Difference between revisions of "Holotopia"

From Knowledge Federation
Jump to: navigation, search
m
m
(29 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 13: Line 13:
 
<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
<small>Modernity <em>ideogram</em></small>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
<!-- AAA
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
Line 135: Line 137:
 
<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>To see things whole, we must look at all sides.</blockquote>  
 
<p>In the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing, every statement, or model, or <em>view</em>, is necessarily a simplification, which resulted from a certain specific way of looking or <em>scope</em>. Views that show the whole from a specific angle (as exemplified by the above picture) are called <em>aspects</em></p>  
 
<p>In the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing, every statement, or model, or <em>view</em>, is necessarily a simplification, which resulted from a certain specific way of looking or <em>scope</em>. Views that show the whole from a specific angle (as exemplified by the above picture) are called <em>aspects</em></p>  
<p>The aim of this presentation being to challenge the <em>exclusiveness> of our present social and academic <em>paradigm</em> in order to propose an update, we will of necessity present views that are, relative to this <em>paradigm</em>, "controversial".  The views we are about to share may make you leap from your chair. You will, however, be able to relax and enjoy this presentation, if you consider that the communication we invite you to engage in with us  <em>is</em> academically rigorous—but with a different <em>idea</em> of rigor. In the <em>holoscope</em> we take no recourse to "reality". Coexistence of multiple ways of looking at any theme or issues (which in the <em>holoscope</em> are called <em>scopes</em>) is axiomatic. And so is the assumption that we <em>must</em> overcome our habits and resistances and look in new ways, if we should see things whole and finding a new course.</p>
+
<p>The aim of this presentation being to challenge the <em>exclusiveness</em> of our present social and academic <em>paradigm</em> in order to propose an update, we will of necessity present views that are, relative to this <em>paradigm</em>, "controversial".  The views we are about to share may make you leap from your chair. You will, however, be able to relax and enjoy this presentation, if you consider that the communication we invite you to engage in with us  <em>is</em> academically rigorous—but with a different <em>idea</em> of rigor. In the <em>holoscope</em> we take no recourse to "reality". Coexistence of multiple ways of looking at any theme or issues (which in the <em>holoscope</em> are called <em>scopes</em>) is axiomatic. And so is the assumption that we <em>must</em> overcome our habits and resistances and look in new ways, if we should see things whole and finding a new course.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Although we have created all our claims, and <em>prototypes</em>, to our best ability, to be perfectly coherent and rigorous, and to stand to scrutiny, <em>we do not need to make such claims</em>, and we are not making them. Everything here is <em>prototypes</em>. Our invitation is not for adopting them as a "new reality"—but to begin a <em>dialog</em>, and by doing that co-create a social process by which our "realities", and the ways we create them, will be continuously evolving.</p>  
  
 
<blockquote>We invite you to be with us in the manner of the <em>dialog</em>—to <em>genuinely</em> share, listen and co-create.</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote>We invite you to be with us in the manner of the <em>dialog</em>—to <em>genuinely</em> share, listen and co-create.</blockquote>  
Line 240: Line 244:
  
 
<p>The very first step the founders of The Club of Rome did after its inception in 1968 was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave "making things whole" on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adopted that as one of our <em>keywords</em>. </p>  
 
<p>The very first step the founders of The Club of Rome did after its inception in 1968 was to convene a team of experts, in Bellagio, Italy, to develop a suitable methodology. They gave "making things whole" on the scale of socio-technical systems the name "systemic innovation"—and we adopted that as one of our <em>keywords</em>. </p>  
 +
 +
<p>The Knowledge Federation was created as a system to enable <em>federation</em> into systems. To bootstrap <em>systemic innovation</em>. The method is to create a <em>prototype</em>, and a <em>transdiscipline</em> around it to update it continuously. This enables the information created in disciplines to be woven into systems, to have real or <em>systemic</em> impact.</p>
 +
 +
<p>The <em>prototypes</em> are created by weaving together <em>design patterns</em>. Each of them is a issue-solution pair. Hence each roughly corresponds to a discovery (of an issue), and an innovation (a solution). A <em>design pattern</em> can then be adapted to other design challenges and domains. The <em>prototype</em> shows how to weave the relevant <em>design patterns</em> into a coherent whole.</p>
 +
 +
<p>While each of our <em>prototypes</em> is an example, the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em> is offered as a canonical example. It has about a dozen <em>design patterns</em>, solutions to questions how to make education serve transformation of society—instead of educating people for society as is.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Each <em>prototype</em> is also an experiment, showing what works in practice. Our very first <em>prototype</em> of this kind, the Barcelona Ecosystem for Good Journalism 2011, revealed that the prominent experts in a system (journalism) cannot change the system they are part of. The key is to empower the "young" ones. We created The Game-Changing Game. And The Club of Zagreb.</p>
 +
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
Line 250: Line 263:
  
  
<p>If our next evolutionary task is to make institutions or <em>systems</em> <em>whole</em>—<b>where</b> should we begin?</p>  
+
<p>If our next evolutionary task is to make institutions or <em>systems</em> <em>whole</em>—<b>where</b> shall we begin?</p>  
 
<p>Handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. One of them is that if we'll use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>  
 
<p>Handling of information, or metaphorically our society's 'headlights', suggests itself as the answer for several reasons. One of them is that if we'll use information as guiding light and not competition, our information will need to be different.</p>  
<p>Norbert Wiener contributed another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> individuals into a system. The nature of communication <em>determines</em> what a system will be like. <em>The</em> basic insight of cybernetics is that to to be able to correct its course (or to maintain "homeostasis", Wiener would have preferred to say, which we may interpret as "sustainability"), the system's "control" must be based on <em>suitable</em> communication or "feedback". </p>  
+
<p>Norbert Wiener contributed another reason: In <em>social</em> systems, communication is what  <em>turns</em> a collection of independent individuals into a system. In his 1948 book Wiener talked about the communication in ants and bees to make that point. Furthermore, "the tie between information and action" is <em>the</em> key property of a system, which cybernetics invites us to focus on. The full title of Wiener's book was  "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". To be able to correct their behavior and maintain inner and outer balance, and to "change course" when the circumstances demand that (Wiener used the technical term "homeostasis", which we may here interpret as "sustainability")—the system must have <em>suitable</em> communication and control.</p>  
  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
 
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>  
  
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observedit must be restored, for sustainability to be possible. </blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>The tie between information and action has been severed, Wiener too observed. </blockquote>
 
+
<p>Our society's communication-and-control is broken, and it has to be restored.</p>  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Bush-Vision.jpg]]
 
[[File:Bush-Vision.jpg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their own</em> system their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>  
+
<p>To make that point, Wiener cited an earlier work, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think", where Bush urged the scientists to make the task of revising <em>their own</em> communication their <em>next</em> highest priority—the World War Two having just been won.</p>  
  
<p>Why hasn't this been done?</p>  
+
<p>These calls to action remained, however, without effect. And it is not difficult to see why.</p>  
  
 
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm.</p>  
 
<p>"As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved," observed David Bohm.</p>  
Line 269: Line 282:
 
<blockquote><em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his results to the communication whose tie with action had been severed!</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote><em>Wiener too</em> entrusted his results to the communication whose tie with action had been severed!</blockquote>  
  
<p>We assembled a considerable collection of academic results that shared a similar fate, as evidence of an underlying anomaly we are calling the [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]].</p>
+
<p>We have assembled an interesting collection of academic results that shared a similar fate, as illustration of the phenomenon we are calling [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]].</p>
 
 
<p>It may be disheartening, especially to an academic researcher, to see that so many best ideas of our best minds are unable to benefit our society. But this sentiment quickly changes to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, when we look at the vast creative frontier that is opening up—where we are called upon to reinvent the very <em>system</em> by which we do our work; as the founding fathers of science did centuries ago. </p>  
 
  
<p>Optimism turns into enthusiasm, when we understand the role that the new information technology will have in that undertaking.</p>  
+
<p>It may be disheartening, especially to an academic researcher, to see so many best ideas of our best minds unable to benefit our society. But this sentiment quickly changes to <em>holotopian</em> optimism, when we look at the vast creative frontier this is pointing to; which Vannevar Bush pointed to in 1945. </p>  
  
<blockquote> Core parts of contemporary information technology were created to enable <em>fundamentally different</em> systemic solutions in knowledge work, compared to the ones we have inherited from the past.</blockquote>  
+
<p>Optimism turns into enthusiasm, when the information technology, which we all now use to communicate with the world, is taken into consideration.</p>
  
<p>"Fundamentally different" here means that their very principle of operation will be different—in the manner and in the degree in which electrical light is different from the light that a burning candle would produce.</p>  
+
<blockquote>Core elements of the contemporary information technology were <em>created to enable a paradigm change</em> on that creative frontier.</blockquote>  
  
<p>It is not completely true that Vannevar Bush's call to action was ignored. Douglas Engelbart heard it, and with his SRI team developed a solution that was well beyond what Bush envisioned. They showed this solution—really the technology we all now use to connect with each other and to communicate—in their famous 1968 demo.</p>  
+
<p>Vannevar Bush already pointed to this new paradigm, indeed already in the title, "As We May Think", of his 1945 article. His point was that "thinking" really means making associations or "connecting the dots". And that our knowledge work must be organized in such a way <em>that we may benefit from each other's "thinking"</em>—and in effect think <em>together</em>, as a single mind does. He described a <em>prototype</em> system called "memex", which was based on microfilm as technology.</p>  
  
<blockquote>But the vision that guided Engelbart, of a new <em>paradigm</em> in communication, has neither been understood in theory nor implemented in practice.</blockquote>
+
<p>Douglas Engelbart, however, took this development in a whole new direction—by observing (in 1951!) that when we, humans, are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together in a similar way as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. While all earlier innovations in this area—from clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium that bears a message be physically <em>transported</em>, this new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</p>  
 
<p>When we, humans, are connected to a personal digital device through an interactive interface, and when those devices are connected together into a network—then the overall result is that we are connected together in a similar way as the cells in a human organism are connected by the nervous system. While all earlier innovations in this area—from clay tablets to the printing press—required that a physical medium that bears a message be physically <em>transported</em>—this new technology allows us to "create, integrate and apply knowledge" <em>concurrently</em>, as cells in a human nervous system do.</p>  
 
  
 
<blockquote> We can now think and create—together!</blockquote>  
 
<blockquote> We can now think and create—together!</blockquote>  
  
<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the <em>system</em> by which information is produced and put to use; even "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingers on his forehead: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The improvement that is possible is not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that can and needs to be achieved is indeed <em>qualitative</em>— from a system that doesn't really work, to one that does.</p>  
+
<p>[https://youtu.be/cRdRSWDefgw This three minute video clip], which we called "Doug Engelbart's Last Wish", offers an opportunity for a pause. Imagine the effects of improving the <em>system</em> by which information is produced and put to use; even "the effects of getting 5% better", Engelbart commented with a smile. Then he put his fingers on his forehead: "I've always imagined that the potential was... large..." The potential not only large; it is <em>staggering</em>. The improvement that can and needs to be achieved is not only large, it is <em>qualitative</em>— from a system that doesn't really fulfill its function, to one that does.</p>  
  
