Psybertron Asks

Preamble

Leland (Lee) Beaumont has been a fellow traveller in the quest to raise the value of wisdom over narrower views of rationality. Whilst I’ve been blogging he’s been building a massive “Wisdom Wikiversity” resource. His focus has always been more educational whereas mine was (and is) on documenting a more abstract philosophical framework (good > epistemology > ontology > metaphysics). You see how massive his resource is from this Applied Wisdom / Curriculum page which indexes and groups his many modular “lessons”.

We mostly corresponded by email over the years, sharing links etc, but there are several references in the Psybertron blog too. We share a lot of common sources and general agreement on the subject matter but we’ve not corresponded for a few years, partly (a) because one mis-perceived difference between us that he was nevertheless biased towards good-old-fashioned rationality and critical thinking (patently not true) and partly (b) because my own focus shifted to “systems thinking as a response to complexity” in constructing my philosophical framework(s) above (and partly the distraction of Pirsig’s #ZMM50th).

Reformation

For both of us however, “Wisdom” is consolidated as the word of choice – short-hand for our subject matter – the missing ingredient for a world better than the predicament we currently find ourselves in. Most recently Lee has called his project to achieve this a new global “Reformation” to educate ourselves (learning beats teaching, etc.)

It’s a “two-page” summary with updated links to the key lessons from the Wikiversity resource he has created. A recommended read, it’s excellent, notwithstanding the comments I make below, almost all of which are about alignment with my own work, some of which I’d captured in an initial response on LinkedIn:

Wisdom

Despite the fact that “critical thinking” is still prominent in the introduction and the graphic headline text, his introduction concludes with “more wisdom” and “greater integrity”, and the first bullet of the first preparatory section mentions wisdom twice – proposing “living wisely” and adopting “wise practices”.

No doubt that wisdom is front and centre.

Integrity

Significant that integrity makes the summary. Generally most would interpret this as something like “consistently incorruptible honesty” in the words and actions of people, but actually integrity is even more fundamental than that from the systems integration perspective.

Honesty and good faith – virtue – are a given, but consistency is over-rated (see Brunsson on the positive value of “hypocrisy”). From a “systems thinking” view of everything – as a complex web of functional interactions – it cannot all be equally true and consistent all of the time, they’re always in an state of flux – whether at glacial / evolutionary pace, or the pace of day-to-day human activity and everything in between. So, the web of stuff is generally always full of inconsistencies. The real need is the joined-up “holistic” systems thinking – seeing functionally integrated wholes in systems terms of their parts and ecosystems – so that current gaps and inconsistencies are visible, intelligible, manageable and improvable. Managed inconsistency beats artificially – dishonestly – constrained consistency.

On this systems integration perspective, see Lee’s piece on “Interdependence”. He even uses the phrasing:

Every living being, every system—natural or human-made—exists in a vast network of relationships and flows. The Earth is not a collection of isolated entities but a deeply intertwined system where changes in one area inevitably ripple through many others. Understanding these interconnections is essential for sustaining life and ensuring the well-being of future generations.

That …
using the word “system” twice
… is all I mean by “systems thinking” 🙂

Information & Belief

More common ground for us. Information is fundamental to my philosophical framework, metaphysical even. And reformation includes concern for journalism, media & social media standards – prominently recurring here too. True belief is of course fundamental to my epistemological “knowledge” agenda – what does it mean to (believe you) know anything? Something which involves systems of belief & value as well as explicit concepts of evidence, logic and proof. (Even “good religion”^(*) – or sacred naturalism in my terms.)

Governance

Governance has been explicit to my Cybernetic focus on systems – aka Psybernetic to emphasise the original human intentional aspect of Wiener’s term – well beyond feedback, command & control allusions. Cybernetics literally means governance. Not surprisingly governance conceptually has constantly circled round for me to government practically and politically – organisationally, locally, nationally and supra-nationally.

