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----- DEC. 6, 2018 -----
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<div class="page-header" > <h1>Federation through Conversations</h1> </div>
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<div class="row">
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>The paradigm strategy</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We can talk about anything</h3>
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<p>We can now converse about any theme that might interest you. And yet – in the context that's just been created – our conversation is bound to be different, relevant and meaningful. What makes the difference is the guiding principle we've proposed, to which we've given different names such as [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] and [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]]. </p>
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<p>What might public informing be like, if we should claim it back from "the invisible hand" (or more precisely from "the attention economy" – see [[intuitive introduction to systemic thinking]]) – and develop it as a core system on which all other systems in our society depend? What practical difference might such a public informing make? We can have similar conversations about education, or healthcare, or any other activity or system you may be interested in.</p>
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<p>And we may just as well talk about the perennial "philosophical" theme – how may truth and meaning be created. Is it indeed the case that a whole <em>new</em> way is now possible, and even called for? Think about the emergence of science, and all that followed until the system of science became as rich and as profound as it is today. Could a new frontier of this kind and scale be opening up? And if it could – what methods, social organization, types of results... might result? </p>
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<h3>We can talk about knowledge federation</h3>
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<p>We need these conversations to complete the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]  [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] we've introduced. </p>
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<p> You'll recall that our <em>systemic</em> [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] must have a feedback loop and a correction mechanism to be complete. A purpose behind these conversations is to secure that.</p>
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<p>You will also recall that, in the order of things or [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] we are describing, it is not possible to make reality claims. All we can do is provide distinct ways of looking at experience. These points of view acquire meaning, and veracity, when placed into a dynamic relationship with one other, when they are subjected to a social process through which they are continuously verified and updated. </p>
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<p>A purpose of these conversations is to create, and indeed to <em>be</em> that social process.</p>
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<p>Notice that the creation of this social process, of this functioning [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]], is the core purpose of our initiative. It is indeed this process, this operation of our [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]], that we are calling [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. </p>
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<h3>First things first</h3>
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<p>And yet there is a single theme, which – when what's been told here is digested and understood – must be given priority. There's an insight that needs to inform our handling of all other themes.</p>
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<p><blockquote>
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It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course,
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</blockquote>
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wrote Aurelio Peccei (see Federation through Stories). <em>Is it</em>, really?</p>
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<p>And if it is – in what way could such a feet realistically be achieved?</p> </div></div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Large change made easy</h3>
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<p>[[Donella Meadows]] talked about systemic leverage points as those places within a complex system "where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything". She identified "the mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise" as <em>the</em> most impactful <em>kind of</em> systemic leverage point. She identified specifically working with the "power to transcend paradigms" – i.e. with the assumptions and ways of being out of which paradigms emerge – as the most impactful way to intervene into systems. </p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"> [[File:Donella.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Donella Meadows]]</center></small></div>
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</div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<p>Our initiative is to approach our contemporary condition in this most powerful way. We are  <em>not</em> proposing to replace the worthy efforts of our colleagues who are focusing on specific issues such as the millennium development goals or the climate change, but to vastly increase their prospects of success. And to engage enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity.</p>
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<p>You'll notice that the approach to knowledge we've described in Federation through Images offers "the power to transcend paradigms", by transcending <em>any</em> fixed way of looking at the world, and recreating any fixed way of doing things. We are <em>not</em> proposing to replace the excellent work of our colleagues in academic disciplines, but to vastly augment the social visibility and impact of their results.</p>
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<h3>Religion for the third millennium</h3>
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<p>We have seen that huge, Industrial Revolution-like improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of human work, as enabled by new technology, can be achieved through the approach we are calling [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. Perhaps the most interesting question that remains, is – What hinders us from doing that?</p>
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<p>Here we'll go a level deeper, and look at the underlying causes. We use the light of new information to illuminate the very road the Modernity 'bus' has been following; to examine the nature of our cultural and societal evolution.</p>
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<p>We'll challenge what's become in a truest sense our or modernity's religion – the belief that "the invisible hand" of the market or the "free competition" can be relied on to turn our self-serving acts into a perfect world. Can we rediscover and re-establish ethics, and religion, in an entirely new way?  We'll see how this question can be answered by combining insights reached by [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities with the ones reached by the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] of the world traditions.</p>
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<p>In this way we'll also answer how "the great cultural revival", and a sweeping improvement in "human quality" – which Peccei deemed necessary – may realistically be a result of the proposed strategy.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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----
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>These conversations are dialogs</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We are not just talking</h3>
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<p>Don't be deceived by this word, "conversations". These conversations are where the real action begins.</p>
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<p>By developing these dialogs, we want to develop a way to bring the themes that matter into the focus of the public eye. We want to bring the insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] to bear upon our understanding and handling of those themes. And we also want to engage us all to collaborate on combining those insights with everyone else's, and evolving them further.</p>
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<p>The purpose of these conversations is to  <em>create </em>  a way of conversing that works; which makes us "collectively intelligent".  We want to evolve in practice, with the help of new media and real-life, artistic situation design, a public discourse where the themes,  the events and the sensations are the stepping stones in our advancement toward a new cultural and social order. </p>
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<p>In a truest sense, the medium we'll use is intended to be our message!</p> </div></div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-6">
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<h3>Changing the world by changing the way we communicate</h3>
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<p>There is a way of listening and speaking that fits our purpose quite snuggly. Physicist [[David Bohm]] called it the dialogue, and we'll build further on his ideas and the ideas of others, and weave them into the meaning of another one of our [[keywords|<em>keywords</em>]], the [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]]. </p>
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<p>Bohm considered the dialogue to be necessary for resolving our contemporary entanglement. Here is how he described it.
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</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Bohm.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[David Bohm]]</center></small></div></div>
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<blockquote>
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<p>I give a meaning to the word 'dialogue' that is somewhat different from what is commonly used. The derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. 'Dialogue' comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means 'the word' or in our case we would think of the 'meaning of the word'. And dia means 'through' - it doesn't mean two. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture of image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which will emerge some new understanding. It's something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It's something creative. And this shared meaning is the 'glue' or 'cement' that holds people and societies together.</p>
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<p>Contrast this with the word 'discussion', which has the same root as 'percussion' an 'concussion'. It really means to break things up. It emphasises the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view. Discussion is almost like a Ping-Pong game, where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to get points for yourself. Possibly you will take up somebody else's ideas to back up your own - you may agree with some and disagree with others- but the basic point is to win the game. That's very frequently the case in a discussion.</p>
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<p>In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail. Rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. It's a situation called win-win, in which we are not playing a game against each other but with each other. In a dialogue, everybody wins.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<h3><em>Real</em> reality shows</h3>
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<p>Two people could be dialoging about these themes by a coffee house table. If they turn on a smartphone recorder, their conversation can become part of the global one.</p>
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<p>What we, however, primarily have in mind is a public dialog that begins in physical spaces and continues online. We have this notion that such [[dialogs|<em>dialogs</em>]] can become true sensations, of a completely new kind. </p>
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<p>What could be more real, and more really relevant and interesting, than watching a new Renaissance emerge? Hearing its pulse, feeling its birth pains... </p>
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<p>Even our resistance to this emergence, our blind spots, our reluctance to take a step – can be, and indeed already <em>are</em> sensational!</p> </div>
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</div>
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----
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The Paradigm Strategy dialog</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A roadmap for guided evolution of society</h3>
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<p>What might be a natural benchmark for us to test a new approach to knowledge?</p>
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<p>Neil Postman left us this hint:
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<blockquote>
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The problem now is not to get information to people, but how to get some meaning of what's happening.(...) Even the great story of inductive science has lost a good deal of its meaning, because it does not address several questions that all great narratives must address: Where we come from; what's going to happen to us; where we are going, that is; and what we're supposed to do when we are here. Science couldn't answer that; and technology doesn't.
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</blockquote></p>
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<p>In keeping with our general approach, we're about to face this challenge by
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<ul>
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<li>building on core insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] </li>
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<li>engaging everyone, our "collective intelligence", to weave them together and develop them further</li>
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<li>evolving a way of speaking, and a "public sphere", capable of condensing any diversity of insights to a single point, and of using that point to orient – and begin – action</li>
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</ul>
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You may think of the [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] we are about to put together as a roadmap for giuided evolution of society. We'll only be covering an area on this roadmap, the one we haven't covered in our other three modules. We'll be weaving together core insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities, to illuminate the very nature, and the course, of our cultural and social-systemic evolution. The insight we are aiming at will answer the key question: Can we rely on "the invisible hand" or "the free competition" to guide us still further?</p>
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<p>Or do we need to change the very nature of our evolving, and create and use suitable information as the guiding light?</p> 
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<h3>The paradigm strategy</h3>
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<p>We wrote the following in our abstract to the academic conference where this roadmap, which we called "The Paradigm Strategy poster",  was initially shared:
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<blockquote>
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The motivation is to allow for the kind of difference that is suggested by the comparison of everyone carrying buckets of water from their own basements, with everyone teaming up and building a dam to regulate the flow of the river that is causing the flooding. We offer what we are calling the paradigm strategy as a way to make a similar difference in impact, with respect to the common efforts focusing on specific problems or issues. The Paradigm Strategy is to focus our efforts on instigating a sweeping and fundamental cultural and social paradigm change – instead of trying to solve problems, or discuss, understand and resolve issues.
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</blockquote></p>
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<h3>The Paradigm Strategy poster</h3>
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<p> </p>
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<p>[[File:PSwithFredrik.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Fredrik Eive Refsli, the leader of our communication design team, jubilates the completion of The Paradigm Strategy poster.</center></small></p>
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<p></p>
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<p>It will be best if you'll be looking at [http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf The Paradigm Strategy poster] as we speak.</p>
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<p>What you see on the left is a presentation of our current way of evolving (culturally and socially), drafted on a yellow background. What you see on the right is the creative frontier where the new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] is about to emerge, represented by a couple of [[design patterns|<em>design patterns</em>]] and five [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]]. The large dot or circle in the middle is what we call "the key point" – it is the insight (or [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]]) that can take us from one social reality and way of evolving to the next.</p>
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<p>Close to the dividing line, on the new paradigm side, you see "bootstrapping". [[bootstrapping|<em>Bootstrapping</em>]] the singular act that takes us out of our old paradigm and makes us part of the new one.</p>
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<p>The poster is conceived as an invitation to begin to [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrap</em>]] – and in that way join the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] as an aware and active participant. The poster is interactive; the QR codes open up files with further information (they are also hyperlinks, so that also the digital version of the poster is interactive). The "bootstrapping" thread leads to the QR code and file with an interactive online version of the poster – where it's possible to post comments, and in that way be part of the online dialog, through which the presented ideas, and the poster itself, are developed further.</p>
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<p>The core insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] (and also some other insights, as we shall see) are represented by icons, rendered as [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], and combined into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]]. By weaving the threads into [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]], and [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] into a [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]], the central "key point" is made accessible. </p>
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<p>As you might be aware, we use [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] to make abstract and high-level ideas accessible. In this brief summary, we cannot possibly tell each of the 12 [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] that are presented on the poster! And yet if we only describe them abstractly, we risk to lose the zest and the reality touch.</p>
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<p>So what we'll do is a compromise: We'll sketch a couple of [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] in some detail; and we'll give only a gesture drawing of all the rest. </p></div>
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</div>
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----
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The Wiener's paradox</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<h3>Control depends on communication</h3>
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<p>Norbert Wiener was recognized as exceptionally gifted while he was still a child. He studied mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and finally got his doctorate in mathematical logic from Harvard, when he was only 17. Wiener went on to do seminal work in several distinct fields, one of which was cybernetics.</p>
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<p>We'll now let you in on some observations from Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics, and specifically from its last chapter,  "Information, Language and Society". If his technical language is unfamiliar, you may interpret the word "homeostasis" simply as the capability of the Modernity vehicle (or of any of our specific institutions or systems) to steer a viable course.
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<blockquote>
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In connection with the effective amount of communal information, one of the most surprising facts (...) is its extreme lack of efficient homeostatic process. There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end in a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. This is associated with the very comforting view that the individual entrepreneur, in seeking to forward his own interest, is in some manner a public benefactor and thus has earned the great rewards with which society has showered him. Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory.</blockquote> </p>
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<p>If "the invisible hand" is not to be relied on, then what might be the alternative? </p>
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<p>Wiener's point is that suitable information must be our guide.</p>
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<p>Or more concretely, that we must study how the structure of natural and human-made systems influences their behavior. That we must use the results of that study to develop and manage all our socio-technical systems – and in particular those core ones that determine the course of all other ones, such as our knowledge work and our governance.</p>
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<p>In this way Wiener made a case for cybernetics as a new discipline, whose role is to provide the knowledge that is lacking. The complete title of his seminal book is "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine". </p>
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<h3>The invisible hand cannot be trusted</h3>
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<p>To support the quoted point, that the invisible hand cannot be relied on, Wiener points to insights of another pair of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, reached through the study of the game theory, which they established together (Von Neumann's story is parallel to Wiener's; his many seminal achievements include the digital computer architecture that is still in use). Wiener also points out how those insights are confirmed in everyday experiences with economy and politics.</p>
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<h3>Our communication is broken</h3>
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<p>How can we continue to believe in "the invisible hand" in spite of such evidence?</p>
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<p> Wiener echoes a core insight of another [[giants|<em>giant</em>]], Vannevar Bush, (whom we've mentioned on our front page and of whom we'll say more below) to conclude that our society's communication is broken – and he uses this conclusion as an additional strong reason for developing and using cybernetics. </p> 
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<h3>To steer a sustainable coure, we must be able to update our institutions</h3>
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<p>We have shared Erich Jantsch's core ideas  in Federation through Stories. We let the following excerpt from his last book, "The Self-Organizing Universe" (in which the emphasis is ours) serve as a concise summary – highlighting once again his conclusion we used here as the title,  at the same time pointing to the importance he attributed to the question with which the excerpt begins.
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<blockquote>
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And how is evolution to continue in the human world? Has it, as some hold, become caught in a net of coercifve factors in which it is ever more inextricably entangled with every motion? (...) I believe that <b>the most important task today</b> is the searrch for new degrees of freedom to facilitate the living out of evolutionary processes. It is of prime importance that the openness of the inner world for which no limitations are yet in sight, is matched by a similar openness of the outer world, and that it tries actively to establish the latter. I believe that the sociocultural man in "co-evolution with himself" basically has the possibility of creating the conditions for his further evolution—much as life on earth, since its first appeareance 4000 million years ago, has always created the conditions for its own evolution toward higher complexity. </blockquote> </p>
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<h3>How the invisible hand remained our guide</h3>
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<p>In 1980, when this book was published, and when Erich Jantsch passed away, Ronald Reagan became the 40th U.S. president. His message to the world – his winning agenda – was
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<blockquote>
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In our present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government <em>is</em> the problem.</blockquote>
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This meant, of course, that "the invisible hand" of the market is the only thing we can rely on. And that we run  into problems as soon as we (that is, our governments) interfere with it.</p>
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<p>By voting in this way, the American people didn't ignore only the core messages of Norbert Wiener and Erich Jantsch. Just after Wiener published his book, the research in game theory focusing on a phenomenon called "prisoner's dilemma" virtually exploded, resulting in several thousands of publications. The prisoner's dilemma models the real-life situations where collaboration leads to a better situation for <em>everyone</em> – and yet where the perfectly rational players will choose to dissent and compete. Isn't that our root issue in a nutshell?</p>
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<p>The scientific production in cybernetics or the systems sciences grew even faster – and its results too were ignored.</p>
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<p>"The invisible hand" as the evolutionary doctrine, and the corresponding way of evolving – where the market, or the money, decides – became our "evolutionary guidance"; and remained that until today.</p>
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<h3>There's no need for censorship</h3>
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<p>It was during Nickson's presidency,  and well before the Web, that Italo Calvino pointed to the root of this problem in an interview. He pointed out that censorship is no longer needed, by comparing the New York times with Pravda, and observing that whatever was achieved by censorship in the latter, it was effectively implemented by overabundance of information in the former. </p>
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<p>Recall Galilei in house prison. Could it indeed be the case that there's no longer need to confine [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] to house arrest, or to forbid or burn their books?</p>
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<p> In a society where the powerful media are used to only <em>broadcast</em> information, it's no longer the strength of the argument, but the campaign dollars and the "air time" they buy that decides what we the people are going to think and believe. And what direction our socio-cultural or socio-technological evolution will take.</p>
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<h3>We are not facing a problem but a paradox</h3>
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<p>
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<blockquote>
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As long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved
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</blockquote>
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observed David Bohm.</p>
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<p>We can already see the [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] we call [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]]. </p>
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<p>We use it to point to a pervasive phenomenon – that academic results are created, and then ignored. </p>
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<p>Wiener's just mentioned insight is an especially interesting instance of this [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]], because it was meant to point to that pattern itself – and to the way to overcome it, by taking systemic evolution in knowledge work, and beyond, into our own hands.</p>
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<p>This instance is furthermore interesting to us because of the paradox  that Norbert Wiener and the systems sciences created – by committing their insights to the same communication or feedback-and-control system that, as Wiener diagnosed, is broken:  Wiener wrote <em>a book</em>; cybernetics, and the systems sciences, organised themselves as <em>academic disciplines</em>. </p> </div></div>
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-----
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2 style="color:red">Reflection</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The consequences of the paradox</h3>
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<p>You may reflect on your own – and we may also reflect together, in a conversation. In either case the purpose of these reflections is to connect the dots. </p>
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<p>In [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] we in particular want to connect the abstract with the concrete,  the general direction-setting principle with the bothersome phenomena we experience daily. </p>
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<p>So let's begin this reflection with Donald Trump – who has to many academic people become a symbol of dwindling standards in political discourse; and in political decision making; and of the academic cause losing its bearings in economic and political reality. Enough has been said about Trump in the media; and we won't even mention him further. We only point to him as a phenomenon, and invite you to see how the trend he may represent as an icon follows from the general insights we've been discussing.</p>
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<p>Here's a good way to begin the ascent from where we at the moment to the bold generalization we made in the title: Recall the efforts on the part of The Club of Rome to draw attention to the key issue of growth, through The Limits to Growth study. Recall Engelbart's observation (made his second slide at Google)  that our civilisation is lacking 'brakes'. Use this metaphor to reflect on the urgency of this matter...  Then hear [https://youtu.be/0141gupAryM?t=95 this video snippet] where Ronald Reagan is saying, <em>in a most seductive tone of voice</em>,
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<blockquote>
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We believe then, and now, there are no limits to growth, and human progress, when men and women are free to follow their dreams.
