Ada Agada — A truly African philosophy

Review of

‘Consolation philosophy’ understands the human being as a unity of feeling and reason, in a cosmos rich with primal emotion…

Here I offer a brief presentation of this African philosophical synthesis, which I hope will help to resolve the dilemma eloquently put forward in 1997 by professor of philosophy at Penn State University Robert Bernasconi: ‘Either African philosophy is so similar to Western philosophy that it makes no distinctive contribution and effectively disappears; or it is so different that its credentials to be genuine philosophy will always be in doubt.’...

Presently, there is lively debate over the teaching of philosophy that involves viewing philosophy as traditionally Western or considering world philosophy. The status of "Indian philosophy" and "Chinese philosophy" is arguably part of the intellectual tradition of humanity, even though the methodology is different.

However, the case of African philosophy is different. Many Westerners doubt that anything good has come out of Africa, even though the ancient civilization of Egypt is the world's oldest. (China's civilization is the world oldest continuous civilization.) Others argue that Africa does have much to contribute and treating African thought in the context of the global intellectual tradition is not simply pandering to multiculturalism, as some charge.

My view is that the humanity's intellectual tradition extends far beyond the confines that academia has imposed on it through an arbitrary division of disciplines that that underappreciates the essential wholeness of the world system. This is true of many disciplines other than academic philosophy.

This article illustrates the author struggling with this conundrum in attempting to locate the African intellectual tradition.

Consolation philosophy is not only a philosophy of life, or meaning in life, but also a system of speculative metaphysics. Therefore, I extended the concept of mood to the external or mind-independent world at the risk of facing the charge of anthropomorphism. What epistemological framework could facilitate the projection of mind into the space of matter in a manner consequential for the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, emotion and reason, joy and sadness, optimism and pessimism? Panpsychism.

Panpsychism is the most ancient philosophical position, with its roots in prehistory where thought becomes blurred in the mists of time. It is the basis of various forms of idealism in the Western intellectual tradition. Now not only philosophers but also psychologists and cognitive scientists are reconsidering this position as a viable explanation to address the deficiencies of "scientific materialism" as the best or only rational alternative to supernatural belief.

Why is this important? Because Africa is no longer the backwater it once was and it is posed to play an increasingly influential role in the world as it comes online and develops quickly throughout the coming years of this century. How Africans come to see themselves will be increasingly determinative historically, and there are a lot of factors and influences in play regarding this.

How this plays out will contribute to the world system in terms of a culture that is becoming increasingly globalized. The West is confident that Western culture will become dominant and so Westerners will continue to dominate through Western ideas and values, in addition to materially through organization and technology. That may turn out to be a hollow expectation as the rest of the world begins to catch up.

Of course, the powers that be in the West will do what is in their power to delay this and to direct it in the channels they desire so as to maintain and extend control, that may not be as possible as they anticipate. The Zeitgeist is on the move and a new world order is emerging.

Enter Africa.

Aeon
A truly African philosophy
Ada Agada | research fellow at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. and author of Existence and Consolation: Reinventing Ontology, Gnosis, and Values in African Philosophy

See also

Music leads the way culturally.

Stoney Roads
The evolution of Afrobeat and its impact on dance music
Jack Woodford

Sputnik — Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Putin puts his finger on a key issue without naming explicitly.

This is the classical question about what it means to be a good person in a good society.

Under Anglo-American liberalism, this question is not to be asked because the market is the arbiter of truth and value equates to prices. In this view, culture is based on utilitarianism, with its stimulus-response model of human behavior, and law exists chiefly to provide security and protect private property.

Traditionalism disagrees. In this view, human behavior involves moral responsibility and genuine freedom is impossible without moral responsibility.

Morality is about how people should behave, and law is about how people must and must not behave.

Morality and ethics are evolved culturally, and law is decided institutionally.

Classical conservatism is traditionalist. It looks to tradition for guidance in such matters.

Classical liberalism is rationally based. It looks to reason and evidence for justification.

Classical conservatives generally favor government taking a moral role and exerting moral authority where the need arises owing to conflict of views.

Classical liberals generally hold that this is is not a question for government to answer, although law makers must deal with it in legislating. Reason and evidence should be the guide rather than tradition and custom.

Putin is taking a liberal position for Russia, albeit traditionalist in Western liberal eyes. However, traditionalism and classical conservatism predominate strongly in Russian culture and politics.

Sputnik International
Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Also

It’s up to the creative community to filter tele-and internet content as the government’s influence in this sphere should be reduced to minimum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday at a meeting with participants in the Tavrida educational youth forum, commenting on an idea of establishing a kind of a filter for television and internet content to reduce aggressive and crime-related information that is adversely impacting the younger generation.

"What is prohibited by law must be outlawed everywhere - both in the internet and in television, and in other mass media," he stressed. "But everything else must be done only by one way - through filtering by the creative community. If the community elaborates a system of moral and ethical filters it would be right. The government’s say in this process should be if not excluded, then minimized. But better excluded."