Lee’s two-page summary doesn’t currently mention democracy, but for the same reason I do mention it. Not only is it clearly “broken” in the 21st C and fixing it a fundamental part of any reformation project – for both of us. The estates, institutions and processes of democracy may be broken and under attack from many misinformed, misguided directions. As Churchill said – it’s the worst form of government apart from all the others – so there isn’t much alternative to working out the best way to improve and defend it.

My own (UK) emphasis has been institutional arrangements that maintain democracy between elections, so that elections are less focal, campaigns a less dominant & less frequent part of the whole, and that we have “properly proportional” electoral systems that better avoid the tyrannies of both majorities and minorities. Also, extending the bicameral basics to “differently appointed” second houses & heads of state as well as to additional local / topical “people’s” assemblies or standing forums.

Lee elsewhere has interest in similar aspects of other (US) electoral system reforms:

• Final Five Voting
• Liquid Democracy
• Decision Making Forums

I think the only difference between us is, as I noted earlier, that I’m happy to continue at the conceptual level – the frameworks and characteristics that make for good systems & models of knowledge & governance – whereas Lee is focussed on education of the specific options & choices of processes & models available. I think Lee’s choices fit my frameworks, we appear complementary.

Coda

The remaining “problem” is a fact for all human endeavours and that is the imperfection of language; that communication is a “game” in the true sense. We all choose to emphasise different preferred words, their usage and their intended interpretations, even where our intentions remain closely aligned. Although the word Wisdom – partly because it’s so ill-defined – has found traction in most dialogues, choices of language around (say) systems and complexity remain problematic – quite strongly held critical differences killing creative dialogue.

Practice intentional evolution.
We can do this!

=====

(*) Zen Coda

When it comes to value & belief systems Lee mentions the concept of good religion but doesn’t mention any specific philosophical or theological world-views in his two-page “Reformation” summary. I noted above that the closest thing to religion (secular, non-ideological-dogmatic religion) I would ascribe to myself is Sacred Naturalism (aka Natural Theology) (even Humanism is this kind of religion although most humanists would rail against the suggestion.) However, of course, my own systems-thinking metaphysical philosophy has evolved from Taoist / Zen Buddhist thinking triggered by Nobel-prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson triggering my reading Robert Pirsig’s ZMM. And the rest is history from my perspective.

So, although not mentioned by Lee in that Reformation summary, you will find his Wikiversity resources include “The Wise Path” as progress toward wisdom. So, no explicit mention of The Way / Tao / Dao and yet very clear on becoming as opposed to being (wise) and doing good, with a reference to the work of French / Nepalese Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard.

It’s all connected.

=====

Stockton Calling has become a regular annual multi-venue music festival, with a focus on providing support for North East bands, offered many short set opportunities. Saturday this Easter weekend is the 3rd I’ve attended. Going to post thoughts in reverse order from the top – the day didn’t quite go to plan thanks to Northern Rail cancellations – so a bit of a random, hurried selection of who to watch, where, once I’d checked-in at The Arc – and didn’t see any of the official headliners – spent the latter half of the evening in The Georgian.

Avalanche Party were the band I was there to see, again. Energy-packed stampeding beast of a performance as we’ve come to expect, this home gig effectively the finale of their album-promotional European tour. As others commented, the sound has suffered recently. Hurried – short-sets / short-turnarounds – sound check seems to be about the band being able to hear what they need through their monitors, fair enough, but with the audience experience set at everything turned-up to eleven. Lost something of the dynamic interest in the varied instrumentation between guitar, keyboard, sax and multiple vocals. Hard to pick any one of them out of the wall of sound so the live experience ends up a bit monotonous, even when you recognise the opening riffs and choruses. Fortunately the album “Der Traum Uber Alles“ benefits from top notch engineering and mixing – à la QOTSA – at Joshua Tree’s Rancho De La Luna Studio.