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</blockquote> </p>
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<p>Think about what this means, more abstractly. Can you see parts of our collective mind trying with all their might to think thoughts of relevance and meaning – and being swamped by politically motivated sugary nonsense! How is this possible? Just compare the broadcasting power of Norbert Wiener or Erich Jantsch with the broadcasting power of the United States president, and the answer will be clear.</p>
 +
<p>Consider, further, that our issue at hand is our "evolutionary guidance"; and whether academic ideas have impact or not; and whether information technology is helping us evolve toward "collective intelligence" or collective stupidity –  and you'll have no difficulty understanding our motivation.</p>   
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</div></div>
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----
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<div class="row">
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Understanding evolution</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<h3>Illuminating the way</h3>
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<p>But perhaps Reagan was right? Perhaps "the invisible hand" <em>is</em> our best guide?</p>
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<p>What can we <em>really</em> learn about our societal evolution from Darwin's theory? How well has the <em>non</em>-guided social-systemic evolution served us so far?</p>
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<p>What do we really <em>know</em> about this all-important theme?</p>
 +
<p>All we'll need from the theory of evolution is the core insight that Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist, and the archenemy of religion) published in his book "The Selfish Gene" (which led to the development of "memetics" as a research field studying our cultural and societal evolution). Darwinian evolution should not be assumed to lead to benefits or perfection of any kind, Dawkins contended. To understand evolution correctly, we must perceive it as favouring only the best adapted genes – or [[memes|<em>meme</em>]] or 'cultural gene' when the societal and cultural evolution is being studied. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>What made us powerful</h3>
 +
<p>With this we can now just give a gesture drawing of the second [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] with which the [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]] pattern is woven together – and add some finishing touches at the end.</p>
 +
<p>Here we see Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist, who when asked  (in 2007? at Google, we are quoting from memory) "Professor Chomsky, what is in your opinion an insight that may be reaching us from your field that could have a large societal impact?" pointed to an (still unorthodox, he qualified) conclusion that our language is not really a means for communication – but for worldview sharing. A bird may see a hawk and go "tweet, tweet, tweet" and other birds will go "tweet, tweet, tweet" and soon enough all of them will be either averted of the danger or gone. But that's not how the <em>human</em> communication works! </p>
 +
<p>This may seem like an evolutionary error. But Yuval Noah Harari is there to explain why it's not – why this singularly human ability, to to create a story and make it a shared reality made us <em>the</em> dominant species on earth. (Put a gorilla and a human being on a deserted island, and guess who'll be more likely to survive. But if you put ten thousand gorillas on a football stadium, you'll get complete chaos! It's the football and so many other shared stories that literally <em>gamify</em> our social behaviour!)</p>
 +
<p>Harari pointed to money as a prime example of a shared story that has successfully 'gamified' our existence. (Give a gorilla a banana – and he'll gladly take it. Ask him to trade it for a dollar – and he'll surely refuse. A human will, of course, be inclined to do the opposite. But the only reason why the value of this printed piece of paper exceeds the value of a banana is that we jointly believe that it does.) </p>
 +
 +
<h3>What makes us powerless</h3>
 +
<p>How has the power of money, of our shared story par excellence, been used? How has it directed our (systemic) evolution?</p>
 +
<p>David Graeber, the anthropologist, is there to point to an answer.</p>
 +
<p>The story we are about to share is adapted from Graeber's book "Debt; the first 5000 years", which is a history of money. But as the case is with all our stories, we'll simplify his story and use it as a parable. You'll recall  (from Federation through Stories) that our goal is not historical accuracy, but to see the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]].</p>
 +
<p>So imagine that you are living 23 centuries ago. That you are an exceptionally gifted young king. You've received the best education that's available in your time. And your ambition is to rule the world.</p>
 +
<p>You know that with an army of 100 000 men you have a good chance to succeed. But there's a logistical challenge: To feed and clothe an army of that size, you'll need an army of 100 000 supply workers servicing your soldiers.</p>
 +
<p>You think of a solution: You'll print coins and give them to your soldiers; and you'll request of everyone else to pay you those taxes in those coins. In no time everyone will get busy supplying your soldiers with everything they want!</p>
 +
<p>Your business model, as we would call it today, is now nearly complete; but there's still another challenge.</p>
 +
<p>Alexander the Great – the historical king we've asked you to impersonate – needed <em>half a tone of silver a day</em> to pay his soldiers! How in the world could anyone secure such massive amounts of precious metals?</p>
 +
<p>There were, it turned out, two ways to do that.</p>
 +
<p>One way was to raid foreign countries, turn the free people into slaves, and have them mine silver and gold for you.</p>
 +
<p>The other way  is to raid foreign monasteries and palaces, melt whatever sacred or artistic objects are of silver and gold and turn them into coins for your soldiers.</p>
 +
<p>This makes your business plan complete. You might object that it's a kind of a Ponzi scheme (our "fittest" business plans indeed tend to be that); but as you know from history – it worked quite fine for awhile. </p>
 +
<p>What interests us here, however, are the cultural and social-systemic implications of this this way of evolving.</p>
 +
<p>We let you draw your own conclusions. </p> </div></div>
 +
-----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2 style="color:red">Reflection</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The corporation</h3>
 +
<p>As the University of British Columbia law professor, Joel Bakan had an insight that, he felt, was so universally important, that it needed to be federated. The result was a popular book, and an award-winning documentary called The Corporation – which you may see [https://youtu.be/Y888wVY5hzw here]].</p>
 +
<p>Twenty-three centuries after Alexander, it's the international corporations that is the most powerful institution on our planet. The corporation is what takes most people's daily work and power as input – and turns that into socially useful effects. Or so we seem to believe.</p>
 +
<p>See Bakan's film. How has our joint power been evolving? How has it been used? </p>
 +
<p>Can you follow this line of thought all the way to the Key Point at the center of The Paradigm Strategy poster, and beyond, to its right-hand side?</p>
 +
<p>Can you see why we the people now need to direct our power into [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]? And why The Lighthouse project is a natural way to begin?</p> </div> </div>
 +
-----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>We are not (only) the homo sapiens</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
 +
<h3>How to live in a complex world without information</h3>
 +
<p>The second [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] featured on the left-hand side of The Paradigm Strategy poster is trivial; we don't really need those [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] and [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] to see it.</p>
 +
<p>Just imagine us living in a complex world while immersed in information glut. How can we cope?</p>
 +
<p>There's a simple way – just learn how to perform in your various social roles, as one would learn the rules of a game. And then play competitively.</p>
 +
<p>"Homo Ludens" is a title of an old book; but with a bit of [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]], we can give this keyword, the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]], a lot more precise and agile meaning than what Johan Huizinga who coined this phrase was able to do. The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] is a cultural species, distinguished from the <em>homo sapiens</em>. To him, the big-picture insight, or the kind of knowledge combining insights into the nature of a situation with systemic purpose and ethical direction is (to use Carl Jiung's most useful keyword) in his psychological <em>shadow</em>; it's what he had to abandon in order to to achieve success. In the <em>homo ludens</em> world, one does not achieve success by serving a larger societal purpose. Rather, one uses one's social antennas and attunes one's behavior to the personal wants of other players.  By accommodating <em>their</em> power, one acquires a power position of one's own.</p>
 +
<p>Now you know the rest of our story, in a nutshell. The reason why we still give you these details is the importance of this theme: We need to know what we are up against, if we should really be able to cope with our situation and find solutions. Evolve beyond.</p>
 +
<p>Furthermore what we are talking about is really the heart of the matter. What hinders us from recreating our systems? What hinders us from hearing our [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]? Answers will be provided by weaving our remaining two [[threads|<em>threads</em>]]. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>A warmup thread</h3>
 +
<p>The bottom-left [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] will give us a quick and easy start.</p>
 +
<p>The [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] begins with the excerpt from Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power, which was quoted near the bottom of the [[Intuitive Introduction to Systemic Thinking]]. (This is a good moment to re-read that excerpt. Hear Nietzsche say that already in his day, we the people were already overwhelmed with impressions; that already then we were losing our ability to truly comprehend, and to truly act.) Paul Ehrlich (Stanford University biologist, environmentalist and "pessimist") telling how when in the 1950 when he was doing field research with the Inuits, he realized that each member of the community was closely familiar with all the community's tools. It ends with Anthony Giddens (Britain's leading sociologist and public intellectual) describing "ontological security":</p>
 +
<blockquote><p>The threat of personal meaninglessness is ordinarily held at bay because routinised activities, in combination with basic trust, sustain ontological security. Potentially disturbing existential questions are defused by the controlled nature of day-to-day activities within internally referential systems.</p>
 +
<p>Mastery, in other words, substitutes for morality; to be able to control one's life circumstances, colonise the future with some degree of success and live within the parameters of internally referential systems can, in many circumstances, allow the social and natural framework of things to seem a secure grounding for life activities. </p> </blockquote>
 +
<p>It is very easy to see how the distinct [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] that form this [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] enhance one another and lead to a larger insight.</p>
 +
<p>We heard Nietzsche tell us that we are so overwhelmed by impressions, that we defend ourselves from taking <em>anything</em> deeply in, from <em>digesting</em> ideas. We then heard Ehrlich tell us that within the time span of a single generation, our tools – and on a larger scale our reality – have become impenetrably complex (just think of your smartphone – does anyone still possess the kind of knowledge that would suffice to put such a thing together?). The shared excerpt from Giddens' "Modernity and Self-Identity" then shows how we adapt to this situation – by "substituting mastery for morality". </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
 +
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Symbolic power</h3>
 +
<p>We pick up the second [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] with which the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] is woven at the middle, and then work our way to both ends.</p>
 +
<p><blockquote>
 +
[S]ymbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
Let's consider this to be Pierre Bourdieu's gift to the world in a nutshell. In what follows we'll unpack this gift and see why [[symbolic power|<em>symbolic power</em>]] is a key piece in the  big-picture puzzle of our condition we are now putting together.</p>
 +
<p>As the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France, Bourdieu was at the very peak of his profession, in effect representing the science of sociology to the French people. In the latter part of his career he would abandon his purist-academic reluctance to become a public intellectual, and become indeed an activist against the "invisible hand" ideology. </p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3">[[File:Bourdieu.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Pierre Bourdieu]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>Our story begins, however, much earlier, in 1955, when Bourdieu was an army recruit in Algeria, where a war was about to begin. Our goal is to share an insight that made him a sociologist. Like Doug Engelbart and quite a few other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], Bourdieu did not enter his field by studying it, but by first having an insight; by observing something that would make a large impact on that field, and potentially also on our understanding of ourselves.</p> 
 +
<p>During the Algerian war Bourdieu had no difficulty noticing how the official narrative (that France was in Algeria to bring progress and culture) collapsed under the weight of torture and all manner of human rights abuses. So he wrote a small booklet  describing this in an accessible language, in the Que sais-je series. </p>
 +
<p>Back home in France this booklet contributed to politicization of French intelligentsia during the 1950s and 60s. But in Algeria it had another effect. A contact would bring Bourdieu to an "informant" (who might be a man who'd been tortured) and say "You can trust this man <em>completely</em>!" What a wonderful way for a gifted young man to look into the inner workings of the society, at the point of buoyant change!</p>
 +
<p>Having became politically independent, Algeria entered a new stage – of  <em>modernization</em>. </p>
 +
<p>With sympathy and profound insight, Bourdieu was 'a fly on the wall' in a Kabyle village house, deciphering the harmony between the physical objects and the relationships among its people. And how this harmony collapsed when the Kabyle young man was compelled, by new economic realities, to look for employment in the city! Not only his sense of honor, but even his very manner of walking and talking were suddenly out of place – even to the young women from his own background, who saw something different in the movies and in restaurants. </p>
 +
<p>It was in this way that Bourdieu came to realize that the old relationships of economic and cultural domination did not at all vanish – they only changed their way of manifesting themselves!</p>
 +
<p>Bourdieu was reminded of his own experiences, when after childhood in alpine Denguin in Southern France he joined the Parisian elite, by studying in the prestigious École normale (not by birthright, but because of his exceptional talents).</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Theory of practice</h3>
 +
<p>Bourdieu called his theory "theory of practice" –  a fitting name for a theory explaining our social practice, and practical reality. </p>
 +
<p>His keywords "symbolic power", "habitus", "field" and "doxa" will suffice to summarize his insights.</p>
 +
<p>We'll interpret them here somewhat freely (as it suits our overall main goal, to materialise the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]]) with the help of the following brief reflection.</p>
 +
<p>If you would break into your neighbor's house, slaughter the family and rob their property, you would surely be considered a dangerous criminal and treated accordingly. If you wold make a speech on the main square inviting your fellow citizens to do the same to the people in a neighboring country, on a massive scale, you would surely be considered a dangerous madman, and incarcerated accordingly.</p>
 +
<p><em>Unless</em>,  of course, this sort of behavior is part of your "job description", because you are your country's monarch or president. In that case you might even be remembered in history as a great leader – as Alexander the Great might illustrate </p>
 +
<p>Whence this inconsistency?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Odin the horse</h3>
 +
<p>But before we revisit Bourdieu's concepts, let us sketch the other two [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] that complete the [[threads|<em>thread</em>]].</p>
 +
<p>Odin the Horse is a short real-life story about the territorial behavior of Icelandic horses. This excerpt will be sufficient for our purpose.</p>
 +
<p>When Odin the Horse – an ageing leader of the herd – runs parallel with New Horse pushing him into the river, and away from his mares, he is protecting just the physical spot on the turf and the specific social role that he considers his own.</p>
 +
<p> Imagine – in the manner of sharing a certain way of looking at things – our culture as a turf. Then the first thing you'll notice about this turf is that it's considerably more complex than the turf of the horses – just as much as our society and culture are more complex than theirs. There are the kings, and there are his pages; and there's the nobility. Furthermore you might be in king's favor, or in <em>dis</em>favor. You'll feel the difference by the way the king addresses you, as soon as you him. And even if you won't know consciously, <em>something</em> in you will know. You see everyone bow as the king enters, and you automatically do the same. How could it be otherwise?</p>
 +
 +
<h3> Descartes' Error</h3>
 +
<p>Antonio Damasio completes this [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] by helping us understand why [[symbolic power|<em>symbolic power</em>]] is so powerful, even when – and especially when – nobody's aware of its existence.</p>
 +
<p>Damasio, a leading cognitive neuroscientist, explained in a most rigorous, scientific way a key element of our social psychology that you may not even have noticed – namely why we don't wake up wondering whether we should take off your pajamas and run naked in the street. Damasio showed that the content of our conscious mind is controlled by an embodied cognitive filter, which presents to it for deliberation only those possibilities that are "acceptable" – from the embodied filter's point of view, of course.</p>
 +
<p>You might already be guessing how this all might fit together?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Socialization explained</h3>
 +
<p>We may now understand Bourdieu's keyword "field" as a symbolic turf, or metaphorically as a game with rules and distinct avatars, each having a set of capabilities. You may understand "habitus" as a distinct position on the symbolic turf, or as everyone's set of capabilities. Odin the horse has one. And so does Alexander the Great, and everyone else.</p>
 +
<p>You don't bow to Alexander – off goes your head. Each habitus has a socialised collection of ways to negotiate its relative power with the owners of each other habitus. </p>
 +
<p>And finally,  <em>doxa</em>. The more familiar word "orthodoxy" signifies that there is one "right" social order, and one "right" story, the "right" way of conceiving of the world. <em>Doxa</em> is a further step in the same direction, where only <em>one</em> option is allowed to exist. Doxa is what we've been socialized to call "reality".</p> </div> </div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-6">
 +
<p><blockquote>
 +
If I could convince more slaves that they are slaves, I could have freed thousands more.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
We let Harriet Tubman's observation serve as an epigram pointing to the quintessential practical consequence of <em>doxa</em>; and of the the kind of power ("symbolic power") it has over us. Symbolic power is what makes us accomplices in our own disempowerment! </p>
 +
<p>How can we <em>ever</em> be free?</p> 
 +
<p>(The Liberation book will be our attempt to give an answer to this enduring question.)</p>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Tubman.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Harriet Tubman]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
-----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2 style="color:red">Reflection</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Consequences</h3>
 +
<p>We offer the following four consequences of what's just been shared for reflection – and conversation.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Why we cannot see systems</h3> 
 +
<p>An often used parallel – between our [[socialization|<em>socialization</em>]] and the Indian tradition of training an elephant to stay put when tied by a rope to a branch – can be used to explain why we ordinarily cannot even conceive of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]. The point is that we've evolved in such a way that our systems are not admissible to our conscious deliberation; they are a result of our socialization.  Our obedience to systems is pre-conscious – just as is wearing clothes and saying "hello".</p>
 +
<p> This explains a paradox that permeates this proposal – that larger-than-life benefits that become accessible when we allow ourselves this new degree of freedom of thought and action are habitually ignored.</p>
 +
<p>The obstacles to our proposal are cultural and social. Overcoming them is an <em>evolutionary</em> step – which needs to be understood and handled accordingly.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Redefining politics</h3>
 +
<p>The second consequence of the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] is that it changes the conventional political game ceases, from "us against them" to <em>all of us</em> against the obsolete socio-cultural structures (for which our technical keyword is [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]]). </p> 
 +
<p>We'll say more about this below, when discussing the religion for the third millennium – so let it only be said here that while it may appear that the kings are the winners in a social game, and their pages are the losers, <em>this view radically changes as soon as we are able to see the game from the outside.</em> <em>Everyone</em> is socialised into a certain role, or <em>habitus</em>. And [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] can make <em>everyone</em> much better off. Odin the horse doesn't really need all those mares. He's an ageing horse, the farmer had good reasons for bringing New Horse to the farm. But Odin doesn't think in this way. In fact he doesn't think at all. He only feels that someone is violating his turf, he feels threatened, and just he wants to push him into the river.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Redefining reality</h3>
 +
<p>The third consequence is that the idea of reality – which in the traditional cultures occupied the most honoured position as <em>the</em> foundation on which our creation of truth and meaning is based – now becomes the heart of our problem. The reality, or more precisely Bourdieu's <em>doxa</em>, is perceived as what organizes the game, as the very structure of the symbolic turf – which keeps us disempowered without noticing. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Why giants are ignored</h3>
 +
<p>Have you been wondering why the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] tend to be ignored? <em>In spite of</em> the gigantic usefulness of their ideas? And their intrinsic beauty and value?</p>
 +
