[Campaigns-l] What Is "Politics"? - Part 1

Tue Jul 11 20:21:31 UTC 2006

Dear Slije:

First, thank you very much for taking the time to step back, look at,  
and express the big picture of what we're dealing with here.  As a  
fellow engineer (civil engineer, class of '76, UMass - Amherst) who  
has attempted to continue to apply that view of the world on the  
community and international development careers I've taken up since  
1991 (when I had an early mid-life reevaluation of what I was doing),  
I think you are really onto something here.  And I would encourage  
everyone on this list to give your work the reflective attention it  
deserves.

I would also encourage you to tell us who you are, since I see no  
signature line at the end of your message nor any personal data at  
the wikia site.  (And perhaps I just didn't look in the right place.)

Second, here is my take on what is missing from you "where are we  
now" analysis.  In essence, you have not completely answered the  
question "why?" as in "Why are we stuck with the broken system we are  
stuck with?"

I really appreciate the need to understand where we are.  You cannot  
build something new without knowing the existing conditions  
(physical, financial, and socio-political) of the "place" where you  
want to build that new "something".  And by "place" I include  
contextural place in history.  What you have done, I believe, is  
define the existing system in which we find ourselves and which needs  
to be redesigned because - plain and simple - it just doesn't work.   
It's a mess!  (And "mess" is a technical term from the field of  
Systems Thinking, as developed by my friend and mentor, Dr. Russell  
L. Ackoff, starting in the early 1950's.)  You have answered the  
question "What?", as in "What is the nature of - the design of - the  
system in which we find ourselves?"  This is a critical question to  
answer.  If you can't step back and look at what the problem consists  
of, there's no way you can get objective about it.  However, in  
addition to stepping back, you also need to understand the larger  
system which gave birth to the system that doesn't work.  Because it  
is the larger system which constructed the system for a specific  
purpose...to solve a specific problem.

You say the existing system is all about resource distribution and  
allocation.  I agree with you.

But what needs to be added...the answer to the "Why do we have this  
control-based distribution system?" question...is a description of  
the larger reality (the larger system) that determined the design of  
this system because of certain fundamental assumptions it (the larger  
system) made about how that smaller distribution system needed to  
function.  What is this larger system I am referring to?  It is the  
world in which human civilization existed thousands of years ago at  
the time when the earliest versions of politics developed. And what  
was that world like?  It was a pretty scary place.  You were lucky if  
you lived to be older than 25.  Survival was your primary objective  
in life.  As the educator James Burke said in his landmark PBS series  
"The Day the Universe Changed" (at least I think that's where I heard  
this), life back then was "nasty, brutish, and short".  No wonder  
people gravitated toward religion, which promised a very pleasant  
after life in Heaven if you were a good person.   Life here on Earth  
was nothing short of awful!

And so, out of this "survival of the fittest" world came a control  
system for all of humanity based on one fundamental principle:  There  
Isn't Enough For Everyone.  Therefore, My First Priority Is To Take  
Care Of Myself And Those Who I'm Closest To.

That was it.  In a world where there isn't enough for everyone, what  
we wind up with - and what we still have today - is a (now global)  
system which has as its absolute, most fundamental (yet completely  
unchallenged because it has become like the water in which fish  
swim.  Most of us can't even see it.) design assumption that There  
Ain't Enough For Everyone; So The Game Is Let's Make Sure Those We  
Like Survive.

The primary reference on this topic I would recommend to everyone on  
this list is the seminal book "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"  
by R. Buckminster Fuller.  This book can be read for free on the site  
of the Buckminster Fuller Institute here - http://bfi.org/node/422

Fuller describes our world as still functioning on the obsolete  
belief in Malthusian Economics, the product of Thomas Malthus who (in  
the early 1820's) predicted that population would forever be greater  
than the available supply of essential resources.  Malthus thus  
codified the concept that "Scarcity of Resources" is the true  
fundamental nature of reality, a "truth" which actually remained true  
until the early 1960's, when the publisher of Scientific American -  
Gerard Piel - in his equally critically important book "Science in  
the Cause of Man" (1961, Alfred A. Knopf publishers) wrote that  
humanity had finally advanced scientifically to the point where we  
now had the ability to feed, clothe and house every man woman and  
child on Earth. (I'm paraphrasing here.  To read the actual Preface  
to Mr. Piel's book, go here - http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ 
SteveBrant ) Gerard Piel and Bucky Fuller were friends.