Home Counties were the best act on the day. Fantastic energetic delivery and presence from the front pair and the conventional guitars, keyboard, bass and drums augmented by the male lead and the bassist doubling-up on synths. Heavy delivery with synth sub-bass lines and an 80’s disco twist compounded by the male lead looking like a cross between the young Marc Almond and Dave Gahan back in the day. Found myself standing in front of the rhythm guitarist who seemed to leading much of the choppy drive and direction. Very entertaining all round. Hope to see them again.

Swannek were the biggest surprise of the day. A laid-back jazzy-soul collective led by Findlay Hewitson didn’t auger well for my usual tastes. Electric piano, tenor sax and cello used sparingly and effectively (take note AP), but it was the vocals that wowed. Mollie Birmingham (a name which Google struggles with) accompanied by a reggae / ska / toaster vocalist for the first couple of numbers, soaring and gravelly by turns, she commanded attention from audience and apologetic photographers throughout, couldn’t get enough of her. Courageous therefore for the band to finish on an instrumental to showcase their musicians. One to watch, they were actually promoted by the local “BBC Introducing”. Will seek out again.

Before these a mixed-bag. I only just caught the last number and a half of SISTER MADDS – heavy and probably fun, but for me she was trying a bit too hard to act the bad girl. CASINO a bit too laid back funky soul with little else to commend performance-wise. Suspect from their audience there may be more in their songs? WALDO’S GIFT – weird to say the least, even their drummer had to admit, doing his best to engage the audience. No songs, all instrumental numbers led by their nerdy-persona virtuoso guitarist^(*) and an impressive board-full of effects and loops. Notable to me that Carl, the lead guitar of Middle Management, was there in the audience to appreciate him (though they weren’t on the bill) and that Waldo’s bassist and drummer were chilling – as I was – in The Kopper Keg after Avalanche Party.

(*) Not a bad thing in itself – I’m off to see Joe Satriani & Steve Vai next month.

Onwards and upward.

=====

Had a couple of interesting exchanges with Jean Boulton after my previous post tying-up a few loose-ends around my ongoing writing.

Preamble

Just one point I want to address here.

Part of the “problem with the problem” we’re dealing with – a meta-problem – is that we’re talking about “life, the universe and everything” and therefore “talking about everything all at once”. It takes effort and good-faith to avoid such dialogue seriously straining and breaking the limits of language, and it makes destructive-critique and disagreement much easier than creative-agreement – a topic in its own right for my writing project(s).

Also, talking about literally everything, we’re also talking about all types (classes, categories, forms) of everything at several levels of abstraction, every-meta-thing(s) as well as every-particular-thing(s).

And, once we’ve accepted science isn’t everything, then the ground we stand on, our chosen metaphysics, cannot simply be physical science. Metaphysics isn’t very fashionable in the 21st C, but these kinds of meta-talking about everything in the abstract are the bread-and-butter of philosophy.

Whatever ground we stand on and however explicitly we expose our metaphysics, we are creating our ontology, a meta-model of that everything, all those things and meta-things that may exist in the world and all their properties, processes and relations, and an epistemology of all that we can know about this “everything”, what everything means and thus every other branch of philosophy too. We’re talking about everything on many levels & dimensions.

(In my own metaphysics, my epistemology and my ontology are so closely tied that I’ve been calling it an epistemological-ontology … but I don’t want to talk here about that meta-model of everything – everything all at once.)

So, as I say I just want to mention one point here:

The Word “Systems”

In the previous post I already alluded to the fact that Seddon was limiting himself to the complication of particular systems. Named systems – human and technology – that were part of particular organisations and operations.

Boulton’s focus (like mine) is complexity – Embracing Complexity / The Dao of Complexity – and her interest (like mine) is well beyond the organisational management perspective of that previous dialogue. But she used the word “system” in this phrase: “when things don’t stabilise into so-called systems as when they do, and what makes them unravel”. She too is using system in the particular – so-called, things, they, them.