<p>The problem with [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] is that they're too large. If we would let them in, they'd occupy way too much space on the symbolic turf... </p> </div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Religion as liberation</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Buddhadasa's discovery</h3>
 +
<p>After just a couple of years of monastic life in Bangkok, barely in his 20s, Nguam Phanit (today known as Buddhadasa, "the slave of the Buddha", and celebrated as a reformer of Buddhism) thought "This just cannot be it!" So he made himself a home in an abandoned forest monastery near his home village Chaya, and equipped with a handful of original Pali scriptures undertook to live and practice and experiment as the Buddha did. </p>
 +
<p>It was in this way that Buddhadasa found out that the essence of the Buddha's teaching was not at all as it was taught.</p>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa further understood that what he was witnessing was a simple phenomenon or a "natural law", the rediscovery of which marked the inception of all religions; that all religions had a tendency to ignore this essence; and that his insight could be transformative to the modern world. </p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Buddhadasa.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Buddhadasa]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Liberation prototype</h3>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa’s insight is being fully federated within the book manuscript titled “Liberation” and subtitled “Religion for the third millennium”. This will be the first book in the Knowledge Federation trilogy, by which the ideas sketched here will be made accessible to general public. </p>
 +
<p>Here we only highlight several points, which will help us weave together and complete some streams of thought that are central to our initiative. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Cessation of suffering</h3>
 +
<p>According to legend, Prince Siddartha, who later became the Buddha, left wealth and security to withdrew into the forest and find the cause of suffering. “Suffering”, however, is a rough translation of the Buddhist keyword “dukkha”, which denotes <em>a specific kind of suffering</em>. </p>
 +
<p>This explanation will serve us well enough: <em>dukkha</em> is, simply, what drives Odin the horse to engage in turf behavior.  Applied to humans, <em>dukkha</em> is that part of the human nature whose characteristic emotions are anxiety and worry; and which urges us to control and dominate. </p>
 +
<p>Dukkha is so much part of our everyday life that we tend to take it for granted.</p>
 +
<p> The isight into how much <em>dukkha</em> colors our daily experience and our relationships is life changing. Even more so is the insight into the exquisite way of being that the liberation from dukkha entails. The Buddhists talk about <em>sukkha</em>; other traditions talk about bliss or charity or unconditional love. </p>
 +
<p>What is most interesting for us, in the context of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] and [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]],  is the possibility of substituting our present naive or misguided pursuit of happiness with (what one might call) evidence-based or informed pursuit of happiness – which can take us incomparably further than our present one.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Way to cessation of suffering</h3>
 +
<p>The Buddha called it <em>dhamma</em>. Buddhadasa interprets this completely central keyword as pointing both to a certain natural law, and to living and practicing in accordance with this natural law. It’s like watering the plant – you engage in a certain discipline, and something grows. Asking “why” is beside the point. It’s enough to know that Odin the horse can be tamed; its whims don’t need to dominate our emotions, and our behavior. </p>
 +
<p>The essence of this practice, of the ‘watering’, is to remain free from any sort of clinging – both to what is desirable and to what is not. The key is “mindfulness at the point of contact” – at the point when something we might be inclined to cling to presents itself to our senses or to our awareness, the mind is present and alert and says “no”. A natural way to train Odin is by serving causes that are larger than oneself. </p>
 +
<p>Two points are most interesting from the point of view of “a great cultural renewal”, the possibility of which we have undertaken to illustrate:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>The Buddhist practice is not just different – it is <em>opposite</em> from the ecology in which our modern culture emerges us. Meditation combined with “mindfulness” <em>removes</em> from us the overload of impressions; it allows us to become <em>more</em> sensitive (recall Nietzschje).</li>
 +
<li>You may see how Peccei’s wish may realistically come true: <em>dhamma</em> is the natural law that links our capability to experience happiness with our work on improving our “human quality”!</li>
 +
</ul> </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Seeing the world as it is</h3>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa doesn’t use the word “enlightenment”. Rather, he describes the accomplished or elevated state of veing as “seeing the world as it is”. </p>
 +
<p>Our discussion of the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] offers a ready explanation: The liberation Buddhadasa is talking about is not only the liberation from <em>dukkha</em>; it is also the liberation from our socialisation, and our socialised ways of looking at the world.</p>
 +
<p>So interesting that those two things – our suffering and our socialization – might be closely related!</p>
 +
 +
<h3>There are two ways to God</h3>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa describes the Buddha as a reformer and a rebel. The rebirth he was talking about is not the physical rebirth of the HIndus, but the rebirth of our ego-centeredness, which can happen one hundred times a day. </p>
 +
<p>He describes how just a few centuries after the Buddha the belief system of Hinduism took over, and replaced the original teaching of the Buddha, the real way out of suffering, here and now. </p>
 +
<p>This invites the following conjecture: That there are two approaches to religion, corresponding to what we’ve been calling the <em>homo sapiens</em> and the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] evolutionary streams. That religions tend to begin when an especially gifted person, a true [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] of religion, discovers the <em>dhamma</em> (or whatever this may be called in his or her language) and practices and becomes transformed. Other people see this result, and gather round him to see if they can reach it themselves. </p>
 +
<p>But as the movement grows, and its forefathers are gone and forgotten,  the “socialization” sets in and the institution suffers exactly the kind of transformation that we’ve described above on the examples of social and military organisation, and the corporation. Religion ceases to be an instrument of our liberation, and becomes an instrument of our socialization. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Federating religion</h3>
 +
<p>In most people’s minds the word “religion” is associated with a strongly held (clinged onto) set of beliefs.</p>
 +
<p>When we compare those beliefs together, surely they appear to us as irreconcilable. </p>
 +
<p>When, however, we consider religions to be world traditions within which most valuable <em>experience</em> has been developed – about inherent human possibilities, about the ‘seeds’ we carry inside and how to ‘water’ them – the religious scene becomes entirely something else.</p>
 +
<p>You will now have no difficulty seeing how [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] and [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] engender an approach to knowledge that can help us do the latter – just as our traditional approaches to knowledge focused on the <em>worldviews</em> of religions, and ignored their true gifts. </p>
 +
<p>The point is simply this: When we focus on what's valuable and common in experience, and treat the worldviews as "syntactic sugar", then we can easily show that
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>a radically better realm of human experience  (call it nirvana or nibbana or enlightenment or...) is accessible through a certain [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] </li>
 +
<li>there's a strong agreement among the world traditions about the nature of this [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] </li>
 +
</ul> </p>
 +
<p>We are now back to where we started. Recall Heisenberg's observation about the "narrow frame" or narrow way of looking at the world that the 19th century science gave our ancestors, which was damaging to culture and in particular to religion. </p> 
 +
</div> </div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Stepping through the mirror</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Back to polyscopy</h3>
 +
<p>The last on the list of [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] on the right-hand side of The Paradigm Strategy poster is the Polyscopy prototype. We've talked about [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] quite a bit in Federation through Imges, where we've seen it as the approach to truth and meaning on the other side of the metaphorical [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]. We reached the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] from a fundamental interest, by exploring what the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] have found about "language, thought and reality", as Whorf's put framed it. Here we are once again standing in front of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], but now with a handful of <em>most practical</em> or cultural interests – by exploring what the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] have said about success, happiness, love, values, religion...</p>
 +
<p>On this side of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] the winner takes it all. And the winner – that's the traditionally the king. Or perhaps today – the millionaire. So everyone today wants to be a millionaire, just as in olden days everyone dreamed of being a king. </p>
 +
<p>Can you imagine a radical change of values – similar in magnitude to the change from the values from the Middle Ages to the ones of modernity?</p>
 +
<p>Can you see how Peccei's dream may now come true – about a "great cultural revival", where "human development is the most important goal"?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Religion on the other side of the mirror</h3>
 +
<p>All we need to do to get there, once again, is to see ourselves in the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]. We then instantly realize that how we define winners and losers is all just part of our socialization, it's all part of the game we've learned and accepted as reality. We also realize how much what we <em>experience</em> as desirable and pleasant can be just simply our perception, a result of <em>that</em> collection of illusions (recall Einstein). We become ready to listen to the experience of others – and <em>correct</em> our ideas and our experience. </p>
 +
<p>The Buddha (as the tradition portrays him) may well be seen as showing us the way (through the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]) – didn't he leave the wealth and power of his royal existence, to pursue a whole other way from suffering to happiness? Christ may then be seen as pointing to the ultimate sacrifice – of one's "interests" or "happiness" or "ego" – for the sake of a larger good.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Emperor Alexander meets the Buddha</h3>
 +
<p>What would have happened if a great historical king, such as Alexander the Great, met an enlightened follower of the pursuit of happiness on the other side of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]?</p>
 +
<p>The event – Alexander visiting Diogenes (who was sunbathing in front of the barrel he was living in) – is familiar. And so is this detail, quoted here from an ancient text.
 +
<blockquote>
 +
So the king came up to [Diogenes] as he sat there and greeted him, whereat the other
 +
looked up at him with a terrible glare like that of a lion and ordered him to step aside
 +
a little, for Diogenes happened to be warming himself in the sun. Now Alexander was
 +
at once delighted with the man’s boldness and composure in not being awestruck in his
 +
presence. For it is somehow natural for the courageous to love the courageous, while
 +
cowards eye them with misgiving and hate them as enemies, but welcome the base and
 +
like them.</blockquote> </p>
 +
<p>This wasn't, of course, their entire conversation. Diogenes did not miss this opportunity to make his main point, that virtue and wisdom, rather than inherited social status, is what distinguishes true royalty:
 +
<blockquote>... [Diogenes] went on to tell the king that he did not even possess the badge of
 +
royalty. . ."And what badge is that?" said Alexander. "It is the badge of the bees, "he
 +
replied, "that the king wears. Have you not heard that there is a king among the bees,
 +
made so by nature, who does not hold office by virtue of what you people who trace
 +
your descent from Heracles call inheritance? " "What is this badge ?" inquired
 +
Alexander. "Have you not heard farmers say, "asked the other, "that this is the only
 +
bee that has no sting since he requires no weapon against anyone? For no other bee
 +
will challenge his right to be king or fight him when he has this badge. I have an idea,
 +
however, that you not only go about fully armed but even sleep that way. Do you not
 +
know," he continued, "that is a sign of fear in a man for him to carry arms? And no
 +
man who is afraid would ever have a chance to become king any more than a slave
 +
would."
 +
</blockquote>
 +
</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Rebuilding the tower of Babel</h3>
 +
<p>According to an old myth, a very long time ago the humanity was well on the way to reach this other realm of cultural possibilities that the founders of religions and adepts of spiritual practice have been pointing to. But they got divided by their different ways of speaking and looking at the world, and the project failed.</p>
 +
<p>We are now in a position to do it again.</p>
 +
<p> </p>
 +
[[File:Babel2.jpeg]] <br><small><center>A detail from the Earth Sharing installation (in 2018 in Bergen), where our dialog series began.</center></small>
 +
<p> </p>
 +
<p>You'll find a brief report about this [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] in Federation through Applications. Further details will be provided also here.</p>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Academic self-renewal</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-6"><h3>What the giants had to say</h3>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<p>What are the scientists to do next? </p>
 +
<p> There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers — conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial. Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. </p>
 +
</blockquote> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3"> [[File:Bush.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Vannevar Bush]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>Vannevar Bush was an early computing machinery pioneer, who before the World War II became the MIT professor and dean, and who during the war served as the leader of the entire US scientific effort – supervising about 6000 chosen scientists, and making sure that we are a step ahead in terms of technology and weaponry, including <em>the</em> bomb. </p>
 +
<p>In 1945 this scientific strategist par excellence wrote a <em>scientific</em> strategy article, titled As We May Think, from which the above excerpt is taken. The war having been won, Bush warned, there still remains a strategically central issue, which the scientists need to focus on and resolve – our organization and sharing of knowledge. Bush's argument is for collective sense making. He observed that we must be able to in effect think together as a single mind does – which explains his title. </p>
 +
<p>Doug Engelbart heard him (he read Bush's article in 1947, in a Red Cross library erected on four pillars, while stationed as an army recruit in the Philippines) – and carried the project significantly further. Doug foresaw (already in 1951!) that the enabling technology would not be the microfilm (as Bush thought – microfilm too needs to be sent and broadcasted) but digital computers equipped with an interactive interface and linked together into a network.  And he created the technology that was still missing  (see Federation through Stories).</p>
 +
<p>Norbert Wiener also heard him. Wiener cited Bush in the already mentioned last chapter of his 1948 Cybernetics (see Federation through Stories). Wiener took this initiative further by developing cybernetics – which is a different and complementary direction than Doug. The message we need to receive from cybernetics is that we the people act through systems. And that it is the structure of those systems that determines whether our action will be effective – or self-destructive. And that proper communication in a system is necessary if the system should have control over its effects on its environment – and on itself just as well.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>A case for academic self-renewal</h3>
 +
<p><blockquote>
 +
[T]he university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing the society’s capacity for continuous self-renewal.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
Erich Jantsch, who gave us this most timely advice a half-century ago, understood that it is the <em>evolution</em> of our systems that is the key to changing our condition. That the only system that <em>can</em> be capable of [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]] this evolution is the academic system. And that to be able to do that, <em>the academic system itself needs to self-organize</em> as it might suit this new role. </p>
 +
<p>The academic system <em>is</em> indeed already in charge of our society's evolution, or <em>autopoiesis</em> or self-renewal. Through research, this system creates the new knowledge that <em>drives</em> the evolution of other systems. And through education, it recreates the world with every new generation of students. The only question is whether we in the academia are also <em>doing</em> this job.</p>
 +
<p>As we have seen, neither Doug Engelbart nor Erich Jantsch found a fertile ground for their ideas at a university. Also the core message of cybernetics, or the systems sciences, is yet to be heard. </p>
 +
<p>Vannevar Bush's most opportune strategic initiative is still waiting to be taken up.</p> 
 +
<p>So why don't we at the very least have an honest academic <em>conversation</em> about this all-important theme?</p>
 +
<p>What we would like to offer to this most conversation, what we'd like to put on the round table around which we are going to sit, is an academically solid case for academic self-renewal.</p>
 +
<p>A careful reading of the material we've presented here will reveal three distinct arguments and three <em>reasons</em> for this course of action – focusing on technology, epistemology and ecology.</p>
 +
<p>Here's a brief summary.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>The technology argument</h3>
 +
<p>The printing press – which served as technological underpinning to Enlightenment – only automated the social process that was already in place, authoring and broadcasting of documents. The new media technology is, however, <em>qualitatively</em> different; it is properly speaking a collective nervous system.</p>
 +
<p>To see why the new technology enables us to make a quantum leap in our collective intelligence – <em>only if</em> we self-organize in an entirely new way (if we learn to function as cells in a nervous system do), imagine what would become of your own intelligence if your cells would be using your nervous system to only broadcast data to your brain and to each other. You may be thinking your thoughts and walking toward a wall. Suddenly, you find yourself <em>standing</em> a meter from a wall, with full awareness of this fact. This would not have happened if your eyes were trying to signal this fact to your brain by writing academic articles in some specialized domain of academic interest!</p>
 +
<p>And as we have seen – the new technology was <em>conceived</em> to enable the [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]]  re-evolution, a half-century ago, by Doug Engelbart and his team.</p>
 +
<p>[[knowledge federation|<em>Knowledge federation</em>]] is <em>by definition</em> what a collective mind should be doing. Our technical [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] we developed – in education, public informing, scientific communication and other core areas – show how different our systems now need to be; and what an enormous difference this can make.</p> 
 +
 +
<h3>The epistemology argument</h3>
 +
<p>There is a reason why the traditional university is not so interested in technology. Our most valued academic preoccupation is "basic research" – whose goal is to "discover" the mechanisms and processes by which the nature operates.</p>
 +
<p>The epistemology argument is that the reasons for the traditional academic values – and mechanisms and processes – are historical. At the time when they developed, the esteemed goal of a philosopher was to distinguish truth from illusion, to find our how the things "really are" in reality. The solutions to this time honored challenge that the pioneers of science conceived were so vastly advantageous, that they quite naturally became the society's – and the university's – esteemed standard.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen (in Federation through Stories) that this approach was, however, too narrow for supporting core elements of human culture. An erosion in culture took place. And then the naked narrowness of this approach to social construction of truth and meaning emerged <em>as a hard fact</em> in modern physics, and in other sciences and in philosophy as well.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen in Federation through Images that modern science finds the whole "correspondence with reality" approach to truth and meaning unsound for two reasons: (1) it cannot be verified and (2) correspondence with reality tends to be a result of illusion. We have then seen how a foundation for social creation of truth and meaning can be developed which is triply sound and solid:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Because it is a written convention (and truth by convention cannot be disputed)</li>
 +
<li>Because its fundamental conventions are the state-of-the-art epistemological insights, written as conventions</li>
 +
<li>Because it is a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] – and hence equipped with a mechanism for self-renewal, when new insights require that</p>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>We have seen how on this foundation a new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] for knowledge work can be developed, which gives us the people exactly the kind of knowledge we need.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen that in this new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] the work on the <em>design</em> of knowledge work principles, values, tools, mechanisms and processes rightly claims the status that the "basic research" now has. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>The ecology argument</h3>
 +
<p>We use this word, "ecology", to point to the fact that the power of human systems has grown so much that we can now impact, even irreversibly, the bio-physical and natural systems, and ultimately endanger the very systems that have so successfully supported the emergence and proliferation of life on our planet</p>
 +
<p>We also use this word to point to the human-systemic ecology we've created, which now drives our technological, societal and cultural evolution. </p>
 +
<p>We have seen in this module that the ecology we've been relying on – uninformed self-interest, mediated by "the survival of the fittest" – has from the beginning of civilization, and into the modern times, favored the most aggressive societal structures (such as the Macedonian Phalanx, and the modern corporation). It is those erosive [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]] that now coerce us to not only destroy our environment, but to even remain oblivious of that very fact.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen that the [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]] has been pointed to as <em>the</em> natural remedy; and as the next large stage of our evolution. We have seen that the guided evolution of society crucially depends on an "evolutionary guidance system" or in a word, on suitable <em>knowledge</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Homo ludens academicus</h3>
