Reading as a Penance?

I really am avoiding reading as I focus on the writing. It’s not as if it’s any kind of crime not to have read all the writers and books on any given topic and with such a broad and inter-disciplinary topic as mine, there are literally millions of things to read, fictional narratives as well as would-be factual treatises. I took my lead initially from Pirsig, whose psychiatrist told him to just write something, even as a therapy to escape the numberless frustrations between the life-experienced and the words of received-wisdom already “out there”. Reading lists are never-ending to start with and counter-intuitively they grow the more you read. It was Eco that cemented the idea that even books acquired for one’s library could remain unread on the shelf – his “library of unread books”.

Re-shelving several half-read / un-read books recently, I have accidentally slipped into reading mode just occasionally, but yesterday I stumbled upon a writer and a book in that unread library that I had studiously avoided reading for a some time. In fact I only acquired in in guilty response to some very personally directed criticism that I didn’t feel the need to know Gregory Bateson’s work, given my clear interest in Macy and Cybernetics. He was part of those foundations, I already knew that, but you can’t read everyone and everything.

I was prejudiced against Bateson, from very negative opinions of Quine (Gavegai?) and Dennett about Bateson’s, and his first wife Margaret Mead’s, early anthropological work on “tribal” language evolution and development. And frankly, as I’ve said elsewhere, any systemic study of human organisational processes is anthropology by any other name – it’s where I’d started long ago in my 1988/91 Master’s work. So, Bateson wasn’t for me it seemed.

I’ve absorbed plenty of his “Ecology of Mind” ideas by osmosis from other sources I’ve read as part of the Psybertron project, but still hadn’t read his original collection of “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”. I can pretty surely say his ideas in this area are consistent with plenty of my own. I’m not reading him not because I reject his work, but because – see priorities – it feels like more reinforcement of the track I’m already firmly on.

But what of that earlier prejudice? Clearly Nora Bateson, his daughter (b.1968) with his third wife is very active in this cybernetics / systems / complexity space in the 21st C developing and promoting his thinking. Mary Bateson his daughter (b.1939-d.2021) with Margaret Mead was also a strong supporter, co-authoring later in his life, picking-up his unfinished work after his death and in providing a (1999) foreword to the second edition of his (1971/72) “Steps”.

In his own 1971 foreword he says:

“My first anthropological field work among the Baining [tribe] of New Britain [Bali & Papua New Guinea] was a failure, and I had a period of partial failure in research with dolphins. Neither of these failures has ever been held against me.”

Mary’s 1999 foreword acknowledges the failure of his early anthropological work, though widely read suggests he was misunderstood in the context of his wider work which didn’t yet exist, that he was in some sense both ahead of and behind his time. Hard to be sure now, but relieved to find I didn’t imagine that his failure really had been held against him.

Lots of good stuff in the foreword texts and the chapter titles, so good that I may uses some as titles of my own “Pathologies of Epistemology” and “Metalogues” for example but also so many topics already considered here, William Blake, Versailles and more. Not actually that impressed with his writing, none of the chapters I skimmed hooked me – many transcripts of talks? – however good his ideas, so back on the shelf for if-and-when needed.

If he says anything you think I’ve missed, let me know.

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Getting Back to “We”

Brief but fascinating RSA Patron’s Lecture by political scientist Robert Putnam.

Mapping the trajectory of cohesion vs division – “We vs I” on multiple measures across four main areas – over the past century and a bit. One key message is that rather than seeking to learn lessons from the 1960’s when “we never had it so good” (and it’s been all downhill since), we should be looking at late 1800’s early 1900’s for lessons for how the upswing in cohesion was last generated, especially initiatives by people who were young at that time.

Compelling stuff, and there’s a discussion that follows the talk that I’ve not digested yet (See footnotes). Some key takeaways already from my perspective.

Time Axis – Yes, one reason my researches have been so focussed on the causes of what was happening in the 1920’s – responses to “the world in crisis”. (Aside, maybe fascinating also, to compare Kondratiev cycles to this double wave-length cycle.)

Youth / Bottom-Up – Yes, one reason my focus – as an oldie – is meta, the frameworks, the enablers, the environment of “creative constraints” rather than any actual projects, plans, applications. They’ve gotta come from people that will actually live them.