For me, as I’ve expressed many times but this is my first exchange with Boulton, systems is actually “Systems Thinking (and Doing)” as a response to real-world complexity. I’m using systems at the meta (as well as the particular) levels, simply viewing that “everything” in terms of their functional ontology. Seeing everything in the world in terms of their dynamic relations with other part & whole & eco-system things at any level on any dimension. A choice of how to view the (whole) world. Part of our metaphysical choice.

For me Systems is simply a response to Complexity, a useful way of viewing it all in all its complexity, not an alternate competing view.

In this systems view all such systems are always dynamic, patterns in flux on any & all levels & dimensions, evolving, and like everything else in the natural world, some such particular systems hang-around – emerge, stabilise, some by human choice, some by the active processes of life – reify-long-enough to be usefully given a name – speciation by any other name. But they’re all viewable as systems, even if they don’t.

Complexity camp or Systems camp, we can all use both words without pitting one against the other?

=====

Yes, despite appearances, I really am progressing the writing at last. Essentially, what little reading I am still doing is simply proving to be confirmation and reinforcement, adding new references, so lots of drafts, mental and physical, have already taken their shape.

I wrote-up the Iain McGilchrist / Oxford trip, but haven’t done so for the John Seddon / Mike Jackson Hull lecture nor for the British Library visits. So below, this is just a round-up of those.

John Seddon – gave this year’s annual Mike Jackson lecture at Hull Uni / Centre for Systems Studies (CSS) last Thursday, 10th April. In his 70’s with many decades of war stories under his belt as management consultant to leaders in commercial industry as well as assorted ministerial civil servants – health, prisons, etc. Pretty liberal with his opinions of named public people & politicians and their (very costly and ineffective) mistaken approaches to systems management systems. For him, his systems were all complicated but not complex, in the sense that he limited his interest to those management systems (procedures and tools) designed – made complicated – by humans, for a well defined purpose that could be seen as closed from any wider human or ecosystem complexities. Fair enough. Even then, most of his stories were of the “you get what you manage” variety. Systems designed to serve the needs of – fix the problems of – individual “customers” but which invariably ended-up managing the efficiencies of quantifiable compliance within the system itself, ultimately dominated by handling all the failure cases, especially via support and referral call-centres. The experts should be answering the phones, not hidden away behind multi-layered inexpert filtering processes. Hence “Vanguard” branded methodology / approach. (eg A good front-line triage nurse is the one with the experience, not the junior with a checklist.) So not rocket science, common sense for “closed – not complex – systems”^(*), but boy could he talk, for a full 75 minutes before Mike Jackson as host could pause for 10 minutes of dialogue to close. (Dave Snowden also there, making copious notes. My focus is unashamedly the complex, the wider societal context of open systems, and his Cynefin approach is about assessing whether you are dealing with Simple / Complicated / Complex / Chaotic regimes to start with, and choosing methods & actions accordingly. I wasn’t really therefore the audience for Seddon’s focus on the Complicated.)

I mentioned in the footnotes to my recent Iain McGilchrist post, my own history with the British Library. I did have reading-room membership back in the days of my London-weekly-commute-working, but the BL had a massive cyber-attack back in 2023 from which they are only partially recovered. User records lost as well as losing the capability of ordering books via their electronic cataloguing. Like the US Library of Congress, in principle they have at least one copy of, every version of, everything ever published. For a book like McGilchrist’s “Against Criticism” there is only one Faber & Faber 1982 hardback edition and they had two copies catalogued, one in London and one in Boston Spa / Thorpe Arch nr Wetherby. However, the one in Yorkshire appeared to be lost (valuable, stolen?), so as well as re-registering in person, I had to make a second trip yesterday to see the London copy brought closer to home.

It proved to be worth it. Even though in 4 hours I could only selectively skim read and make notes and selected image copies, it was both fascinating in content and a wonderfully written read. [I’ll will of course, say more.] Two things arose.