<p>By collaborating in new ways, as Engelbart envisioned, we would be able to comprehend our problems and respond to them incomparably more quickly than we do. Engelbart foresaw that the <em>collective intelligence</em> that would result would enable us to tackle the "complexity times urgency of our problems", which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate or "exponentially". </p>  
+
<p>By collaborating in this new way, Engelbart envisioned, we would become able to comprehend our problems and respond to them incomparably faster than we do. Engelbart foresaw that the <em>collective intelligence</em> that would result would enable us to tackle the "complexity times urgency of our problems", which he saw as growing at an accelerated rate or "exponentially". </p>  
  
<p>But to Engelbart's dismay, our new "collective nervous system" ended up being used to only implement the <em>old</em> processes and systems, which evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press, and make them more efficient; to only <em>broadcast</em> data. </p>
+
<p>But to Engelbart's dismay, this new "collective nervous system" ended up being use to only make the <em>old</em> processes and systems more efficient. The ones that evolved through the centuries of use of the printing press, which only <em>broadcast</em> data. </p>
  
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Giddens-OS.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact this has had on us as culture; and on "human quality". Dazzled by an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>  
+
<p>The above observation by Anthony Giddens points to the impact this has had on culture. And on "human quality".</p>
 +
<p>Dazzled by an overload of data, in a reality whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension—we have no other recourse but "ontological security". We find meaning in learning a profession, and performing in it a competitively.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>But <em>ontological security</em> is what <em>binds us</em> to <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
  
<p>But this is, of course, what binds us to <em>power structure</em>. </p>  
+
<blockquote><em>What is to be done</em>, if we should be able to use the new technology to change our <em>collective mind</em>?</blockquote>
  
<blockquote> Instead of liberating us—the new information technology bounded us to <em>power structure</em> even stronger. </blockquote>  
+
<p>Engelbart left us a clear answer in the opening slides of his "A Call to Action" presentation, which were prepared for a 2007 panel that Google organized to share his vision to the world, but were not shown(!).</p>  
  
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
  
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
+
<p>In the first slide, Engelbart emphasized that  "new thinking" or a "new paradigm" is needed. In the second, he pointed out what this "new thinking" was. </p>
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<p>We ride a common economic-political vehicle traveling at an ever-accelerating pace through increasingly complex terrain.</p>
 +
<p>Our headlights are much too dim and blurry. We have totally inadequate steering and braking controls. </p>
 +
</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>There can be no doubt that <em>systemic innovation</em> was the direction Engelbart was pointing to. He indeed published an ingenious methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em> <em>already in 1962</em>, six years before Jantsch and others created theirs in Bellagio, Italy; and he used this methodology throughout his career. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Engelbart also made it clear what needs to be our next step—by which the spell of the <em>Wiener's paradox</em> is to be broken. He called it "bootstrapping"—and we adopted <em>bootstrapping</em> as one of our <em>keywords</em>. The point here is that only <em>writing</em> about what needs to be done (the tie between information and action being broken) will not lead to a desired effect; the way out of the paradox, or <em>bootstrapping</em>, means that we <em>act</em>—and either create a new system with our own minds and bodies, or actively help others do that.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is the 'collective thinking' that the new informati9on technology enables, and our society requires.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> was created by an act of <em>bootstrapping</em>, to enable <em>bootstrapping</em>. Originally, we were a community of knowledge media researchers and developers, developing the <em>collective mind</em> solutions that the new technology enables. Already at our first meeting, in 2008, we realized that the technology that we and our colleagues were developing has the potential to change our <em>collective mind</em>; but that to realize that potential, we need to self-organize differently.</p>  
  
<p>What we are calling <em>knowledge federation</em> is the functioning of our <em>collective mind</em> that suits the new technology—and our situation.</p>  
+
<p>Ever since then have been <em>bootstrapping</em>, by developing <em>prototypes</em> with and for various communities and situations.</p>
  
<p>Our call to action—to develop <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as real-life <em>praxis</em>—is proposed as a remedy to the <em>collective mind</em> issue.</p>  
+
<p>Among them, we highlight
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism, IEJ2011</li>
 +
<li>Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, TNC2015</li>
 +
<li>The LIghthouse 2016</li>
 +
</ul> </p>
 +
<p>The first, IEJ2011m, shows how researchers, journalists, citizens and creative media workers can collaborate to give the people exactly the kind of information they need—to be able to orient themselves in contemporary world, and handle its challenges correctly.</p>
 +
<p>The second, TNC2015, shows how to <em>federate</em> a result of a single scientist—which is written in an inaccessible language, and has high potential relevance to other fields and to the society at large.</p>
 +
<p>The third, The Lighthouse 2016, empowers a community of researchers (the concrete <em>prototype</em> was made for and with the International Society for the Systems Sciences) to <em>federate</em> a single core insight that the society needs from their field. (Here the concrete insight was that "the free competition" cannot replace "communication and control" and provide "homeostasis"—as Wiener already argued in Cybernetics, in 1948.)</p>  
  
<p>Our <em>prototype</em> is offered as a proof of concept model of this solution.</p>  
+
<p>Together, those three <em>prototypes</em> constitute a <em>prototype</em> solution to the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>.</p>  
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
 +
BBB -->
  
  
Line 318: Line 360:
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
 
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>  
 
<p>
 
<p>
<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else"</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",</blockquote>  
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Securing our children a future, however, will require an unprecedented level of international collaboration, and restructuring of the global economy, the widely read [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/ Rolling Stone article] reeports. The COVID-19 exacerbates those demands and makes them even more immediate. Considering the way in which things are related, restructuring of the world economy will not be possible without restructuring other systems as well.</p>  
+
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. <em>Of course</em> those people love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking them was to 'pull the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is more closely inspected, it becomes clear that also its 'brakes' are dysfunctional.</p>  
  
<p>So our next question is <b>who</b>, that is <em>what institution</em> will initiate the next urgent task on our evolutionary agenda—tell us how to update <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>; and empower us to do that?</p>  
+
<p>So <b>who</b> will lead us through the next urgent task on evolutionary agenda—empower us to update <em>the systems in which we live and work</em>?</p>  
  
<p>Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored. And so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them; and also Neil Postman and others that followed. </p>
+
<p>Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" as institution would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored—and so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and the others who followed. </p>  
<p>Why? Isn't restoring agency to information and power to knowledge a task worthy of academic attention?</p>  
 
  
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the <em>academia</em> too followed the general evolutionary trend; that the academic discipline too evolved as <em>power structure</em>—to provide clear and fair rules for pursuing a career <em>within</em> a discipline; and divide the 'academic turf' <em>between</em> disciplines—while keeping the outliers outside.</p>
+
<p>Why?</p>  
 
<p>But to see solutions, we will need to look at deeper causes.</p>  
 
  
<p>As we pointed out in the opening paragraphs of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. By bringing up the image of Galilei in house arrest, we highlighted that it was not the pursuit of <em>practical</em> knowledge that led our ancestors to a "great cultural revival", but of <em>knowledge for its own sake</em>. Censorship and prison were unable to contain the new way to look at the world, whose time had come—and it transpired from astrophysics, where it originated, and permeated the society.</p>  
+
<p>It is tempting to conclude that the <em>academia</em> followed the general trend, and became a <em>power structure</em>. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.</p>  
  
<p>So the core role of the university is to inform us about the meaning and purpose of knowledge, so that we may successfully pursue knowledge in <em>any</em> context. The traditional academic keyword is "epistemology", which is usually interpreted as the exploration of the limits of knowledge, understood as "how and to what degree can we really know reality?". Here we'll use this keyword a bit differently, and let <em>epistemology</em> mean both the "knowledge of knowledge", and the "foundation for creating truth and meaning" that follows from it. </p>  
+
<p>As we pointed out in the opening paragraph of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. 
 +
Our tradition developed from classical philosophy, where the "philosophical" questions such as "How do we know that something is <em>true</em>?" and even "<em>What does it mean</em> that something is true?" led to certain "academic" standards for pursuing knowledge. The university's core social role, or that is in any case how we, academic people tend to perceive it, is to uphold those standards. By studying at a university, one becomes capable of pursuing knowledge in an academically correct or qualified way in <em>any</em> domain.</p>  
  
<p>We concluded the opening paragraph of our website by asking, rhetorically, "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" In this way we suggested that our situation today might be similar as the situation back then, in Galilei's time. That now again there is a new way to look at the world waiting to be given 'citizenship rights'—ready to transform our world. </p>  
+
<p>In the opening paragraph of this website we brought up the image of Galilei in house arrest, to pointe out that this fundamental and seemingly only "philosophical" pursuit has a tremendous power. The Inquisition, censorship and prison were unable to keep in check an idea whose time had come—and the new way to pursue knowledge soon migrated from astrophysics, where it originated, and transformed all walks of life. "A great cultural revival" was a result. In the opening of our website we asked "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?" </p>  
  
<p>This leads us to <em>the</em> key question, which we shall here begin to explore.</p>  
+
<p>In what follows we offer an affirmative answer to that question.</p>  
  
<blockquote>Who, or what, might be 'Galilei in house arrest' today?</blockquote>  
+
<p>In what follows you will recognize <em>the core of our proposal</em>—we'll propose to change the relationship we have with information. But here we'll make a case for that proposal on fundamental or <em>academic</em> grounds.</p>  
  
<p>What transformative ideas are ready to emerge? What new way of looking at the world is ready to transform it?</p>  
+
<blockquote>The spontaneous pursuit of <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> has brought us to a point where changing the relationship we have with information has become immanent—also for intrinsic or <em>fundamental</em> reasons.</blockquote>  
  
<p>And who, or what, is keeping Galilei 'in house arrest'?</p>
+
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
  
 +
<p>Early in the course of modernization, we made a fundamental error whose consequences cannot be overrated.  This error was subsequently uncovered and reported, but it has not yet been corrected.</p>
  
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
+
<p>Without thinking, from the traditional culture we've adopted a myth incomparably more disruptive of modernization that the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the purpose of information, and of knowledge, is to allow us to know the reality "objectively", as it truly is. </p>  
  
BBBBBBB
+
<blockquote>The 20th century science and philosophy disproved and abandoned this naive view.</blockquote>  
<blockquote>It turned out that <em>we</em> got it wrong.</blockquote>  
 