So, what was once true at a physical level - that it's a scary world  
out there and we can't all make it and which was formalized by human  
culture at various levels over thousands of years of history  
including most expansively by Thomas Malthus - hasn't been true since  
the 1960's.  But we live in a global society that still operates as  
if it is true.

Amazing stuff to think about, wouldn't you say?  Well, it's been  
something I've been thinking about since I first read Operating  
Manual for Spaceship Earth in 1979.  I mean, even the United Nations  
- which has as its mission to create world peace - was designed at a  
time (1945) before which humanity had the technical capability to  
live in peace.  The UN was designed in a world where Thomas Malthus  
was still correct.  If only Gerard Piel and Bucky Fuller had been  
able to make their case to the UN, perhaps the UN Decade of Education  
for Sustainable Development that was launched last year would be  
charged with teaching people all over the world that Malthusian  
Economics is obsolete and would be holding annual conferences  
designed to address the questions "What would be the design of a  
socio-economic political system based on "abundance" rather than  
"scarcity" of resources?  And how could such a redesigned system  
actually be implemented; by what process would such a new system  
replace the existing system?"

Maybe that expanded agenda for the Decade of Education for  
Sustainable Development is something "We, the people" of wikia could  
get behind.  (Just thinking out loud here.)

By the way, as an engineer my "abundance of resources" equation  
includes the energy Earth receives every day from the Sun, which is  
many times greater than humanity's daily energy requirements.  As an  
engineer, I know we have the technical capability to capture that  
energy.  In fact, a report was released by the UN last month that  
spoke of doing that.  It was a report on the future of the world's  
deserts, and it included the fact that a properly designed solar  
energy generating system in the Sahara desert could supply all the  
world's energy needs.  For more info, go here...

http://tinyurl.com/zuyvh  (Link to article from the World Business  
Council for Sustainable Development)

Lastly, I had the pleasure of raising this "Malthus is obsolete"  
issue with Tom Friedman, Ted Koppel, and Nobel Prize winning  
economist Joseph Stiglitz at a NY Times sponsored event this past  
April.  Fortunately, the event was broadcast later on C-Span, and I  
was able to capture my question to Friedman, et al.  I posted the  
video of this portion of the event on YouTube.com here - http:// 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MebIll2VDEA

Thanks for writing such a thought-provoking essay, Slije.  Now I need  
to figure out how to add my essay to where yours is posted on the  
wikia site.  :)

Hmm....maybe my post should be entitled "Why Is Politics?"

Steve
----------------------------------
Steven G Brant, Business Futurist
Founder & Principal, Trimtab Management Systems
sbrant at trimtab.com
http://www.trimtab.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/

"It is because we have at the present moment
everybody claiming the right of conscience
without going through any discipline whatsoever
that there is so much untruth being delivered
to a bewildered world." - Gandhi

"Men do not live only by fighting evils.
They live by positive goals." - Isaiah Berlin

On Jul 11, 2006, at 2:23 PM, Slije wrote:

> Dear Reader:
>
> I believe there comes a time to stop what you are doing and ask  
> yourself if
> it's working.  If you're trying to walk across the room but keep  
> banging into
> walls and falling down, do you keep beating yourself up, or do you  
> stop to
> assess the situation calmly?  Which is more likely to help you  
> reach your
> goal?  There is a time for thick-headed persistence.  There is also  
> a time
> for surrender to what is (truth).
>

(HUGE snip)

>
> Next...
>
> What Is Politics? - Part 2
>
>     What kind of world do you want to live in?
>
>     The difference between a problem and an issue
>
>     The difference between positive and negative control
>
>     Analysis of the current political (control) system
>
>
> Thanks for reading.  I welcome your questions and comments.
>
> This text is also available at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:Slije
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