DEI Backlash – I’ve banged on about both sides of Woke / Anti-Woke (a pox on both their houses, etc), but whilst ridding ourselves of the degenerate aspects of identity politics ideology that became attached to these, we mustn’t forget equality and inclusivity of diversity as one of those fundamental enablers. Babies not to be thrown out with the bathwater.

I shall be interested to pick-up on the dialogue following the talk. 

Hat tip to IRamey on BlueSky for the link.

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Post Note: Fascinating that “love” becomes the topic at the end following a question from a charity leader from Hartlepool(*). And two of the panel admit that despite its importance and involvement in their activities, the word doesn’t actually appear anywhere formally. I recalled using the word 4 times in my last two posts about wisdom. And it can’t go un-noticed that changing the subject from I/We/I to Love puts the “summer of love” at the peak in those graphs 🙂

Reminds me of my recurring adage

“What’s so funny, ’bout peace, love and understanding?“

Which of course contrasts perfectly with Putnam’s use of the Elon quote about “empathy being the downfall of the west“. How wrong can one person be?!?

And, having made “LOVE” the topic, I re-read the links I’d made previously about “What’s so funny ’bout …” and this one linking Thoreau with “The Devil Wears Prada” in 2009 is pretty good at summarising my still ongoing agenda … being connected to the idea that more objective things isn’t good for us.

(This “Building Bridges” post from 2010 quotes the relevant lyric, but there are dozens of references to “What’s so funny ’bout …”)

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(*) – And an interesting discussion around the content of this post with Jonathan, here on Facebook relevant to local issues, the kind discussed in local pubs 🙂 Also references this Borders vs Business post, the point being that we need practical constituencies to cohere around, to identify with. National identities – and their boundaries – come with legal jurisdictions enforcing “our” values, so we need to take them seriously for purely practical reasons, ditto all kinds of intra- and supra-national constituencies. That way we can fairly tax rich entities who would otherwise “offshore” their identities (and responsibilities).

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Elusive Wisdom

Preamble

This is the next instalment of my #MoreThanScience dialogue with the ISSS people.

I made a passing reference to a one-to-one dialogue with Gary Smith in this recent interlude, suggesting we were in a good place. The day after I posted that Janet Singer responded to my previous email which embodied this post from a couple of weeks earlier. In that same period between those two exchanges, the intermittent dialogue with Dave Snowden – on the same topic – also included an exchange with Dave (post and comments). Even my most recent post on more general reading mentioned where this #MoreThanScience issue was a blockage to my wider agenda.

I’m focussed on this one very small – linguistic technicality – point for now, not because it represents the object of my work, or any inherent or general pedantry – indeed vagueness is a virtue – but because not having some basic shared understanding here undermines the value of further dialogue about systems knowledge generally. And indeed Yiannis Laouris also shared more excellent contributions to that wider dialogue, to add to other previous materials already captured from him, Janet, Jessie and Gary – which I am just itching to develop and talk about.

And, let’s not forget from an ISSS perspective, all of this is follow-up to my workshop at DC 2024. It’s all connected and I owe some responses.

The Content – Small and Simple?

My topic is for the moment, as I say, this linguistic technicality. In my last post on this, I reduced the whole of the preceding dialogue to 4 simple statements the last of which was:

… this simple question is the point of the workshop & posts:

“IS WISDOM MORE THAN SCIENCE OR ISN’T IT?“

(And if it is, shouldn’t we be more careful in how we use those two words, Science and Wisdom?)

The objection – to the question – is that I called it simple, but in reality it’s not. The definitions and understandings of science and wisdom, and how well these can be captured in symbolic language anyway, are massively complex questions. The relations & similarities, dependencies & differences between Science and Wisdom are therefore another order more complex still. Sure, tell me about it 🙂 #ItsComplicated

My point, again, is that despite that undoubted complexity and uncertainty on so many levels, it is still a simple question with a simple – even a given – answer.

My answer is clearly “Yes” (Wisdom IS #MoreThanScience). And in fact the more complex those other aspects, the clearer and simpler the question and answer are.