The president called to "think together on the establishment of such mechanisms." He said he is in contacts with the CEOs of Russia’s leading television channels and with those "who influence this or that way what is going on in the internet" and these people, in his words, understand the situation and "are trying to change it for the better." "It is difficult to do it - to filter information torrents - in the present-day world. There are grounds to fear that such filtration could be ideologized and society would be stripped of the possibility to receive reliable, open and direct information," Putin added.

TASS
Putin says government’s say in filtering info content should be reduced to minimum

Steve Martinet — The “Fundamentalism” in Police Operations

Sociologists talk a lot about "culture" and "institutions." Institutions are social constructs that are created by societies and embedded in the culture of the society. Moreover, every institution is itself a social group that has its own subculture that reflects aspects of the culture of the society of which it is an institution. 

Societies and their cultures are not monolithic but rather amalgams of different groups that are united by the societies institutions, such as the political system, the legal system and so forth.

In a modern society a large and complex security apparatus underlies national security, that is, the military and paramilitary institutions such as the intelligence services, and domestic security, that is the national, regional and local police and surveillance forces.

For example, in the US the national security apparatus includes "the deep state" that provides continuity to US foreign and military policy and enforces it externally. The domestic security apparatus was unified for the first time in the history of the United States under a cabinet level department, the Department of Homeland Security that coordinates all branches of domestic security, national, state, and local.

All of these institutions are permeated by a "security culture" based on "law and order," which implies exerting control of the population in the interest of the welfare of the state, which is equated with government of the people, by the people and for the people in a liberal democracy. That is a fiction that is serves as justification for an apparatus designed to control elements and subgroups of a society. It also has the potential control the whole of society, especially when it is coordinated at the top level, that is, by the ruling elite that control the reins of power.

Security is both necessary for liberty and antithetical to liberty. A free society cannot be free without security that maintains order under the rule of law. However, individuals cannot be free if the security apparatus impinges on their freedom.

While laws are put in place to restrain the security apparatus from abusing its power, and rights enumerated to protect minorities, institutions are further controlled and determined by their cultures.

Furthermore, the nature of security as enforcement attracts people who are enforcers by disposition. This favors authoritarian personalities. The authoritarian personality is based on paternalism, control and punishment.

The natural tendency of security organizations is authoritarian and paternalistic rather than either nurturing or simply protective. The creates a paradox of liberalism and raises the challenge of controlling the controllers and enforcers.

History shows that law and rights are insufficient to the task. Culture and subculture are capable of thwarting the expressed will of the people and violating liberties and rights with impunity.

Counterpunch
The “Fundamentalism” in Police Operations

Steve Martinet

David F. Ruccio — Critique and the neoliberal university

The neoliberalizing (commercializing) of education and culture, by monetizing education and capitalizing the university. 

With the ending of liberal education, can liberal democracy survive? 

The neoliberalizers see the problem as a tyranny of the majority aka rule of the rabble and seek to end that, too, but destroying its roots. This is nothing less than a veiled attack on popular sovereignty by undermining its foundation in education and culture.

The current model is that the faculty works for the administration, and the administration carries out of the wishes of the trustees that represent big donors. Students are clients and customers. 

Formerly liberal education dedicated to critical thinking and creativity is being repurposed to feed the machine with qualified and compliant labor.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Critique and the neoliberal university
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame

Our task. Rightsizing Adaptive Cultural Signals From Human Cultural Noise.

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

It finally hit me, as a conceptual summary. This is what Context Nomads do.

Our task.

Rightsizing adaptive cultural signals from human cultural noise.

Does our nation have an aggregate-OODA-Loop?  Of course.

AOODA-Loop?

Do we know how to tune it?

How? Through group practice?

What are we waiting for?

Aggregate, perceptual clarity? About our context, and major, not just trivial, challenges?

Where would that be aggregate perceptual clarity be formed, if not in the body of public discourse?

And where would it be expressed, if not in our Desired Outcomes, milestone goals, policies, strategies, tactics and tools?

As the US Marine Corp says, the scale of our organizational demands change, but it's always about ...

staging, linking, sequencing

... to master successive aggregate challenges.

Where are those challenges played out?  On a field we call Policy Space.

Using what toolkit?  The one we call Policy Agility, and it's cascade of component parts, down to individual skills & characteristics.

So what ARE we waiting for? Adequate preparation, in K-12 schools? Doh!

If you're worried about where your national vehicle is going, carping from the back seat is pretty inefficient, and there's a known cascade of ways to help arrive intact. 

Participate in setting the Desired Destination. Get involved in the decision process, at the decision point.

Pick your stage, and participate in leveraging the steering wheel, or the brakes, or the turn signals, etc, etc.  

