint of ignorance about the existence of molecules, so the point seems somewhat artificial. Yet it does have its deeper implications, the most important being a rejection of "reductionism" — the sort of silliness one often encounters which says, for example, that we are "nothing more than atoms" or that we are merely the products of our conditioning, etc. Synergetics (more precisely, "synergism") started as a theological idea: God depends on human cooperation to carry out, well ... Creation. Although I am not religious in any conventional sense, I find this earliest meaning of "synergism" worth pondering. I return to it later in this Essay. Rejecting reductionism, I embrace synergism: the belief (for it cannot be proved) that "reality" is emergent, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Around 1972, I started to contrast "synergetics" with "cybernetics" — based partly on the works of Gregory Bateson (see next Note) — in the sense that synergetics allows all sorts of things and ideas, etc., while cybernetics weeds out those that are flawed or dysfunctional, etc. Obviously, both synergetics and cybernetics are "heuristics": ideas, mental constructs, intended to promote further thought. The last thing I want to promote is a new reductionism which asserts that we are merely synergetics bounded by cybernetics. Obviously, we are far more. (Go back)
Metalogues are discussed in Gregory Bateson's book, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (1979). See Catherine Bateson's discussion of her father's work. (Return to discussion of metalogues)
The use of "cultural software" to denote tools of thought and communication, etc., is suggested by J.M. Balkin's book, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology (1998). Balkin's first paragraph supplies a powerful metaphor: As God completed the work of Creation at sunset of the sixth day, according to the Talmud, God created the first set of tongs — the first tool — because tongs can only be forged using other tongs. The idea of tool-making tools is central to the coevolution of Matter and Mind, the evolution of culture, and the Advancement of Learning ... including the evolution of cultural know-how regarding governance and self-governance.
Perhaps the greatest contribution to our understanding of cultural software is offered by Julian Jaynes' book, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976-1990). One does not have to accept the entirety of Jaynes' astonishing speculations, etc., to recognize the power of his treatment of metaphors. "There are ... always two terms in a metaphor, the thing to be described, which I shall call the metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I shall call the metaphier. A metaphor is always a known metaphier operating on a less known metaphrand. I have coined these hybrid terms simply to echo multiplication where a multiplier operates on a multiplicand. ... It is by metaphor that language grows. The common reply to 'what is it?' is, when the reply is difficult or the experience unique, 'well, it is like — .' ... The human body is a particularly generative metaphier, creating previously unspeakable distinctions in a throng of areas. The head of an army, table, page, bed, ship, household, or nail, or of steam or water; the face of a clock, cliff, card, or crystal; the eyes of needles, winds, storms, targets, flowers, or potatoes; the brow of a hill; the cheeks of a vice; the teeth of cogs or combs; the lips of pitchers, craters, augers." (pp. 48-49).
Indeed, says Jaynes, "language is an organ of perception, not merely a means of communication." (50) Our sense of "reality" is mediated by metaphor. "Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb 'to be' was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit bhu, 'to grow, or make grow,' while the English forms 'am' and 'is' have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asmi, 'to breathe.' It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjugation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for 'existence' and could only say that something 'grows' or that it 'breathes.'" (51).
Interestingly, not all languages have a word for "is"; Russian uses a dash, thereby conferring upon one of my favorite (most necessary) punctuation marks a completely different duty, as in: "Ah, building a global 'cultural software' equal to the challenges at hand — a difficulty!"
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Even "metaphor" started as a metaphrand in search of a metaphier.
Furthermore, meta — "over" — and pherein — "to carry" — doubtless had precursors, no less than bhu and asmi did.
Our communicative grunts and stunts preceded agriculture and, hence, the movement from "grow" to "make grow"; and metaphorical "carrying" (as in a mother "bearing" her child, whether in her womb or on her back) may have originated in a baby's first cry of dependency, or perhaps second, or third. Who knows?
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We humans are deeply "immersed" in our knowledge. Surely there is a "real reality out there" that is distinct from our metaphors, but when it comes to cultural institutions, including law, we are the "makers" of what "is"; law "breathes"; and let us never forget that "natural law" and "natural rights" are essentially cultural constructions. They have coevolved with our knowing, our liberties, our limitations on those evolving liberties, and our most general "carrying capacity" of ... that infant which is our future.
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Natural law and natural rights are not primarily "of" nature; they are not even "of" second nature or culture. They are remarkably-recent metaphrands in search of adequate metaphiers; and we — carriers of civilization — are their parents and, as a species, their originators.
RISE is an extended metaphrand in search of a "third-nature" metaphier that we are growing: a "self" that transcends the natural and even the cultural, the culturally self-conscious, the self-consciously self-governing, and the (words fail us!) future-consciously self-transforming. It does not yet "exist"; it is a baby being carried "over" our present time to a potentially-better future time.
RISE is an extended metaphor. If you don't like it, invent a better metaphor. By doing so, you will make a better "baby" bhu.
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We are fortunate to live when the dew is fresh upon computer-aided, internet-mediated "thinking" — at both individual and societal levels — but our progress will be enhanced and safeguarded if we never forget just how tentative these toddling first steps are. Let us celebrate with circumspection, not with strutting.
Hubris, especially the arrogance of believing that ones own tribe or sect or nation is the "chosen people" and that all others are inferior, deluded, or damned, is the worst enemy of RISE. Ironically, however, the consequences of such hubris are so dysfunctional that we must be prepared to say, gently but firmly, that such chosen-people dogmas are inferior, deluded, and damned.
Cultural software is delved into more deeply in First Trinity. (Return to "Metalogue Defined") (Go back)
Note on Kennedy's Inaugural Address: This quotation is from President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, 1961. I must emphasize that for me the word "God" is a place-marker for that depth and ground of all being which, alas, our world's religions generally put to trivial and often dysfunctional uses that impede development of a "religion" worthy of what we now know, as distinct from what was believed millennia ago. Kennedy's words here should serve as a starting point for our inquiry into synergetics — participatory co-creation of ideas, things, institutions, and all aspects of a worthwhile global future. (Go back)
Go to Start of Conversation of Democracy