Firstly, I was reminded that Coleridge’s “Biographia Literaria” is a recurring reference in so much of my reading. The archetypal source of the romantics, both British and German, that it’s been on my must-read list for some time. As I was in the Library and logged-in to their cataloguing I searched in order to request it for the reading room. Well, unlike McGilchrist, there are many, many published editions and versions of Coleridge, so just doing that selection is a piece of research in its own right. Long story short, using Amazon as well as the BL, I’ve ended-up with a Kindle copy of the 1817 edition. There were plenty of later used versions out there at reasonable prices too, unlike the sole $2000 dollar used copy of McGilchrist, and there are quite a few modern editions. Coleridge is well referenced by others, so I really need only a reference version myself – so with Kindle I get the added bonus of searchability for the context of of other people’s quotes. Job done.

Secondly, Jean Boulton – is embedded in my memory for some reason, despite checking mail and social-media records showing that I’ve only known of her for a matter of months? Some LinkedIn exchanges with Dave Snowden over the last year or two and a debate with Mike Jackson (I missed) back in February this year (hat tip to Ben Taylor). Anyway I bought a copy of her (2024) “Dao of Complexity” – “sense-making in turbulent times” – like every man and his dog these days – a veritable meme of memes. Can’t comment yet on the quality of her writing or arguments, but it is chock-full of so much of my own content and 21st C sources … no Pirsig and no Snowden, but lots of Maturana, Mazzucato, Temelkuran, McGilchrist, Rovelli and Whitehead … and Pragmatism and Mary Parker-Follett(!) We obviously have a lot in common. Wondering if it was the MPF connection where we’ve crossed paths before? [More later, below.]

=====

Post Notes:

The recording of the Jean Bolton and Mike Jackson conversation noted above (hat tip Ben Taylor again):

Remember when I first saw the talk advertised, bridling at that awful click-bait title – obviously they’re compatible – they’re co-dependent in fact. This is just about finding the right level of common description – through dialogue (as opposed to critique).

I already mentioned her book above – still that familiarity listening to her, presumably from the obvious common ground – weird feeling though. Mike’s book, I already reviewed (and also read and listened to him many more times), and I’ve summarised his position as essentially “pragmatism plus requisite variety (diversity)” … “There are more things in heaven and earth, etc.” Can’t argue.

She starts with “metaphysics” – unusual for a physicist – and this is recurring for me. Once a science-literate person accepts that “there is more than science“, recognising one’s metaphysics is an unavoidable necessity. “The ground on which we stand.” – Good. And recognising agenda / purpose, not simply detached objectivity, also unusual for a scientist – Good. “Ontological Resonance” between humanities and sciences – Good. “Reflective interaction” in any (eco)-system. Stable “patterns” emerge. Becoming more than being. “Things” are always evolving dynamically even if patterns are (at some level) relatively stable. “Intrinsic indeterminism” … “not frightening the horses” is an expression I often use too when it comes to communicating on a broad front. All very good, and well established in my own work. We diverge in that her agenda is still essentially management consulting in organisations (like Snowden)? – “organisational change strategy” is where I started this journey in my Masters back 1988/91- whereas my 21stC agenda is the human thinking and decision-making ecosystem in the widest “global” sense, for the good of the world – that shared metaphysical (meta-)model or framework, in my case. Neither of us are focussed on methods or specific / individual models. Stop reading / listening, and get on with the writing ….?

Mike’s agenda – really about helping people who have already been immersed in or subjected to the many different traditions of systems thinking (and complexity, and OR), sciences, theories and methods – a pragmatic route map out of the confusions of subject-matter complexity.

Both “in” their own journey’s in their own writings … me too. Systems view is more epistemological, Jean’s more ontological – mine already claimed as “an epistemological ontology” … so all good.

Yep, stop reading / listening, and get on with the writing.

