That's both interesting, and provides a good example of how to begin assembling evidence of whole system events from anecdotal information. Your syntax is a little unfamiliar in places, but assembling as wide a variety of consistent progressing indicators if very useful. My research method for natural systems (roughly defined as 'movements' with a life of their own) also involves careful analysis of the turning points in their growth curves. You might find that interesting to pursue. One easy way to collect information on natural system events in the development of ideas, policies and trends, etc., is to pick one or more key phrases and do a historical search in an established database for the frequency of their use. Separating one group's use from another is sometimes challenging, but often there's a particular turn of phrase that stands out. My site has two examples of how to use that technique, one for the holistic environmental design 'sustainability' movement and one for 'General Systems Theory'.
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -----Original Message----- From: Alfredo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2006 12:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Democracy and evolution Maybe no other Democracy is evolving more than Latin American Democracy. A few months ago I told you about Latin America turns to left and I said that It could be a case of emergence. Process seems to be consolidating, during the last month two left presidents were reelected and a new one was elected. But in my opinion there are other features more important behind left presidents phenomena. It's not as simple as 'apparition' of populist candidates or isolated leaders, in fact in some countries there is a consolidation of solid left democratic parties. But not only are appearing or emerging left parties, members of traditional Liberal and Conservator parties are conforming the right party. It's a very interesting feature of the new Latin American democratic tendency. Maybe is an irony, but left could finally consolidate Democracy in Latin America because political power is no more exclusive of the same white families whom had been dominating politics along two centuries. Right politics tends to deny it, but political debate in Latin America turns around property, is a debate over social classes. Left parties consider necessary to replace current economical model. This region is consider the most inequitable of the world and neoliberalism is increasing it. Huge unemployment, huge subemployment, population with unsatisfied basic needs are pushing. Unfortunatelly, I think left will not return job to people because modern production systems have changed and robots, smart software and biotechnology have replaced the worker. In my opinion It's the biggest obstacle for left consolidation and of course common people just claim for job. Probably left governments will be obligated to appeal to drastic measures. Maybe they are considering two or three strategies: recover by expropriation totally or partially the property of strategic companies recently sold by neoliberal governments, or agree with these foreign companies a redistributions of profits. Of course, land property redistribution claimed since 60's could be implemented. In fact, It already started to occur in two countries and is generating tensions with a couple of developed nations. But those developed countries are unable to invoke to traditional intervention because are not treating with a lonely sheep out of the flock. And it's other important feature: democratic left is creating a block in the region. Phil Henshaw wrote: Marcus wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my experience those societies that have some homogeneity also are the most tolerant and therefore diverse ideas do emerge. Sweden and even Poland. Make the group like the individual and vice versa and then self-preservation is group-preservation, and vice versa. It risks making the group slower moving, but a collective cognition is a potential economy of scale. Does one want to optimize for diverse ideas or strong execution on a few ideas? The latter can be very profitable and have excellent survival characteristics, especially in the United States. I think the developed world is a really remarkable new thing on earth. It's huge, but still doubles in size and complexity approximately every 20 years. Clearly one of the things it prospers from is an incredible tolerance and need for all different kinds of skills and interests. When you earn money, you have no idea what your customer will do with the product you give to them and neither do they know what you'll do with the money you're paid. It's a marvelous and essential fact of how things work in an economy, that every exchange essentially has no purpose, because the next person in the exchanges of the usual 'earning-spending chain' is entirely free to do whatever they like with what they take away from it. What it does produce is the kind of well oiled machine that no one in a billion years could possibly design, or even actually understand. What takes a while to see is that we are actually in danger of loosing that, because of a certain intolerance built into the other form of economic exchange, the 'saving-investment chain'. That's the one with exponential strings attached to each transaction that form a rigid behavioral requirement for the recipients. You must add a percent to the pile if you're to remain in business. It may well be that settled and cohesive societies that have low social barriers and general tolerance for individual differences, treating everyone as an equal, will more readily respond to change and successfully answer threats to their survival. I think I observe something of the kind in the response of the low crime areas of New York City to the crack epidemic in the 80's. The curves clearly show that they responded much earlier and much more effectively to the scourge that overtook the 'wild cowboy' neighborhoods of East New York, Brownsville, Harlem and the South Bronx. Social structure does matter, but 30 doublings, a reasonable estimate of the multiplication of wealth since the modern age of growth began, is more than the acceleration of a meter per second, a nice slow walk, to the speed of light. The plan for the earth is to keep doubling the size and complexity of our own lives and impacts on the planet every 20 years or so, forever. We call it 'stability'. The question is, what sort of mind notices such curious things? Is it an efficient one, skipping all the non-essential tasks? Is it one that's comfortable with the way things are, is tolerant and helps people get along? Or is it one with a habit of poking around and shaking things up? I observe nature is a mix, and if you don't know all three of those ways of getting along, you're not up to speed. David Breecker wrote: If Paul is correct, this is fascinating. Perhaps there is some minimum threshold of confidence in the integrity of our "self," beyond which we can afford to be tolerant of the "other" Not just integrity of self, but more-seriously the reliability of the leadership of the collective. There's no point in serving an ideal that isn't individually beneficial if the ideal it serves has been compromised by corruption. It seems to me a society (or organization) with sufficient wealth to nurture the development of complex skills, and a culture that valued full utilization of the individual, could be very healthy and still protect itself from competing strategies. However, it's not clear that psychological health and performance are tightly correlated. I mean, even if corporate workers are miserable, it depends whether they are operating at 20% or 80% mental efficiency compared to their peers in a more Utopian system. Self-esteem is very hard to come bye sometimes, and it's equally difficult for others to nourish in an individual that is an unknown commodity. My 19 year old son is in that in-between world, where there's relatively very little evidence of his taking charge, so that his parents are apt to leap at any small sign. It certainly helps to remember that I was a lot worse, though, so I also sympathize with the parents who were prodigies and have normal kids. 'Finding one's self' is not an efficient process, and steadily doubling the amount of learning required for basic functioning in the 'collective' is problematic. I think the 'leadership of the collective', as Marcus puts it, is showing a peculiar negligence in this regard. We're simply not making a world that's possible to operate in a huge variety of ways. Our leaders today are the kind who drive the ship of state off an obvious cliff and then crawl out of the wreck on the barren canyon floor talking confidently about how they're finally getting the knack of steering. It could almost make one intolerant... ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