And, participate in making sure that every component hears about every other component, so that poor maintenance of wheels, oil, brakes, coolant, exhaust, steering, heat, AC, ABS, fuel filter, generator, etc, etc don't derail the progress of the whole.

This is the greatest organizational challenge in human history ... but having made it this far, we're obviously capable of taking one more, even more distributed, step.  Only if we act together, and adequately provision all parts of our increasingly distributed whole.

Simon Glendinning — Five Things You Need To Know About The Philosophy Of Europe

1. Europe enters philosophy in the context of a distinctively philosophical conception of human history. 

2. For philosophy, the history of Europe unfolds within universal history. 

3. Philosophical history of the world (universal history) has Europe at the head. 

4. Philosophical history of the world is also a discourse of Europe’s modernity 

5. The discourse of Europe’s modernity is… falling apart.

Social Europe Journal
Five Things You Need To Know About The Philosophy Of Europe
Simon Glendinning | Professor of European Philosophy at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Cultural Development at 31st Week of Democracy

Cultural Development at 31st Week of Democracy

Are we past the 2nd Trisequester yet?

Or still in the fetal position?

Johan Galtung — A Theory of China

Short weekend reading. It's really a broad brush comparison of China and the US that hits the highlights pretty well in my estimation.

Counterpunch
A Theory of China
Johan Galtung

Gianfranco Poggi — Discussing Karl Polanyi, Understanding the Current Crisis

Reviewed: Fred Block & Margaret Somers, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi’s Critique, Harvard University Press 2014.…

More or less self-consciously, all “polanyians” argue from a critical posture vis-a-vis the structures and processes dominant within contemporary Western societies. To that extent, they share a position on the left with a larger collectivity of scholars dealing with social and historical phenomena most of whom, instead, derive their intellectual inspiration from this or that component of the Marxian legacy. These scholars in turn disagree widely from one another, but basically share a (at best) diffident attitude toward Polanyi, due chiefly to a critical contrast between the understandings of “society” held respectively by Marx and by Polanyi. 

From Marx’s standpoint, society is no more than the site of the hostile confrontation between the conflicting economic interests of two historically variable groups – freemen and slaves in antiquity, lords and serfs under feudalism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat under capitalism. Societal dynamics revolves around the exploitation of the second element within each relation by the first. Under rare and momentous historical circumstances, an existent mode of exploitation is subverted and replaced by another mode. 

Polanyi of course shared Marx’s emphasis on these developments, but challenged their absolute prominence attributed to them in his view of the social process, focused almost exclusively on the unique historical experience of the West. Thus, in Polanyi’s judgment Marx was insufficiently aware of the huge diversity of non-Western arrangements for material production and of their relationship with other significant aspects of the social process. 

For Polanyi, “society” is a complex reality constituted by relatively autonomous sets of diverse institutional arrangements, varying widely in time and space, some of which address concerns of no immediate economic significance. They generate and validate similarities and contrasts between individuals and between groups that may override - or any rate frame and constrain, rather than masking or justifying - the relations regarding their economic interests and the resulting collective identities. 

Block and Somers’ entire book can be considered as a sustained exploration and elaboration of this key motif in Polanyi’s thinking, the so-called ‘embedding’ of the economic aspect of the social process within a pre-existent, more complex matrix. Their concluding chapter is entitled “The reality of society” and places this notion at the core of what they label Polanyi’s “new public philosophy”.…

Books & Ideas
Discussing Karl Polanyi, Understanding the Current Crisis
Gianfranco Poggi | Professor of Sociology at University of Trento, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia and European University Institute
h/t Mark Thoma at Economist's View

What Will It Take To Trigger Some Cultural Adaptations In This Country? We're Long Overdue.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Video too.

From FDR to Obama, John Dingell rates the presidents

This story illustrates, indirectly as well as directly, much that's wrong with our approach to shepherding adaptive public policy. Some immediate thoughts, while reading this.

1) too few get experience or practice at legislating (only kids of politicians & rich people get to be unpaid pages & interns in Congress)

2) too many Congresspeople follow their relatives, or mentors? (may be changing?)

3) the turnover & diversification rate in Congress is far too slow (no one should be irreplaceable; resiliency means many are capable of taking over on a moment's notice; Congress is no longer representative of our changing electorate in all 50 states, regardless of ethnicity, which shouldn't matter to a melting pot)

4) Congress itself is too small, and too easily co-opted by ridiculous things like campaign finance

That's just outside of the many inside insights that Dingell mentions. Read the article to hear his many interesting observations. Will this be enough to make more people think?

Makes you wonder what it will take to trigger some cultural adaptations in this country. We're long overdue.

Will we adapt?

Or will we stop ourselves in our cultural tracks?