 
<p>  
 
<p>  
 
[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Einstein-Watch.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>It is impossible, scientists found out, to assert that our ideas and models <em>correspond</em> to reality. There is simply no way to open the supposed "mechanism of nature", and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to it.</p>  
+
<p>There is simply no way, scientists found out, to open the 'mechanism of nature'  and verify that our models <em>correspond</em> to the real thing.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>So what, then, are the origins of our "reality picture"? How do we decide whether something is "true"?</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>"Reality", it has been reported, is not something we discover; it is something we <em>create</em>. Hence we shall from here on prefer to use the verb, <em>reification</em>. </p>
 +
<p>Part of our "reality construction" is performed by our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense and helps us function. The other part is performed by our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it; and through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—the way of our culture.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>There are at least two reasons why we should not waste more time, but abandon this dangerous "reality myth" as we abandoned other such myths and prejudices from the past. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To see the first, we invite you to a simple, one-minute thought experiment. We invite you to follow us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this has nothing to do with religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our metaphorical images or <em>ideograms</em>, to help us see things in proportion and make a point.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>What strikes us, as we enter, is the architecture, which inspires awe. We hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are frescos by masters of old on the walls. If the cathedral of your choice is the St. Peter's in Rome, then Michelangelo's frescos are near. And there is the ritual...</p>
 +
<p>There is also a little book on each bench. Its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.</p>
 +
<p>Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—point to the difference in the importance of the roles of the factual or "objective" information—and the one that is <em>implicit</em> in everything else we call "culture"—whose role is to create (let's call it that) a <em>symbolic environment</em> by which our <em>socialization</em> takes place. By which our inclinations to feel and think in a certain way, and our values and our "human quality" are created. We are making no value judgment, and you should not do that either. We are only pointing to a role or a <em>function</em>.</p>  
  
<p>"Reality", sociologists found out, should rather be considered as a contrivance of the traditional culture (or of what we called the <em>power structure</em>), invented to <em>socialize</em> us in a certain way. In "Social Construction of Reality", Berger and Luckmann pointed out that throughout history, the explanations how "the reality really works", which they called "universal theories", have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> the given social order.</p>  
+
<p>What happens with this function when we, considering the <em>worldview</em> to be the point, replace the worldview of the tradition with the "scientific" one? Who becomes responsible for our <em>socialization</em>? The answer is obvious. A superficial look around will suffice to see just how much our contemporary <em>symbolic environment</em> is a product of advertising—whose function is to give us the kind of "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow; and not to help us become the kind of people who will <em>make things whole</em>.  But explicit advertising is, of course, only a tip of an iceberg, through which our <em>socialization</em> is takes place.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>So the first reason why we need to abandon the "reality myth" is that it it alienates us from a lion's share of our cultural heritage—and makes us abandon the creation of culture and "human quality" to <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The second reason is the role in which "constructed reality" plays within the <em>power structure</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>It could be sufficient for our purpose to only point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann pointed out that throughout history, the "universal theories" (about the nature of reality and how it is to be understood) have been used  to <em>legitimize</em> a given social order. But this theme being central to <em>holotopia</em>, we here give a gist of a more thorough explanation.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>This being only a teaser and a summary, we do that by giving only broad contours of a <em>thread</em>—in which three short stories or <em>vignettes</em> and strung together to compose a larger insight.</p> 
 +
 
 +
<p>The first <em>vignette</em> in this <em>thread</em> is a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors, aging Odin the Horse and New Horse, are engaged in turf strife. We'll ask you to just imagine their long hairs waving in the wind, and their display of power—as Odin, who had been the stallion and the king of the turf, tries to keep New Horse away from his mares.</p>  
  
<p>Results in cognitive science, and in political science and sociology, showed that we are not the "rational decision makers", as the 19th century made us believe.</p> 
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Bourdieu-insight.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>They explained the <em>mechanism</em> of <em>socialization</em>—the way in which our seemingly rational choices are manipulated through the use of "symbolic power", without <em>anyone</em> noticing.</p>
 
  
<p>This, however, <em>has</em> been noticed. The business people were quick to learn that our choices can be manipulated; they now use <em>scientific</em> advisers to do that (the epic story of Edward Bernays, Freud's American nephew, illustrates how this began). The politicians followed.</p>  
+
<p>The second story involves sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how <em>socialization</em> works—and in particular how it works through creation and use of what he called "symbolic power". Our point will be to combine these two stories, and show that "we have a problem" (or more to the point—that we need to see things in that way), which we have not yet seen and understood. We too are (need to see ourselves as) "territorial animals"; only our 'turf strifes' are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of the horses—just as much as our culture is more complex than theirs. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Bourdieu has two keywords for this symbolic 'turf', "field" and "game", which he uses interchangeably. He calls it a "field"—to suggest both a field of activity such as an academic community or discipline or any other institution; <em>and</em> something akin to a gravitational field or a magnetic field—which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random behavior in a certain specific direction. When he refers to it as "game", he suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, and allowable 'moves', which serve to organize our 'turf strife' in some specific way.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>To explain the mechanism by which the <em>symbolic power</em> induces a field, Bourdieu uses additional two keywords, which have a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". The habitus includes embodied behaviors and predispositions, which are part of everyone's 'role' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do its pages. The doxa refers to a form of experience, or a belief, that the given social order is <em>the</em> reality. "Orthodoxy" is a related terms, where multiple "realities" are acknowledged to coexist, of which only one is the "right" one. Doxa ignores even the <em>possibility</em> of alternatives. Here we may complete this brief sketch by observing that the habitus is an instrument, by which the positions on the symbolic 'turf' are maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too). Doxa then serves as cement, to make it all stable and permanent.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Antonio Damasio completes this <em>thread</em> as a cognitive neuroscientist, to help us see that these "embodied predispositions" reach far deeper and wider into our cognitive structure and inclinations than what was believed earlier. That they act as a cognitive filter—determining our priorities, and even <em>what</em> we may consciously consider as possible. (Why, for instance, we don't consider the option of taking off our pajamas and running into the street naked.)</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>And now our point.</p>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
<blockquote> In our hitherto modernization we have learned to harness the power of the rivers, the sun, the wind and the atom. What remained as our next task is to harness the power that has remained as the <em>largest</em> in our Earthly abode—the power of our socialization. It is the largest because it determines how all those other powers will be used. </blockquote>
 +
 
 +
<p>The <em>socialized reality</em>, as we've just outlined it, is the reason why we, for instance, still use 'candles' as 'headlights'; we have <em>reified</em> them as such. For us, the candles <em>are</em> headlights. The work of journalists, and of scientists, is not a means to an end; science "is" what the scientists do, things like physics, biology and chemistry. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Our social reality is kept from evolving by a doxa—which is deeply grounded in the way in which we see the function of information; and of knowledge.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>But if information and knowledge should now liberate us—as they did our ancestors following Galilei's time—then once again the very relationship we have with information will need to change.</p>
  
<p>As it turned out, the Enlightenment did not really liberate us, as we tend to believe. Our <em>socialization</em> only changed hands—from one <em>power structure</em> (the kings and the clergy) to the next (the corporations and the media). </p>
 
  
<blockquote><em>They</em> are now creating our culture.</blockquote>
+
<!-- XXX
  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
 
<h3>Remedy</h3>  
  
<p>"Reality" as foundation for creating truth and meaning, and hence of culture, is bankrupt. It has no basis in reality.</p>
 
  
 
<p>We use the <em>mirror</em> as metaphorical image, in a similar way as we use the bus with candle headlights, to point to the academic and cultural situation that resulted. The spontaneous pursuit of knowledge, and the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> that resulted, brought us to the <em>mirror</em>. The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes coming back to the original academic values, and ethos: self-reflection; and the Socratic dialog, about the meaning and purpose of what we do. But now in the light of <em>contemporary</em> knowledge of knowledge. It symbolizes also a new self-awareness and self-image that will result: We are not <em>above</em> the world, observing it "objectively"; we are <em>in</em> the world—and have a role in it.</p>  
 
<p>We use the <em>mirror</em> as metaphorical image, in a similar way as we use the bus with candle headlights, to point to the academic and cultural situation that resulted. The spontaneous pursuit of knowledge, and the <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> that resulted, brought us to the <em>mirror</em>. The <em>mirror</em> symbolizes coming back to the original academic values, and ethos: self-reflection; and the Socratic dialog, about the meaning and purpose of what we do. But now in the light of <em>contemporary</em> knowledge of knowledge. It symbolizes also a new self-awareness and self-image that will result: We are not <em>above</em> the world, observing it "objectively"; we are <em>in</em> the world—and have a role in it.</p>  
Line 444: Line 520:
 
<p>This question becomes especially interesting when we consider it in the light of the task we've taken up, of <em>federating</em> Aurelio Peccei's call to action, to "find a way to change course", by beginning a "great cultural revival". Clearly—and we highlighted that by talking about Galilei in house arrest—the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival" was largely a result of a new way to look at the world, which liberated us from the worldview of the Scripture and empowered us to use the reason, and the human experience, to <em>understand</em> the world. Our question was, and is all along—"Could a similar advent be in store for us today?"</p>  
 
<p>This question becomes especially interesting when we consider it in the light of the task we've taken up, of <em>federating</em> Aurelio Peccei's call to action, to "find a way to change course", by beginning a "great cultural revival". Clearly—and we highlighted that by talking about Galilei in house arrest—the <em>last</em> "great cultural revival" was largely a result of a new way to look at the world, which liberated us from the worldview of the Scripture and empowered us to use the reason, and the human experience, to <em>understand</em> the world. Our question was, and is all along—"Could a similar advent be in store for us today?"</p>  
  
<p>This question is also most pertinent in the context of our proposal to <em>academia</em>, to establish <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field and a real-life [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]]. And especially so in the light of the <em>accountability</em> argument we've presented in <em>socialized reality</em>—according to which the <em>academia</em> must consider itself accountable for the way of looking at the world it gives to the researcher, and the lay person (its core function in the society to tell us what is "right" information leading to "right" knowledge—so that we may pursue it in all walks of life). To highlight the importance of this role, imagine an extraordinarily gifted young man entering the <em>academia</em>. Let's call him Pierre Bourdieu, to be concrete. The academic toolkit given to this young man as part of his academic training, which he'll henceforth simply take for granted, as part of his job and self-identity, will largely determine how useful or <em>usable</em> the results of his career will be to the society. </p>  
+
<p>This question is also most pertinent in the context of our proposal to <em>academia</em>, to establish <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field and a real-life [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]]. And especially so in the light of the <em>accountability</em> argument we've presented in <em>socialized reality</em>—according to which the <em>academia</em> must consider itself accountable for the way of looking at the world it gives to the researcher, and the lay person (its core function in the society to tell us what is "right" information leading to "right" knowledge—so that we may pursue it in all walks of life). To highlight the importance of this role, imagine an extraordinarily gifted young man entering the <em>academia</em>. Let's call him Pierre Bourdieu, to be concrete. The academic toolkit given to this young man as part of his academic training, which he'll henceforth simply take for granted, as part of his job and self-identity, will largely determine how useful or <em>usable</em> the results of his career will be to the society. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Imagine the effects on the rest of us, and our culture—if <em>we</em> can be educated, and legislated, to think in a new way! Isn't that the <em>natural</em> way to "cultural revival"?</p> 
  
