To Marty, Dean and the MOQ >From Rog MARTY WROTE: Since the intellectual level is of a higher moral value, the social (the economic model) should be controlled by the intellectual (the ruling governmental body), right?.....The MOQ seems to call for the higher static pattern to rule the lower. Since this doesn't seem to be occurring with a high degree of success, then it is our responsibility, on the intellectual/governing level, to rectify it. ROG: I agree with Dean that government and/or leadership is about as social as social gets. Of course, there is an intellectual element to leading/governing as well. I would argue that it has been learning and evolving for thousands of years. One of the most recent discoveries of the intellect is that the world is much more chaotic than intellectuals once thought. Extremely complex systems, such as whirlpools, water flows, living things and societies are not intellectually deterministic. On the other hand, these patterns can be modeled and particular value attractors can be found that "govern" how the complex system tend to react. Complex systems reveal there has been an inherent intellectual fallacy in our belief that centralized control is always best. Complex network systems work best through partially decentralized, partially parallel patterns of interaction. An essential component in complex systems is to experiment with simple value attractors within the underlying components. Test different value attractors and keep those that lead to consistent positive results. Add components together in different ways via different types of attractors. Again retest, keeping successes and replacing failures with better ideas. Living things are built in just such a fashion, with a central governing nervous system or mind adding executive control over a greatly self regulating interconnected set of biological patterns. Insect colonies work the same way (with virtually NO central command), and societies do too. (If you doubt this, please read Non Zero by Robert Wright, or Out of Control by Kevin Kelly ) For those of you unfamiliar with complexity and chaos theories, I am probably just spouting a bunch of nonsense, and some may think that it violates some principle of the MOQ. I suggest that both camps consider studying these theories themselves before they pass judgement. Complexity is all about patterns and values and how to understand and influence complex systems such as life and society. I guess I am rambling, but my point is that current intellectual theories of society would lead us to see that society has been evolving and learning and, in general, improving since culture itself evolved. The current apex, or most successful social systems seem to use a combo of free enterprise with a degree of centralized and decentralized control, along with a representative democracy of intricate checks and balances. Even our best societies though have yet to figure out how to avoid destroying elements of the environment and overconsuming repleneshable resources and depleting non-repleneshable resources. But I see us as learning...slowly at times, often at the pace of generations. Will we learn fast enough? You get to decide. I will say that the first step to improving society further though is to intellectually recognize the many decentralized elements to society. Pirsig was totally naive in his proclamation that socialism was inherently intellectually superior to free enterprise. To his defense, it was conventionally viewed this way back when Lila was being written, and though intellectuals are now starting to see the folly of their ways, it is probably a few decades off from being widely understood outside of those that have broken through into this new science that applies to so many new fields. But then again, I could be wrong Rog PS -- Karl Popper -- decades before the advent of complexity/chaos science -- was one of the first intellectuals to see the evolutionary benefits of 'tinkering' as opposed to the folly of grand, centrally designed and controlled social experimentation. MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