(*) Post note – I agreed with Seddon’s common sense for these kind of “closed” systems back here in 2006, but that was before my own focus evolved to “complex systems thinking”. Not really had any more to do with Seddon since then. Ben Taylor previously critiqued the limitations of Seddon’s approach, and linked that in his comment to Barry F’s thoughts on Andy Wilkin’s LinkedIn report on Seddon’s Mike Jackson lecture, which I dismissed briskly above. A mechanistic thinker about closed systems, not a systems thinker. I think Barry’s comment about “nothing new” is kinda what’s driving my current agenda too. I damned with faint praise the wise words in Mike’s book last year, as really being a summary of all the extant approaches developed in this complex systems space, whose own recommendation I summarised as it’s all contingent so you can’t beat “pragmatism”. And in my trajectory, pragmatism as a philosophy comes down to the wisdom of how we judge what is good / better …

=====

Still to write-up … (above) McGilchrist’s “Against Criticism” …

=====

As a Pirsigian originally, I’ve naturally seen Aristotle as part of the problem that systematising everything scientifically and logically has led inevitably to the dominance of science in the world of knowledge and applied knowledge in action. Extreme forms in that, say, anything seen as rhetorical is thus described pejoratively, or that seeing science as the only credible form of knowledge being a dogma known as scientism. It’s a no-brainer that Aristotle himself was obviously far more nuanced than that.

I’ve dipped into Aristotle often enough to follow-up the context of quotes by others, but I wouldn’t say I’d read more than 10% of Aristotle’s own writings. I’m familiar with his Organon, the systematic way he organises and categorises everything and every topic in the world, the lesson learned in the taxonomy of any number of ontologies since. Any given organon or ontology is or course “deemed”, it’s the consistent and comprehensive systematisation that represents the lasting pragmatic value. The fact that our post-Galilean word “science” derives from “scientia” is part of the problem too, that we’ve taken the term that signified knowledge of all kinds and turned it into the word for just the one kind.

The “best-available one-volume Aristotle” I have (~1500 pages) is “The Basic Works of Aristotle” constituted out of the definitive Oxford translations and in print as the Random House hard-back for over 80 years, as edited by Richard McKeon. He of course was the bogeyman, the professor or Chairman of the Ancient Greek philosophy course that Pirsig bumps up against in Chicago in his first book (ZMM). I have the 2001 Modern Library Classics paper-back version. As well as McKeon’s biographical notes on Aristotle and his original Preface to the whole volume, the 2001 edition includes an introduction by C.D.C. Reeve. Although thoroughly signposted by Aristotle in his own chapter and subject headings, there is sadly no alphabetical topic index in the individual books or the overall volume. Those 3 introductory sections by McKeon and Reeve are actually quite illuminating about what is or isn’t science in Aristotelian terms.

After labelling pretty much all of Aristotle’s topics as “sciences” theoretical, practical and productive – even theology, philosophy, ethics, arts and crafts (with rhetoric as one of those “arts”) – Reeve says this :

“Of these [sciences] the theoretical ones are the Aristotelian paradigm, since they provide us with knowledge of necessary universal truths. The extent to which ethics [and others] fit the paradigm is less clear. One reason for this is that a huge part of these [Ethics & Rhetoric] has to do [NOT] with universal principles of the sort one finds in physics, but with particular cases whose near infinite variety cannot easily be summed-up in formulae. [eg] The knowledge of what justice is may well be scientific knowledge, but to know what justice requires in a particular case one also needs equity, which is a combination of virtue and an eye [trained by experience]. Perhaps then we should think of the practical [and productive] sciences as having something like a theoretically scientific core, but as [NOT] being reducible to it.”

That latter sentence is pretty much the core of my own thesis these last 20+ years, even though I read it only yesterday. Fascinating.

=====

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.

=====

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.

=====

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 …”)

=====

(*) – 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).

=====