 
<p>Herein lies the <em>academia</em>'s immense power: It holds the key to "great cultural revival" (provided a better "course" for handling information and knowledge can be found). </p>  
 
<p>Herein lies the <em>academia</em>'s immense power: It holds the key to "great cultural revival" (provided a better "course" for handling information and knowledge can be found). </p>  
Line 466: Line 544:
 
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, we were informed, we have the evolutionary prerogative to understand the world, and to make choices rationally. Give the <em>homo sapiens</em> a correct understanding of the natural world, he'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "his needs", which he no doubt knows because he can experience them directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, our ancestors invented a "ghost in the machine"—and prayed to <em>him</em> to give them what they wanted. Science corrected this error. It <em>removed</em> the "ghost"—and told us how the nature, or 'the machine', <em>really</em> works. </p>
 
<p>As members of the <em>homo sapiens</em> species, we were informed, we have the evolutionary prerogative to understand the world, and to make choices rationally. Give the <em>homo sapiens</em> a correct understanding of the natural world, he'll know exactly how to go about satisfying "his needs", which he no doubt knows because he can experience them directly. But the traditions got it all wrong! Being unable to understand how the nature works, our ancestors invented a "ghost in the machine"—and prayed to <em>him</em> to give them what they wanted. Science corrected this error. It <em>removed</em> the "ghost"—and told us how the nature, or 'the machine', <em>really</em> works. </p>
  
<p>This gigantic step—removing the "ghost in the machine"—is what modernization was really all about! Isn't that how we came to understand, finally, that women can't fly on broomsticks?</blockquote>  
+
<p>This gigantic step—removing the "ghost in the machine"—is what modernization was really all about! Isn't that how we came to understand, finally, that women can't fly on broomsticks?</p>
 
 
 
<p>We can now combine scientific understanding of causes with technology, and get out the nature exactly what we want and need!</p>   
 
<p>We can now combine scientific understanding of causes with technology, and get out the nature exactly what we want and need!</p>   
 
 
 
<p>Of course, some social instruments also need to be in place to make it all work. The <em>homo sapiens</em> needs a similarly "objective reality picture" about what's happening in the social world, so that also there he can make informed, rational decisions.. That's what the media informing provides him. And when his wants and needs contradict with those of another, he needs "the free market" and "the free elections" to serve as perfect scales, and assure that justice, the will of the majority, will prevail.</p>  
 
<p>Of course, some social instruments also need to be in place to make it all work. The <em>homo sapiens</em> needs a similarly "objective reality picture" about what's happening in the social world, so that also there he can make informed, rational decisions.. That's what the media informing provides him. And when his wants and needs contradict with those of another, he needs "the free market" and "the free elections" to serve as perfect scales, and assure that justice, the will of the majority, will prevail.</p>  
  
Line 484: Line 559:
 
[[File:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Heisenberg–frame.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
</blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>  
+
<blockquote>The first reason is that the nature is not a mechanism.</blockquote>  
 
<p>Modern physics proved that <em>scientifically</em>—by showing that small <em>quanta</em> of matter exhibited behaviors that could not be explained in "classical" or "causal" terms. Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be <em>on popular culture</em>—because the <em>narrow frame</em> would be removed. </p>  
 
<p>Modern physics proved that <em>scientifically</em>—by showing that small <em>quanta</em> of matter exhibited behaviors that could not be explained in "classical" or "causal" terms. Werner Heisenberg, one of the progenitors of this research, expected that the largest impact of modern physics would be <em>on popular culture</em>—because the <em>narrow frame</em> would be removed. </p>  
  
Line 551: Line 626:
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">  
 
<div class="col-md-7">  
 +
 +
<p>The Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em> <em>prototype</em> shows how a general-purpose methodology can be created—to enable abstraction, and creation of principles, rules of thumb etc. in <em>any</em> domain.</p>
  
 
<p>Of the various <em>prototypes</em> that may illustrate this method we here point to only one: "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>" book manuscript. Here the claim made in the title is <em>justified</em> in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it. The book is an <em>information holon</em>, where the insight created is what we've been talking about all along—that we can no longer live with only the <em>traditional</em> approach to information; that <em>information</em> must be modernized, or <em>designed</em>. </p>  
 
<p>Of the various <em>prototypes</em> that may illustrate this method we here point to only one: "<em>Information</em> Must Be <em>Designed</em>" book manuscript. Here the claim made in the title is <em>justified</em> in four chapters of the book—each of which presents a specific angle of looking at it. The book is an <em>information holon</em>, where the insight created is what we've been talking about all along—that we can no longer live with only the <em>traditional</em> approach to information; that <em>information</em> must be modernized, or <em>designed</em>. </p>  
Line 559: Line 636:
  
  
<!-- XXX
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]]</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3><em>Scope</em></h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>In this last of the <em>five insights</em>, we answer the question that has remained as perhaps most intriguing—and <em>portray</em> "a great cultural revival" that is now ready to emerge. To see what this may mean practically, think of the world in Galilei's time. Concerns about "original sin" and "eternal punishment" were soon to be replaced; happiness and beauty would be lived here and now, and elevated and celebrated by the arts. What might the <em>next</em> "great cultural revival" be like? </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Another place to begin is what we've just proposed—to develop a <em>general purpose methodology</em>, or 'generalized science', which allows us to <em>federate</em> cultural insights emanating from ancient and contemporary cultural traditions, religions, schools of therapy <em>and</em> science, that would allow us to create insights, rules of thumb or principles in <em>any</em> domain of choice. We are about to apply our <em>prototype</em> to the pivotal issue, the one that gives our cultural evolution or our 'bus' its direction—the question of human aims and values. To inform our "pursuit of happiness". What insights, what new discoveries might emerge?</p>
 +
 
 +
<h3>Diagnosis</h3>
 +
 
 +
<p>The insight we propose is closely similar to the <em>academic</em> one resulting from the self-reflection with the help of the metaphorical [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]; the discovery that emerges is as simple as—the discovery of ourselves.</p>
 +
 
 +
<p>The values that will be challenged are the ones that resulted by looking at the world through the <em>narrow frame</em>, as we've just described. First of all (in the more <em>private</em> pursuits) the value of <em>convenience</em> (or "instant gratification"), which <em>appeared</em> as "scientific" because it roughly corresponds to the scientific experiment. And then (in the more social ones) the value of <em>egotism</em> (or "egocenteredness"), which appears to follow as "natural" from Darwin's theory. And relying on "free competition" to take care of <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
  
<p>Here our focus is on what most closely corresponds to 'candle headlights' on this <em>fundamental</em> level—on the way or the method by which we look at the world, to comprehend it and handle it.</p>  
+
<p>Both values ignore systems—first of all the natural ones, and then also social. Both are the environments, whose quality largely determines our life quality. They have, however, a difference—that in culture we have no CO2 and CO2 quotas; and that the destruction can be <em>more</em> pervasive, and remain unnoticed.</p>  
  
 +
<p>What we, however, focus on here is the third system—ourselves. The observation that our "values" made us neglect how our choices influence our own condition, including our <em>capability to feel</em> in the long run. And that by 'seeing ourselves in the <em>mirror</em>',  we become liberated from <em>objectifying</em> our own emotional responses—that when we feel something is attractive, or repulsive, it "really is" so. </p>
  
<h3>[[Holotopia:Convenience paradox|<em>Convenience paradox</em>]] issue</h3>  
+
<blockquote>The way in which we emotionally react to stimuli from the outside will turn out to be <em>the</em> most fertile ground for improvement.</blockquote>  
  
<p>We now look at what (in a "democracy", and a "free market economy") <em>directly</em> determines our society's course—our values</p>  
+
<p>Completely ignored!</p>  
  
<p>Here the "ontology" and the "epistemology" we have just seen led to a way of making choices that vastly relies on "classical" or "Newtonian" <em>direct</em> causality—namely "instant gratification". This way of making choices, where we focus on "our own interests",  also seems to be supported on the ethical side by the Darwin's theory of evolution, as "simply natural". </p>  
+
<h3>Remedy</h3>
 +
 +
<p>When we apply the <em>holoscope</em> to this most fertile realm of questions, three insights emerge.</p>  
  
<p>  
+
<p>The first is the <em>convenience paradox</em>—that <em>convenience</em> is a deceptive and useless value, behind which <em>enormous</em> cultural opportunities have remained hidden. The idea of a "couch potato" provides a common-sense illustration—but, we show, the depth and breadth of possibilities for improving our condition through long-term cultivation is beyond what most of us will dare to consider possible.</p>
 +
<p>
 
[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
 
[[File:LaoTzu-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>  
 
</p>  
<p>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue is that <em>convenience</em> is a paradoxical and deceptive value, whose pursuit leaves us as a rule <em>less</em> whole. And that <em>immense</em> opportunities for improving our condition remained ignored. </p>
 
 
<p>A <em>radically</em> better human experience is possible, than what our culture allows us to experience. <em>Wholeness</em> does exist; and it does feel incomparably better than what the deception of <em>convenience</em> might allow us to believe. But the way to it is paradoxical, and needs to be illuminated by suitable information.</p>
 
  
<p>Two consequences or more specific insights follow and are worth highlighting, that result when this insight (what the way to human <em>wholeness</em> is <em>really</em> like) is understood on a more detailed level.</p>  
+
<p>The second insight is what we propose to call "the best kept secret of human culture": Human <em>wholeness</em> does exist; and it feels, and looks, incomparably better than most of us will dare to imagine. It is this that drove people to the Buddha, Christ, Mohammed and other founders of religion. We represent them all here by Lao Tzu, who is often considered the founder of "Taoism". "Tao" literally means "way". The point here is to develop one's way of live, and culture, based on on <em>where the way is leading to</em>—and not (only) based on how attractive a direction may feel at the moment.</p>  
 
+
<p>The most fascinating insight is reached as soon as we ignore the differences in worldview, what the adherents of different religion "believe in"—and pay attention to the <em>symbolic environment</em> they produce, and the kind of values and way of being they nourish. Compare, for instance, the above Lao Tzu's observations with what Christ told his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. </p>  
<p>The first is that <em>we do not need</em> all the material welfare to pursue <em>wholeness</em>. On the contrary—the kind of lifestyle we've developed, in the pursuit of "material welfare", makes this pursuit impossible.</p>  
 