 +
<p>This brings us to <em>the</em> key issue of this conversation – the <em>academic</em> ecology.</p>
 +
<p>are our present academic value system, and the system of academic remuneration and promotion, still suitable for supporting this re-evolutionary new role of the university – whose urgency and importance is so rapidly growing? Will the university be able to give our society the knowledge it needs? Will it enable its self-renewal?</p>
 +
<p>We can answer this question in two very different ways. We can be "objective observers" of our system and its evolution. Or we can take a proactive stance toward this evolution.</p> 
 +
<p>If we now tell you that the present-day academic ecology (the so-called "publish or perish", which so flagrantly favors routinized hyper-production in traditional academic fields) does not give us the ecology we need, that it favors a certain cultural sub-species at the detriment of others, we will not be saying anything that you don't already know. We propose to call this presently "fittest" cultural sub-species the <em>homo ludens academicus</em>.</p>
 +
<p>You will also have no difficulty seeing why the <em>homo ludens academicus</em> is an evolutionary miscarriage. And why his cultural subspecies should not even exist. Isn't it the very <em>purpose</em> of the academic system to keep us the <em>homo sapiens</em> track?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Reviving the academic spirit</h3>
 +
<p>Galilei, and Giordano Bruno and Copernicus, are of course exemplary figures. But if we should go back to the original academic spirit, we must go further back in time than that – all the way to Plato; and to Socrates, his teacher.</p>
 +
<p>It was Plato, as you'll easily recall, that <em>created</em> the Academy from which the modern academic tradition evolved. And it was his teacher, Socrates, to whom Plato gave the credit for creating the very spirit on which the Academy was founded.</p>
 +
<p>And Socrates was, by today's standards, a strange kind of academic indeed. HIs publication record, as you might recall, was all but impressive . His work was to engage people in – dialogs!</p>
 +
<p>His goal was to help his fellow citizens see that what they saw as reality was largely an illusion, which gave them illusion of power. </p>
 +
<p>Socrates was sentenced to death for impiety, and for corrupting the Athenian youth. But his spirit lived on. And it led to Plato's academy, but to its rebirth in the Renaissance, and ultimately to the modern-day university. </p>
 +
<p>Can we once again revive some of that original spirit, in <em>this</em> age?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Occupy your university</h3>
 +
<p>"The future will either be an inspired product of a great cultural revival, or there will be no future", wrote Aurelio Peccei. </p>
 +
<p>Not long ago, when it became obvious how intolerably wasteful and unjust our global monetary system was, people found themselves called to occupy Wall Street. Certainly we must leave our spectator position, we must learn to react and act. The question is – What strategy may be most promising?  Where – in what system – can the re-evolutionary change of our society most naturally begin?</p>
 +
<p>When we begin to look into this question, we realize at once why the Wall Street may not be the answer. Those bankers wouldn't really know how to change their system – <em>even if they wanted to</em>! They too are just doing what they are paid for – making the rich richer. Isn't the growing income inequality an eloquent sign that they are doing their job expertly? And hasn't the banking elite acquired their expertise at our elite universities?</p>
 +
<p>Judging from what's just been told, occupying your local university would appears to be a more promising choice.</p>
 +
<p>And if you already <em>are</em> at a university – then there's nothing left to occupy!</p>
 +
<p>All that remains is doing what <em>we</em> are paid for – being <em>creative</em>. And yes, perhaps also being creative <em>in new ways</em>, when the circumstances require that.</p>
 +
</div> </div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The next step</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>It's important to start right</h3>
 +
<p>As Lao Tzu already observed, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It is all-important, however, to take that one step in a good direction.</p>
 +
<p>It might surprise you now to hear that we see consider this first step to be an <em>inward</em> or ethical one, rather than a surge of action. And yet from what's been told you might have discerned that an <em>embodied</em> ethical stance will have to be the very root from which the contemporary cultural revival can grow. </p>
 +
<p>As long as we remain competitive role players in a competitive world, our hands are soiled and we are bound to soil everything we touch.</p>
 +
<p>If you've realized this, than you can also understand how <em>we</em> intend to handle this situation. We want to above all keep our intentions clear. And we want to leave a clean space for you to step in.</p>
 +
<p>This is a very delicate path for us to walk. We'll surely make many mistakes. But we see no other way to go; and there's no turning back.</p>
 +
<p>Being "nice" and accommodating each other's whims and foibles, and by extension the existing [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]], is obviously not a good direction. But neither is starting a turf strife – which can only create more of the dynamic that got us into trouble.</p> </div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
<h3><em>We</em> will not change the world</h3>
 +
<p>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has", wrote [[Margaret Mead]]. (We mention in passing that as <em>the</em> first woman leader of the systems community, Margaret Mead championed the strategy that this community should apply systemic thinking <em>to its own system</em>!) You will find evidence of our thoughtfulness and commitment on these pages.</p>
 +
<p>And yet it is clear to us, and it should be clear to you too, that we <em>cannot</em> change the world. The world is not only us – it is <em>all of us</em> together! </p>
 +
<p>So if the world will change, that will be a result of <em>your</em> doing; of <em>your</em> thoughtfulness and commitment!</p>
 +
<p>We've all been socialized to think and act <em>within</em> our systems.  Deviating from this feels unnatural; it <em>hurts</em> – and yet that is the re-evolutionary next step that those of us who are able simply <em>have to</em> take!</p>
 +
<p>All the rest will be just fun; just creative play! </p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Mead.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Margaret Mead]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Knowledge federation is not <em>our</em> project</h3>
 +
<p>See if you can see [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as <em>your</em> project, not ours. </p>
 +
<p>From this point  on we'll be implementing our [[back seat policy|<em>back seat policy</em>]] – holding onto an advisory role, and offering help to people and groups worldwide who'll want to take this initiative further. We'll do that because <em>it is that very act</em>, of taking initiative, and only to a lesser degree its results, that brings the new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] into being.</p>
 +
<p>Collaboration is to the emerging paradigm as competition is to the old one. In Norway (this website is hosted at the University of Oslo) there is a word – <em>dugnad</em> – for the kind of collaboration that brings together the people in a neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon, to gather fallen leaves and branches and do small repairs in the commons, and then share a meal together. </p>
 +
<p>It is the <em>dugnad</em> spirit that now needs to replace competitive career game play.</p>
 +
<p>If there is any leadership you may expect from us, its extent is the creation this creative space and this invitation. If there is anything we expect from you, it is to be completely free to take the lead. We've passed you the ball, and it's now in your hands. </p>
 +
<p>Surprise us with a creative move of your own. And if you'll want us to play along, invite us to a <em>dugnad</em>!</p>
 +
<p>If our commitments allow and your idea feels resonant, rest assured that we won't be able to refuse.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
 +
---- OLDER ----
 +
 +
 +
<div class="page-header" > <h1>Federation through Conversations</h1> </div>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>How to change course</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The big question seen in the context of the big picture</h3>
 +
<p><blockquote>
 +
It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
We have already seen this core challenge that The Club of Rome – and Aurelio Peccei, the Club's founder and our icon for [[guided evolution of society|<em>guided evolution of society</em>]] – have entrusted us with.</p>
 +
<p>Do we really need to change course? And <em>can [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] be helpful in finding a way to do that?</em></p>
 +
<p>But aren't these exactly <em>the</em> right questions for us to put to test our proposal – of a new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in knowledge work, the "big picture science", the "natural approach to knowledge", the provider of "information as we may need it"?</p>
 +
<p>Naturally, we look at this big question by developing a big-picture view <em>of the course itself</em> – which is of course the course of our societal and cultural evolution. Can we see it in the light in which we now see the zeitgeist of the Middle Ages?</p>
 +
<p>We approach this theme by challenging the "religion" that the modernity has given us – that <em>we do not need knowledge</em> (recall Galilei in house arrest); that all we need is to be conscientiously and consistently self-serving; and that "the invisible hand" of the market, or free competition and the survival of the fittest, will secure that the world that results will be the best possible one. </p>
 +
<p>Isn't this the "universal theory" that is now commonly used to on the one hand legitimize our social order, and subordinate us to it – and on the other hand to orienting our  "human development" (which, as you'll recall, Aurelio Peccei considered to be "the most important goal"). </p>
 +
<p>There can be no doubt that "the invisible hand" is indeed now guiding our evolution – but not as a magical force capable of turning our cherished character faults into a perfect social order; only as a political ideology <em>ratifying</em> our arrogance and our ignorance.</p>
 +
<p>So what do we really <em>know</em> about this theme?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Understanding evolution</h3>
 +
<p>We look at our cultural evolution from an angle we haven't used before – by [[knowledge federation|<em>federating</em>]] the insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] in the humanities (sociology, cognitive science, anthropology, history, psychology and linguistics). And by weaving them together with the insights of the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] of world cultural traditions (Buddhism, Sufism, martial art and qigong).</p>
 +
<p>By doing that we also illustrate how a big-picture view of <em>any</em> core issue could be developed by combining or [[knowledge federation|<em>federating</em>]] insights of [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] across time and space, cultural boundaries and disciplinary divisions.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Evolving beyond paradigms</h3>
 +
<p>Have you noticed how different traditions have tenaciously held on to their worldviews <em>the</em> only right ones? How ready they were to wage wars – even against the people who upheld a slightly different variant of the <em>same</em> creed; and even when their creed and their god explicitly <em>forbade</em> killing!</p>
 +
<p>We are about to see that a quantum leap <em>in the very nature</em> of our evolution has become possible – where we'll transcend worldviews and paradigms (as they have been traditionally) altogether! Where we'll liberate ourselves from <em>any</em> fixed way of looking at the world, and of conceiving "reality" – and become able to acquire new forms of awareness responsibly yet freely.</p>
 +
<p>It is to ignite this way of evolving that is the core purpose of these conversations. </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>These conversations are dialogs</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Changing the world by changing the way we communicate</h3>
 +
<p>There is a way of listening and speaking that fits our purpose quite snuggly. Physicist [[David Bohm]] called it the dialogue, and we'll build further on his ideas and the ideas of others, and weave them into the meaning of another one of our [[keywords|<em>keywords</em>]], the [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]]. </p>
 +
<p>Bohm considered the dialogue to be necessary for resolving our contemporary entanglement. Here is how he described it.</p></div></div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-6">
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<p>I give a meaning to the word 'dialogue' that is somewhat different from what is commonly used. The derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. 'Dialogue' comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means 'the word' or in our case we would think of the 'meaning of the word'. And dia means 'through' - it doesn't mean two. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture of image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which will emerge some new understanding. It's something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It's something creative. And this shared meaning is the 'glue' or 'cement' that holds people and societies together.</p></blockquote></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bohm.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[David Bohm]]</center></small></div></div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<p>Contrast this with the word 'discussion', which has the same root as 'percussion' an 'concussion'. It really means to break things up. It emphasises the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view. Discussion is almost like a Ping-Pong game, where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to get points for yourself. Possibly you will take up somebody else's ideas to back up your own - you may agree with some and disagree with others- but the basic point is to win the game. That's very frequently the case in a discussion.</p>
 +
<p>In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail. Rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. It's a situation called win-win, in which we are not playing a game against each other but with each other. In a dialogue, everybody wins.</p>
 +
</blockquote>
 +
 +
<h3>We are not just talking</h3>
 +
<p>Don't be deceived by this word, "conversations". These conversations are where the real action begins.</p>
 +
<p>By developing these dialogs, we want to develop a way for us to bring the themes that matter into the focus of the public eye. We also want to bring in the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] and their insights, to help us energize and illuminate those themes. And then we also want to engage us all to collaborate on co-creating a shared understanding that reflects the best of our joint knowledge and insight.</p>
 +
<p><em>And above all</em> – we want to  <em>create </em>  a way of conversing that works; which makes us "collectively intelligent".  We want to evolve in practice, with the help of new media and real-life, artistic situation design, a public sphere where the events and the sensations will be the ones that truly matter – i.e. the ones that are the steps in our advancement toward a new cultural and social order. </p>
 +
<p>In a truest sense, the medium here really is the message!</p>
 +
 +
<h3>A <em>real</em> reality show</h3>
 +
<p>Two people can be talking about these themes over a coffee house table. If they turn on the smartphone and record, their conversation can already become part of the global one.</p>
 +
<p>What we, however, primarily have in mind is public dialogs, which begin in physical space and continue online. What can possibly be more real, and really relevant and interesting, than watching a new Renaissance emerge? Observing our blind spots and subconscious resistances; feeling its pulse, its birth pains... </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Conversations that matter</h3>
 +
<p>Imagine now, if you have not done that already, that you are facing this task – of choosing just a handful of themes that matter; the ones that will be most suitable for us to initiate this process. What themes would you choose? We have tentatively chosen three themes, to begin with. In what follows we'll say a few words about each of them.</p></div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The Paradigm Strategy dialog</h2></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The paradigm strategy</h3>
 +
<p>The theme we chose for The Paradigm Strategy dialog appeared to us as perhaps the most natural one, which had to be represented in this showcase of knowledge work that illuminates the way: How to respond to contemporary issues. </p>
 +
<p>We wrote the following in the abstract where this idea was initially shared
 +
<blockquote>
 +
The motivation is to allow for the kind of difference that is suggested by the comparison of everyone carrying buckets of water from their own basements, with everyone teaming up and building a dam to regulate the flow of the river that is causing the flooding. We offer what we are calling The Paradigm Strategy as a way to make a similar difference in impact, with respect to the common efforts focusing
 +
on specific problems or issues. The Paradigm Strategy is to focus our efforts on instigating a sweeping and fundamental cultural and social paradigm change – instead of trying to solve problems, or discuss, understand and resolve issues.
 +
</blockquote></p>
 +
 +
<h3>A roadmap for guided evolution of society</h3>
 +
<p>At the same time this dialog introduces a roadmap for guided evolution of society – and it develops further by engaging and weaving together our collective knowledge and ingenuity. Can we perceive our own time, our own blind spots and evolutionary entanglements, in a similar way as we now see the dark side of the Middle Ages? </p>
 +
<p>This too is a natural theme – because what could be a better way to showcase the new approach to knowledge, than by providing what's been lacking – as  Neil Postman insightfully observed:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
The problem now is not to get information to people, but how to get some meaning of what's happening.(...) Even the great story of inductive science has lost a good deal of its meaning, because it does not address several questions that all great narratives must address: Where we come from; what's going to happen to us; where we are going, that is; and what we're supposed to do when we are here. Science couldn't answer that; and technology doesn't.
 +
</blockquote></p>
 +
 +
<h3>The Paradigm Strategy poster</h3>
 +
<p> </p>
 +
<p>[[File:PSwithFredrik.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Fredrik Eive Refsli, the leader of our communication design team, jubilates the completion of The Paradigm Strategy poster.</center></small></p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<p>It will be best if you'll be looking at [http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf The Paradigm Strategy poster] as we speak.</p>
 +
<p>What you see on the left is a presentation of our current way of evolving (culturally and socially), drafted on a yellow background. What you see on the right is the creative frontier where the new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] is about to emerge, represented by a couple of [[design patterns|<em>design patterns</em>]] and five [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]]. The large dot or circle in the middle is what we call "the key point" – it is the insight (or [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]]) that can take us from one social reality and way of evolving to the next.</p>
 +
<p>Close to the dividing line, on the new paradigm side, you see "bootstrapping"; it's that very singular act that takes us out of our old paradigm and makes us part of the new one.</p>
 +
<p>The poster is conceived as an invitation to begin to [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrap</em>]] – and in that way join the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] as aware and active participant. The poster is interactive; the QR codes open up suitable files with further information (they are also hyperlinks, so that also the digital version of the poster can be interacted with). The "bootstrapping" thread leads to the QR code and file with an interactive online version of the poster – where it's possible to post comments, and in that way be part of the online dialog, through which the presented ideas, and the poster itself, are being developed further.</p>
 +
<p>The core insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] (and also some other insights, as we shall see) are represented by icons, rendered as [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], and combined into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]]. By weaving the threads into [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]], and [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] into the [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] , the central "key point" is made accessible. </p>
 +
<p>By now you know why we use [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]]: They bring abstract and high-level insights down to earth, make ideas palpable, and real. We cannot possibly do that with 12 [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] in this very brief summary! And yet if we only describe them abstractly, we'll lose the solid ground under our feet, and we'll never reach that metaphorical 'mountain top' from where the naked Middle-agedness of our present way of being and evolving can be seen with clarity and precision.</p>
 +
<p>So what we'll do is a compromise: We'll sketch a couple of the [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] in some detail; and give only a gesture drawing of all the rest. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Norbert Wiener's key insight</h3>
 +
<p>Norbert Wiener was recognized as exceptionally gifted while he was still a child. He studied mathematics, zoology and philosophy, and finally got his doctorate in mathematical logic from Harvard, when he was only 17. Wiener went on to do seminal work in several distinct fields, one of which was cybernetics.</p>
 +
<p>In a moment we'll let you in on some observations from Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics, which was one of the core works by which this field was established. What you need to know to understand why this is relevant to us – why what's being talked about is <em>exactly</em> our main theme, giving the right 'headlights' to our civilization 'bus' –  is that the name "cybernetics" derives its meaning from Greek words that signify "science of control" or of steering. And that when Wiener talks about "homeostasis", you may interpret this word as meaning precisely the <em>capability</em> of "steering" the Modernity bus. You may also interpret this word as meaning "sustainability" – because <em>homeostasis</em> is the capability that a machine or an organism needs to have to be able to correct its course and not hit a wall or fall into a precipice. Obviously, says Wiener, information is going to be the key, because that's what turns any living organism or community, animal <em>or</em> human, into an organism or community (Wiener here doesn't use the word "system"). So what kind of information – and <em>use</em> of information – does the modern society need in order to be able to steer a viable course, in its present highly developed and complex form? Ultimately, of course, Wiener is making a case for cybernetics as the needed and still missing body of knowledge – in the final chapter of the first edition of Cybernetics, titled "Information, Language and Society", from which the following excerpt is quoted.