Let's Just Start Taxing Economic Policy Lobbying, Instead Of Sales & FICA Taxes?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Damage-Subtracted taxes, instead of Value-Added taxes? DST vs VAT?*

John Cochrane Explains Neo-Fisherism

Really? When is too much too much? Orthodox economics - like Aristocracy - has turned into nothing more than hoarding behavior. First people hoard static goods, then they soon hire academics to train shamans, create political-religions, and finally flood us with "economic" theory - in distracting attempts to hoard public fiat, and cultural perspective itself.

Personally, if I became President, I'd do something to seriously tax all this excessive economic theorizing that somehow accumulates as paid lobbying - unproductively dominated by "savers hoarding" instead of "labor producing" ...

... and get back to actively managing a highly dynamic economy based on more/faster/wider feedback based on better/faster/more cultural instrumentation.

Surely we must stop letting these hoards of Economic Policy beginners continue over-modeling an economy as an adequately described, static machine running at constant load.

A dynamic democracy is not a simple machine, it's an incredibly dynamic, rapidly evolving bio-cultural engine. Just stop trying to constrain our democracy & culture.

I've now read enough economics literature to stop reading it.

What do we need? Funny how those words cheques & balances come back to haunt us. :)

The original checks & balances intended by the Constitution were hacked within 8 years, when we let factions create political parties instead of sticking to our intended practice of finding consensus Desired Outcomes anew, with every year of changing context. The easiest time to betray any revolution is immediately, while rebels are still thinking that they won.

Disorders of hoarding behaviors in defined central nervous systems are continuously studied, yet those individual disorders are trivial compared to the impact of distributed hoarding behaviors in definable cultures, whether the cultural boundaries are defined by markets or nations. We won't address cultural hoarding until we invent new methods for training citizens to acknowledge and study it. By then, we'll have distributed disorders on a supra-cultural scale. Will the quality (including tempo) of our distributed discourse rise to meet that looming challenge, fast enough for humans to survive? Not if we don't start practicing audacious new methods, ASAP.

We need more methods, not models. And more practice, not just theory.


* A sin tax on public practice of economic theorizing, just like on other forms of gambling? Sure. Why is it ok for rich lobbyists to gamble with public policy, while poor people may only gamble their personal options in casinos (owned by rich people)? Yes, political parties are casinos, where naive voters are enticed to roll their dice - while not playing with House options, nor the Senate's. :(

The challenge of liberalism

The challenge of liberalism in a world of different traditions and cultures.

Irregular Times
Hindus Threaten Violence Over Image Of Krishna With Coca-Cola
J Clifford

The Vineyard of the Saker

The West: the most sexually dysfunctional society on the planet

Vineyardsaker

Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy

There are various answers depending on different traditions. The attempt to impose the American version of liberal democracy on the world is destined not only to fail but to provoke conflict.

American Conservative

Putin’s Philosophy — The Russian leader’s paradoxical, strong-state “liberal-conservatism”

Paul Robinson | Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

The World Post
Xi Launches Cultural Counter-Revolution to Restore Confucianism as China's Ideology
Nathan Gardels | Editor-in-chief

Patheos
Shri Narendra Modi, Hinduism, and Resurgent India
David Frawley, (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is an American Hindu author

Narendra Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh faction of the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party (Hindutva). RSS is dedicated to Indian culture and values. Modi has also stated that he will reinvigorate India's ties to Buddha, who is also recognized as one of the ten Hindu avatars (incarnations of the God in human form).

And no, the Islamic revolt against the American Empire at its periphery is not about their "hating our freedoms," but rejecting Western liberal values that they see the US attempting to impose on the rest of the world by force against the will of the vast majority who are traditionalists.

Henry A. Giroux — Capitalism Is a Tumor on the Body Politic: What's the Alternative? Beyond Mid-Election Babble

The biggest challenge facing those who believe in social justice is to provide an alternative discourse, educational apparatuses and vision that can convince US citizens that a real democracy is worth fighting for.

I think it is more appropriate to call it neoliberalism, neo-imperialism, and neocolonialism than "capitalism." This is much more about institutional power and its use than economic systems. Economics is a tool of politics, which is about the nature and use of institutional power in society. Economics is a manifestation of that power, analogous to the way the visible universe of phenomena is the manifestation of invisible energy underlying and causing phenomenal change. Physically we live in a universe of energy, and socially we live in a world of power.

In spite of what the established media claims, the election results contained a hidden order of politics that do not suggest a popular shift to the right, but a failure of both parties, especially the Democratic Party to address the popular needs and mood of the electorate. How else to explain that a number of states voted to raise the minimum wage. Joseph Kishore writing on the World Socialist Web Site gets it right in arguing:

"The Democratic strategy of appealing to affluent layers of the middle class on the basis of identity politics while working with the Republicans to step up attacks on workers' jobs, wages and living standards produced an electoral disaster. In a contradictory way, reflecting a system monopolized by two-right parties of big business, the election showed that appeals on the basis of race, gender and sexuality move only a small fraction of the population, while the broad masses of people are driven by more fundamental class issues—issues on which the Democrats have nothing to offer."