I embarked on an ontological / taxonomic exercise, in symbolic (logical and graphical) language – in some draft visual / dynamic slides, hierarchical, heterarchical, holarchical systems network or set-theory diagramming based on some I’d prepared and used in earlier lives – remember this used to be my day job before I saw the error of our ways 😉 But, do we really want to go there just now? Let’s just stick to the natural language of human interactions for a while longer.

The Question Again

Let’s rephrase my question negatively and see if the point is clearer:

Is there any conceivable world – a whole world over all evolved times and domains – in which we can (ever, usefully or truthfully) say:

Wisdom <is identical with> Science ?

Surely not, “No”? Whatever their complexities of definitions & understandings, overlaps & relations in good & bad examples of linguistic & physical process embodiments, can the answer ever be “Yes”?

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What Am I Not Reading?

Made it clear since the turn of the year that I am positively avoiding reading to concentrate on the writing with mental breaks embodied through live performance interludes and walks in the wild(ish) outdoors. I just posted a diary of planned in-person interludes – in the side-bar if you’re on a tablet or PC, in the footer if you’re on your phone – largely to get a grip on how many I’m committing to. If you want to talk in person, you’ll know where to find me.

My writing agenda is as wide as this blog is long-lived, with 2 or perhaps 3 well-defined projects in hand, but one single item has become a stumbling block – a conversation killer – to establishing the language needed to be taken seriously by the intended audience. I’ve tagged that blockage #MoreThanScience in several dialogues, with ISSS members, with Dave Snowden, with Teesside-SitP and with others. Essentially, if we don’t value resources that are not scientific, don’t recognise that there is more to understanding (and acting in) the world than scientific knowledge and processes, then we’re letting the world down badly. Few would actually deny understanding that, but I am always left with so then WHY? label everything we do as science or sciences – systems science, complexity science, social sciences generally? It denies, or at least disadvantages by obscuring, use of non-scientific contributions in the languages of wisdom, love, intuition et al. Another instalment of that conversation in a following post, where I can rephrase my assertion as a negative question that ought to be easier to answer. I think I understand those motivations “why?” and would really love to move the dialogue on to challenging my own motivations and objectives in erecting that #GoodFence

Although I am indeed not actually reading any new material right now, I am nevertheless noticing new materials reminding me of old materials generally and this long-standing stumbling block in particular. Impossible to ignore. These for example:

Carlo ROVELLI – Last night someone (Sean Brady) referred to Carlo Rovelli’s (2020) “Helgoland” as a surprise to discover 5 years after publication. I reviewed it in early 2021 – it remains an excellent recommended read for anyone in this systems space – and as well as Mach (Vienna Circle) and Nagarjuna (Buddhist) links, led me through Bogdanov from systems thinking in general to systems as a specific discipline at Hull CSS and then to ISSS contacts and back to earlier INCOSE sources.

(I’ve been immersed in “systems thinking” for the whole of this 25 year research project because I was immersed in it my entire career since the late 1970’s – but it was only through contact with Anatoly Levenchuk and Rob Black as INCOSE advocates that I noticed since 2010 the wider formality of “Systems” in day-job contexts, in parallel with my “Psybertron” research, and the Rovelli / Mach / Bogdanov trigger as recently as 2020/21 above made it the explicit / active topic of my research. There are so many global “systems” initiatives in every topic area from general management to wider business, government and civil society that I can’t list them, so apart from my ISSS membership, I effectively treat Ben Taylor as the hub or custodian of the network of systems networks of over 40,000 people.)

Jean-Pierre DUPUY – The same is true of Jean-Piere Dupuy’s (2009, MIT Edition) “On the Origins of Cognitive Science” – a republication of his (2000) “Mechanisation of the Mind” with a new preface following the death of Heinz von-Foerster. Another highly recommended read. Having lent my copy to the local pub book club, I recovered the 2009 edition to read the new preface – pushing the agenda that continues as my own.