 +
<blockquote>
 +
In connection with the effective amount of communal information, one of the most surprising facts (...) is its extreme lack of efficient homeostatic process. There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end in a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. This is associated with the very comforting view that the individual entrepreneur, in seeking to forward his own interest, is in some manner a public benefactor and thus has earned the great rewards with which society has showered him. Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory.</blockquote> </p>
 +
<p>Wiener continues by making two distinct points using a single line of argumentation.</p>
 +
<p>The first point is that the just mentioned belief – that we don't need to consciously be concerned about our capability to steer a sustainable or viable direction, that the free competition or "the invisible hand" will deftly guide us to the best possible world, and future – is obviously false. Wiener discusses the results and insights of another pair of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, in game theory (Von Neumann's story is parallel to Wiener's; his many seminal achievements include the digital computer architecture that is still in use today); and points out how those insights are confirmed in everyday experiences with economy and politics.</p>
 +
<p>The second point Wiener makes is that our society's communication is broken – because how else could we still believe in that obviously naive and politically motivated free competition story – and ignore both what the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] have been telling us, and what common experience has shown?</p> 
 +
<p>This could already be sufficient to establish the Wiener's paradox [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] – because Wiener himself committed his insight to a book; cybernetics itself became organized as a traditional scientific field; and we <em>still</em> believe in "the invisible hand". But let us not hurry; this theme is centrally important, and the insight we want to share will be strengthened by completing this [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] with the help of the other two [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] – which we'll cover only very briefly.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>How we failed to become sustainable</h3>
 +
<p><blockquote>
 +
And how is evolution to continue in the human world? Has it, as some hold, gbecome caught in a net of coercifve factors in which it is ever more inextricably entangled with every motion? (...) I believe that <b>the most important task today</b> is the searrch for new degrees of freedom to facilitate the living out of evolutionary processes. It is of prime importance that the openness of the inner world for which no limitations are yet in sight, is matched by a similar openness of the outer world, and that it tries actively to establish the latter. I believe that the sociocultural man in "co-evolution with himself" basically has the possibility of creating the conditions for his fur5ther evolution—much as life on earth, since its first appeareance 4000 million years ago, has always created the conditions for its own evolution toward higher complexity. </blockquote>
 +
In Federation through Stories we have already told about Erich Jantsch (as an icon of [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]) and his legacy and vision. We let the above excerpt from his last book, "The Self-Organizing Universe" (in which the emphasis is ours) serve as a concise summary – pointing at the same time to the importance he attributed to the question with which the quoted paragraph begins.</p> 
 +
<p>In 1980, when this book was published, and when Erich Jantsch passed away, Ronald Reagan became the 40th U.S. president. And with him, "the invisible hand" evolutionary doctrine, and the corresponding way of evolving – where the market, or the money, decides – became our way of evolving. </p>
 +
<p>Perhaps when people will look back at our era, or if you can imagine the knowledge pyramid we talked about on our front page and in Federation through Images – then this single piece of information or insight might be recognized as <em>the</em> most important one; and this decision as <em>the</em> most important decision in humanity's history. Should we use knowledge to steer our way into the future? Or is "the invisible hand" or "the survival of the fittest" or "the market" a sufficient and indeed our best guide?</p>
 +
<p>How was this question decided?</p>
 +
<p>You'll have no difficulty noticing that it wasn't really [[knowledge federation|<em>federated</em>]] in any meaningful way. Ronald Reagan was not in any way qualified to analyze and reject the findings of those [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]; his expertise was only as a media artist, a role player. But that turned out to be enough! Because in a world where information is simply broadcast, it's the campaign dollars that decide how much "air time" one gets, and ultimately about the course of our evolution – not the insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Wiener's paradox</h3>
 +
<p>The [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]] is a [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]]; we use it to point to a pervasive phenomenon – that an academic community may fail to communicate even its very core message to the public: even when that core message that is as old as the field itself; and even when this core message must be communicated <em>before</em> the public can understand why all other results created by that community are relevant, whether they should be put to use and for what purposes. </p>
 +
<p>If you look at the right-hand side of The Paradigm Strategy poster, you will see that The Lighthouse is one of the five [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] that are featured there. And if you look up this [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] in Federation through Applications, you will see that it's mentioned two times – as a proposal developed for and partly with the systems community (in collaboration with Alexander Laszlo), and then again as a [[Quixote stunts|<em>Quixote stunt</em>]]. So this prototype already has quite a bit of history. And that it's really the only right way to handle a question of such an importance that we can stand behind.</p>
 +
<p>While we wait for this [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] to become operational, this question is too important to just wait. So let's investigate now – what do we actually <em>know</em> about it?</p>
 +
<p>How has "the invisible hand" or "the market" or simply "the money" served us as the guiding principle of our social-systemic evolution?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Fitness revisited</h3>
 +
<p>All we really need from the theory of evolution is Richard Dawkins' key insight (which forms the substance of his book "The Selfish Gene", and which led to the development of "memetics" as a research field) – that evolution should not be assumed to lead to benefits or perfection of any kind; that the only thing it really serves or favors is the best adapted gene (or [[memes|<em>meme</em>]], when we apply Darwin's theory to culture). </p>
 +
<p>With this we can now just give a gesture drawing of the second [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] with which the [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]] pattern is woven together – and add a bit of detail, as finishing touches, at the very end.</p>
 +
<p>Here we see Noam Chomsky, who having been asked  (in 2007? at Google, we are quoting from memory) "Professor Chomsky, what is in your opinion an insight that may be reaching us from your field, from linguistics, which could have a large impact?" points out to an (still unorthodox, he says) finding that our language is not really a means for communication – but for worldview sharing. (Our comment: a bird may see an eagle, and go "tweet, tweet, tweet" and other birds will go "tweet, tweet, tweet" and soon all of them will be either tweeting or gone. But that's not how our <em>human</em> communication operates!) </p>
 +
<p>This may seem like an evolutionary error. But Yuval Noah Harari is there to explain us that this – to create a shared story and jointly believe in it – is what makes our species <em>the</em> dominant one on earth. (Put a gorilla on a deserted island, and a human being – and guess who's more likely to survive. But put ten thousand gorillas on a football stadium – and you'll get <em>complete</em> chaos! It's obviously a shared story, or literally a game, that can keep thousands of men orderly doing the same thing – in this case watching.</p>
 +
<p>Harari then points to money as a prime example of a shared story that has successfully 'gamified' our existence. (Give a gorilla a banana – and he'll gladly take it. Ask him to trade it for a dollar – and he'll surely refuse. A human will, of course, be inclined to do the opposite.) <p>
 +
<p>How well has the money served us in the role of an evolutionary guide? David Graber, the anthropologist, will answer that question for us.</p>
 +
<p>And since the story he's about to tell us is most interesting and relevant, we'll give it its own private slot.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>A metaphorical illustration of our social-systemic evolution</h3>
 +
<p>As in all our stories, the point is not their historicity but that they illustrate a point. This story too could have been just a parable...</p>
 +
<p>So imagine that you were a very young king, living 23 centuries ago. You are exceptionally smart, you have received the best education that existed in your era. And your ambition is no less than to rule the world.</p>
 +
<p>An easy calculation shows that with an army of about 100 000 you have a good chance to succeed. You are, however, still facing a logistical challenge: To feed and clothe an army of that size, you would need another army of 100 000 supply workers running around and servicing your soldiers. But there is a solution: You print coins and give them to your soldiers; and you request of your people to pay you taxes in terms of those coins. And so in no time everyone's busy providing your soldiers with everything they need.</p>
 +
<p>Your business model, as this might be called today, is now almost complete; but you still have a problem to resolve.</p>
 +
<p>Alexander the Great – the historical king you are impersonating – needed <em>half a tone of silver a day</em> to pay his army! How in the world can one secure such massive amounts of precious metals?</p>
 +
<p>There are, it turned out, two ways to do that.</p>
 +
<p>One way is to raid foreign countries, turn their people into slaves, and have them dig under ground and mine silver and gold for you.</p>
 +
<p>The other way  is to raid foreign monasteries and palaces, and melt those sacred and precious objects of silver and gold and turn them into coins.</p>
 +
<p>This makes your business plan complete. One might object that it's a kind of a Ponzi scheme, but for awhile it really did work. But the reason why this story interests us, however, is its cultural and social-systemic implications.</p>
 +
<p>Notice that all the essential details are there: money as evolutionary guide, social-systemic and cultural consequences of such evolution... We leave the details to your reflection.</p> 
 +
 +
<h3>The end of history</h3>
 +
<p>The kind of evolution we've just illustrated – which marks what we learn at school as "history" – gave us the "fittest" social-systemic structures. But at what cost!</p>
 +
<p>Those "fittest" structures are, of course, at war not only with people and their cultures, but against the nature as well. </p>
 +
<p>How much longer can this sort of war-like evolution continue?</p>
 +
<p>And what might be an alternative?</p>
 +
<p>Our lack of cultural and social-systemic imagination is suitably illustrated by typical "science fiction" movies and novels, where the technology is immensely further advanced than our technology, but the values and culture and the manner of behaving and evolving are still the same. We, however, may have <em> already</em> reached the limit, how far the evolution of technology can be paralleled by this sort of social and cultural evolution, before the combination becomes suicidal.</p>
 +
<p>We'll talk about a natural alternative in our next conversation. For now, let's zoom in on another interesting question: Why have we the people put up with this nonsense for so long?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>A reflection</h3>
 +
<p>If you would break into your neighbor's house, kill him and rob him of his property and treat his wife and children in some suitably unthinkable manner, you would surely be considered a dangerous criminal and put into prison. If you'd stand on the main square with a microphone and invite your fellow citizens to do similarly to the people in your neighboring country, on a massive scale, you wold be considered a dangerous madman and incarcerated accordingly.</p>
 +
<p><em>Unless</em>,  of course, this sort of behavior is part of your "job description" (because you are a monarch, or your country's president). In that case you might even be remembered in history as a great leader; Alexander the Great! </p>
 +
<p>What made this sort of inconsistency possible?</p>
 +
<p>Keep this question in mind, because an answer will be provided by our next pair of [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] and the next [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] they weave together. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Homo ludens pattern</p>
 +
<p>The second [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] featured on the left-hand side of The Paradigm Strategy poster is almost trivial; we don't really need all those [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] and [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] to see it.</p>
 +
<p>It's enough to just imagine an impenetrably complex world with an overload of information. How might the people cope? How will they adapt?</p>
 +
<p>There's a natural way – and you'll see it all around you if you just take a fresh look. This natural way is that one simply learns how to perform in his various social roles, as one would learn the unwritten rules of a game – namely by just playing, and adjusting to the moves of other players by suitable actions of your own.</p>
 +
<p>"Homo Ludens" is a title of an old book; but with a bit of [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]], we can make the meaning of [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] a lot more precise and agile than what Johan Huizinga did when he coined this expression. Think of [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] as a cultural species; or as an [[aspects|<em>aspect</em>]] of the civilized human condition. </p>
 +
<p>The distinguishing characteristic of the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] is that he is not your <em>homo sapiens</em>. Knowledge of the big picture, of the purpose, is indeed (to use Carl Jiung's most useful keyword) in his psychological and cognitive <em>shadow</em>; it's what he had to abandoned to achieve the kind of things he's achieved (in the <em>homo ludens</em> world, of course). </p>
 +
<p>The reason why we <em>will</em>, however, briefly visit those [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] is that they'll enable us to understand this crucially important phenomenon – the nature or the social psychology of our <em>cultural</em> evolution – and in that way also answer the paradox we've pointed to above.</p> 
 +
 +
<h3>A warmup thread</h3>
 +
<p>The bottom-left [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] will give us a quick and easy start.</p>
 +
<p>The [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] begins with the excerpt from Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power, which was quoted near the bottom of the [[Intuitive Introduction to Systemic Thinking]]. It continues with Paul Ehrlich (Stanford University biologist, environmentalist and "pessimist") telling how when in the 1950 when he was doing field research with the Inuits, he realized that each member of the community was closely familiar with all the community's tools. It ends with Anthony Giddens (Britain's leading sociologist and public intellectual) describing "ontological security":</p>
 +
<blockquote><p>The threat of personal meaninglessness is ordinarily held at bay because routinised activities, in combination with basic trust, sustain ontological security. Potentially disturbing existential questions are defused by the controlled nature of day-to-day activities within internally referential systems.</p>
 +
<p>Mastery, in other words, substitutes for morality; to be able to control one's life circumstances, colonise the future with some degree of success and live within the parameters of internally referential systems can, in many circumstances, allow the social and natural framework of things to seem a secure grounding for life activities. </p> </blockquote>
 +
<p>It is very easy to see how the distinct [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] that form this [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] enhance one another and lead to a larger insight.</p>
 +
<p>We heard Nietzsche tell us that we are so overwhelmed by impressions, that we defend ourselves from taking <em>anything</em> deeply in, from <em>digesting</em> ideas. We then heard Ehrlich tell us that within the time span of a single generation, our tools – and on a larger scale our reality – have become impenetrably complex (just think of your smartphone – does anyone still possess the kind of knowledge that would suffice to put such a thing together?). The shared excerpt from Giddens' "Modernity and Self-Identity" then shows how we adapt to this situation – by "substituting mastery for morality". </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
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 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
 +
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Symbolic power</h3>
 +
<p>So let us now take a look at the second [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] with which the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] is woven. We'll start in the middle, and work our way through both of its ends.</p>
 +
<p><blockquote>
 +
[S]ymbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
Consider the above sentence as a compact package where we'll find a gift that Pierre Bourdieu – a sociology [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] – indebted us with. In what follows we'll unpack this gift and see what [[symbolic power|<em>symbolic power</em>]] means, and why it is a necessary piece in the puzzle of the big-picture view of our condition.</p>
 +
<p>As the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France, Pierre Bourdieu was at the very peak of his profession, in effect representing the science of sociology to the French people. In the latter part of his career he would abandon his purist-academic reluctance to become a public intellectual, and he would become indeed an activist in the strife against the proliferating "invisible hand" ideology, whose social-psychological roots he was unable to unearth and expose, as we shall see. </p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bourdieu.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Pierre Bourdieu]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
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 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>Our story begins, however, much earlier, in 1955, when Bourdieu was an army recruit in Algeria, where a war was about to begin. Our goal is to share his insight that made him a sociologist. Like Doug Engelbart and quite a few other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], Bourdieu did not enter his field by studying it, but by first having an insight; by observing something that could make a large impact on the field, and on the human condition more broadly.</p> 
 +
<p>During the Algerian war Bourdieu had no difficulty noticing how the official narrative (that France was in Algeria to bring progress and culture) collapsed under the weight of torture and a variety of other human rights abuses. So he wrote a small book about this in an accessible language, in the Que sais-je series. </p>
 +
<p>Back home in France this booklet contributed to politicization of French intelligentsia during the 1950s and 60s. But in Algeria it had another effect. A contact would bring Bourdieu to an "informant" (perhaps a man who'd been tortured) and say "You can trust this man – completely!" What a magnificent way for a gifted young man to look into the nuts and bolts of human society, at the point where they were buoyantly transforming!</p>
 +
<p>As it became "independent", the Algerian society entered a new phase –  of  <em>modernization</em>. </p>
 +
<p>With sympathy and keen insight, Bourdieu spent days as 'a fly on the wall' in a Kabyle village house, recording the harmoniously-intricate relationships that existed between the physical objects the relationships among its people. And how painfully this harmony collapsed when the Kabyle young man was compelled, by new economic realities, to look for employment in the city! Not only his sense of honor, but even his very way of walking and talking was suddenly out of place – even to the young women from his own native village,  who'd seen something different in movies and in restaurants. </p>
 +
<p>It was in this way that Bourdieu came to realize that the old relationships of economic and cultural domination did not at all vanish – they only changed their manner of expression!</p>
 +
<p>He was reminded of his own experiences, when after having grown up in alpine Denguin in Southern France he moved to Paris, and then joined the elite, by studying in the prestigious École normale – not by birthright, but because of his exceptional talents.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Theory of practice</h3>
 +
<p>Bourdieu called the theory that resulted "theory of practice"; a fitting name, because it's really a scientific theory of the manner in which human society evolves and operates <em>in practical reality</em>.</p>
 +
<p>Bourdieu's keywords "doxa", "symbolic power", "habitus" and "field" will suffice to summarize this theory. We'll highlight as its core insight that the renegade power – which once manifested itself in prisons and torture chambers – can functions just as effectively by only <em>symbolic</em> means. It is in the nature of [[symbolic power|<em>symbolic power</em>]] that it's most effective when neither the victors nor the victims are aware of its existence. Everyone's socially sanctioned and embodied manners of speech and behavior or "habitus", the subtle "field" they compose together, and the shared "reality picture" or "doxa" – turn out to be sufficient to structure everyone's behavior and even awareness according to the subtle power play. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Beading the thread</h3>
 +
<p>But before we revisit those concepts, let's just briefly sketch the other two [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] in the same [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] – which will help us see  Bourdieu's theory in even a bit different light than what he may have intended.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Odin the Horse</h3>
 +
<p>Odin the Horse is a brief real-life story about the territorial behavior of Icelandic horses. But it's also a bit of a private joke, whose explanation we shall see a bit later. </p>
 +
<p>Let's just go straight to the point. Remember that what we are really after is a way of looking at things, and specifically a way of looking at our socio-cultural condition, and evolution, and our present-day point in that evolution.</p>
 +
<p>When Odin the Horse (an aging leader of the herd) is pushing New Horse with his body, physically, away from his mares, he is protecting just that one physical spot on the turf and the one single role in the herd that can be protected. Imagine – in the manner of looking at things in a certain way – our society and culture as a turf. Of course this turf is incomparably more complex than the turf of the horses – just as much more complex as our society and culture are more complex than theirs. There are the kings and their guards and pages; and then there's the nobility. Furthermore you could be in king's favor, or out of favor. You can feel the difference in his body's demeanor, as soon as you approach him; and in the tone of his voice as he speaks. Then there are of course also different contemporary variants of those categories and behavioral patterns, even more nuanced. </p> 
 +
<p>The word "habitus" in Bourdieu's theory of practice stands for embodied predispositions, which are transmitted through bodily interaction. The king steps in, and everyone bows. Naturally you bow your head as well – as he looks down upon you all from his throne. </p>
 +
<p>In our modern world the turf is of course not at all that simple. There are all kinds of interests one must be sensitive to. Imagine them as composing together a kind of a field, akin to a magnetic field, which naturally orients our behavior. Different positions carry different power – as in a computer game, you acquire certain capabilities when you step into a certain role. But there are no guards and no chains; everything is just subtle play of embodied predisposition, just <em>symbolic</em>. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Antonio Damasio and the Descartes' Error</h3>
 +
<p>Antonio Damasio steps in within the third and final [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] in the [[threads|<em>thread</em>]], to help us understand how the keyword <em>doxa</em> fits into this picture. Damasio, a leading cognitive neuroscientist, explained in a most rigorous, scientific way something you may not have even notice, not to speak about considering it as a question to ponder about –  namely why it is that you don't wake up wondering whether you should take off your pajamas and run out naked into the street. As Damasio showed, the content of our conscious mind is controlled by an embodied cognitive filter, which presents to our prefrontal cortex only those possibilities that are "acceptable" – from the embodied filters point of view. You may be getting how this all fits together?</p>
 +
<p>So let's go back to <em>doxa</em>. The more familiar word, "orthodoxy", signifies that there is one "right" social order, and one "right" way of conceiving of the world. <em>Doxa</em> is a step beyond that, where the prefix "right" disappears, and where only <em>one</em> social order and one way of conceiving of the world is considered possible. It's what is called "the reality"!</p>
 +
 +
<h3>How our systems have been evolving</h3>
 +
<p>Let's just mention one more [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] on the left-hand side of the poster, the Chomsky – Harari – Graeber thread. The point of it is to see the societal structures that this has given us – and exactly the manner of evolving them – by engaging the Charles Darwin's or more precisely the Richard Dawkins' angle of looking at it. </p>
 +
 +
 +
<h3>Four consequences</h3>
 +
<p>With apologies for just throwing all these ideas on you in this way, and the offer to develop them leisurely in our conversation, let's just illustrate what all this means by pointing to a couple of consequences or corollaries of this ad-hoc theory. (You'll recall that it's making our understanding of the world consistent with the findings of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], and being able to understand what we perceive, that we are aiming at.)</p>
 +
<p>The first consequence is that we may begin to understand what might otherwise (when one does the rational thinking part) seem completely incredible – namely our inability to see and improve our systems. To engage in [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]], in other words. The point is that we've been <em>socialized</em> to accept them as "the reality". This socialization is pre-conscious – and we cannot conceive of doing that just as we cannot conceive of running out into the street. What is ahead of us is, in other words, precisely an <em>evolutionary</em> issue... </p>
 +
<p>The second consequence is that the whole political game ceases to be "us against them" – and becomes <em>all of us</em> against the obsolete socio-cultural structures (for which our technical keyword is [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]]). </p> 
 +
<p>The third consequence  is that the idea of reality – which used to be <em>the</em> foundation for knowledge work – now becomes the heart of our problem. The reality, or more precisely Bourdieu's <em>doxa</em>, can now be perceived as what organizes the game, as the very structure of the symbolic turf – which keeps us in disempowered positions without us noticing that. </p>
 +
<p>And finally the fourth consequence is an explanation of our other core theme – what's been going on with those [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], why they tend not to be heard. The problem with [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] is, of course, that they occupy so much space (of the invisible symbolic turf)... </p> </div>
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</div>
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<div class="row">
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Liberation dialog</h2></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Testing a paradigm</h3>
 +
<p>There can hardly be a better benchmark for testing an emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in knowledge work than religion.</p>
 +
<p>The Enlightenment liberated us from a religious outlook on life, and empowered us to use our reason and pursue happiness here, in this life. Or so it seemed. But what if in the process we've misunderstood the true nature of religion <em>and</em> of happiness? What if a whole new chapter in both of those pursuits is now available to us?</p>
 +
<p>In Federation through Stories we've witnessed Werner Heisenberg point to religion as a core element of human culture that's been eliminated by our "narrow and rigid" worldview. And we've seen Aurelio Peccei point to the improvement of "human quality" as our key strategic goal.</p>
 +
<p>Can renewed religion empower us to achieve that goal?</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Engaging the public</h3>
 +
<p>There can hardly be a better choice of theme for engaging the general public into an impassioned dialog than religion.</p>
 +
<p>Strong opinions about religion are common on both sides – both among those who believe, and those who don't. Have you noticed how ready people have been to wage wars on people whose religion was a variant of their own – even when their religion <em>forbade</em> them to kill? </p>
 +
<p>We are about to see a view on religion that reconciles <em>all</em> such opinions with one another – and at the same radically differs from all of them.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Completing the paradigm</h3>
 +
<p>The view we are about to share is that there is a phenomenon or a natural law or a [[memes|<em>meme</em>]]), which is both essential for understanding the phenomenon of religion – <em>and</em> which can be a key element in the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]]. Something that might truly tip the scale...</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Striking a conversation</h3>
 +
<p>It is for the above three reasons that we decided to begin the Knowledge Federation trilogy – a series of three books with corresponding dialogs, by which the ideas sketched on these pages will be shared with the general public – with this theme.</p>
 +
<p>The first book will have the title "Liberation" and subtitle "Religion for the Third Millennium". All three books will have "the Third Millennium" in the subtitle; the idea is to suggest that if we want to be around for another millennium – then here is what might prove useful, or even necessary.</p>
 +
<p>The Liberation turns out to have a real-life story, which weaves the core insights together and makes them accessible. </p> </div>
 +
</div>
 +
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 +
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  <div class="col-md-6">
 +
<h3>Buddhadasa's rediscovery</h3>
 +