 
<p>
 
<p>
 
[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
 
[[File:Huxley-vision.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
</p>
<p>The second insight is that <em>overcoming</em> egocentricity is an essential part of the way to <em>wholeness</em>; and most interestingly—even when its <em>physical</em> or motoric side is concerned!</p>  
+
<p>The third insight is that the <em>transcendence</em> of <em>egotism</em> is a key element of the "way". </p>
 +
<p>Lao Tzu is often pictured as riding a bull, which signifies that he conquered and tamed his ego. We here quote Aldous Huxley, to point out that transcending <em>egotism</em> is so much part of our <em>wholeness</em>, that even <em>physical</em> effort and effortlessness—which we now handle exclusively by developing the technology—is conditioned by it. </p>
  
<p>Lao Tzu (often considered as the progenitor of Taoism) appears in <em>holotopia</em> as an icon for using knowledge to understand "the way" to <em>wholeness</em> ("tao" literally means "way"). He is often pictured as riding a bull, which signifies his tamed ego.</p>
+
<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em>: Definition of <em>religion</em> as "reconnection with archetypes". </p>  
  
<p>But <em>ego-centeredness</em> is what <em>makes us</em> create the <em>power structures</em>! And what prevents us from collaborating and self-organizing differently!
+
<p>The book "Liberation" subtitled "Religion beyond Belief" is an ice breaker. It <em>federates</em> "the best kept secret", and creates a <em>dialog</em>. </p>
 +
 
 +
<p>Movement and Qi is a template how to put the <em>language</em> of "movement" (doing something with the body) into the academic repertoire. And how to put the heritage of the world traditions such as yoga and qigong into academic repertoire.</p>
  
<p>With this the circle of causality that the <em>five insights</em> compose together has been closed.</p>
 
  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
Line 595: Line 686:
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five solutions</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>A great cultural revival</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
<h3>The <em>power structure</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>j
 
 
<p>The [[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>power structure</em> issue]] is resolved through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]—by which [[system|<em>systems</em>]], and hence also [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]], evolve in ways that make them <em>whole</em>; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
 
<p>We give structure to <em>systemic innovation</em> by conceiving our [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] by weaving together suitable [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across <em>prototypes</em>, but also across application domains.</p>
 
<p>All our <em>prototypes</em> are examples of <em>systemic innovation</em>; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen <em>design patterns</em> of the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em>, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,</p> 
 
<p>(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or <em>systemic innovation</em>, because  when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the <em>theme</em> of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really <em>knowledge federation</em> and <em>systemic innovation</em>, organized under a name that the students can understand.</p>
 
<p>By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology <em>prototype</em> illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as <em>systemic innovation</em>/<em>knowledge federation</em>. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a <em>single</em> lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.</p>
 
<p>A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that <em>systemic innovation</em> depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life). </p>
 
<p>The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a <em>new</em> and <em>transdisciplinary</em> body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.</p>
 
<p>Our other <em>prototypes</em> show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel <em>prototypes</em> shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it <em>serve</em> cultural revival.</p>
 
<p>Such <em>prototypes</em>, and the <em>design patterns</em> they embody, are new <em>kinds of</em> results, which in the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.</p>
 
<p>A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or <em>transdiscipline</em> around a <em>prototype</em>, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the <em>transdiscipline</em>) have <em>direct</em> impact on <em>systems</em>. </p>
 
<p>Our experience with the very first application <em>prototype</em>, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the <em>transdiscipline</em> (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change <em>the systems in which they live and work</em> themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those <em>system</em>. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to <em>change</em> systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game <em>prototype</em>, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a <em>prototype</em> which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.</p>
 
 
<p>Finally, and perhaps <em>most</em> importantly, progress toward resolving the <em>power structure</em> issue can be made <em>by simply identifying the issue</em>; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a <em>radical</em> change of values, and of "human quality".</p>
 
<p>Notice that the <em>power structure</em> insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 
<p>This potential of the <em>power structure</em> insight gains power when combined with the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>socialized reality</em> insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the <em>power structure</em> defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the <em>real</em> "reality game" are indeed enormous.</p>
 
<p>The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: <em>decooling</em>. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar <em>decolling</em>.</p>
 
  
<h3>The <em>collective mind</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<p>The <em>five insights</em> have been chosen to reflect five <em>aspects</em> of the last "great cultural revival", to which we point by bringing up the image of Galilei in hose arrest. Our point is that when those five centrally important aspects of our society's 'drive into the future' are no longer looked at by using the <em>inherited</em> ways of looking at the world ('in the light of a pair of candles') but by a deliberately <em>designed</em> way (represented by the <em>holoscope</em>), or in other words when our minds and eyes are liberated from the habit and the tradition and we allow ourselves to <em>create</em> the way we look at the world—then once again the blind spots and the opportunities for creative action are seen that <em>naturally</em> lead to a deep and comprehensive change.</p>  
  
<p>Here it may be recognized that <em>knowledge federation</em> is really just a name, a <em>placeholder</em> name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> is to <em>bootstrap</em> the development of <em>knowledge federation</em> both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>), and in general (by developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as a real-life <em>praxis</em>). </p>  
+
<p>Hence the <em>five insights</em> together reveal a vast creative frontier, where dramatic improvements can be reached. And which <em>together</em> constitute "a great cultural revival"—each of them being a piece in the large puzzle, a mechanism that unleashes our creative potential on such major scale.</p>  
  
<p>Of the concrete <em>prototypes</em>, the Barcelona Innovation Ecosystem for Good Journalism, BCN2011, may be named as a <em>prototype</em> of a public informing that provides the information according to <em>real</em> that is <em>systemic</em> needs of people and society—as it may be necessary for <em>making things whole</em>. A number of <em>design patterns</em> are woven together. The news production loop begins by citizen journalism (the local Barcelona Wikidiario project gave us a head start); the people themselves report about their issues and problems. These reports are then curated by journalists, to present recurring or important ones as "front page news" etc. The production enters then into its second loop, <em>where systemic causes</em> to perceived issues are identified and reported. Professional (academic and other) advisors are followed in this loop by communication designers, to make academic insights clear and palpable (by using video, animation, story telling...). The second loop concludes by giving advice for <em>systemic action</em>. So here we have a journalism <em>prototype</em> that supports <em>systemic innovation</em>—and counteracts the <em>power structure</em></p>  
+
<h3>A revolution in innovation</h3>
  
<p>Also the Tesla and the Nature of Creativity, TNC2015 <em>prototype</em</em> and The Lighthouse 2016 <em>prototype</em> are also offered as <em>prototype</em> resolutions to the <em>Wiener's paradox</em>. The former shows how to <em>federate</em> a single result of a researcher, which is written in a highly specialized academic language (quantum physics), and has large potential to impact other fields (the article is about the phenomenology, and cultivation and use, of the kind of creativity that we  now vitally need (the creativity that was manifested, and described, by genius inventor Nikola Tesla). The latter shows how to <em>federate</em> a single core insight from an entire research field. Here the field is the systems science; the insight is that "free competition" cannot be trusted; that <em>systemic innovation</em> must be used. Both <em>prototypes</em> show how an academic discipline may need to self-organize to acquire the capability to make the most important insight that result in its midst usable and useful to the larger society. </p>  
+
<p>By bringing a radical improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, through innovation, the Industrial Revolution liberated our ancestors from the toil for survival, and empowered them to devote themselves to more humane pursuits such as developing their "human quality", by developing culture. Or so we were told. The real story may, however, be entirely different. Research has shown that the hunger-gatherers used only a small fraction of their time for hunting and gathering. The <em>power structure</em> insight shows that not only today—but throughout history the improvements in effectiveness and efficiency in human work have been largely wasted by the <em>systems in which we live and work</em></p>
  
 +
<p>We saw, by illuminating those systems and the way in which they evolve, that this age-old negative trend in our evolution can be countered by innovating differently—through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], or by "making things whole". And how this <em>socio-technical</em> innovation can, finally, liberate us from toil and empower us to engage in cultural revival.</p>
  
<h3>The <em>socialized reality</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>  
+
<h3>A revolution in communication</h3>  
  
<p>This is <em>extremely</em> good news: To <em>begin</em> the transformation to <em>holotopia</em>, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change <em>their</em> rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of publicly supported intellectuals. </p>  
+
<p>The printing press enabled the Enlightenment by enabling a revolution in literacy, and in communication.  The <em>collective mind</em> insight shows that the new information technology enables a <em>similar</em> revolution—whose effects will not be only a mass production of volumes of information, but most importantly a revolution in the production of <em>meaning</em>. A revolution where information is considered and treated as the lifeblood of human society—and enabled to make all the differences it can and needs to make, in a post-industrial society.</p>  
  
<p>The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as <em>the</em> key element in our various systems.</p>  
+
<h3>A revolution in vision</h3>  
  
<p>Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent <em>contemporary</em> issues.</p>  
+
<p>The Enlightenment was a combined revolution; our ancestors were first empowered to use their reason to <em>understand</em> the world; and then to see that the royalties were not divinely ordained, but indeed part of a human-made <em>power structure</em>. The whole revolution, however, began as a relatively minor epistemological innovation in astrophysics. By putting the Sun into the center of the Solar system, a scientific explanation of the movement of the planets became possible. We have seen that a <em>continuation</em> of that revolution is now due, by which all <em>reification</em> is seen as obsolete and a product of <em>power structure</em>; and in particular the <em>reification</em> of our worldview, and of our <em>systems</em>. By liberating the <em>academia</em> from the pitfall of <em>reification</em>, we can both empower ourselves to adapt our <em>systems</em> to the purposes they need to serve <em>and</em> liberate the vast global army of academic researchers from the disciplinary constraints on creativity—and empower them to be creative in ways and on the scale that a "great cultural revival" enables and requires.</p>  
  
<p>Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as <em>the</em> urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but <em>without</em> academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new <em>paradigm</em> be rightly considered as "basic research".</p>  
+
<h3>A revolution in method</h3>
  
<p>The key to all these changes is <em>epistemology</em>—just as it was in Galilei's time!</p>  
+
<p>Galilei in house arrest was really <em>science</em> in house arrest. It was this new way to understand the natural phenomena that liberated our ancestors from superstition, and empowered them to understand and change their world by developing technology. The <em>narrow frame</em> insight shows that the "project science" can and needs to be extended into all walks of life—to illuminate all those core issues that science left in the dark. </p>  
  
<p>The <em>reification</em> as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also <em>reification</em> of our institutions (democracy <em>is</em> the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing). That it is also <em>directly</em> preventing us from even imagining a different world.</p>  
+
<h3>A revolution in culture</h3>  
  
<p>Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with reality!  Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement <em>about</em> reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything <em>but</em> what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we <em>ever</em> come out of this entrapment?</p>
+
<p>The Renaissance <em>was</em> a "great cultural revival"—a liberation and celebration of life, love, and beauty, by changing the values and the lifestyle, and developing the arts. The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight illuminates two <em>dimensions</em> of this most fertile creative domain we've neglected—the time dimension, and the inner one. When this is done, a completely new <em>direction</em> of human pursuits readily emerge as natural—where our goal is the cultivation of inner <em>wholeness</em>, by developing culture. </p>  
 