First referenced and part-reviewed here:
“Dupuy Completion” (2002)
Most recent mention here:
“Psybernetic Cognition” (2025)

(All systems are dynamic but those involving (evolved / emergent) life are distinct even if not dichotomous #GoodFences, and where that living complexity includes humanity, the human condition (after Arendt) is more to do with love (**) than science. Rehabilitating the initial failure of Cybernetics with the more humanistic Macy-Conferences interpretation originally intended by Wiener, Bateson, Varela, Foerster and more – something I’ve tagged #Psybernetics in recent years – systems thinking where the psychological complexity of humanity and the ecosystems we inhabit, are a given.)

Sara IMARI-WALKER (ASU / Santa Fe) – I obtained her (2024) “Life As No-One Knows It – the Physics of Life’s Emergence”(*). (Been a fan recently of her active research work, as well as Paul Davies, Jessica Flack, Lee Cronin, Kevin Mitchell and more.) On the shelf for a future read, but the blurbs and the initial “What is Life?” opening also reflecting on the possibility, rejected by Dupuy and Arendt above, that the living may be no different to the dead – that “Life does not exist.” – as she puts it.

Onwards and upward.

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(*) “No-One Knows” is of course the spur for my underlying agenda – what does it mean to know anything? And, it’s also the Josh Homme title / lyric / chorus of a QOTSA number – seeing the connection? (Also the connection from Hull-CSS to ISSS via Dennis Finlayson at a local gig. Small world.)

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Post Note: And an admission, I did this weekend also choose to re-read to completion “Leonard and Hungry Paul” (2019) by Ronan Hession, by independent publishers Bluemoose Books. Very good, gently funny study on life, love, family and friendship. No funerals and one wedding, maybe. (PS – never did find out explicitly why Hungry Paul has that name. Presumably his older sister’s nick-name for him from his time as a needy infant, but never even mentioned, unless I missed it?)

(**) For “Love” – see also “Getting Back to We”

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Musical Interlude

I often mention that live music is my main diversion from the intellectual and the mundane. Music, and/or walking in the wilds that is. After our regular annual walking holiday the last week in February – some great walks around Porte Soller in the Serra Tramuntana mountains of North-West Mallorca – these last two weekends have involved gigs.

The well-ordered writing project(s) haven’t quite recovered since being distracted from getting them back on track in the new year. Technical content-wise – the ongoing dialogue with Dave Snowden really needs some attention, his recent extensive blogs as well as our exchanges (Dave responded to my last post) – and the “more than science” conversation with ISSS members needs an update since I had a one-to-one with president Gary Smith. We’re in a good place. Onwards and upward.

The first of the two gigs was last weekend in Hull. Avalanche Party headlining their promotional tour on the release of their latest album recorded with the resources of the Joshua Tree studios and record company backing on the back of previous Austin TX “SXSW” success. (See more in the footnotes to my previous reference.) The Polar Bear Club is a famed UK venue with a great history in grass-roots music. The relatively low turnout – 40/50 people tops including the two support bands and their hangers-on? – might have something to do with the foggy Sunday night(*) and the surrounding road-construction access and parking difficulties – but the atmosphere could have been better.

Avalanche Party themselves were excellent again, with sympathetic support from the mixing desk and lighting, also now knowing most of their numbers, thanks to regularly playing the new CD recently. Full-on intensity, bass-driven riffs, with dynamic range and rhythm changes, as I’ve said before, puts one in mind of QOTSA with extra keyboards and sax (before I’d heard bassist Joe – originally met in our local bar – was a QOTSA fan too, and of course that Joshua Tree connection).

Support bands were a mixed bag. Second band were Bleach, competent but a little too conventional for me, very much led by their guitarist. But, first up were Wormfood, a bit “art-school”, chaotic but fun and bouncy, not taking themselves too seriously – self-identifying as “pretentious twats”. Really enjoyed them, and could easily get into them.

Hope the rest of Avalanche Party’s tour goes well, London and Belgium / Holland / Germany included, followed by France, Spain, Poland, Czechia and more. With recent serious signs of success and support behind them, it feels like now or never for fame and fortune. “Last roll of the dice” someone said. Good luck guys.

After the Polar Bear in Hull last weekend, this weekend was The Georgian Theatre in Stockton – again really about grass-roots support for original performers, and the evergreen question of what does it take – or even mean – to make it as a musical success these days? Creativity needs to be experienced and appreciated.