<p>After just a couple of years of monastic life in Bangkok, barely in his 20s, Nguam Phanit (today known as Buddhadasa, "the slave of the Buddha", and celebrated as a reformer of Buddhism) thought "This just cannot be it!" So he made himself a home in an abandoned forest monastery near his home village Chaya, and equipped with a handful of original Pali scriptures undertook to live and practice as the Buddha did. </p>
 +
<p>It was in this way that Buddhadasa found out that the essence of the Buddha's teaching was not at all as it was taught.</p>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa further understood that what he was witnessing was a simple phenomenon or a "natural law", the rediscovery of which marked the inception of all religions; that all religions had a tendency to ignore this essence; and that his insight could be transformative to the modern world. </p>
 +
<p>So with a growing community of like-minded monks who gathered around him over the years, Buddhadasa created the Suan Mokkh forest monastery, with a separate international extension, to make his insight available to the world.</p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Buddhadasa.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Buddhadasa]]</center></small></div>
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</div>
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<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Three life-changing insights</h3>
 +
<p>What did Buddhadasa experience? What did he understand? In what way can this be relevant to us?</p>
 +
<p>To the conversation that we want to start by telling this story, we can offer indeed <em>three</em> insights, each of which alone can be life-changing. So let's highlight them by talking about each of them separately. </p>
 +
<p>We'll point to them by using the traditional Pali terminology. But we could just as well use the terminology of Sufism or of any other tradition whose essence is personal transformation, not a theory about the world. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>Our emotional and social life is just "suffering"</h3>
 +
<p>The goal of Buddhism, you might recall, is to eliminate "suffering". According to the legend, Prince Siddhartha, determined to understand suffering and eradicate its very roots, withdrew into the forest and practiced and meditated until he found the answer. The word <em>dukkha</em> however, which the Buddha used and which is commonly translated as "suffering", turns out to have a precise, subtle and indeed <em>technical</em> meaning. <em>Dukkha</em> is the kind of psychological suffering that is so much part of our lives, that we tend to consider it as just as unavoidable as "birth, old age, sickness and death".</p>
 +
<p>This insight – <em>to what degree</em> worries, cravings, unconscious control strategies... mark our emotional life and our relationships with others – is profound and life-changing!</p>
 +
<p>The "noble truth" that the Buddha discovered, and Buddhadasa rediscovered, was that <dukkha <em>can</em> be eliminated through a certain [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] which we'll call here <em>dhamma</em> (the Pali word for dharma).</p>
 +
<p>We can here point to the nature and the role of <em>dhamma</em> with the help of Odin the Horse metaphor that's been introduced above:  Odin the Horse is not only the territorial animal he appears to be. As his name might suggest, he also has a "divine" nature. The key is "tame the horse" – by developing a certain attitude, a certain way of looking at the world, and a certain set of habits, by which not only selfishness but even the very identification with oneself and with one's "personal interests" is erased!</p>
 +
<p>You'll have no difficulty seeing how Christ's "turn the other cheek" could be an instance of that same paradoxical [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]].</p>
 +
 +
<h3><em>Nibbana</em> is more than the absence of suffering<em>dukkha</em></h3> 
 +
<p>The second insight we want to highlight is that <em>dukkha</em> – however life-changing its elimination might be –  is only part of the story, and perhaps even a relatively smaller part. This is something that the Buddhist don't emphasize, but the Sufis do.</p>
 +
<p>The point here is that the same [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] that eliminates <em>dukkha</em> with time brings one to a certain blissful state of being, characterized not only by the absence of <em>dukkha</em>, but also by the presence of exalted emotions described by words like "charity", "unconditional love", "bliss" and "rapture" .  The communication problem here is, of course, that the gist or the <em>taste</em> of it cannot be described, just as the color "green" cannot be described to a color blind.</p>
 +
<p>When a person enters that state, other people may not only see it as something desirable, but also be "infected" by it. It feels so good! It should not be difficult to imagine how this could be a common inception point of world's great religions.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Our lifestyle is opposite from <em>dhamma</em></h3>
 +
<p>"Lifestyle" may not be the best word here. So let's rather talk about the <em>systems</em> that define the <em>ecology</em> in which our lives are lived: the competitive economy, the advertising, the entertainment industry... Compare them with the life in a forest monastery and you might get the idea.</p>
 +
<p>Our point is of course <em>not</em> that we should all move to a forest and become monks.</p>
 +
<p>Our point is that we can, and need to, develop a body of knowledge about the nature of the human condition, and about its various possibilities</p>
 +
<p>And then <em>use that knowledge to develop our systems</em>, and our culture, and its ecology.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Seeing the world as it is</h3>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa does not use the word "enlightenment". He points to the effect of the mentioned [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] as "seeing the world as it is".</p>
 +
<p>You might now revisit what we've told above, why we are not those "objective observers" and those "rational choice" makers as Descartes and others believed and made us believe. Recall now Damasio: There's a socialized, embodied cognitive filter that controls what we are able to rationalize and conceive of.</p>
 +
<p>Imagine if <em>dhamma</em> is – in addition to what's been said above – also a way to reprogram or erase this filter – a way to <em>liberate</em> ourselves from socialized "cognitive commitments"?</p>
 +
<p>Imagine if it turns out that what we believed to accomplish by looking at the world through the "objective" prism of "the scientific method" – cannot really be accomplished without some of this quintessentially "religious" practice, of serving the world instead of just serving ourselves!</p>
 +
<p>And wouldn't this then also explain the [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] about Doug Engelbart and other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]? Imagine if the "creative genius" is in essence not a person who is so much more intelligent than others – but a one who can "see the world as it is" – because his priorities, and hence his embodied filters, are set differently!</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Religion beyond belief</h3>
 +
<p>You'll have no difficulty putting these two stories together: A person discovers <em>dhamma</em> (or whatever this is called in his or her region), becomes "enlightened", a magnet attracting people, manifesting a better way to be. The movement turns into an institution. Our social ecology turns the institution into a turf, and a belief...</p>
 +
<p>In the Liberation book we show how a roadmap for an informed "pursuit of happiness" can be developed by simply [[knowledge federation|<em>federating</em>]] relevant experiences from a variety of ancient and modern traditions – including modern psychoanalysis, and what F.M. Alexander taught and various others. What transpires is that a whole <em>range</em> of human experience is possible, which we've nicknamed "happiness between one and plus infinity", to signal that what we've known and pursued so far is only between "zero" (no happiness at all) and "one" ("normal" happiness, as we see around us, and as we've experienced it). </p>
 +
<p>When the insight of the Buddha, as explained by Buddhadasa (and also the teaching of Christ, and of other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] of religion) are liberated from the 'worldview puzzle' and  placed into <em>that</em> one, they turn out to complete it quite perfectly. So that it all makes perfect sense!</p>
 +
<p>The details are beyond this short essay and left to our conversations. For now just observe how beautifully this completes our larger vision, of an Enlightenment-like change triggered by an up-to-date approach to knowledge.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Discerning the elephant</h3>
 +
<p> <blockquote>
 +
Utility was the watchword of the time. (...) Confidence in the scientific method and in rational thinking
 +
replaced all other safeguards of the human mind.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
These words Heisenberg used to point to the obstruction of culture that resulted from the "narrow and rigid frame" that the 19th century science gave to humanity. We may now continue this line of thought further, based on what's been told on these pages, and conclude that the problem is not so much utility and rational thinking – but that they "replaced all other safeguards of the human mind" without really understanding their own limitations, without being able to self-reflect and improve themselves. </p>
 +
<p>When <em>that</em> is corrected, when "utility" becomes informed in a proper way, it comes – as we have seen – to quite similar ethical principles as the ones that were upheld in traditions and by "other safeguards of the human mind"; and now perhaps much more stably and securely.</p>
 +
<p>We can now begin to see not only how new understanding of religion, social justice, democracy and other institutions becomes within reach – but also how this all may fit together snuggly into a coherent new order of things.</p>
 +
<p>And how "utility" may perhaps later even be transcended – when the reason understands that developing the kind of ethics we've just been talking about is the securest way to both personal and societal wholeness.</p>
 +
<p>Isn't that a natural way how Peccei's "great cultural renewal" may become reality?</p>
 +
</div></div>
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----
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Knowledge federation dialog</h2></div>
 +
 +
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Large change made easy</h3>
 +
<p>[[Donella Meadows]] talked about systemic leverage points as those places within a complex system "where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything". She identified "the mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise" as <em>the</em> most impactful <em>kind of</em> systemic leverage points. She identified specifically working with the "power to transcend paradigms" – i.e. with the very fundamental assumptions and ways of being out of which paradigms emerge – as the most impactful way to intervene into systems. </p>
 +
<p>We are proposing to approach and handle our contemporary condition in this most powerful way.</p>
 +
<p>If you've been through some of the details of our proposal, then you'll be aware that we are <em>not</em> proposing a paradigm that would consist of a new worldview and a new method for creating truth and worldview. Rather, our proposal is quite literally what Donella Meadows advocated – it is an approach to knowledge that transcends holding on to <em>any</em> fixed way of looking at the world. And which introduces a mindset and a set of assumptions and practices that empower us to evolve <em>freely</em> our knowledge and our institutionalized practices, by building on existing knowledge, and by empowering knowledge.</p> </div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Donella.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Donella Meadows]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>In addition to being far more potentially effective than the conventional problem-based or issue-based approaches (where we wrestle with a specific issue such as the climate change or the poverty), this approach has the added advantage of being far more potentially effective in engaging our enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity. </p>
 +
 +
<h3>A case for academic self-reflection and self-organization</h3>
 +
<p>The proposed strategy has, furthermore, a natural way to begin – namely by <em>academic</em> self-reflection and self-organization. And that is, of course, the cause to which  this website is dedicated, and this specific dialog is offered.</p>
 +
<p>The website – whose role is to prime the dialog – is there to show that (just as the case was in Newton's time) all is ready for a fundamental and thorough change in the way in which knowledge is conceived of, created and used.</p></div>
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 +
<div class="col-md-6">
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<p>The pragmatic reasons for taking such a step are overwhelming.</p> 
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<p>What are the scientists to do next? </p>
 +
<p> There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers — conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial. Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. </p>
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</blockquote> </div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Bush.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Vannevar Bush]]</center></small></div>
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<p>Vannevar Bush was an early computing machinery pioneer, who before the World War II became the MIT professor and dean, and who during the war served as the leader of the entire US scientific effort – supervising about 6000 chosen scientists, and making sure that we are a step ahead in terms of technology and weaponry, including <em>the</em> bomb. </p>
 +
<p>In 1945 this scientific strategist par excellence wrote a <em>scientific</em> strategy article, titled As We May Think, from which the above excerpt is taken. The war having been won, Bush warned, there still remains a strategically central issue, which the scientists need to focus on and resolve – and he described what we've been calling [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] quite precisely.</p>
 +
<p>Subsequent to 1945, the academic publishing virtually exploded in intensity and volume (see the "Largest contribution to knowledge" [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] in Federation through Applications).</p>
 +
<p>Furthermore we now <em>not only</em> have the technological means to resolve this issue – but this technology has indeed been created for this very purpose, by Doug Engelbart and his team, as we have seen in Federation through Stories. Indeed, it was Bush's article (which Doug read while stationed as an army recruit in the Philippines, in 1947) that later inspired him to take on this project.</p>
 +
<p><em>And</em> finally – we are now becoming increasingly aware of the global issues, and shouldn't we then also be aware that those issues <em>demand</em> that we come out of our boxes and think and behave differently?</p>
 +
<p>Who will give the humanity the orientation it needs? Who will create and ignite the new ethos of systemic self-organization, beyond what the reliance on "the invisible hand" has given us? Quite exactly a half-century ago Erich Jantsch submitted (to the MIT authorities, urging them to embrace this agenda) his proposal for the "trans-disciplinary university", pointing to the urgent need that
 +
<blockquote>the university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing the society's capacity for continuous self-renewal.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
By submitting this proposal we are only echoing what these [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] have said; only passing on the flame.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>Our counter-argument</h3>
 +
<p>There is a usual argument that the academic people use against transdisciplinarity – that it is not in a proper sense <em>academic</em> (well-founded epistemologically, performed with rigorous and well-founded methods, building on existing knowledge, academically "deep" or non-trivial etc.). </p>
 +
<p>We have demonstrated that a fundamentally new <em>transdisciplinary</em> approach to knowledge can be created which is
 +
<ul>
 +
<li><em>more</em>  solidly epistemologically founded than conventional disciplinary research</li>
 +
<li>builds more properly on existing academic insights</li>
 +
<li>invites the depth and creativity that characterized early science (unlike "plagiarizing the past")</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
<em>and</em> which empowers us to give our people and society exactly the kind of knowledge they need.</p>
 +
 +
<h3>We are not starting a turf strife</h3>
 +
<p>Please observe that – when submitting our proposal as bluntly as we just did – we remain most careful not to start a turf strife. That would only burry us deeper in the [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] we have undertaken to leave.</p>
 +
<p>Our reason for speaking in this way is, rather, that our global and human condition is such that it demands clarity. And because the accommodating way of being we've created, where "anything goes", is just what the turf strife way of working and being has given us, what we learned to do in order to be able to claim "our" part of the turf.</p>
 +
<p>The revolution we want us to be part of is unlike all revolutions in the past. It is a revolution in awareness; and in the way our ethics and action interact; and above all – in the way we present ourselves as cells to the intricate tissues that form our society.</p>
 +
<p>We offer our very best to this revolution. And we leave a no-strings-attached space for you to step in. We apply the best of ourselves to setting a stage – which will invite the best of <em>yourself</em> to manifest. And we bring our toys to share. How will you present yourself on this stage? Which toys will you pick? In what way will you play? We leave all that entirely to you to decide.</p> </div></div>
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<h3>We will not change the world</h3>
 +
<p>"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has", wrote [[Margaret Mead]]. You will find evidence of our thoughtfulness and commitment on these pages.</p>
 +
<p>And yet it is clear to us, and it should be clear to you too, that we <em>cannot</em> change the world. The world is not only us – it is <em>all of us</em> together! </p>
 +
<p>So if the world will change, that will be a result of <em>your</em> doing; of <em>your</em> thoughtfulness and commitment!</p>
 +
<p>We've been socialized to think and act <em>within</em> systems. To conform to the worldview we've been socialized to accept as "reality".  Deviating from this feels unnatural; it <em>hurts</em> – and yet that is the re-evolutionary next step that those of us who can now simply <em>must</em> take!</p>
 +
<p>The rest will be just fun! </p> </div>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Mead.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Margaret Mead]]</center></small></div>
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<div class="col-md-7">
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<p>So see if you can see [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as <em>your</em> project, not ours. </p>
 +
<p>We shall from here on be implementing our [[back seat policy|<em>back seat policy</em>]] – holding onto an advisory role, and offering our insights and experiences to people worldwide who'll want to step in and take initiative along this most timely of agendas. We'll do that because <em>it is that very act</em>, of taking such an initiative, and not the results of the initiative, that brings the new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] into being.</p>
 +
<p>Collaboration is to the emerging paradigm as competition is to the old one. In Norway (this website is hosted at the University of Oslo) there is a word – <em>dugnad</em> – for the kind of collaboration that brings together the people in a neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon, to gather fallen leaves and branches and do small repairs in the commons, and then share a meal together. </p>
 +
<p>If you'll invite us to a <em>dugnad</em> – whose purpose is to enkindle society-wide renewal through suitably conceived situated local action – we shall be recognisant that you've taken the torch we are passing to you from the historical [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], and glad to accept.</p>
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<p>Can we use [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to turn even a profane theme as "evolution" into a sensation? (We are of course talking about our cultural and societal evolution, the evolution that matters.)</p>
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<p>While we let ourselves be guided by our natural wish to save your time and attention, by showing you a crisp and clear picture of the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] on a very high level that is, without too much detail – we risk missing the real point of our undertaking, which is to give an exciting, palpable, moving, spectacular, breath-taking... vision or "narrative". You might remember the [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] we introduced in Federation through Stories? The point is to present abstract ideas through stories, which give them realness and meaning. And (you'll also remember) each of these stories, in a fractal-like or parable-like way, portrays the whole big thing. So let us here slow down a moment and introduce just one single [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] through his story. Not because <em>his</em> story is the most interesting of them all – but because it alone points to what might be the very heart of our matter, that is, of the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] or the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]]. And even so – all we'll be able to do is provide some sketches, and rough contours, but please bear with us – we are only priming this conversation. As we begin to speak, the details will begin to shine through, and so will the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]].</p>
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<p>So let's follow Bourdieu from his childhood in Denguin (an alpine village in Southern France) to his graduation in philosophy from the uniquely prestigious Parisian École normale supérieure (where just a handful of exceptionally talented youngsters are given the best available support to raise to the very top of a field). A refusal to attend the similarly prestigious military academy (which was the prerogative of the ENS graduates) led Bourdieu to have his military service in Algeria, which is where the real story begins.</p>
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<p>Upon return to France Bourdieu would ultimately raise to the very top of sociology (he occupied the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France) – largely by developing the insights he acquired back in Algeria. notice that Bourdieu was not <em>educated</em> as a sociologist – he became one by observing how the society really operates, and evolves. And by turning that into a theory, which he aptly called "Theory of Practice". What did he see?</p>
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<p>Two things, really. First of all he saw the ugly and brutal side of French imperialism manifest itself (as torture and all imaginable other abuses) during the Algerian War in 1958-1962. Bourdieu wrote a popular book about this, in French Que sais-je series, which very roughly corresponds to Anglo-American "For Dummies". In France this book contributed to the disillusionment with the "official narrative". And in Algeria it made him trusted (someone would take him to an 'informant', perhaps a one who has been tortured, and say "you can trust this man completely") – and hence privy of the kind of information that few people could access.</p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bourdieu.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Pierre Bourdieu]]</center></small></div>
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<p>This led to the second and main of Bourdieu's observations – of the transformation of the rural Kabyle society with the advancement of modernization. It is with great pleasure and admiration that one reads Bourdieu's writings about the Kabyle house and household, with its ethos and sense of duty and honor arranging both the relationships among the people and their relationships with things within and outside their dwellings. And yet – Bourdieu observed – when a Kabyle man goes to town in search of work, <em>his entire way of being</em> suddenly becomes dysfunctional. Even to the young women of his own background – who saw something entirely different in the movies and in the cafes – the way he walks and talks, and of course his sense of honor... became out of place. The insight – which interests us above all – is that the kind of domination that was once attempted, unsuccessfully, through military conquest – became in effect achieved not only peacefully, but even <em>without anyone's awareness</em> of what was going on. The <em>symbolic power</em> – as Bourdieu called it – can only be exercised without anyone's awareness of its existence!</p>
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<p>To compose his Theory of Practice, Bourdieu polished up certain concepts such as <em>habitus</em> (which was used already by Aristotle and was brought into sociology by Max Weber), and created others, such as "symbolic capital" and "field" which he also called "game". A certain subtly authoritative way of speaking may be the <em>habitus</em> of a boss. The knowledge of brands and wines, and a certain way of holding the knife and fork may be one's <em>social capital</em> – properly called a "capital" because it affords distinct advantages and is worth "investing into", because it gives "dividends".  But let's explain the overall meaning of this theory of practice and its relevance, by bringing it completely down to earth and applying it to some quite ordinary social "practice" – which marked our social life throughout history.</p>
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<p>[[File:Elephants.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Even if we don't talk of him directly, the elephant in the picture will be the main theme of all our conversations. Our purpose is to ignite the co-creation of the vision of the emerging paradigm by (1) materializing just enough so that some of its characteristic contours can be discerned and (2) orchestrating the activity of connecting the dots further – which is what these conversations are about.</center></small></p>
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<p></p>
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  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Changing our collective mind</h2></div>
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  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Information as we might need it</h3>
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<p>We here introduce our proposal, [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], as a response to the last of the three large changes that developed during the past century – the change of the nature of our condition, and how our new condition imposes new demands on the way in which information and knowledge are created and used.</p>
 +
<h3>Changing the subject</h3>
 +
<p>You might consider, just as we do, the news about Donald Trump or some terrorists as nothing really new. Why give those people the attention they don't deserve? Why use the media to spread <em>their</em> messages? If you <em>are</em> entertaining such thoughts, then you might be ready for some really <em>good</em> news!</p>
 +
<p>Also five centuries ago an abundance of daily spectacles occupied the people's minds. And yet when we look back, what we see is Leonardo, and Copernicus... We see the rebirth of the arts and the emergence of the sciences. We see those large and slow events because they give meaning and relevance to all particular ones. We notice them even from this distance because they were so spectacularly large – and that's also why the people living at that time <em>failed</em> to notice them! But how much more <em>spectacular</em> will it be to witness this sort of development in our own time! </p>
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<p>Although we don't talk about him directly, the elephant in the above [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] will be the main theme of all our conversations. It is a glimpse of him that we want to give and have by talking about all those people and things. And when we talk about the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], you should imagine the exotic large animal appearing in a room full of people – not today, but five centuries ago, when perhaps some of those people had heard of such a creature, but none of them had ever seen one yet. The elephant in the room is a breath-taking sensation! We use this visual metaphor to point to the whole big thing – the Renaissance-like change that now wants to emerge. The elephant is invisible, but we will have glimpses of him as soon as we begin to 'connect the dots'. And isn't that what we've been doing all along!</p>
 +
<p>Be mindful of our challenge: A paradigm, a new "order of things", is <em>nothing but</em> an immense rearrangement of relationships. There are just about infinitely many dots to be connected! We can not, and will not, try to connect them all. As the above picture might suggest, our goal is to only connect sufficiently many, so that some characteristic contours of the whole big become discernible. And to make further connection making fun and easy, by providing guidelines, and by turning this work into a social game. Yet in spite of all that, <em>you</em> will have to make most of the connections yourself and in your own mind – and that's inevitable!</p>
 +
<h3>Changing the protagonists</h3>
 +
<p>By shirting our attention from Trump-style scandals and sensations to the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], we can also give attention and credit to our [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. We can begin to truly understand what they were talking about. If earlier we heard them talk about all sorts of different things like "the fan", "the hose" and "the rope", we can now see that they were really talking about the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]]'s ears, trunk and tail. Given the spectacular size and importance of our 'animal', we will then not only appreciate our [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]' insights as a new breed of sensations; we will also appreciate the fact that we've ignored them so long as a new breed of scandals.</p>
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<p>"The human race is hurtling toward a disaster. It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course", [[Aurelio Peccei]] – the co-founder, firs president and the motor power behind The Club of Rome – wrote this in 1980, in One Hundred Pages for the Future, based on this global think tank's first decade of research.</p>
 +
<p>Peccei was an unordinary man. In 1944, as a member of Italian Resistance, he was captured by the Gestapo and tortured for six months without revealing his contacts. Here is how he commented his imprisonment only 30 days upon being released:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
My 11 months of captivity were one of the most enriching periods of my life, and I regard myself truly fortunate that it all happened. Being strong as a bull, I resisted very rough treatment for many days. The most vivid lesson in dignity I ever learned was that given in such extreme strains by the humblest and simplest among us who had no friends outside the prison gates to help them, nothing to rely on but their own convictions and humanity. I began to be convinced that lying latent in man is a great force for good, which awaits liberation. I had a confirmation that one can remain a free man in jail; that people can be chained but that ideas cannot.