 
<p>
 
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 
</p>
 
  
<p>A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or <em>reification</em>. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world". </p>  
+
<p>This new revolution perhaps finds its most vivid expression in re-evolution of religion—by which an age-old conflict between science and religion is seen as a conflict between two <em>power structures</em>, which hindered the evolution of <em>both</em> our understanding of the world and our understanding of our selves. And how a completely <em>new</em> phase in this relationship can now begin.</p>  
  
<p>Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of <em>information</em> is not <em>reification</em>, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only <em>in context at hand</em>—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X <em>as</em> Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.</p>  
+
</div> </div>  
  
<p>By using <em>truth by convention</em>, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and <em>purposes</em> to academic fields! </p>
 
  
<p>The concrete <em>prototypes</em</em> are the <em>design epistemology</em>—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of <em>information</em>, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.</p>  
+
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The 6th insight</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
  
<p>We have two canonical examples of concept-and-field definitions, which were tested in practice—through interaction with academic communities that represent them—and hence already are <em>prototypes</em>. </p>
 
<p>One of them is the definition of <em>design</em>, as "the alternative to <em>tradition</em>; when the two concepts are defined as two alternative ways to <em>wholeness</em>—where we either rely on spontaneous evolution (in the case of <em>tradition</em>), or take conscious responsibility for it (and use <em>design</em>). The point here is that in a culture that is no longer <em>traditional</em> (following conservatively in the footsteps of the ancestors, and perhaps making small and gradual changes)—<em>design</em> must be used.  </p>
 
  
<p>The other definition is of <em>implicit information</em>, and of visual literacy (which also the name of an academic field) as "literacy associated with <em>implicit information</em>. The point here is that while our ethical, legal and political sensibilities are, by tradition, focused on <em>explicit information</em> (where is something explicitly claimed)—our culture is dominated by largely visual and subtle <em>implicit information</em>; which is the source of <em>symbolic power</em>, and an instrument of <em>socialization</em>. </p> 
 
 
 
<h3>The <em>narrow frame</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 
 
<p>The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a <em>narrow frame</em>—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was <em>destructive</em> of culture.</p>
 
<p>The solution found is to define a <em>general purpose methodology</em>.
 
<p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—<em>and</em> give provisions for updating them.</p>
 
<p>Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...). </p>
 
<p>The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the <em>knowledge federation</em> as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...</p>
 
<p>Further <em>prototypes</em> include the <em>polyscopy</em> or  Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>—whereby information can be created on <em>any</em> chosen theme, and on any level of generality.</p>
 
 
 
 
<h3>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue has a solution</h3>
 
 
<p>The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential... </p>
 
<p>The resolution is —<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>—which means to develop support for long-term work on <em>wholeness</em>; watering 'the seeds' of <em>wholeness</em>. And to <em>federate</em> information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
 
<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em> include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by <em>federating</em> the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.</p>
 
<p>The big news is that <em>wholeness exists</em>; and that it involves the value of serving <em>wholeness</em> (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to <em>power structure</em>.
 
  
  
Line 692: Line 741:
 
</ul>  
 
</ul>  
  
 +
<p>Hence we have an overarching new insight.</p>
 +
 +
<blockquote>A comprehensive change can be easy—even when smaller and obviously necessary changes may have proven impossible.</blockquote>
 +
 +
<p>The global system does maintain a self-destructive <em>homeostasis</em>. It resist the changes that are contrary to its nature.</p>
 +
 +
<p>We have seen that, however, <em>the system as a whole</em> is ripe for change.</p>
  
<p>We adapted the keyword <em>paradigm</em> from Thomas Kuhn, and define it as
+
<p>And that the key to that change, the "systemic leverage point", is to change the relationship we have with information.</p>  
<ul><li>a new way of conceiving a domain of interest</li>
 
<li>which resolves the reported anomalies</li>
 
<li>and opens up a new frontier to research</li> </ul>
 
The <em>five insights</em> complete our proposal as a <em>paradigm</em> proposal. Not in any traditional domain of science, where paradigm proposals are relatively common, but in our handling of information or <em>knowledge work</em> at large.</p>  
 
  
<h3>The solutions enable a cultural revival</h3>
+
<p>We have also seen (and called it the <em>socialized reality</em> insight) that this change is now due also for fundamental reasons, because our <em>knowledge of knowledge</em> demands it. And hence that the spontaneous evolution of the academic tradition has brought us to that point.</p>  
<p>The <em>five insights</em> were deliberately chosen to represent the main five <em>aspects</em> of the cultural and social change that marked the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. They show how similar improvements in our condition can once again be achieved, by resolving the large anomalies they are pointing to.</p>
 
  
<ul>  
+
<p>This completes the analogy with Galilei's time—which is or main line of argument, in the case for developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and a real-life <em>praxis</em>.</p>  
<li>The <em>power structure</em> insight shows how dramatic improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of human work can be made, similar to the ones that resulted from the Industrial Revolution</li>
 
<li>The <em>collective mind</em> insights points to a revolution in communication, similar to the one that the invention of the printing press made possible</li>
 
<li>The <em>socialized reality</em> insight points to a revolution in our very relationship with information and knowledge, similar to the one that marked the Enlightenment</li>
 
<li>The <em>narrow frame</em> insight points to a revolution in our understanding of our everyday realities, similar to the revolution that science made possible in our understanding of natural phenomena</li>
 
<li>The <em>convenience paradox</em> insight points to a general "cultural revival", analogous to the Renaissance</li>
 
</ul>  
 
  
<p>Together, the <em>five insights</em> complete the first half of our response to Aurelio Peccei's call to action—where we showed that the <em>holoscope</em> can illuminate the way in the way in which he deemed necessary.</p>
 
<p>The second half will consist in implementing the "change of course" in reality.</p>
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
Line 717: Line 760:
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will not "solve our problems"</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will <em>not</em> solve "the huge problems now confronting us"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-6">
 
<div class="col-md-6">
  
Line 724: Line 767:
 
"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
 
"(W)e are living in a period of extraordinary danger, as we are faced with the possibility that our whole species will be eliminated from the evolutionary scene. One necessary condition of successfully continuing our existence is the creation of an atmosphere of hope that the huge problems now confronting us can, in fact, be solved—and can be solved in time."
 
</blockquote> </p>  
 
</blockquote> </p>  
<p>Despite the <em>holotopia</em>'s optimistic tone, we <em>do not</em> assume that the problems we are facing can be solved.</p>  
+
<p>Despite the <em>holotopia</em>'s optimistic tone, we <em>do not</em> assume that the problems we are facing <em>can</em> be solved.</p>  
 
</div>  
 
</div>  
  
Line 740: Line 783:
 
</blockquote>   
 
</blockquote>   
  
<p>Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream ([https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, in a most charming tone, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). But we must forgive our political leaders for leading us into an abyss; they didn't <em>know</em> what they were doing. To be successful in politics, they had to genuinely believe what the <em>power structure</em> made them believe.</p>  
+
<p>Yes, we've wasted a precious half-century pursuing the neoliberal dream ([https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 hear Ronald Reagan] set the tone for it, in the role of "the leader of the free world"). </p>  
  
<p>Just as we must forgive our <em>academic</em> leaders for <em>not</em> leading us to a transformation of our knowledge work. To be successful in <em>academia</em>, they had to either "publish, or perish". </p>  
+
<p>So no, we do not claim that our problems can be solved. Neither do we deny them. </p>  
  
<p>We do not claim our problems can be solved. But neither do we deny them.</p>  
+
<p>There is a sense of sobering up, and of <em>catharsis</em>, of empowerment, of deep understanding that small things don't matter, that only being creative in the manner and on the scale we are proposing <em>can</em> matter—which needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. <em>That</em> must be our very first step.</p>
 +
<p>We take a deep dive into that depth. But we do not <em>dwell</em> there.</p>  
  
<p>There is a sense of sobering up, of a <em>catharsis</em>, that needs to reach us from the depth of our problems. <em>That</em> must be our very first step.</p>
+
<p>"The huge problems now confronting us" <em>must</em> be dealt with, conscientiously and resolutely. We, however, do not do that. We propose to add to those most necessary and timely efforts a strategy—through which the solutions may be made easy; and which may well be necessary for the solutions to even exist.</p>  
<p>We take a deep dive into the depth of our problems. But we do not <em>dwell</em> there.</p>  
 
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will begin "a cultural revival"</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We will begin "a great cultural revival"</h2></div>
 
<div class="col-md-7">
 
<div class="col-md-7">
  
<p>Ironically, our problems might only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which <em>can</em> and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.</p>  
+
<p>Ironically, our problems can only be solved when we no longer see them as problems—but as <em>symptoms</em> of much deeper, structural or systemic defects, which <em>can</em> and must be corrected to continue our evolution, or "progress", irrespective of problems.</p>  
 
<p>And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and <em>must</em> take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus.
 
<p>And most interestingly, our evolution, or "progress", can and <em>must</em> take a completely new—cultural—direction and focus.
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Meadows say], in the same interview:</p>  
 
<p>[https://youtu.be/U7Z6h-U4CmI?t=291 Hear Meadows say], in the same interview:</p>  
Line 777: Line 820:
 
<p>We are developing the <em>holotopia</em> as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".</p>  
 
<p>We are developing the <em>holotopia</em> as (what Gandhi would have called) our "experiments with truth".</p>  
 
</div> </div>  
 
</div> </div>  
 +
 +
<b>To be continued...</b>
 +
 +
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
 +
  
 
<div class="row">
 
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Our mission</h2></div>
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
<div class="col-md-7">
+
<div class="col-md-7"><p>The Holotopia project continues to evolve as a collaborative strategy game—where we make tactical moves toward the <em>holotopia</em> vision. We bring to this 'game' a collection of tactical assets we've developed—to make it flow. </p>
 +
 
 +
</div> </div>  
  
<p>By <em>mission</em> we mean the practical changes we undertake to achieve, to implement our strategy and pursue our vision. </p>
+
<div class="page-header" ><h2>A pilot project</h2></div>
<blockquote>Our <em>mission</em> is to change the relationship we have with information.</blockquote>  
 
  
<p>So that information will no longer be controlled by <em>power structure</em>, but be an instrument of our liberation; and our <em>cultural</em> re-evolution.</p>
 
  
<p>Don't be deceived by the apparent modesty of this mission, compared to the size of our vision. "In all humility", </p>  
+
<div class="row">
<blockquote>the creative space this mission opens up to is unique is human history.</blockquote>  
+
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><p>To bring all this down to earth, we describe the pilot project we've developed in art gallery Kunsthall 3.14 in Bergen. </p>
  
</div> </div>  
+
 
 +
[[File:KunsthallDialog01.jpg]]
 +
<br>
  
  
<div class="page-header" ><h2>Tactical assets</h2></div>
+
<!-- YYY
  
  
Line 1,068: Line 1,119:
 