Headline were Wave Pictures, a band I didn’t previously know, and with some obvious “fame” behind them, commanding the £20+ ticket price, but I’d actually come along specifically to see the support, The Middle Management.

Although my own musical taste is rooted in blues-guitar-based and singer-songwriter “Americana”, Wave Pictures, like Bleach last weekend, were just a tad too conventional – led by the lead guitar – to be interesting for me, though obviously some quirky wit in the songs themselves which you can only ever get a hint of in one live listening.

The three fellas in Middle Management were previously in a band called The Young Hegelians (did I mention pretentious, but witty) and Simone the new member on keyboards and vocals is also someone we see regularly with her partner in our local bar (seeing the connection?) It was my first opportunity to see them, from previous enquiries they were busy rehearsing and recording. They were very much worth the entry fee. All I knew before were comparisons to Talking Heads and hearing their new single Influencer Influenza. Last time I saw Talking Heads live would have been Hammersmith Odeon (now Apollo) late 70’s, probably their first UK tour, so what’s not to like?

Actually, Middle Management were refreshing, much more original and a long way from any kind of tribute act – the covers bands that seem to fill every local music slot these days. It’s the rhythmic variety and dynamic range that gets you viscerally, but the fun of originality and intelligent wit that shines through. Loved them. When can I see and hear – embody the experience – more?

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FootNotes:

(*) Foggy Sunday Night? Being in Hull searching for the M62 home in the small hours of Monday 10th March 2025 – did I mention the road construction / closures? – I can vouch for the local fog on that night / morning. That weird coincidence meant I’ve been taking more than passing interest in the Russian connection in the Solong ramming of the Stena Immaculate that morning.

Perhaps not obvious, but with my intellectual topic being systems thinking – aka Cybernetics (or Psybernetics) being literally “governance” – the less-than / more-than science – of politics of government, local, national and international are integral to my interests. The fact that everything IS connected, doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy or that you’re paranoid 😉

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Catholicism by Choice

An interest of mine at several points previously, that “wiser” people – writers, thinkers – have often chosen later in life to join the Catholic church, having previously been Anglican / protestant or atheistic. Part of my respect for theology alongside secular science, and religion as “that which binds us” ritualistically.

A wide-ranging “Voicecraft” conversation with Dave Snowden – including his own espousal of Catholicism- too many notes to record (yet) – on so many subjects I agree on. A few linguistic choices where I’d disagree with his choices & rejections of specific words, but absolutely agree with the distinctions (#GoodFences) he’s making.

Rituals ….

(Transcript isn’t great, but I may work on it … to make it usefully searchable.)

Still absolutely baffled by his grip on “science” as his preferred term for (all) his work, given his nevertheless using the pejorative term “scientistic” to label the predictive / causal problem.

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More later …

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Post Note / Aside. Spooky coincidence, but the day before picking up this “Catholic” (name) church reference from Dave, I use the English “catholic” (adjective) in an exchange with him on LinkedIn.

And another Post Note: quoting Dave from another LinkedIn thread:

… they use intuition and then mask it with analytics to justify what they already decided to do.

But I’m wary of anything that contrasts intuition with ‘rationality’; you end up with the whole left/right thing from McGilcrist and others that doesn’t match modern Neuroscience, a point of disagreement I have …

That “post-rationalisation” was one of the original things that led me to my “keeping science honest” agenda. The tendency to make things look “scientific” even when they never really were – way back in my 1988/91 MBA thesis before that became my Psybertron project agenda since 2001.

He’s right to be wary of the terms on the E & I sides – Explicit vs Implicit, Rational / Science vs Intuitive – as well as contrasting them, but as we’ve said before I think he misses the real left-right brain points of Iain McGilchrist’s work. Language-wise it is indeed a minefield, but the real distinctions are important to understand.

(Latest instalment here: https://www.psybertron.org/archives/19537 )

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Autistic as an adjective?

I have 4 or 5 on my timeline who are either self-confessed “on the spectrum” or are living with a family member with Autism or Asperger’s. It’s a neurodiverse issue that requires care to varying degrees for the individual. No doubt. I do care.