This is the problem for democracy of interest and identity politics based on exploiting wedge issues without addressing the needs of the social system. The result in never satisfactory, and people begin to conclude that democracy is a waste of time.

As Paul Buchheit points out, capitalism [I would say "neoliberalism"] is spreading like a tumor in US society and the key is to cut out its ability to convince people that there are no other alternatives, that the market should govern all of social life including politics itself, and that the government's only role is to protect the benefits of big business and the interests of the super-rich.

TINA and trickle down.

Truthout | Op Ed

Capitalism Is a Tumor on the Body Politic: What's the Alternative? Beyond Mid-Election Babble

Henry A. Giroux

Noah Smith — On "Asian Values"

This might be a bit simplistic in that it assumes that a nation is composed of rather homogenous individuals that generally agree about how value should be prioritized personally, culturally and institutionally. In fact, this is the dialectical dynamic of the era based on the liberal trend since the Enlightenment and the political revolutions that were based on Enlightenment thinking. 

The challenge is to actually achieve E pluribus unum, and the currency cultural divisiveness manifesting in political divisiveness in the US is an example of it. The two chief forces are individualism manifesting as personal liberty, characteristic of libertarians of the right and left, and the desire for law and order and traditional values, characteristic of authoritarians. 

Add to this matrix, conservatives that emphasis inequality resulting from individual uniqueness and liberals that emphasize equality of persons as the basis of the rule of law and human rights and civil liberties. This is illustrated by the Political Compass matrix of the  at politicalcompass.org for example.

America is hardly unique in this, and it can be found in similar and also contrasting expression in other countries as well. It is even more pronounced in more traditional countries that the US, of which the Asian countries are good examples.

"Freedom and democracy" sound great as slogans, but they are extremely complex in themselves and in relation to other values. For instance, the Enlightenment values of liberty, egality, and fraternity (solidarity, community) are a difficult trifecta to harmonize culturally and institutionally and no nation has been highly successful at doing this in a way that pleases all constituencies. 

The neoconservative notion of exporting freedom and democracy along with a neoliberal political theory based on economic liberalism that has been characteristic of US policy has not been very successful in achieving the harmonization of this trifecta either in the US or abroad, and the cost of the experiment in terms of blood and treasure has been enormous.

There are many factors in play right now. The liberalization of society has been continuing apace since the Enlightenment and is going global. Innovation in technology and communications is resulting in a more unified world but on the way diversity is also clashing. Technology is also generating externalities that are now consequential enough to present an existential threat to humanity.

Humanity is now becoming self-aware as a species, on one hand, but on the other, huge resistance to greater unity is arising in order to preserve accustomed diversity. This is going on within groups and nations and regions, and among nations and regions. There are a number of divorce proceedings either in the works or being advocated, including secessionism and nullification in the US, as well as rejection of the president by a significant cohorts, for example, the rejection of Bush as a war criminal by the left and the rejection of Obama as a socialist dictator by the right.

Can we speak of East and West? Only in a very general way that easily falls into the pit of stereotypes. Both Easterners and Westerners are susceptible to this, too, just as Northerners and Southerners in the US.

Nor is Asia uniform. Take China and India, for instance, each with out the same size population, land mass, and natural resources, although very different climate, each coming into their own in the contemporary world at about the same time, India in 1946, and China in 1949. However, China is a one-party authoritarian state and India is multiparty liberal state. Which has had the better of it socially, politically, and economically, and based on what criteria? Both have made great progress but significant challenges remain. The US is recommending that China liberalize socially and that India liberalize economically. Is this appropriate for them or is this advice largely self-serving?

I don't think that there are easy answers to these issues, and I also don't think that the US is a position to be giving advice to other nations about how to manage their internal affairs if only because the US has shown itself to be unable to separate its own interests from what it preaches.

The world is in a phase transition between social, political and economic eras, in which the social challenge is increasing awareness of universality, the political challenge the consequences of this for rights as diversity groups with different values and priorities come into closer contact, and the economic challenge of birthing a new economic age, the digital era, which promises to be as revolutionary as agriculture and industry were. Just as these eras produced difference social, political and economic institutions, so will this new era we are entering as a species that is becoming increasing aware of itself.

Noahpinion
On "Asian Values"
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University

What's The Dividing Line Between Cultural Evolution & Terminal Cancer?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

"The power of willful ignorance can never be overstated, because people are prepared to look the other way and believe anything." 

John Leonard (electrician's union)

Yes, and what do we do about it?* Well, doesn't that quickly force us to ask what culture is? You don't have to be able to state an answer to have culture, but it sure might help us to do so if we want to extend present Human Culture.




So much has been discovered, documented - and ignored - about diverse forms of culture that we are in dire need of summarizing, so we can get to the self-survival question of what to do next. How do we extend what we have?