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</blockquote></p>
 +
<p> Peccei was also an unordinarily able business leader. While serving as the director of Fiat's operations in Latin America (and securing that the cars were there not only sold but also produced) Peccei established Italconsult, a consulting and financing agency to help the developing countries catch up with the rest. When the Italian technology giant Olivetti was in trouble, Peccei was brought in as the president, and he managed to turn its fortunes around. And yet the question that most occupied Peccei was a much larger one – the condition of our civilization as a whole; and what we may need to do to take charge of this condition.</p>
 +
<p>In 1977, in "The Human Quality", Peccei formulated his answer as follows:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
Let me recapitulate what seems to me the crucial question at this point of the human venture. Man has acquired such decisive power that his future depends essentially on how he will use it. However, the business of human life has become so complicated that he is culturally unprepared even to understand his new position clearly. As a consequence, his current predicament is not only worsening but, with the accelerated tempo of events, may become decidedly catastrophic in a not too distant future. The downward trend of human fortunes can be countered and reversed only by the advent of a new humanism essentially based on and aiming at man’s cultural development, that is, a substantial improvement in human quality throughout the world.
 +
</blockquote></p>
 +
<p>On the morning of the last day of his life (March 14, 1984), while dictating "The Club of Rome: Agenda for the End of the Century" to his secretary from a hospital, Peccei identified "human development" as "the most important goal". </p>
 +
<p>Peccei's and Club of Rome's insights and proposals (to focus not on problems but on the condition or the "problematique" as a whole, and to handle it through systemic and evolutionary strategies and agendas) have not been ignored only by "climate deniers", but also by activists and believers. </p>
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<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Peccei.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Aurelio Peccei]]</center></small></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Changing communication</h3>
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<p>Connecting Peccei's observations with some of the insights of Neil Postman will help us understand more closely our strategy – why it is that we are putting this [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] into the forefront of our attention. Several years after Peccei passed away, in 1990, Postman delivered a keynote to the German Informatics Society titled "Informing Ourselves to Death", and then published the text as a chapter in the book "The Nature of Technology". We shall here only quote a few lines from the televised interview he gave to the PBS (a link will be provided).
 +
<blockquote>We've entered thne age of information glut. And this is something no culture has really faced before. A typical situation is information scarcity. (...) Lack of information can be very dangerous. But at the same time too much information can be very dangerous, because it can lead to a situation of meaninglessness, that is – people not having any basis for knowing what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what is useful, what is not useful... That they live in a culture that is simply committed, through all of its media, to generate tons of information every hour, without categorizing it in any way for you, so that you don't know what any of it means. (...) This becomes a threat not only to one's peace of mind, but much more importantly to one's sense of meaning. The problem now is not to get information to people, but how to get some meaning of what's happening.(...) We are less coherent in our understanding of information. There was a time when the word "information" always had associated with it action. That is, people sought information in order to solve some problem in their lives. And information was the instrument through which they would solve this problem. Then beginning in the 19th century information became a commodity; beginning, actually I believe with telegraphy. Something you could buy and sell. So that action association began to diminish. So that now there is nothing but information – and we are not expected to do anything with it, just consume it. (...) To know what to do with information depends on having some sort of conceptual framework; I sometimes call it, and some of my colleagues do, some "narrative", some story, which will help you decide which information you will want to seek out, and why you want to seek it out, and what it's good for. (...) Even the great story of inductive science has lost a good deal of its meaning, because it does not address several questions that all great narratives must address: Where we come from; what's going to happen to us; where we are going, that is; and what we're supposed to do when we are here. Science couldn't answer that; and technology doesn't.</blockquote>
 +
So you may now appreciate that what we call the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] is exactly what (Postman observed) has been lacking. By "connecting the dots", we undertake to put in place a truly spectacular, sensational, breath-taking story – which will not only reinstate a sense of meaning, but also and most importantly once again give context and thereby also <em>relevance</em> to the ideas of our [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], and of course to knowledge in general. And perhaps still more importantly, by orchestrating this activity of "connecting the dots", we undertake to create the sort of collaboration and communication that is capable of synthesizing and updating such narratives.</p>
 +
<h3>Changing the tone</h3>
 +
<p>If you hear us knowledge federators say such off-the-wall and Trump-like things like "the climate change is a red herring", we do not mean to belittle the excellent and necessary efforts of our friends and colleagues who work so devotedly on this issue. Our point is that the climate, or any other "problem", becomes a red herring when it diverts all attention from those deeper evolutionary tasks on which our ability to find <em>lasting</em> solutions now depends.</p>
 +
<p>By focusing on the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], we will work on contemporary issues, both large and small, both global and local, without even mentioning them by name! Instead of struggling to coerce the people and systems who created the problems to create solutions, our strategy is to inform and empower us the people, so that we may co-create solutions – i.e. systems – ourselves. Instead of seeing our contemporary condition as a dictate to do what we <em>have to</em> do, we turn it into a mandate to do what we <em>wish to</em> do. What could be a richer source of opportunities for achievement and contribution, than a whole new paradigm being born!</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>The nature of our conversations</h2></div>
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>We are not just talking</h3>
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<p>Don't be deceived by this seemingly innocent word, "conversations". These conversations, with which we want to extend and continue our initiative, are where the real action begins; and the real fun.</p>
 +
<p>[[File:Elephant.jpg]]<br><small><center>Our goal is to organize this activity, and foster this collective capability - of federating knowledge or 'connecting the dots' – so that this new guiding vision (the view of the new paradigm, i.e. of the new course of our cultural and systemic evolution) can emerge.</center></small></p>
 +
<p> </p>
 +
<p>When we say "conversations", we don't mean "only talking". On the contrary! Here truly the medium is the message. By developing these conversations, we want to develop a way for us to put the themes that matter into the focus of our shared attention. We want to engage our collective knowledge and ingenuity to bear upon understanding, and handling, of our time's important issues. We want to give voice to ideas that matter, and to people who merit our attention. And above all – by developing these conversations, we want to <em>create a manner of conversing</em> that works. We want to re-create our public sphere. We want to change our [[collective mind|<em>collective mind</em>]] so that it <em>can</em> think new thoughts! </p>
 +
<p>The guiding vision we are co-creating together will not only change our understanding of our world, but also the way we handle it. We will no longer be struggling to improve our candles; we will be creating light bulbs.</p>
 +
<h3>Conversations merge into one</h3>
 +
<p>This simple strategy, to [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] a vision, and to self-organize differently, can make <em>any</em> conversation matter. Two people can be conversing across a coffee table; by just recording and sharing what's been said, they can make their conversation be part of this larger one.</p>
 +
<p>What we above all have in mind, however, is to stage public conversations. Conversations that will enrich our large global one with the knowledge and insights of their participants. Conversations that will put important themes into our public sphere. Conversations which, when recorded and shared, will be <em>real</em> reality shows, showing the birth pains of a whole new stage of our evolution.</p></div>
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<div class="col-md-6"><h3>Dialogs not discussions</h3>
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<p>This <em>re</em>-evolution will be nonviolent not only in action, but also in its manner of speaking. The technical word is [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]]. The [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]] is to the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] as the debate is to the old one. The [[dialogs|<em>dialog</em>]] too might have an icon [[giants|<em>giant</em>]], physicist [[David Bohm]]. Let's hear what Bohm had to say about this matter.</p>
 +
<blockquote>
 +
<p>I give a meaning to the word 'dialogue' that is somewhat different from what is commonly used. The derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. 'Dialogue' comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means 'the word' or in our case we would think of the 'meaning of the word'. And dia means 'through' - it doesn't mean two. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture of image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which will emerge some new understanding. It's something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It's something creative. And this shared meaning is the 'glue' or 'cement' that holds people and societies together.</p>
 +
<p>Contrast this with the word 'discussion', which has the same root as 'percussion' an 'concussion'. It really means to break things up. It emphasises the idea of analysis, where there may be many points of view. Discussion is almost like a Ping-Pong game, where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to get points for yourself. Possibly you will take up somebody else's ideas to back up your own - you may agree with some and disagree with others- but the basic point is to win the game. That's very frequently the case in a discussion.</p>
 +
<p>In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular view prevail. Rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody, everybody gains. It's a situation called win-win, in which we are not playing a game against each other but with each other. In a dialogue, everybody wins.</p>
 +
</blockquote></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bohm.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[David Bohm]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Paradigm strategy dialogs</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>First things first</h3>
 +
<p>Implicit in [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as an idea and an initiative is a certain economy of attention: If there is a single overarching insight or principle that changes the very direction of our efforts (Norbert Wiener called this "know-what") – then why waste our time on the details of the "know-how" of the old pursuits and direction? You will notice here that both our choice of themes and the sequence in which those themes are introduced reflect this most timely principle. Our first question, then, is – what theme, what insight, should come first? What deserves the highest priority? The question we discuss first is about the nature of our condition, and about a suitable strategy to handle it. It is those two that will help us answer the questions of relevance and priority in these conversations.</p>
 +
<h3>Paradigm strategy</h3>
 +
<p>The paradigm strategy dialogs are tailored for informed professionals (academic researchers, social entrepreneurs...) who have already recognized the characteristic global or contemporary issues as context in which strategies and priorities need to be forged; and who have already adopted systemic thinking as methodological foundation. Can we still say something, or better still – can we <em>engage</em> them in a certain new way – that will make a difference?</p>
 +
<p>Here is how we introduced the [[paradigm strategy|<em>paradigm strategy</em>]] at the Relating Systems Thinking and Design RSD6 conference, in 2017 in Oslo.
 +
<blockquote>
 +
The motivation is to allow for the kind of difference that is suggested by the comparison of everyone carrying buckets of water from their own basements, with everyone teaming up and building a dam to regulate the flow of the river that is causing the flooding. We offer to the RSD community what we are calling the <em>paradigm strategy</em> as a way to make a similar difference in impact, with respect to the common efforts focusing on specific problems or issues. The <em>paradigm strategy</em> is to focus our efforts on instigating a sweeping and fundamental cultural and social paradigm change – instead of trying to solve problems, or discuss, understand and resolve issues, within the current paradigm.</blockquote></p>
 +
<p>Another metaphor that may explain this strategy proposal is the one we've used already – the construction of a light bulb, as an alternative to trying to improve the candle. Needless to say, this incomparably more powerful strategy depends on our shared understanding that the construction of the light bulb <em>is</em> possible – and then of course what this construction might involve as necessary elements.</p>
 +
<p>Our presentation was both a strategy proposal, and an intervention into the RSD6 conference as a system. Our goal was to engage this community of academic change makers to transcend the conventional academic lecture and publication conference format, and to self-organize and collaborate in a new way. Our purpose was to apply everyone's collective intelligence toward co-creating an evolutionary guiding light for everyone else – and hence ignite a wave of change. (Yes, this sentence is a mouthful. But just read on, and its meaning will be clear.)</p>
 +
<h3>The Paradigm Strategy poster</h3>
 +
<p style="margin-top:0.5cm;">[[File:PSwithFredrik.jpeg]]<br><small><center>Fredrik Eive Refsli, the leader of our communication design team, jubilates the completion of The Paradigm Strategy poster.</center></small></p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
<p>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf  The Paradigm Strategy poster] is designed as a way to (1) communicate the [[paradigm strategy|<em>paradigm strategy</em>]] and (2) choreograph a small but significant set of first steps toward self-organization and co-creation of knowledge – and hence <em>into</em> the new paradigm.</p>
 +
<p>The left-hand side, with yellow background, represents the current societal paradigm, that is – the current way of evolving culturally, socially and systemically. The techniques for weaving together core ideas of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], which were outlined in Federation through Images – [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] and [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] – are applied to come to the main and central point or [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]] (represented by the circle in the middle), which is the wormhole into the emerging order of things. The right-hand side represents the space where the emerging paradigm is being co-created, by highlighting a small subset of the [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] that we discussed in Federation through Applications. </p>
 +
<p>In a nutshell, the poster weaves the findings of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] into two [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] – the [[Wiener's paradox|<em>Wiener's paradox</em>]] and the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]]. The first one (which we discussed briefly in Federation through Stories) is there to show that academic publishing (specifically in systems research, and then also in general) tends to have no effect on public opinion and policy. The second one, the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]], points to the way in which we've been conducting our lives and careers, and evolving culturally and socially – <em>without</em> suitable information and knowledge. (Technically the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] is a [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]], so it must be understood as a way of looking at things, not as "the" reality – as we explained in Federation through Images. The purpose of formulating such 'side views' is to be able to look in a new way, and discuss degenerative tendencies, however small or large they might be.) The messages it conveys are central to our story line, and deserve a paragraph of its own.</p>
 +
<h3>The threads</h3>
 +
<p>We implement what [[Vannevar Bush]] asked for in 1945 – we link ideas and people associatively into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], which roughly correspond to what Bush called "trails". The [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] not only federate ideas (give them strength by linking them together into higher-order units of meaning) – they also add a dramatic effect, by combining the ideas so that they amplify one another. But here we take this process of "upward growth" of knowledge even further, by weaving [[threads|<em>threads</em>]] into [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]], and [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]] into a [[gestalt|<em>gestalt</em>]]. We'll come back to that in a moment.</p>
 +
<p>The poster presents a small selection of four [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], of which we have already seen one, Wiener – Jantsch – Reagan, in Federation through Stories. And we have seen also how this single thread already allows us to see one of the two patterns on the LHS of the poster, the Wiener's paradox. We here show another straight-forward thread, Nietzsche – Ehrlich – Giddens, which will allow us to already see the second pattern, the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]]. And these two patterns will then be all we'll need to reach the pivotal, paradigm-shifting insight. </p>
 +
<p>The thread we want to show you begins with Friedrich Nietzsche looking at modernity from the point of view of digestion:</p>
 +
<blockquote><p>Sensibility immensely more irritable; the abundance of disparate impressions greater than ever; cosmopolitanism in food, literatures, newspapers, forms, tastes, even landscapes. The tempo of this influx prestissimo; the impressions erase each other; one instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to “digest” anything; a weakening of the power to digest results from this. A kind of adaptation to this flood of impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they merely react to stimuli from outside. They spend their strength partly in assimilating things, partly in defense, partly in opposition. Profound weakening of spontaneity: The historian, critic, analyst, interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader-all of them reactive talents-all science!</p>
 +
<p>Artificial change of one’s nature into a “mirror”; interested but, as it were, merely epidermically interested; a coolness on principle, a balance, a fixed low temperature closely underneath the thin surface on which warmth, movement, “tempest,” and the play of waves are encountered.“</p>
 +
<p>Opposition of external mobility and a certain deep heaviness and weariness.“</p></blockquote>
 +
<p>Take a moment to <em>digest</em> the above excerpt, in the context of its background: What this already ancient daring thinker was observing, was that <em>already in his time</em> an overload of information and of impressions of all kinds made people unable to connect the dots! But let's continue with this thread before we come back to this observation and draw conclusions.</p>
 +
<p>The second protagonist in the thread is Stanford University's famed biologist, environmentalist and (as he likes to say) "pessimist" [[Paul Ehrlich]]. We'll, however, quote here only one of his personal observations we heard him make – that when he was in the 1950s staying with the Inuits as a young researcher, he noticed that every member of the community was able to understand and handle all the community's tools. A woman would perhaps not use the hunting knife, but she perfectly understood how it works. Compare this with the complexity of your smart phone, and the situation where you not only don't know how this thing works – but would even be challenge to produce the names the professions and specialties whose knowledge would need to be combined to answer that question. The point here is that – within just a generation or so – the complexity of our world has increased to the point where it's become practically impenetrable.</p>
 +
<p>Add to this the fact – yes, we have to put it into this picture, it's our main theme after all – that we do not have the kind of information that would help us penetrate through this complex reality; that we've indeed used the modern information technology to just broadcast... and hence to <em>vastly</em> increase the overload of impressions... How in the world do we cope with all that? The third hero of this [[threads|<em>thread</em>]], [[Anthony Giddens]],  will answer that question. Here is how the famed sociologist formulated the concept "ontological security" in Modernity and Self-Identity:</p>
 +
<blockquote><p>
 +
The threat of personal meaninglessness is ordinarily held at bay because routinised activities, in combination with basic trust, sustain ontological security. Potentially disturbing existential questions are defused by the controlled nature of day-to-day activities within internally referential systems.</p>
 +
<p>Mastery, in other words, substitutes for morality; to be able to control one’s life circumstances, colonise the future with some degree of success and live within the parameters of internally referential systems can, in many circumstances, allow the social and natural framework of things to seem a secure grounding for life activities.</p>
 +
</blockquote> 
 +
<p>Already based on this single [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] we can see the [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]] we are calling [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] (man the [game] player) – where we have given up knowing and understanding; where we simply learn our profession, and our various other roles as well, as one would learn the rules of a game – and we play our career and other 'games' competitively, just to increase (what we perceive as) our personal gain. But let's wait with the discussion of this pattern and its consequences until we've seen some of its deeper sides – which is what we'll turn to next. </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Understanding evolution</h3>
 +
<p>Can we use [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] to turn even a profane theme as "evolution" into a sensation? (We are of course talking about our cultural and societal evolution, the evolution that matters.)</p>