But, I’ve been using the term Autistic as an adjective (and sometimes the abstract noun Autism) in a technical sense since 2005/6 for a much wider misunderstanding of the place of “rationality” in our socio-cultural-political “systems” context.

Caring about the former I often bite my tongue in needing to refer to the latter, but I’m finding the term more and more appropriate in 2025. (Not least because of the current prominence of Musk, but he’s just one visible consequence of a long-standing, yet largely hidden & misunderstood, iceberg confronting us.)

#AutisticEconomics
#AutisticPolitics
#AutisticSocialSciences

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And here, those original 2005/6 references:

2005 – “To be Rational is Autistic”
https://psybertron.org/archives/962

2006 – “Autistic Economics”
https://psybertron.org/archives/1252

General Autism / Autistic references in Psybertron
https://psybertron.org/?s=Autis&sort=oldest

Deirdre McCloskey, mentioned only once so far in the whole blog, but the source behind one of those earliest references to (Post)-Autistic-Economics, and yet the word isn’t mentioned in her Wikipedia profile – wonder why, there is in fact a whole post-autistic-economics “movement”?

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More on “More Than Science”

In summary(*1):

Is there “more than science” that is valuable to understanding & engaging in physical & human, content & processes in a world seen in terms of systems(*2)?

Can we usefully distinguish – draw a #GoodFence(*3) between – that which is science from that which is more than science?

Is “wisdom” a good word – as good an umbrella word as any(*4) – for understanding and referring to all those aspects that are beyond science?

So, … is Wisdom more than Science or isn’t it?(*5)

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Notes

(*1) – This post is a summary of where recent email dialogue got to after I shared the proceedings from and proposal for ISSS Workshops. (Incidentally, I think it significant that the only dialogue so far is with the women, Janet and Jesse. The men are silent so far.)

(*2) – I make no secret of the fact that literally the whole world, from fundamental quanta to entire transnational governmental issues to the cosmos itself can be, and is best, seen in systems terms. This isn’t a fatuous “theory-of-everything” claim, simply a pragmatic best-world-view claim. And by “Systems” I’m including Cybernetics, Complexity, OR/Community-OR, Systems-Thinking, you name it, and all the specific theories, sciences, methods and processes within and overlapping those broad genres.

(*3) – The distinction I’m making in this “Tyranny of the Explicit” scope is between the explicit, objective, definitive, scientific, conceptually-modelled from the implicit, intuitive, subjective, humanistic, embodied, holistic, directly-experienced non-science? Most of my concerns here are linguistic – maintaining constructive dialogue that integrates broad (inclusive) views. All language is about choosing and using words (symbols) – what we choose to call things – every word has a pointer element making a “this-not-that” distinction for the purposes of such dialogue. I simply use the Robert Frost / GK Chesterton #GoodFences metaphor, to emphasise the plurality & flexibility of such useful & intersecting distinctions as opposed to hard-and-fast dichotomies (camps) to be attacked or defended.

(*4) – Note the question is about being any good, useful, not about being rigorously defined in terms that would meet orthodox scientific standards, that would defeat my point here? And obviously, “social sciences” have lived with such compromises and approximations for many decades. I make few if any (explicit) social-science references in my work, I jump straight from STEM / Science to (maximally complex, human, eco-) Systems Thinking, but I do acknowledge that many of the issues I’m addressing already are and have been addressed in such fields. Note *3 is already one corollary – that war-like dichotomies between (say) science and post-modern “social-construct” views or between science and religious dogmas (say) are not useful even if the distinctions are themselves useful. Another is the idea that “objective approximations” and scientific representations are useful in subjective contexts, but always lose or distort some human aspects. I label the understanding of such dichotomies and paradoxes, whilst choosing to treat them as simply useful distinctions, as PoPoMo (Post-Post-Modernism) or what some now call “Meta-Modernism”.

(*5) – Does explicitly & exclusively attaching the word “science” to our endeavours, implicitly constrain language expectations – even kill useful dialogue – when considering more-or-less-wise, more-than-science, contributions from community members? Whatever all the scientific and philosophical (and moral) threads and histories running through and across this whole topic – this simple question is the point of the workshop & posts:

IS WISDOM MORE THAN SCIENCE OR ISN’T IT?