Let's try one, terse summary of what we do have, and what we know about the process of building and extending culture.

aka,

1) Data is meaningless w/o context.

2) Construction of context = Interpretation of data = part of culture = outcomes from habits.

3) It takes LAYERS OF SUB-CULTURE to tune any & all cultural components w asynchronous & increasingly shorter time constants (i.e., cultural agility = adaptive rate).

4) Which is why we need progressively MORE self-governance infrastructure, just to maintain - let alone increase - net agility of a system growing in size &/or capability.

(Resiliency is NOT efficiency. Tuning to do ONE task involves dumbing down capabilities. Retaining ability of a growing system to respond to ANY contingency requires continuously added inter-dependencies among existing and emerging infrastructure components.)

5) Ergo.

Cost-of-coordination [C-O-C] is always the highest cost, by far. (Shewhart)
Return-on-total-coordination [R-O-TC] is the ONLY return worth chasing.

(Logic: R-O-TC = only return > C-O-C)

So what is the dividing line between evolution & terminal cancer?

Tuning return-on-coordination out of uncoordinated growth?

We're at another fork in that path. Since most paths are terminal, let's focus on taking the road less traveled.

It might also help to remind students and all citizens that culture didn't start with humans, or even with amoebas, or even with inorganic chemistry ...




... so that it doesn't come as a shock if they finally learn that culture will definitely not end with anything we can currently imagine.

Really, we're left with only a rather simple question.

How do we both successfully launch, and then stay out of the way of our own grandchildren, and the 7th generation yet unborn?

How that question is interpreted is entirely dependent upon the transition rate between the context which the group mind of our current electorate holds today, and the context perceived by our survivors a few generations out.

If we wisely choose which directions of change to accelerate, there will be more of those survivors, racing on sooner to new futures.

If we choose poorly, more of our descendants will suffer terminal consequences, and their journey to the future will be slowed.

Which outcome do we desire?

(very apt cartoon here, by Beatrice the Biologist; part of how brains work)

An inexperienced, out of practice cultural group-brain tends to work the same way.

_____________

* Notice I didn't mention coincidental trivialities like economics, accounting, or regulation. Those are all standardized parts of cultural plumbing, to build upon, not constrain with.

There Has To Be A Campaign To Make These Dingbats Stop Trying To Neuter the Fiat

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)





There's a new farce playing on L Street.

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Fiat?

starring NEUTER THE FIAT as arch Deficit Terrorist

If you're afraid of fiat, then of course the CBO's outlook on fiat is frighteningly predictable.

Previous generations were easily frightened by these type of Budget Slasher movies, but younger generations expect more initiative, and more sovereign action. So let's hope & pray that this play runs for only a short time before audiences lose interest.

And if a corporation is a person, surely a culture and an economy are animals too. Do we really want to emasculate AND defeminate both our economy and culture? Why not just drain all the private savings too? Oh, because they'd already be gone, as a consequence of neutering the fiat. I'd advise getting a second opinion before letting these dingbats go on a nip and tuck spree.

The following news release has been edited for clarity, with out-of-context semantics replaced with context-relevant semantics.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [Neuter The Fiat] Campaign

[NEUTER THE FIAT!!!]

For Immediate Release
Date: July 15, 2014
Contact: Jack Deutsch (deutsch@[NeuterTheFiat].org, 202-735-2801)

[Neuter the Fiat] Says CBO's Long-Term Budget Outlook Frightening and Predictable 

The Congressional Budget Office's new long-term budget projections show debt on an unsustainable long-term path. Under CBO's current law projections, [then IF NOTHING CHANGES - even though it always does] debt will grow from less than 74 percent of GDP in today to 80 percent by 2025, will exceed the size of the entire economy in the mid-2030s, and will double GDP after 2080. 

Maya MacGuineas, head of [Neuter the Fiat], made the following comment:

"This report shows just how dire the long-term [private financial savings] situation is. The government's official scorekeeper itself says these [private saving] levels 'would ultimately be unsustainable.' Anyone that looks at the current situation and thinks our [private financial savings] problem is solved just isn't paying attention. 

Unfortunately, the cost of this [private financial savings] isn't abstract. As CBO explains, it would lead to slower growth, higher interest rates, and less flexibility for the government to address new challenges. In only a quarter of a century [if nothing else changes, though it always does], income per person could be $2,000 to $5,000 lower as a result of our growing [private financial savings] levels. 

The [gold-std] lining in this report is that policymakers still have time to act. CBO explains that if policymakers act soon, the [private financial savings] could be reduced with smaller and more gradual changes that can improve economic growth and give people time to plan. 

But if Washington continues to kick the can and avoid dealing with the long-term drivers of our [private financial savings] , the magnitude of changes that will be necessary and the risk of a fiscal crisis will be greater. That's something this country just can't afford."

