Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby

Some very interesting material brought to my attention by Alice’s comments, so important I brought it onto the main page. Too much material to assimilate and do justice in any summary, but …

As recently as Feb 2005 Maccoby is writing “Creating Moral Organisations” for Research Technology Management, whilst as an ex student of Erich Fromm he reviewed the “Two Voices” of Erich Fromm in this 1994 piece for Society.

The Fromm piece links in Adler, Freud and Jung as well as James, Maslow, Zen, Suzuki, Ortega y Gasset and a Mexican anthropological connection. The Moral Organisations piece links the Nasa Decision Making stuff with Enron and Sarbane-Oxley. Organisations as “psychopathic individuals”. Committees of moral men making immoral decisions as one J Z DeLorean once said.

As a spiritul atheist Fromm ” … viewed neurotic symptoms as a partial rejection of oppressive or alienating authority. The psychoanalyst’s role was to help give birth to the revolutionary within the neurotic.” Hope for anyone there ?

A tremedoulsy rich seam deserving of some serious prospecting.

Greenteeth

It’s a little difficult to explain how I came to be Googling for Greenteeth, and you’d never believe it anyway, too spooky for words, but I’m glad I did. A certain Ian Thorpe runs a very entertaining blog in the name of Jenny Greenteeth the Boggart, or is that Bloggart.

Roll on. Toilet humour isn’t dead after all.
Even the tagging raises a smile.
(Must check out www.blog.co.uk too.)

A very small sample for you …
“Everyone’s Gone To The Moon was Jonathan King’s first hit record. I the years that followed we all wished he would go to the moon. Or at least fuck off somewhere…anywhere.
Time passed and King did eventually go, not to the moon but the next best place, Wormwood Scrubs Prison, convicted of sexual offences involving minors. Now just in case anyone is thinking “hmm, fading pop star becomes kiddie fiddler – are we looking as parallels with Michael Jackson here?” it should be made clear that Jonathan King was born to look like a pervert; Jackson paid a fortune in order to look that way.”

Or even more relevant to Psybertron, he posts a far more entertaining piece than I on good ole Radio 4’s search for the “Greatest Philosopher“. A great excuse to ressurect the Pythons ..
The Philosopher’s Song —
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
‘Bout the raising of the wrist.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am”
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker
but a bugger when he’s pissed!

Question is, is Ian from Doncaster ?

Positive about Maslow

Piers at Monkey Magic made a positive reference to Maslow, being valuable because he’d studied successful / advantaged people, and therefore his psychological outcome was inherently more positive, looking toward progress, rather than wallowing in “failure” or “sick psychology”. Part of my “Criticisms of Maslow” memewatch.

Of course muggins here, didn’t spot that was Piers’ point when I first read it. See the comment thread on Piers’ post.

Strategic Loops – Mothers of Invention

Hofstadter’s GEB has a thread – his eternal golden braid I guess – on strange loops from the outset, mathematical, visual and musical at the obvious level of his title, and clearly from the content, he’s leading to the idea of emergence of “intelligence” from multi-layered (recursive, cyclical) patterns of complexity.

I noted a clear strategic / tactical game-theory angle in the “evolutionary” cycles of development. Whether it’s the mathematical quest for a model to completely contain all others, or a record player to play all records designed to break it (GEB shows its age there), or a model that humans know more than any formal system can, or the game between advertisers “honesty” and their target audiences, or a bio-evolutionary battle for survival, they are all battles of (metaphorical, anthropomorphic) wits. The key point that at any given “level” of current strategy, it’s a matter of trading tit for tat tactics, until either side finds a different strategy, and moves the game on a level. The other side may intially cry “foul”, but must find a new tactic that acknowledges the new strategy. Strategy continuously leap-frogs tactic, until it finds itself to be just another outmoded tactic in the face of a new strategy. It’s an inevitable driver for evolution.

The aspect that creates the drive is the desire for a “response” that is the response to beat all responses. ie it accomodates all previous responses, but for good measure claims to include the defintion of (or response to) itself, so that no further response can trump it. It really is the Russelian set of all sets vs Godel’s incompleteness. You can’t win, but you can’t step out of the game either. (NB out of the “frame” … frame analysis here, and a Pirsigian connection too, and for me the original metaphysical “bootstrapping” problem.)

Two other corollaries …

(1) The problem is when you give the concept, “the idea of the mother of all responses” a name, a definition. because you are always then back in the linguistic game. Any conceptual high ground is lost. (Hence the attraction of Zen, at least as a concept, if not a solution ;-))

(2) Talking of mothers, it is also in fact a manifestation of a conundrum that I’ve called the parent / sibling problem in classification / ontologies. Supertype is called “a widget”; a popular subtype is also commonly known as “a widget”; a less common subtype (of the supertype) is also a widget by inheritance, but is usually know as a “special widget”. Special widget gets very confused about the identities of its mother and sister. (Also the “I am my own Grandpa” variation on that theme.)

The really attractive positive conclusion of all this … there can never be a complete formal model of everything or a metaphysics with solid foundations and defences … get used to it … forget that, but do we really have “mechanism” to explain the emergence of intelligence from physical patterns ? Wow.

[Post Note : Of course this links directly to the “learning organisation” and “theory in use” cycle stuff in the original business context in my dissertation – low-level adjustments within the current “model” as loops within higher loops of “strategic shift”. Bullshit baffles brains, but that doesn’t make it wrong.]

Google Maps UK

I see Google maps covers the UK now. Here’s a familiar patch. Big variabilty in the quality (clarity, resolution and colouration) in different regions, but it’s all there. Some of the biggest cities have the poorest imgaes. [via Rivets]

Weird experience to navigate right round the coastline from the air.

It’ll be on-line log-tables next.

Apart from historical education as museum pieces (which is fair enough), why would anyone want an on-line slide-rule, several on-line slide-rules in fact ?

I remember using one for real, but not beyond high-school and university days, when electronic calculators became widespread. Also remember finding one in an old briefcase about ten years ago and trying to explain to the kids how to use it. I could just about remember how to multiply two numbers, and reverse to divide, but that was about it.

Another example of the breadth of things Jorn gathers together on Robot Wisdom. Only Rivets comes close in my experience.

Foucaultian Wicker Man ?

Another fine spot by Jorn at Robot Wisdom. “The Wicker Man” is an almost forgotten film that made an impression on me, though I never analysed why then, an awful long time ago.

This review by philosophical writer Robert Farrow weaves an analysis of Foucault’s ideas (and others) into a synopsis of the plot. No less interesting are the witty captions to the illustrations and the promise of further interesting content at “Metaphilm“.

Cree Anthropology

One important thread in the development of Pirsig’s ideas, starting with Northrop and the aboriginals of “Latin” America (and all points “East” of western thinking), continued in the North American Indian anthropological forays with Verne Dusenberry. A descendent of said anthropologist points out that Dusenberry’s book is back in print with Oklahoma University Press.

Some interesting Dusenberry biographical points just in the site blurb which might explain Pirsig’s remarks that Dusenberry had a better knack than he did, when it came to interacting with the indians on their own terms. He was an adopted son.

Is that snow on the top of my reading list ?

[Note also error in the Laverne Madigan details in the Pirsig timeline – to be corrected.]

On Bullshit

“The simple truth ” I don’t know, I just like it that way ” simply won’t do, so into this vacuum rushes the bullshit” a quote from Design Observer (Harry Frankfurt) via Adrian Trenholm comments on Johnnie Moore’s blog “Sophistry”. A story where a subject finding no credible patterns to explain something, concocts complex fiction. (Not quite the same point because this subject has deliberately been given no obvious easy explanation, but it does show how people prefer seemingly sophisticated explanations to simple ones. But, careful with that razor Occam !)

Johnnie also presents this antithesis, on exposing emotional honesty, in a Buddhist context, but without comment. What’s your point Johnnie ?

McLuhan has Connections Taped

Mark Federman makes a connection between this Canadian political taping story and Watergate, following recent “Deep Throat” revelations. Interestingly the story has it’s own justification “Everybody … tapes all their conversations with politicians.”

And people are surprised ? Actually I can remember being shocked in a previous life when a colleague told me he taped every conversation with his manager.