(And if it is, shouldn’t we be more careful in how we use those two words, Science and Wisdom?)

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Hate Speech – Really?

This is just a holding post for what needs to be a longer piece, but there are a whole load of live questions in early 2025 about what kinds of speech are inappropriate – and legal definitions of various “hate-speech” related ideas – blasphemy, islamophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, you name it.

Quite simple for me, since the idea of appropriateness of communications is built in to my “rules of engagement” for decades, but poor innocents who’ve grown-up with the un-moderated social-media travesty of free-speech, especially the would-be “anything goes” Musk variety are left floundering. (I say “would-be” because of course his X/Twitter algorithms control his interests NOT wider freedoms, so it’s not even “freeze peach” let alone actual free-speech anyway.)

Before we get to details of different kinds of protections from expressions around various protected characteristics, let’s just stick with the generality of hate-speech as potential “hate-crime incidents” for a moment. For anyone reporting any incident to the authorities as a potential crime, it’s recorded as a non-crime until police investigations show it to be a crime. Of course the innocents are triggered by NCHI’s (Non-Crime Hate Incidents) – just short-hand to allow the police to filter-out vexations accusations of hate-crimes – especially those around the gender-wars, and the battles between Woke and anti-Woke activists. (A pox on both their houses.) Claim and counter-claim. You talk war, you get war. Vexatious accusations of hate-speech are themselves hate-speech.

I labelled the problem as “identity politics” years ago (updated here). What people identify as, and how others relate to the identity of others. (The basis of identity generally is a whole other #GoodFences topic here … my speciality in fact. )

Speech, is a physical action like any other, and can be a crime. The problematic ones are obvious and there really are only two right now:

GENDER & SEXUALITY

Let’s start with the gender vs sexuality wars – the whole LGB/TQI+ word-salad – most serious because it’s been allowed to become the cause of the fuckwits in the white-house and the demise of democracy, even though the original issue is the physically trivial. Self-identity (name-claiming)  or other-identity (name-calling) for “neuro-atypical” life-style reasons have been turned into “vexatious” agendas by “Woke” activists helped by the anti-Woke taking the war to them. The right to identify as something is one thing, but it doesn’t confer any rights against those of other legally recognised identities.

The neuro-atypical tag is a clue and there are many more than this gender/sexuality case. These are mental health-care issues.

Typical left-liberal groups and thinkers have frankly failed to get a grip on reality here, confusing multiple individual rights in the absence of collective responsibilities, leaving the field wide-open to (c)onservative, (C)onservative and authoritarian factions. (See fascist fuckwits in the white-house and see Borders vs Business.)

RACE, ETHNICITY, RELIGION & CULTURE

These really are one “cultural” issue, and my go-to expert here is Kenan Malik. In short for this starter post, they really are one complex, tangled issue. Any legislation that attempts to define one without seeing the whole is doomed. Proper consideration of whole and parts is “Systems Thinking”.

Judaism and antisemitism have been a special case since the “World in Crisis” in the first half of the 20th C. For good reason. But in fact that world in crisis through two world-wars has been responsible for so many un-resolved conflicts in thought and ideas between the objectively physical and the subjectively mental. Between dead-things and living-systems. Anyone who thinks coming down on one side of that generic conflict is any kind of resolution needs to think harder.

Post-9/11 2001, the other pairing is Islamophobia and Islamism (and associated-terrorism, though terrorism isn’t of course limited to this one ideological conflict.) Religion generally vs free-thought, secularism and humanism is another. Even the pro-life vs abortion, end-of-life-care vs assisted-dying and many more, are confusions between physical realities and mental moralities not resolvable by picking sides. A systemic dialogue is non-trivial, complex as well as complicated. Meantime the rule of law and the rejection of physical violence apply, even where for all the reasons above, the law may currently be an ass.

Including hate-speech, yes, really.
(Watch this space.)

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Post Note: That Woke / anti-Woke reference above focusses on what has become the extremes of DEI, but predictably, with the Whitehouse Fuckwits gung-ho for throwing all their babies out with the bathwater, zero DEI is as bonkers and inhuman as the other extreme. (Obviously the reason for my “Pox on both their houses” default position.)