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[Huh!? What currency system are these people from?]

For more information about the [Neuter the Fiat] Campaign, please visitwww.NeuterTheFiat.borg.

[Neuter the Fiat] Campaign | 1899 L Street, Suite 225 | Washington | DC | 20036

###

Meanwhile, in the chart below, can they neuter one part without neutering the obligately yoked parts? I'd rather they experiment on themselves, and prove it it a self-neutering clinical trial, before practicing on the rest of us. Where's the Federal Dingbat Administration when we need one?

What Shapes a Culture's Cognitive Capabilities?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)



Contrary to what naive economists believe, existing systems are NOT collections of fully independent, calculating agents. Rather, each is an incomprehensibly tuned syncytium, with incredibly densely engineered and deeply tuned, seemingly endless lists of interdependencies. Everything depends upon everything else. The insanely great return on coordination is the logic that drives all social species, including humans - and ESPECIALLY humans.

Therefore, the following is the type of question we should be asking about our culture, and it's political economy policies.

What Shapes a Child’s Sense of Humor?

[Hat tip to Sanjeev Kulkarni.]

This is a useful question to pose. At this stage of inquiry, the particular cognitive capability being examined almost doesn't matter. All examples are instructive when it comes to considering what aspects of context, Desired Outcomes and practice is shaping a given system's cognitive capabilities.

Next, consider the following, and keep asking the same type of questions.

A human brain is just a network of neurons.

A human culture is just a network of humans.

Does a culture have a sense of humor? How does it develop? How about all the other cognitive capabilities that both physiologies and cultures develop?

After all, a group intelligence is a terrible thing to waste. So why not examine our own, and consider how to keep adaptively shaping it?

Language, Memory, and Cognition in Infancy and Early Childhood

Old topics, by now, even if deeply neglected.

What about "Cultural Language, Cultural Memory, and Cultural Cognition in Cultural Infancy & Early Cultural Childhood?"

When does an evolving culture ever exit "childhood?" When it has stopped changing fast enough, has therefore started to die, and has spawned descendent cultures - whether it knows it or not?

Is the very fact you have to tell some adults the following ... a sign of how badly our culture has failed?

Read and talk to your kids, to enrich their cognitive development.

If we have to tell our own citizens that group & cultural & national intelligence is held in their body of national discourse, and not intrinsically in the citizens itself ... then we've already failed on an epic scale?

Calculating The Real Effect Of Organizational Dysfunction On Cultural Evolution?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)




Do economists learn the analogous message, that Return on Coordination kills economist salaries & consulting fees?

The following economics study is a very telling example.

THE FOREIGN CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT: Economic Impact on Targeted Firms

You can see why firms would hire economists to quantify the impact of policy on given business prospects. Fine.

So why doesn't our electorate also hire economists to quantify the net impact of policy options on the general welfare of the people, and the Adaptive Rate, and the National Output, and the Net Outcomes of the USA? Largely because we aren't SETTING any Desired National Outcomes worthy of our capabilities?

And also, because all those things are beyond the scope of what economists are capable of? Because that capability requires a fully participatory democracy? It would require getting and using feedback from all people, in all disciplines?

Why isn't there a White House Council on National Outcomes?

If there is a White House Council on Economics, and also Congressional Finance Committees .... then why isn't there a White House Council on National Outcomes, or Congressional Committees tasked with the same responsibility? Largely because there is no functional electorate capable of practicing Outcomes Based Democracy and Outcomes Based Policy Development?

Step #1 would be electing representatives capable of net, not just narrow, Outcomes Based policy development.

If that's not yet practiced, then Step #2 might be vetting potential policy staff in Outcomes Based Training & Education centers, analogous to various Officer Training programs currently existing in diverse public agencies.

If that seems too implausible, then Step #3 might be fundamentally altering our approach to all aspects of all forms of education, from bottom to top.

If that seems impossible, then Step #4 might be rethinking our entire approach to US Culture, what it's for, where it's going, and how to shape it's destiny.

And if that seems too difficult, then Step #5 might be a good, hard look in the mirror, to see if you really love your kids & grandchildren, and want to know HOW to actually express that love in a constructive manner.

Setting Net National-Context-Awareness As A Desired National Outcome

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)




How about an electorate learning how to lead it's own culture? Can that group-quality be developed by studious group-reflection and group-practice? The answer is obviously a resounding yes, if evolving cultural history is any guide.

How do we the people, as an aggregate, go about DOING that, in a pragmatic, objective way?

There's too much to possibly discuss in just one beginning, so I'll only touch on one facet, indirectly brought to light by a review of the rather forgotten Korean Civil War of 1873-to-today (if not older).*

Rather than getting sidetracked in the wealth of details, please consider what this EXAMPLE means to us, and it's implications for what has and is happening to our own culture.