<!-- CUTS
 
<!-- CUTS
  
ENGELBART:
 
  
 
<p>
 
[[File:DE-one.jpeg]]<br>
 
<small>Engelbart's own opening slide, pasted into our standard format. </small>
 
</p>
 
<p>We like to tell story of "Engelbart's unfinished revolution" (as Stanford University called it when it was first uncovered, in the 1990s), because it vividly, or strikingly, illustrates the kind of paradoxes and anomalies that we are now up against. Just imagine the Silicon Valley's premier innovator trying and trying—and failing—to explain to the Silicon Valley that if we should draw the kind of benefits from the information technology that can and need to be drawn, IT innovation will have to be <em>systemic</em>.</p>
 
<p>Engelbart explained in his second slide:</p>
 
<blockquote>
 
<p>We ride a common economic-political vehicle traveling at an ever-accelerating pace through increasingly complex terrain.</p>
 
<p>Our headlights are much too dim and blurry. We have totally inadequate steering and braking controls. </p>
 
</blockquote>
 
  
 
-------
 
-------
Line 1,132: Line 1,171:
  
 
------
 
------
 +
 +
  however, will require an unprecedented level of international collaboration, and restructuring of the global economy, the widely read [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-188550/ Rolling Stone article] reeports. The COVID-19 exacerbates those demands and makes them even more immediate. Considering the way in which things are related, restructuring of the world economy will not be possible without restructuring other systems as well.
 +
 +
-------
 +
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Five solutions</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<h3>The <em>power structure</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>j
 +
 +
<p>The [[Holotopia:Power structure|<em>power structure</em> issue]] is resolved through [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]—by which [[system|<em>systems</em>]], and hence also [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]], evolve in ways that make them <em>whole</em>; with recourse to information that allows us to "see things whole", or in other words the <em>holoscope</em>. </p>
 +
<p>We give structure to <em>systemic innovation</em> by conceiving our [[prototype|<em>prototypes</em>]] by weaving together suitable [[design pattern|<em>design patterns</em>]]—which are design challenge–design solution pairs, rendered so that they can be exported and adapted not only across <em>prototypes</em>, but also across application domains.</p>
 +
<p>All our <em>prototypes</em> are examples of <em>systemic innovation</em>; any of them could be used to illustrate the techniques used, and the advantages gained. Of about a dozen <em>design patterns</em> of the Collaborology educational <em>prototype</em>, we here mention only a couple, to illustrate these abstract ideas,</p> 
 +
<p>(A challenge)The traditional education, conceived as a once-in-a-lifetime information package, presents an obstacle to systemic change or <em>systemic innovation</em>, because  when a profession becomes obsolete, so do the professionals—and they will naturally resist change. (A solution) The Collaborology engenders a flexible education model, where the students learn what they need and at the time they need it. Furthermore, the <em>theme</em> of Collaborology is (online) collaboration; which is really <em>knowledge federation</em> and <em>systemic innovation</em>, organized under a name that the students can understand.</p>
 +
<p>By having everyone (worldwide) create the learning resources for a single course, the Collaborology <em>prototype</em> illustrates the "economies of scale" that can result from online collaboration, when practiced as <em>systemic innovation</em>/<em>knowledge federation</em>. In Collaborology, a contributing author or instructor is required to contribute only a <em>single</em> lecture. By, furthermore, including creative media designers, the economies of scale allow the new media techniques (now largely confined to computer games) to revolutionize education.</p>
 +
<p>A class is conceived as a design lab—where the students, self-organized in small teams, co-create learning resources. In this way the values that <em>systemic innovation</em> depends on are practiced and supported. The students contribute to the resulting innovation ecosystem, by acting as 'bacteria' (extracting 'nutrients' from the 'dead material' of published articles, and by combining them together give them a new life). </p>
 +
<p>The Collaborology course model as a whole presents a solution to yet another design challenge—how to put together, organize and disseminate a <em>new</em> and <em>transdisciplinary</em> body of knowledge, about a theme of contemporary interest.</p>
 +
<p>Our other <em>prototypes</em> show how similar benefits can be achieved in other core areas, such as health, tourism, and of course public informing and scientific communication. One of our Authentic Travel <em>prototypes</em> shows how to reconfigure the international corporation, concretely the franchise, and make it <em>serve</em> cultural revival.</p>
 +
<p>Such <em>prototypes</em>, and the <em>design patterns</em> they embody, are new <em>kinds of</em> results, which in the <em>paradigm</em> we are proposing roughly correspond to today's scientific discoveries and technological inventions.</p>
 +
<p>A different collection of design challenges and solution are related to the methodology for <em>systemic innovation</em>. Here the simple solution we developed is to organize a transdisciplinary team or <em>transdiscipline</em> around a <em>prototype</em>, with the mandate to update it continuously. This secures that the insights and innovations from the participating creative domains (represented by the members of the <em>transdiscipline</em>) have <em>direct</em> impact on <em>systems</em>. </p>
 +
<p>Our experience with the very first application <em>prototype</em>, in public informing, revealed a new and general methodological and design challenge: The leading experts we brought together to form the <em>transdiscipline</em> (to represent in it the state of the art in their fields) are as a rule unable to change <em>the systems in which they live and work</em> themselves—because they are too busy and too much in demand; and because the power they have is invested in them by those <em>system</em>. But what they can and need to do is—empower the "young people" ("young" by the life phase they are in, as students or as entrepreneurs) to <em>change</em> systems ("change the world"), instead of having to conform to them. The result was The Game-Changing Game <em>prototype</em>, as a generic way to change real-life systems. We also produced a <em>prototype</em> which was an update of The Club of Rome, based on this insight and solution, called The Club of Zagreb.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Finally, and perhaps <em>most</em> importantly, progress toward resolving the <em>power structure</em> issue can be made <em>by simply identifying the issue</em>; by making it understood, and widely known—because it motivates a <em>radical</em> change of values, and of "human quality".</p>
 +
<p>Notice that the <em>power structure</em> insight radically changes "the name of the game" in politics—from "us against them", to "all of us against the <em>power structure</em>.</p>
 +
<p>This potential of the <em>power structure</em> insight gains power when combined with the <em>convenience paradox</em> insight and the <em>socialized reality</em> insight. It then becomes obvious that those among us whom we perceive as winners in the economic or political power struggle are really "winners" only because the <em>power structure</em> defined "the game". The losses we are all suffering in the <em>real</em> "reality game" are indeed enormous.</p>
 +
<p>The Adbusters gave us a potentially useful keyword: <em>decooling</em>. Fifty years ago, puffing on a large cigar in an elevator or an airplane might have seemed just "cool"; today it's unthinkable. Let's see if today's notions of "success" might be transformed by similar <em>decolling</em>.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>The <em>collective mind</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 +
 +
<p>Here it may be recognized that <em>knowledge federation</em> is really just a name, a <em>placeholder</em> name, for the kind of "collective thinking" that a 'collective mind' needs to develop to function correctly. The mission of the present Knowledge Federation <em>transdiscipline</em> is to <em>bootstrap</em> the development of <em>knowledge federation</em> both in specific instances (by creating real-life embedded <em>prototypes</em>), and in general (by developing <em>knowledge federation</em> as an academic field, and as a real-life <em>praxis</em>). </p>
 +
 +
<h3>The <em>socialized reality</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 +
 +
<p>This is <em>extremely</em> good news: To <em>begin</em> the transformation to <em>holotopia</em>, we do not need to convince the politicians to impose on the industries a strict respect for the CO2 quotas; or the Wall Street bankers to change <em>their</em> rules. The first step is entirely in the hands of  publicly supported intellectuals. </p>
 +
 +
<p>The key is "to change the relationship we have with information"—from considering it "an objective picture of reality", to considering it as <em>the</em> key element in our various systems.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Notice that if we can do this change successfully (by following the time-honored values of the academic tradition) then the academic researchers—that vast army of selected, specially trained and sponsored free thinkers—can be liberated from their confinement to traditional disciplines, and mobilized and given a chance to give their due contribution to urgent <em>contemporary</em> issues.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Notice that the creative challenge that Vannevar Bush and others pointed to as <em>the</em> urgent one, and which Douglas Engelbart and others pursued successfully but <em>without</em> academic support (to recreate the very system by which do our work)—can in this new <em>paradigm</em> be rightly considered as "basic research".</p>
 +
 +
<p>The key to all these changes is <em>epistemology</em>—just as it was in Galilei's time!</p>
 +
 +
<p>The <em>reification</em> as the foundation for creating truth and meaning means also <em>reification</em> of our institutions (democracy <em>is</em> the mechanism of the "free elections", the representatives etc.; science <em>is</em> what the scientists are doing). That it is also <em>directly</em> preventing us from even imagining a different world.</p>
 +
 +
<p>Observe the depth of our challenge: When I write "worldviews", my word processor underlines the word in red. <em>Even grammatically</em>, there can be only one worldview—the one that <em>corresponds</em> with reality!  Even when we say "we are constructing reality" (as so many scientists and philosophers did in so many ways during the past century)—this is still interpreted as a statement <em>about</em> reality. By the same token, if we would say that "information is" anything <em>but</em> what the journalists and scientists are giving us today, someone would surely object. How can we <em>ever</em> come out of this entrapment?</p>
 +
 +
<p>
 +
[[File:Quine–TbC.jpeg]]
 +
</p>
 +
 +
<p>A solution is found by resorting consistently to what Villard Van Orman Quine called "truth by convention". It is a conception of "truth" entirely independent of "reality" or <em>reification</em>. Or metaphorically, it is the 'Archimedean point' needed to empower information to once again "move the world". </p>
 +
 +
<p>Based on it, we can say simply, as a convention, that the purpose of <em>information</em> is not <em>reification</em>, but to serve as 'headlights' in a 'bus'. Notice that no consensus is needed, and that there is no imposing on others: The convention is valid only <em>in context at hand</em>—which may be an article, a methodology, or the Holotopia <em>prototype</em>. To define "X as Y" by convention does not mean the claim that X "really is" Y—but only to consider X <em>as</em> Y, to see it in that specific way, from that specific 'angle', and see what results.</p>
 +
 +
<p>By using <em>truth by convention</em>, we can attribute new and agile meaning to concepts; and <em>purposes</em> to academic fields! </p>
 +
 +
<p>The concrete <em>prototypes</em</em> are the <em>design epistemology</em>—where the new "relationship we have with information", and the new meaning of <em>information</em>, is proposed as a convention. Here of course, the proposed meaning is as the bus with candle headlight suggests—to consider information as a function in the organism of our culture; and to create it and use it as it may best suit its various roles.</p>
 +
 +
 +
 +
 +
<h3>The <em>narrow frame</em> issue <em>can</em> be resolved</h3>
 +
 +
<p>The issue here is the way or the method by which truth and meaning are created. And specifically that the way that emerged based on 19th century science constitutes a <em>narrow frame</em>—i.e. that it is far too narrow to hold a functioning culture. That it was <em>destructive</em> of culture.</p>
 +
<p>The solution found is to define a <em>general purpose methodology</em>.
 +
<p>Suitable metaphors here are 'constitutional democracy', and 'trial by jury'. We both spell out the rules—<em>and</em> give provisions for updating them.</p>
 +
<p>Information is no longer a 'birth right' (of science or whatever...). </p>
 +
<p>The 'trial by jury' metaphor concerns the <em>knowledge federation</em> as process: Every piece of information or insight has the right of a 'fair trial'; nobody is denied 'citizenship rights' because he was 'born' in a wrong place...</p>
 +
<p>Further <em>prototypes</em> include the <em>polyscopy</em> or  Polyscopic Modeling <em>methodology</em>—whereby information can be created on <em>any</em> chosen theme, and on any level of generality.</p>
 +
 +
 +
 +
<h3>The <em>convenience paradox</em> issue has a solution</h3>
 +
 +
<p>The issue here is values. The problem with values—they are mechanistic, short-term, directly experiential... </p>
 +
<p>The resolution is —<em>cultivation</em> of <em>wholeness</em>—which means to develop support for long-term work on <em>wholeness</em>; watering 'the seeds' of <em>wholeness</em>. And to <em>federate</em> information from a variety of cultural traditions, therapeutic methods, scientific fields... to illuminate the <em>way</em> to <em>wholeness</em>. </p>
 +
<p>Concrete <em>prototypes</em> include educational ones, the Movement and Qi course shows how to embed the work with "human quality" in academic scheme of things—by <em>federating</em> the therapy traditions and employing the body (not only books) as the medium.</p>
 +
<p>The big news is that <em>wholeness exists</em>; and that it involves the value of serving <em>wholeness</em> (and foregoing egocentricity)—which closes the cycles to <em>power structure</em>.
 +
 +
-------