Interesting – scary – piece here on LinkedIn about a piece published anonymously in the BMJ  on the immediate human consequences of current actions. 

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Borders vs Business

There’s a sense from the romantic support for supra-national efforts like EU, NATO, UN etc, that nations, national borders are a hinderance to freedoms – of (movement of) people (and capital) – freedoms managed by supranational interests. “Imagine no countries” as Lennon opined … (If only – see Jonathan Haidt, and notice that is more than a decade old – pre-Trump! See his “Lennon vs Durkheim Test” from about 3:35 minutes in.)

The division between individual “parties” (both people and legal business entities) freedoms and rights on the one hand and the values of collective responsibilities (to humanity and the planet) on the other, much more closely define our 21st C political polarisation than any old left<>right labels. Much closer to a libertarian<>liberal political compass axis these days. But all labels are just short-hand for complexity.

All Systems Thinking (ie Cybernetics as a response to complexity) leads to questions of national and supra-national governance (ie Cybernetics as literally conceived) so better political models has already become a core issue here. Democracy still wins the best-of-a-bad-bunch contest – after Churchill – but there are still so many variations we need to get right within the idea of democracy – institutions, arrangements and processes.

Quite simply for today’s post, I’ve in recent years been defending the need to honour borders which might make me sound on the right – “build the wall”, “stop the boats”, (*) you name it – (naming see?) The need to honour borders, recognise nations and jurisdictions is a purely pragmatic Systems Thinking view. The larger a jurisdiction gets – one world, one nation anyone (*) – the greater and more complex become the internal divisions and diversity of values and interests, the less governable the whole without authoritarian “strong-man” governance and the loss of democratic values.

There’s a dynamic balance between the manageable size of democracies, which can always grow by evolution if successful – the mother of parliaments anyone – and the need for supra-national (federal) arrangements where interests and values conflict across borders.

Our ability to achieve this kind of meta-stability is thwarted by interests that are actually bigger than nations and their governments. That is multi-national businesses generally, the tech giants specifically, and increasing wealth-power of individuals – again both human and legal entity individuals. Jurisdictions need to be able to manage their values, enforce their laws and raise the finances of their own governments, big or small. The imbalance of wealth-power between individuals is one of the things jurisdictions need to be able to manage.

These “elites” in terms of power and influence always start small like me and you, even the corporate and family inheritances started somewhere. Becoming ungovernable imbalanced elites is a feature of the system of how wealth-power is managed relative to national jurisdiction power. It’s the imbalance of power that corrupts, not original corrupt intent in the will to succeed. In the interests of democracy national jurisdictions must have sufficient power to govern such individual and corporate elites, or conversely national and supranational jurisdictions must ensure those elites cannot become bigger and more powerful than the idea of nations. Individual nations must fall within supranational jurisdictions.

The undermining of supra-national arrangements by individual nations and the undermining of such jurisdictions by corporate and individual wealth-power make democracies impossible. An “above the law” Trump is bad enough but Musk’s purchase of government power is the very anti-thesis of democracy. Conflict of interest writ large, conflict with democracy itself. Small national governments are regularly “bought” by commercial interests, but a democracy the size of the USA doesn’t bear thinking about.

Such chaos must be contained within one term. World order, national & supra-national order, must be restored to sanity if we value democracy. Specific “anti-woke” agendas pale into insignificance by comparison, a distraction. #PartOfTheProblem

For more on the general point of the political distortions created by individual and corporate wealth-power greater than national and supra-national governments – this recent episode of “Thinking Allowed” is recommended.

Laurie Taylor talks to Brooke Harrington, and Guido Alfani about the super-rich, more powerful than nations, and the off-shoring of finance, evading jurisdictions beyond national borders. Essential listening.

[Note (*) In case it’s not obvious these are NOT policies, campaigns or slogans I subscribe to 🙂 Any conservatism here is small (c) conservatism.]

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Post Note:

This is of course part of the otherwise no-brainer “tax the rich” debate. The movement power of wealthy individuals and businesses mitigates against it. Sane “border controls” agreed and enforced between nations and regions is a fundamental necessity.

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