Self-Organization...More...

[J. Paul Everett]

In a message dated 11/16/01 11:54:47 AM, corcom at interchange.ubc.ca writes:

<< My preferred metaphor is that of the hunter/gatherer.  For a
hunter/gatherer, the landscape is rich to begin with and requires no
further intervention to make it that way.  Hunters and wildcrafters
protect systems by using them sparingly, thus preserving and sustaining
their yield without threatening the context in which they operate.  And
if the system collapses, hunters can move on to another piece of land.
They are adaptable, resourceful and flexible.  Gardeners (and by
extension, farmers) fence off their land, battle against the elements
and try to preserve what they have.  If the system collapses they are
hooped. >>

Chris,

Well, this prompted a thought on your thought.  When we look at the long wave
history of humankind, we see only two eras of truly fundamental change.  Not
that change didn't occur in the other epochs, but it wasn't a truly
paradigmatic shift.  The first was when mankind stopped being
hunter/gatherers and became farmers and herds- keepers.  This was an enormous
change that gave rise to civilization and more importantly, a small, very
small, slice of the population that could then be supported by the rest and
who then had time to think---and all elements in this world of human origin
are first a thought.  The invention of mathematics by an Indian genius, the
invention of cities, record keeping, writing, etc., mostly in Sumer, were
monstrous leaps up off the veldt 6000+ years ago.  And, they enabled many
more people to live, and therefore, many more thoughts to appear/be had, and
therefore, human-created newness to happen.

To illustrate my thesis that then no further fundamental change happened for
a very long time, take King Solomon and George Washington, living about 3,000
years apart.  Yet, they had, essentially, the same heating, the same
lighting, the same transportation (nobody went faster than a horse on land or
a sail boat would go on water), same mode of communication (written or
verbal, delivered by a person), slave power and very similar medicine.  In
fact, it was not until 1939-40 that medical science had something that would
reliably, knowledgeably (on the part of the prescriber) fight a disease
inside the human body---that was sulfanilamide, followed in short order by
penicillin, etc.  (Saved my brother's life, btw).

The next big change in human consciousness about man's relationship to
reality came someplace in 1740-1785/90 when the Enlightenment fundamentally
altered ideas about the source of change and what humans might do about it.
>From that incredible shift we have the modern civilization that we exist in,
filled with ever-increasing rates of change on multiple fronts.  Is it any
wonder that the Modernists and Post-Modernists are much hated by the
Medievalists?  We are destroying what existed for millennia.  And, that we
have multiple troubles adjusting to that pace of change on so many fronts.
But, in the process mankind is becoming even more free, at least those able
to avail themselves of technologies and new thoughts that generate newness,
world wide.

Therefore, I challenge whether the hunter/gatherer is a viable metaphor for
any organization in this epoch of man.  It certainly can't support the
aggregation of brains necessary to create what we now have.  It would seem
rather that Prigogine's model, or George Land's model, or some other model
might better describe what works best at this point in humankind's history.
Perhaps the cybernetic model, or Open Space as a model, together with it's
self-organizing characteristics is what's really required in these times.
Chaos, complexity and emergence seem to be expanding our understanding of the
Universe, at least it appears so to me.

Just a thought or two.

Paul Everett

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