First off, there are SO many insightful observations on our own, multi-faceted context floating around - from political operations to fiat currency operations, and beyond ... but all of them are under-distributed, under-utilized & hence under-leveraged by we the people, as an aggregate.

When inundated by indicators, the classic solution is to summarize, and discriminate KEY indicators to coalesce around, while letting all others float within local tolerance limits. Yet that presumes that there is always some reference to orient group behavior to. Is it cultural survival? If we are what we-the-people practice, as a whole, then surely we should practice being more systemically aware of what we are, as a group, practicing, so that we can monitor, assess, judge and actively shape what we are becoming, rather than just finding out, after the fact.

Is the answer always more information? How many people will EVER read ANY scholarly bestseller - soon enough to matter? Enough to be statistically significant for real-time policy formation OR for continuous pursuit of an adequately "informed" electorate? Obviously not, since available data always scales faster than the data generators.

Walter Shewhart's words are prophetic.

* Data have no meaning apart from their context.
* Data contain both signal and noise. To be able to extract information, one must separate the signal from the noise within the data.

Obviously, we can't keep all people fully informed. That would reduce to a failed attempt to have clones, and it would destroy the very diversity which we depend upon. Plus, as Shewhart and others showed, the endeavor would be meaningless. We have to keep our diversity and use it too.

To keep evolving our own culture, it seems that we continuously need new cultural models, which must be preceded by new methods, appearing at a faster rate.

What kind of cultural models?

1) Constantly changing models for consciously managing the adaptive rate of our culture, and electorate.

2) Does that mean objective models and metrics for assessing the group-context-awareness of our electorate? Yes?

3) Does that mean setting national-context-awareness as a Desired National Outcome - and then usefully defining "National Context"? At a minimum? As one necessary but not sufficient aspect of an "adequately informed" electorate? Surely? Isn't that what Democracy does - when we let it work?

4) Does that also mean defining National Adaptive Rate as a necessary correlate of rate of change for an ongoing polynomial?

a) Rate of usefully re-defining National Context.

b) Rate of setting new Desired Outcomes worthy of our evolving culture;

c) Rate of adjusting milestone goals accurately defining successful pursuit of those Desired Outcomes.

d) Rate of adjusting our entire, cascading spectrum of policies, strategies, tactics, methods and tools ... in agile pursuit of our constantly evolving goals and summary outcomes.

So when can we see a, b & c spelled out throughout both our cultural outlook AND our K-12 curricula, so that it becomes incorporated into our growing list of guiding principles for all of our subsequent endeavors?


***


*Some of the fascinating insights that this book offers are rarely heard details about the fateful steps circa 1950 that led us to abruptly turn a de-militarized US economy into the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (MICC) which still defines us - and how that sudden reversal also aided the backlash to the 1930s pragmatism and the return to archaic Monetarism and excessively simplistic forms of Conservatism, bordering on Ludditism. It's a sobering reminder that our chosen actions dictate who we become. As we tried to police the world, the world changed us. It's not at all clear who is the victor in that exchange. It doesn't seem to be us.

This book is by Bruce Cumings. Those familiar with the Chicago school of NeoCon, NeoLiberal & Monetarist economics will be surprised that Cumings is on the faculty of that same school, in the History department. Go figure. Maybe there's still hope for the USA, right in the NeoCons front yard!

Cumings' data reveals a long history of Koreans bitterly divided between factions that profitably collaborated with the occupying Japanese between 1910-1945, and those of many stripes who obstinately insisted on either liberty or death. The actions & words of the opposition should have been familiar to Americans, but they weren't recognized, and hence weren't respected.

The paperback version I read is a bit chopped up, since it is condensed from his much larger 2-volume set, but it is still a fascinating read, since it largely details how fundamentally misguided our Korean policy has been, from start to finish, and most of our entire Asian policy too, after 1950.

Aside from the MICC, the book's other parallel to America today is the description of growing alienation and polarization between an Upper Looting Class and a comparatively destitute lower class, with no Middle. Are we listening?

Chris Dillow — Patriarchy as an emergent process

 "Feminism" as in feminist philosophy, feminist literary criticism, feminist politics, feminists economics is a big deal if only because owing to the emergent liberation of women as part of the liberal revolution of the 18th century it is an emergent trend. However, since WWII and the entrance of women to the workforce that trend has been accelerating as more women become more self-sufficient and have more opportunities.

This is about institutionalism influenced by cultural factors and cultural change. It's here to stay and men had better get used an increasingly strong push for women's rights, on one hand, and a revision of intellectual history and current practice on the other, as difficult as it is for some men to acknowledge event that women have a place at the table, let along anything significant to say.

As Akerlof and Kranton say:

In every social context, people have a notion of who they are, which is associated with beliefs about how they and others are supposed to behave. These notions...play important roles in how economies work. (Identity Economics, p4)

Stumbling and Mumbling
Patriarchy as an emergent process
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle