Hi Norman,
I recalled that you are also in San Diego.
Maybe we can meet and talk sometimes here :)
I cannot force myself to do that written discussions.
I am a publisher and would like to form my plan for 2002.
I would like to include there cybernetics and systems books.
Maybe you would be able to help.
Regards
Igor Tsigelny
----- Original Message -----
From: Norman K. McPhail <norm@SOCAL.WANET.COM>
To: <pcp-discuss@lanl.gov>
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 1:54 PM
Subject: [pcp-discuss:] The Missing Elephant
> SOME OBSERVATIONS REGARDING A MISSING ELEPHANT Donald N.
> Michael
>
> [A version of this article appeared in Journal of
> Humanistic Psychology, January, 2000. Copyright 2000 Sage
> Publications, Inc. Don Michael is the author
> of Learning_to_Plan_and_Planning_to_Learn, the formative
> book on organizational behavior, which he wrote in 1973
> before there was a field of Organizational Behavior.
>
> I'd like to hear the "scientific," "systems" and cyberneutic response to
> the points made in this article.
>
> NKM]
>
> "I'd like to share some of my current thinking about the
> predicament of being human -- the dark side, as well as the
> bright. This is my thinking in process; I have not reached
> any conclusions. Your willingness to consider these ideas,
> and your critical response to them, will help me with
> further mulling.
>
> "I'll begin with a Sufi story we're all familiar with. It's
> the story of the blind persons and the elephant. Recall
> that persons who were blind were each coming up with a
> different definition of what was 'out there' depending on
> what part of the elephant they were touching. Notice that
> the story depends on a storyteller, someone who can see
> that there is an elephant. What I'm going to propose today
> is that the storyteller is blind. There is no elephant.
> The storyteller doesn't know what he or she is talking
> about.
>
> "Less metaphorically, I'll put it this way: What is
> happening to the human race, in the large, is too complex,
> too interconnected and too dynamic to comprehend. There is
> no agreed upon interpretation that provides an enduring
> basis for coherent action based on an understanding of the
> enfolding context.
>
> "Consider. Take any subject that preoccupies us. Attend
> to all the factors that might substantially affect its
> current condition, where it might go, what might be done
> about it, and how to go about doing so.
>
> "I'll take, as an example, poverty. Think of the variety of
> factors that connect with poverty that we must comprehend
> if we are attempting to understand everything that
> seriously impacts poverty. One would have to attend to at
> least: technology, environment, greed, crime, drugs,
> family, media manipulation, correction, education,
> governments, market economy, information flows, ethics,
> ideology, personalities and events. All of these infuse
> any topic that we pay attention to and try to do something
> about. But, clearly we can't attend to all of these (and
> others) because each has its own multifaceted realm to be
> comprehended.
>
> "Poverty is just one of endless examples. What we're faced
> with, essentially, is the micro/macro question: How
> circumstances in the small affect circumstances in the
> large and how circumstances in the large affect
> circumstances in the small. And we don't know --
> 'butterfly effects' and chaos theory, notwithstanding --
> how the micro/macro interchange operates in specific human
> situations. And for reasons I shall come to, I don't think
> we can know. In effect, we don't comprehend the kind of
> beast that holds the parts together and how they're held
> together for the human condition we call poverty. There
> isn't any elephant there.
>
> "Having said this, let me emphasize before we go any
> farther, that I'm in no sense belittling our daily efforts
> to engage issues like poverty, or other aspects of the
> human condition. I wouldn't be taking your time if I felt
> that what many of us are about was futile. Instead I hope
> to add a deeper appreciation of the existential challenge
> we face, the poignancy of our efforts, and the admiration
> they merit as we try to deal with our circumstances.
>
> "If we could acknowledge that we don't know what we're
> talking about when we try to deal with any of the larger
> human issues we face, this acknowledgement would have very
> significant implications. These implications would cover
> how we perceive ourselves as persons and how we act to help
> the human condition, including ourselves. I'll come to them
> later.
>
> "But first, I want to offer some observations in support of
> my proposal that we don't know what we're talking about in
> the large, by describing six contributors to our ignorance
> -- six characteristics that seem to be to be the source of
> the storyteller's blindness. I call them 'ignorance
> generators.'
>
> "One more prefatory remark: I intend my observations to be
> as non-judgmental as I can make them. I believe I am
> describing characteristics of the human world that simply
> *are*, analogous to the laws of nature. I am trying to be
> an observer, not an evaluator. However, the very nature of
> my language and what I choose to emphasize conveys values,
> hence judgments, often unknown to me.
>
> "The first of the six is that we have too much and too
> little information to reach knowledgeable consensus and
> interpretation within the available time for action. More
> information in the social realm generally leads to more
> uncertainty, not less. (Consider, for example, the status
> of the world economy. We need more information to
> understand the information we have.) So the time it takes
> to reach agreement on the interpretation increases. During
> that time the information increases as well. We need more
> information to interpret the information we have and on and
> on.
>
> "Among the information we have is that which increases our
> doubt about the integrity and sufficiency of the
> information we do have. There's enough information,
> nevertheless, (or too little in many cases) to generate
> multiple interpretations of that information, which then
> adds another layer of information and interpretation that's
> required to use that information.
>
> "Related and central, information feedback and feed forward
> very seldom is available at the time appropriate to use it.
> It arrives either too soon or too late, if at all. So there
> is too much or too little information at the wrong time.
> So, the first ignorance generator is too much or too little
> information to reach knowledgeable decisions in a finite
> amount of time available for taking action.
>
> "Second, there is no shared set of value priorities. We
> make much of the fact that we share values - it is a truism
> that humans want the same basic things. Perhaps, at a
> survival level, they do. Perhaps, but certainly beyond
> that there is no shared set of priorities with regard to
> values. Priorities change with circumstance, time, and
> group.
>
> "Here are some examples where value priorities differ
> depending on the group and circumstance: Short term
> expedience versus long term prudent behavior and vice
> versa. Group identity versus individual identity.
> Individual responsibility versus societal responsibility.
> Freedom versus equality. Local claims versus larger claims
> for commitment. Universal rights versus local rights that
> can repudiate universal rights (fundamentalism, for
> example). Human rights versus national interest (e.g.,
> economic competition or nationalist terrorism). Public
> interest versus privacy (encryption versus crime-fighting).
> First amendment limits (pornography, etc.). One potential
> gain versus it potential social costs. Who sets the rules
> of the game and who decides who decides? These are all
> issues in which the priorities of values are in contention.
> There's no reliable set of priorities in place that can be
> used to interpret the larger issues. A third contribution
> to this lack of comprehension is what has been called the
> dilemma of context. How much do you need to know in order
> to feel responsible for actions and interpretations? How
> many layers of understanding are necessary to have enough
> background to deal with the foreground? There are no
> agreed-on criteria or methodology for how deeply to probe.
>
> "(I should have said at the beginning that these 6 factors
> are interconnected, interactive, so that the question of
> how much context is necessary in a situation to decide what
> to do about that situation very much depends on what values
> are held by participants in that decision making. And that
> raises another intractable context question: who are the
> legitimate participants in the decision making with regard
> to what constitutes the context? And who says so?)
>
> "The obvious example we're all living with at this time has
> to do with what domains of context are applicable to the
> Clinton impeachment inquiry. Just to remind you of a few:
> The dramatis personae, their motives, the world of the
> media, cultural differences in public responses, political
> styles and susceptibility to rhetoric, the legitimacy of
> public opinion as a basis for evaluating the situation.,
> the intentions of the Constitutional founders, and so on.
>
> "You can choose any issue that's important to you and ask
> yourself, 'How much do I/we need to know about x to have
> adequate context for thought and action?' And then, for x,
> you can use that list of topics I enumerated in the poverty
> example. This is an unresolved realm. And it is unsolved
> for me as well in the very act of giving this talk.
>
> "A fourth item. Our spoken language, the language we hear,
> can not adequately map the complexity that I'm talking
> about. Our language, because we hear it or we read it, is
> linear. So, one thought follows another. Our language can
> not adequately engage multiple factors simultaneously.
> (Perhaps poetry can, but we haven't yet figured out how to
> use poetry to make policy, or to resolve issues of context,
> or to value priorities, or the like. And perhaps some forms
> of visual language can, because they can be presented
> simultaneously in three dimensions.) Our noun/verb
> structure emphasizes, items, events, static-ness, [i.e.,
> is-ness]---e.g., we say, 'this is a microphone', rather
> than engaging it as a multitude of processes in time and
> space.
>
> "Nor can our language adequately map in our minds the on-
> going circularity of cause and effect -- producing causes,
> producing effects. Nor can it map the sustaining of a
> system as a system, by virtue of the in-built circular
> feedback that holds its boundaries together. In other
> words, our spoken, written language doesn't allow us to
> talk about these complexities in ways that are inherently
> informative about the complexities. In fact, it compounds
> these complexities because in its linearity, language
> unavoidably distorts a world of simultaneous multiple
> circular processes.
>
> " The fifth contribution to our inability to know what we
> are talking about is that there is an increasing, and given
> the other factors, an unavoidable absence of reliable
> boundaries. By boundaries, I mean boundaries that
> circumscribe turf, relationships, concepts, identity,
> property, gender, time, and more. Without boundaries, we
> can't make sense of anything. William James, wrote of a
> boundary- less world as one of 'booming, buzzing
> confusion.' Boundaries are about how we discriminate, how
> we partition experience in order to create meaning in all
> those non- material realms, not just turf. But what is
> happening in this world, for reasons I've been describing
> (and others as well), is that these boundaries and their
> reliability are increasingly eroded and disintegrated.
> They are becoming more and more ambiguous. All systems,
> including social systems, require boundaries in order to be
> coherent systems. The feedback that is determined by the
> boundaries of a system allows that system to be self-
> sustaining. If there are no boundaries, there is no
> feedback, no self-sustaining quality and no system. In
> other words, no 'elephant'.
>
> "Everything I've been saying so far reduces the agreed upon
> criteria for boundary- defining feedback. Here are some
> examples of blurred boundaries: political correctness,
> identity, public versus private, intellectual property,
> biological ethics. These are increasingly ambiguous areas,
> taken very seriously, that, nevertheless, don't allow the
> kind of linguistically and behaviorally discriminating
> boundary defining I think necessary to begin to comprehend
> the incomprehensible complexity that we humans live in.
>
> "The sixth contributor to our inability to know what we are
> talking about is the self- amplifying, unpredictable acting
> out of the shadow residing in each human; our instincts,
> our extra-rational responses. These could be considered a
> consequence of the other contributors to our ignorance --
> though each of them is also a consequence of all the
> others. (Or so I think.) To be sure, these allow for more
> creativity, but often in this complex world, they also
> serve up violence, oppression, selfishness, extreme
> positions of all stripes. They are the source of an
> upwelling of the non-rational, the non-reasonable that is
> so increasingly characteristic of all the world, not just
> the United States.
>
> "There was a time -- a long time -- when this sort of
> shadow-driven acting out was more restrained. The elephant
> depends on constraints, on boundaries, to be an elephant.
> In the past, ritual, repression, and suppression served to
> constrain such acting out or to quash it entirely. One's
> social and economic survival depended on playing by many
> explicit and implicit rules. Boundaries were stronger.
> (Think of the up welling of violence after the collapse of
> the Soviet Empire.) These circumstances make human
> governance uniquely problematic. By governance, I mean
> those shared practices by which a society's members act
> reliably toward each other. Government is one such way such
> practices are established via laws etc. Shared child
> socialization practices and formal religions are others.
> For the reasons I am proposing here the processes of
> governance can only become less and less effective. This in
> turn increases unreliably and adds it's own contributions
> to the incomprehensibility of it all.
>
> "So much for the six 'ignorance generators'. Perhaps they
> are variations on one theme and surely others could be
> added. But I hope these are enough to make a presumptive
> case that our daily activities are ineluctably embedded in
> a larger context of ignorance--- that we don't know what
> we're talking about.
>
> "So, what to do, how to go on being engaged in a human world
> we don't understand--and, if I'm on to something, we won't
> understand?
>
> "Here are eight ways I find helpful that respond to the fact
> of our ignorance. Perhaps they may be helpful for you. I
> hope so! (In spite of speaking assertively, I hope it's
> clear that I include myself among those who don't know what
> they're talking about!) These aren't in any particular
> order, though I think the sequence they are in adds a
> certain coherence .
>
> "The first is to recognize that, given our neurology, our
> shaping through evolutionary processes, we are,
> unavoidably, seekers of meaning. Recognizing that we are
> seekers of meaning, we also need to recognize that,
> unavoidably, we live in illusions, socially and
> biologically created constructed worlds, nevertheless
> personally necessary. I'm not implying that we can live
> outside of these constraints, but we need to be self
> conscious about the fact that we do live in illusions and
> there is no way for humans, to avoid this. So, each of us
> needs to be self-conscious about our deep need for there to
> be an elephant and for someone to tell us there really is
> an elephant. ( Lots of authors and publisher thrive on that
> need)
>
> "Second, it seems essential to acknowledge, our
> vulnerability, our finiteness. This starts with our selves
> and extends to our projects. Thus we will be unavoidably
> ignorant, uninformed about the outcomes --the consequences
> of the consequences of what we do.
>
> "Third, as all the great religious traditions emphasize, we
> should seek to live in poverty. Not material poverty but
> rather to be poor in pride and arrogance and in the
> conviction that I/we know what is right and wrong, what
> must be done, and how to do it. Nevertheless we must act -
> - not acting is also to act -- regardless of our
> vulnerability and finiteness.
>
> "Thus, my fourth suggestion: that one or a group acts in the
> spirit of hope. Hope, not optimism. Here I draw on the
> insight of Rollo May. As he put it, optimism and pessimism
> are conditions of the stomach, of the gut. Their purpose is
> to make us feel good or bad. Whereas hope has to do with
> looking directly at the circumstances we're dealing with,
> at the challenges we must accept as finite, at vulnerable
> beings and activities, recognizing the limits of our very
> interpretation of what we're committing ourselves to, and
> still go on because one hopes that one can make a
> difference in the face of all that stands in the way of
> making a difference.
>
> "Fifth, this means one acts according to what I've been
> calling 'tentative commitment'. Tentative commitment means
> you' are willing to look at the situation carefully enough,
> to risk enough, to contribute enough effort, to hope enough,
> to undertake your project. And to recognize, given our
> vulnerability our finiteness, our fundamental ignorance --
> we may well have it wrong. We may have to back off. We
> may have to change not only how we're doing it, but doing
> it at all. And then do so! Tentative commitment becomes an
> essential individual and group condition for engaging a
> world where we don't know what we are talking about.
>
> "Suggestion six, then, is to be 'context alert' as a moral,
> and operational necessity. Among other things, this carries
> a very radical implication, given the current hype about
> the information society that promises to put us in touch
> with practically infinite amounts of information. That is,
> if you are context alert you can only be deeply
> understanding of very few things. Because it takes time to
> and effort to dig and to check and to deal with other
> people who have different value priorities . This means
> there are only a few things that you can be up on at any
> given time. But this is a very serious unsolved, indeed
> unformulated, challenge for effective participation in the
> democratic process--whatever that might mean..
>
> "Number seven: One must be a learner/teacher, a guide in the
> wilderness. Be question-askers all the time, not answer
> givers.
>
> "Number eight again echoes the great religious traditions
> (all of which recognized our essential ignorance): practice
> compassion. Given the circumstances I have described,
> facing life requires all the compassion we can bring to
> others, as well as to ourselves. Be as self-conscious as
> possible, as much of the time as possible, and thereby
> recognize that we all live in illusion, we all live in
> ignorance, we all search for and need meaning. We all need
> help facing that reality and that help goes by the name of
> practicing compassion.
>
> "The blind must care for the blind."
> -------
>
> ========================================
> Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from "Norman K. McPhail"
<norm@socal.wanet.com>
>
========================================
Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from "Igor Tsigelny" <itsigeln@ucsd.edu>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Sep 12 2000 - 22:55:05 BST