Revision as of 14:57, 9 August 2020

Imagine...

You are about to board a bus for a long night ride, when you notice the flickering streaks of light emanating from two wax candles, placed where the headlights of the bus are expected to be. Candles? As headlights?

Of course, the idea of candles as headlights is absurd. So why propose it?

Because on a much larger scale this absurdity has become reality.

The Modernity ideogram renders the essence of our contemporary situation by depicting our society as an accelerating bus without a steering wheel, and the way we look at the world, try to comprehend and handle it as guided by a pair of candle headlights.

Modernity.jpg Modernity ideogram


Scope

"Act like as if you loved your children above all else",
Greta Thunberg, representing her generation, told the political leaders at Davos. Of course those people love their children—don't we all? But what Greta was asking them was to 'pull the brakes'; and when our 'bus' is more closely inspected, it becomes clear that also its 'brakes' are dysfunctional.

So who will lead us through the next urgent task on evolutionary agenda—empower us to update the systems in which we live and work?

Both Jantsch and Engelbart believed that "the university" as institution would have to be the answer; and they made their appeals accordingly. But they were ignored—and so were Vannevar Bush and Norbert Wiener before them, and the others who followed.

Why?

It is tempting to conclude that the academia followed the general trend, and became a power structure. But to see solutions, we need to look at deeper causes.

As we pointed out in the opening paragraph of this website, the academic tradition did not develop as a way to pursue practical knowledge, but (let's call it that) "right" knowledge. Our tradition developed from classical philosophy, where the "philosophical" questions such as "How do we know that something is true?" and even "What does it mean that something is true?" led to certain "academic" standards for pursuing knowledge. The university's core social role, or that is in any case how we, academic people tend to perceive it, is to uphold those standards. By studying at a university, one becomes capable of pursuing knowledge in an academically correct or qualified way in any domain.

In the opening paragraph of this website we brought up the image of Galilei in house arrest, to pointe out that this fundamental and seemingly only "philosophical" pursuit has a tremendous power. The Inquisition, censorship and prison were unable to keep in check an idea whose time had come—and the new way to pursue knowledge soon migrated from astrophysics, where it originated, and transformed all walks of life. "A great cultural revival" was a result. In the opening of our website we asked "Could a similar advent be in store for us today?"

In what follows we offer an affirmative answer to that question.

In what follows you will recognize the core of our proposal—we'll propose to change the relationship we have with information. But here we'll make a case for that proposal on fundamental or academic grounds.

The spontaneous pursuit of knowledge of knowledge has brought us to a point where changing the relationship we have with information has become immanent—also for intrinsic or fundamental reasons.

Diagnosis

Early in the course of modernization, we made a fundamental error whose consequences cannot be overrated. This error was subsequently uncovered and reported, but it has not yet been corrected.

Without thinking, from the traditional culture we've adopted a myth incomparably more disruptive of modernization that the creation myth—that "truth" means "correspondence with reality". And that the purpose of information, and of knowledge, is to allow us to know the reality "objectively", as it truly is.

The 20th century science and philosophy disproved and abandoned this naive view.

Einstein-Watch.jpeg

There is simply no way, scientists found out, to open the 'mechanism of nature' and verify that our models correspond to the real thing.

So what, then, are the origins of our "reality picture"? How do we decide whether something is "true"?

"Reality", it has been reported, is not something we discover; it is something we create. Hence we shall from here on prefer to use the verb, reification.

Part of our "reality construction" is performed by our cognitive system, which turns "the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience" into something that makes sense and helps us function. The other part is performed by our society. Long before we are able to reflect on these matters "philosophically", we are given certain concepts through which to look at the world and organize it and make sense of it; and through innumerable 'carrots and sticks', throughout our lives, we are induced to "see the reality" in a certain specific way—the way of our culture.

There are at least two reasons why we should not waste more time, but abandon this dangerous "reality myth" as we abandoned other such myths and prejudices from the past.

To see the first, we invite you to a simple, one-minute thought experiment. We invite you to follow us on an imaginary visit to a cathedral. No, this has nothing to do with religion; we shall use the cathedral as one of our metaphorical images or ideograms, to help us see things in proportion and make a point.

What strikes us, as we enter, is the architecture, which inspires awe. We hear the music play: Is it Bach's cantatas? Or Allegri's Miserere? There are frescos by masters of old on the walls. If the cathedral of your choice is the St. Peter's in Rome, then Michelangelo's frescos are near. And there is the ritual...

There is also a little book on each bench. Its first paragraphs explain how the world was created.

Let this difference in size—between the beginning of Genesis and all the rest—point to the difference in the importance of the roles of the factual or "objective" information—and the one that is implicit in everything else we call "culture"—whose role is to create (let's call it that) a symbolic environment by which our socialization takes place. By which our inclinations to feel and think in a certain way, and our values and our "human quality" are created. We are making no value judgment, and you should not do that either. We are only pointing to a role or a function.

What happens with this function when we, considering the worldview to be the point, replace the worldview of the tradition with the "scientific" one? Who becomes responsible for our socialization? The answer is obvious. A superficial look around will suffice to see just how much our contemporary symbolic environment is a product of advertising—whose function is to give us the kind of "human quality" that will make us consume more, so the economy may grow; and not to help us become the kind of people who will make things whole. But explicit advertising is, of course, only a tip of an iceberg, through which our socialization is takes place.

So the first reason why we need to abandon the "reality myth" is that it it alienates us from a lion's share of our cultural heritage—and makes us abandon the creation of culture and "human quality" to power structure.

The second reason is the role in which "constructed reality" plays within the power structure.

It could be sufficient for our purpose to only point to "Social Construction of Reality", where Berger and Luckmann pointed out that throughout history, the "universal theories" (about the nature of reality and how it is to be understood) have been used to legitimize a given social order. But this theme being central to holotopia, we here give a gist of a more thorough explanation.

This being only a teaser and a summary, we do that by giving only broad contours of a thread—in which three short stories or vignettes and strung together to compose a larger insight.

The first vignette in this thread is a real-life event, where two Icelandic horses living outdoors, aging Odin the Horse and New Horse, are engaged in turf strife. We'll ask you to just imagine their long hairs waving in the wind, and their display of power—as Odin, who had been the stallion and the king of the turf, tries to keep New Horse away from his mares.

Bourdieu-insight.jpeg

The second story involves sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and his "theory of practice"—where Bourdieu provided a conceptual framework to help us understand how socialization works—and in particular how it works through creation and use of what he called "symbolic power". Our point will be to combine these two stories, and show that "we have a problem" (or more to the point—that we need to see things in that way), which we have not yet seen and understood. We too are (need to see ourselves as) "territorial animals"; only our 'turf strifes' are incomparably more diverse and subtle than the ones of the horses—just as much as our culture is more complex than theirs.

Bourdieu has two keywords for this symbolic 'turf', "field" and "game", which he uses interchangeably. He calls it a "field"—to suggest both a field of activity such as an academic community or discipline or any other institution; and something akin to a gravitational field or a magnetic field—which subtly, without us noticing, orients our seemingly random behavior in a certain specific direction. When he refers to it as "game", he suggests that there are certain semi-permanent roles in it, and allowable 'moves', which serve to organize our 'turf strife' in some specific way.

To explain the mechanism by which the symbolic power induces a field, Bourdieu uses additional two keywords, which have a long academic history: "habitus" and "doxa". The habitus includes embodied behaviors and predispositions, which are part of everyone's 'role' in the 'game'. A king has a certain distinct habitus; and so do its pages. The doxa refers to a form of experience, or a belief, that the given social order is the reality. "Orthodoxy" is a related terms, where multiple "realities" are acknowledged to coexist, of which only one is the "right" one. Doxa ignores even the possibility of alternatives. Here we may complete this brief sketch by observing that the habitus is an instrument, by which the positions on the symbolic 'turf' are maintained through direct, body-to-body action (everyone bows to the king, and you do too). Doxa then serves as cement, to make it all stable and permanent.

Antonio Damasio completes this thread as a cognitive neuroscientist, to help us see that these "embodied predispositions" reach far deeper and wider into our cognitive structure and inclinations than what was believed earlier. That they act as a cognitive filter—determining our priorities, and even what we may consciously consider as possible. (Why, for instance, we don't consider the option of taking off our pajamas and running into the street naked.)

And now our point.


In our hitherto modernization we have learned to harness the power of the rivers, the sun, the wind and the atom. What remained as our next task is to harness the power that has remained as the largest in our Earthly abode—the power of our socialization. It is the largest because it determines how all those other powers will be used.

The socialized reality, as we've just outlined it, is the reason why we, for instance, still use 'candles' as 'headlights'; we have reified them as such. For us, the candles are headlights. The work of journalists, and of scientists, is not a means to an end; science "is" what the scientists do, things like physics, biology and chemistry.

Our social reality is kept from evolving by a doxa—which is deeply grounded in the way in which we see the function of information; and of knowledge.

But if information and knowledge should now liberate us—as they did our ancestors following Galilei's time—then once again the very relationship we have with information will need to change.