 +
<p>While we let ourselves be guided by our natural wish to save your time and attention, by showing you a crisp and clear picture of the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] on a very high level that is, without too much detail – we risk missing the real point of our undertaking, which is to give an exciting, palpable, moving, spectacular, breath-taking... vision or "narrative". You might remember the [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]] we introduced in Federation through Stories? The point is to present abstract ideas through stories, which give them realness and meaning. And (you'll also remember) each of these stories, in a fractal-like or parable-like way, portrays the whole big thing. So let us here slow down a moment and introduce just one single [[giants|<em>giant</em>]] through his story. Not because <em>his</em> story is the most interesting of them all – but because it alone points to what might be the very heart of our matter, that is, of the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] or the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]]. And even so – all we'll be able to do is provide some sketches, and rough contours, but please bear with us – we are only priming this conversation. As we begin to speak, the details will begin to shine through, and so will the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]].</p>
 +
<p>So let's follow Bourdieu from his childhood in Denguin (an alpine village in Southern France) to his graduation in philosophy from the uniquely prestigious Parisian École normale supérieure (where just a handful of exceptionally talented youngsters are given the best available support to raise to the very top of a field). A refusal to attend the similarly prestigious military academy (which was the prerogative of the ENS graduates) led Bourdieu to have his military service in Algeria, which is where the real story begins.</p>
 +
<p>Upon return to France Bourdieu would ultimately raise to the very top of sociology (he occupied the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France) – largely by developing the insights he acquired back in Algeria. notice that Bourdieu was not <em>educated</em> as a sociologist – he became one by observing how the society really operates, and evolves. And by turning that into a theory, which he aptly called "Theory of Practice". What did he see?</p>
 +
<p>Two things, really. First of all he saw the ugly and brutal side of French imperialism manifest itself (as torture and all imaginable other abuses) during the Algerian War in 1958-1962. Bourdieu wrote a popular book about this, in French Que sais-je series, which very roughly corresponds to Anglo-American "For Dummies". In France this book contributed to the disillusionment with the "official narrative". And in Algeria it made him trusted (someone would take him to an 'informant', perhaps a one who has been tortured, and say "you can trust this man completely") – and hence privy of the kind of information that few people could access.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Bourdieu.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Pierre Bourdieu]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
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  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7">
 +
<p>This led to the second and main of Bourdieu's observations – of the transformation of the rural Kabyle society with the advancement of modernization. It is with great pleasure and admiration that one reads Bourdieu's writings about the Kabyle house and household, with its ethos and sense of duty and honor arranging both the relationships among the people and their relationships with things within and outside their dwellings. And yet – Bourdieu observed – when a Kabyle man goes to town in search of work, <em>his entire way of being</em> suddenly becomes dysfunctional. Even to the young women of his own background – who saw something entirely different in the movies and in the cafes – the way he walks and talks, and of course his sense of honor... became out of place. The insight – which interests us above all – is that the kind of domination that was once attempted, unsuccessfully, through military conquest – became in effect achieved not only peacefully, but even <em>without anyone's awareness</em> of what was going on. The <em>symbolic power</em> – as Bourdieu called it – can only be exercised without anyone's awareness of its existence!</p>
 +
<p>To compose his Theory of Practice, Bourdieu polished up certain concepts such as <em>habitus</em> (which was used already by Aristotle and was brought into sociology by Max Weber), and created others, such as "symbolic capital" and "field" which he also called "game". A certain subtly authoritative way of speaking may be the <em>habitus</em> of a boss. The knowledge of brands and wines, and a certain way of holding the knife and fork may be one's <em>social capital</em> – properly called a "capital" because it affords distinct advantages and is worth "investing into", because it gives "dividends".  But let's explain the overall meaning of this theory of practice and its relevance, by bringing it completely down to earth and applying it to some quite ordinary social "practice" – which marked our social life throughout history.</p>
 +
<p>If you break into your neighbor's house, kill the man and rob his property (in olden days you would probably sell his wife and children as slaves, but in this age you may decide what exactly to do with them), you will certainly be put to jail as a dangerous criminal. If you will instead stand on the main square with a microphone and a loudspeaker, and invite your fellow citizens to do the same to a neighboring country, you would certainly be considered a dangerous madman and put to a suitable institution. <em>Unless</em>, of course  your "job description" (let's call it that) entitles you to do that (because you are the country's president, or in earlier times its king).</p>
 +
<p>So isn't the fact that we've been <em>socialized</em> to accept certain kind of <em>habitus</em> or behavior from certain people that makes <em>all</em> the difference – that is stronger than our ethical sense, common sense, and even our self-preservation instincts? The question is – how can this be? And what sort of societal evolution has this given us? Those questions we may begin to answer in the context of the remainder of the [[threads|<em>thread</em>]] in which Bourdieu appears; and with the help of a neighboring thread.</p>
 +
<p>(Yes, this is really turning into a rather long story. But if you have preserved enough of that old <em>homo sapiens</em> spirit to appreciate what we are really talking about, and its importance, then you'll forgive us that. And anyhow, the current version of this website is meant to appeal to you who basically already "get it" – and engage your help, administered through the medium of these dialogs and in other ways, to transform and communicate it further. )</p>
 +
<p>The name of the Odin the Horse [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]], with which this thread begins, is a bit of a private joke, whose meaning will best be appreciated in the context of the next conversation we'll describe here, which is called "Liberation". For now it's enough to say that this vignette is intended to be a poetic and moving description of the turf behavior of Icelandic horses. We are now creating a way of looking at things (recall [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]), which is this: Imagine if we the people also have in us a territorial animal. Imagine that we too are driven by endless "turf battles" – but that our "turfs" are as much more complex than the turfs of the horses, as our culture and society are more complex than theirs. Wikipedia says that, According to Bourdieu, "habitus is composed of:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
[s]ystems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them".</blockquote>
 +
So imagine then our society or culture as  a "turf" (which Bourdieu aptly calls interchangeably the "field" and the "game"), where each social roles and its corresponding habitus has been <em>structured</em> through a (human equivalent of a) turf battle – and which at the same time <em>structures</em> everyone's role and capabilities and in effect the turf battles of our lives.</p>
 +
<p>The last [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] – that bears the name of [[Antonio Damasio]], who is a leading cognitive scientist – is there to explain why it is that we are incapable of "seeing through" this game,  and take the power to consciously <em>create</em> the systems in which we live and work, instead of letting them determine our lives in arbitrarily meaningless or dysfunctional ways. Damasio's key insights is that Descartes (read "modernity") got it all wrong, all upside down. It is not our rational mind that determines our choices; it is our embodied (read "socialized") predispositions or 'filters' that determine what our rational mind is capable of thinking and believing.</p>
 +
<p>So now you must see the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] emerge from the fog he's in one step further. You'll know that you are beginning to discern its contours when you our modern begin to seem to you as the period between the twilight of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance.</p>
 +
<p>The Chomsky – Harari – Graeber [[threads|<em>thread</em>]], which we'll only mention here and elaborate in conversations, is there to point to the evolutionary moment, and situation, we find ourselves in. To put it <em>very</em> briefly: Chomsky, when asked "what sort of insight will emerge from the research in linguistics that may make a large difference" answered that our that is human language did not really evolve as a means of communication (about what's relevant out there to know), but as an instrument for worldview sharing. Harari, in Sapiens and related TED and other talks, described this – the ability to create a story and believe in it as reality – as <em>the</em> competitive advantage of our species over others, which enabled us to conquer the planet and become <em>the</em> dominant species. David Graeber – that is, the [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] to which we have given his name – will explain why this way of evolving (whose inner workings are taken up in the just mentioned other [[threads|<em>thread</em>]]) could have given us dramatically wasteful and dysfunctional societal organizations without us properly noticing. (The [[vignettes|<em>vignette</em>]] is actually about Alexander the Great; Alexander's "business model" where he turns free people into slaves to work in his mines, and turns sacred and artistic objects of precious metals into coins, and thus acquires sufficient funds to be able to finance his military operations and "conquer the Earth" – and as a result becomes "the Great" – is used as a parable for how our systems have been evolving since the beginning of civilization.)</p>
 +
<p>And now the point: While we <em>could</em> – albeit with enormous costs and sacrifices – let our evolution be guided in this way, today our situation is different. We <em> have</em> conquered the planet. Now there remains just about one single thing for us to conquer; a single main challenge.</p>
 +
<p><blockquote>During the past century we humans have conquered or learned to subjugate to our will the power of the rivers, the waves, the winds, the atom and the Sun. Our challenge in this century is to conquer (subjugate to conscious evolution) what has become <em>the</em> greatest power of our planet – the power of our socialization. It is the greatest because it determines how all those other powers are going to be used.</blockquote>
 +
</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
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<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
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  <div class="col-md-7">
 +
<h3>Back to epistemology</h3>
 +
<p>Let us observe in parentheses that while here we've undertaken to place our initiative into the context of the society's basic needs – we've come a full circle and back to epistemology. The reason is that while in the earlier societal order of things a shared "reality picture" was essentially just the reality – in the emerging order of things those reality pictures are really the product of the power structure; they are the "turf" which determines the structure of our "turf battles". It is therefore essential that our very approach to knowledge does not rely on the "reality" of such 'turfs' (...).</p>
 +
<h3><em>Homo ludens</em></h3>
 +
<p>In the spirit of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], we can now put what's been said into a nutshell – and that's what The Paradigm Strategy poster does, by talking about two distinct [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]]. The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] here is a simplification of the more comprehensive and more precise [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]] theory  – but still good enough to bring the main points across. This here is a sketch of some of the conclusions and consequences, of a deeper analysis where the nature of our socialization is explained by weaving  together some of the core insights of Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Damasio, Zygmunt Bauman and other leading researchers in the humanities. </p>
 +
<p>The scope or way of looking here is look at our socio-cultural evolution in two ways instead of just one – which we delineate by the corresponding two keywords, <em>homo sapiens</em> and <em>homo ludens</em>. Although both are always present in degrees or as tendencies, you may think of the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] as a cultural species, which has (most interestingly) been acquiring supremacy in the recent period. The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] has successfully adapted to the social condition where the complexity of our world combined with the overload of information and of impressions in general has made our reality impenetrable. The point is that the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]]  is <em>not</em> the <em>homo sapiens</em>; he does not seek knowledge or use knowledge. He ignores the larger purpose of his work, and all other larger purposes. Instead, he simply learns his profession as a social role, as one would learn the rules of a game, and plays competitively. The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] is guided by what's been called "social intelligence" – he has his antennas tuned to the "interests" of the powerful players around him; and by accommodating them, he acquires his own power position.</p>
 +
<p>Some consequences of the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] evolution seem worth highlighting:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>The systems in which we live and work can be arbitrarily misconstrued, wasteful and dysfunctional, without the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] even noticing that.</li>
 +
<li>This theory explains why politicians like Donald Trump may raise to highest positions of influence – the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] perceives them, perhaps rightly, as the kind of people who "get the things done" in our present order (or <em>dis</em>-order) of things.</li>
 +
<li>The two evolutionary paradigms are – to use Thomas Kuhn's useful keyword – <em>incommensurable</em> (each has its own epistemology, and sees and organizes the world in its own specific way). The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] knows <em>from experience</em> that the <em>homo sapiens</em> is on the verge of extinction; and that one has to be the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] if one should be successful. The <em>homo sapiens</em> looks at the data and the trends, and reaches the <em>opposite</em> conclusion – that the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] must morph into the (cultural) <em>homo sapiens</em> if our civilization, and our species, should have a future. </li>
 +
<li>This theory predicts the existence of a most curious cultural <em>sub</em>-species – the <em>homo ludens academicus</em> – which should not at all exist according to conventional logic (isn't the very purpose of the academic institution to guide us along the <em>homo sapiens</em> evolutionary path?).  The existence of this subspecies still needs to be confirmed by field research, of course. If, however, this species is discovered in reality, this would explain the un-academic resistance of the academic people to update their own system, when the available knowledge is calling for such updates. The [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] ignores the larger societal purpose of his institution. He just sticks to the rules – which provide an "objective" and "fair" frame of reference in which his career game is played.</li>
 +
</ul></p>
 +
<h3>The next step</h3>
 +
<p>What is to be done in this sort of situation? The poster indicates that the key step – from this paradigm into the next – is in the simple act of [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]] (we need to re-socialize ourselves, by daring to co-create the systems in which we live and work). A small but significant act of [[bootstrapping|<em>bootstrapping</em>]] is then choreographed by the poster – which provides an invitation to take part in re-creating the poster itself. A virtual space is provided where the poster is the background, and where one can add verbal and visual comments to its various parts.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
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<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Liberation dialogs</h2></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>First things second</h3>
 +
<p>We begin with this somewhat awkward re-coining of this phrase to signal that while our first theme might be necessary for understanding the relevance of this second one, this second one might in the overall order of things be indeed <em>more</em> relevant than the first. What we'll be talking about is the possibility of changing our contemporary human ecology, so that we may indeed begin to redirect our energies in the kind of direction of development that, Peccei predicted, is necessary now if our civilization should have a future. Or we may also put this second conversation into the context provided by our first one, where "Odin the horse" symbolized for us the very motivational structure that drives our societal power games, and ultimately creates our institutions, mores, structures, and our life itself.  What new information, what new isights, could we bring in, that could tip the scale and lead to a civilizational redirection?</p>
 +
<h3>This conversation is not about religion</h3>
 +
<p>At the dawn of the Enlightenment our ancestors liberated themselves from a stringent religious worldview, and we ultimately became free to "pursue happiness" here and now. But what if in the process we have misunderstood <em>both</em> religion <em>and</em> happiness? </p>
 +
<p>If we now tell you that this conversation is about religion, in a way we would be telling the truth – and yet you would get a <em>completely</em> wrong idea of what it's really about. So it is best to consider this theme, religion, as just a uniquely revealing way of looking at the whole big thing, the [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]], or the [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]]. Here too the whole big thing will be reflected in a single theme in the manner of fractals. Our story will both be a snapshot, a picture of an essential piece in the puzzle – and a parable, displaying the structure of the whole paradigm in a nutshell.</p>
 +
<p>To set the stage, revisit what's been said about [[Aurelio Peccei]] at the top of this page. It is the man's cultural and ethical development on which now our civilization's future will depend, claimed Peccei. Then read pages 8 - 10 of the[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/Liberation.pdf introduction to the book manuscript titled Liberation] and subtitled Religion for the Third Millennium (this book, when finished, is intended to serve a background and a starter for this conversation), especially the page-and-a-half excerpt from Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy. The narrow frame of concepts that the 19th century science gave us was damaging to culture, the celebre physicist observed,  – and in particular to its ethical / religions aspects. How lucky we are that the modern physics disproved this narrow frame!</p>
 +
<p>So the question is – can we (in the context of the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] paradigm and paradigm proposal) handle this matter in a radically better way? Can we fix the "narrow frame" problem – and provide a foundation for exactly the kind of development that Peccei was wanting us to begin?</p>
 +
<p>Observe, further, that in the traditional societies religion (whose etymology suggests re-connection) was <em>the</em> major factor connecting each individual to a purpose (which was often seen as "God's will or command"), and the people together into a community. In modernity, however (as Heisenberg observed in the quoted passage), the belief in uninformed self-interest has assumed this role. The question is if we can do better than that.</p>
 +
<h3>This conversation is not about Buddhism</h3>
 +
<p>Well in some sense it <em>is</em> about Buddhism – but not in the usual sense of this word. Before we began this project or [[knowledge federation|<em>federation</em>]] exercise, our understanding of Buddhism was clouded by the kind of things one hears while growing up in the West: That the Buddhists believe in reincarnation. That the Buddha was a prince, who wanted to find a way out of suffering. Well, we all know, our earthly existence <em>is</em> suffering, there's pain and sickness and old age and dying and there's no way around that. But the Buddha found a solution – if we persist in righteous living for sufficiently long, we can enter "nirvana" or (in Pali) "nibbana" and continue to live in eternal bliss without incarnating. The happiness is to be found, in other words, not here but in the "hereafter".  </p>
 +
<p>How radically our understanding changed in the course of this exploration!</p>
 +
<p>The book manuscript "Liberation" with subtitle "Religion for the Third Millennium" will provide all the details. While this manuscript is being completed, we'll try to provide you sufficient guidelines and details here so that you may begin to connect the dots on this uniquely interesting and relevant picture yourself. Here too you have both a relevant detail and a metaphorical or fractal representation of the whole big thing, how we communicate and fail to communicate (or how our communication and institutionalization gets hijacked by the [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]]). So let's begin with a brief outline of the story line (a more thorough version is provided in the references below) and then continue with the substance.</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-6">
 +
<h3>Understanding religion</h3>
 +
<p>So here's a <em>very</em> short version of Buddhadasa's story: After two years of monastic life in Bangkok, while in his early 20s and almost a century ago, Buddhadasa thought "This just cannot be it! We are chanting sutras and observing the precepts, but if one looks deeper really much of what goes on has to do with the monks' personal ambitions and the prestige." So he learned enough Pali to be able to understand the original scriptures, established a dwelling in an abandoned forest monastery near his home village Chaya in Southern Thailand, and undertook to discover and repeat the Buddha's way (or "experiment", as we sometimes like to frame it) himself. </p>
 +
<p>In this way Buddhadasa found that the essence of Buddhism was not really what was taught. It was, rather, simply a phenomenon, a kind of a natural law that the Buddha discovered 25 centuries earlier. Buddhism, in Buddhadasa's interpretation, is a kind of a science – by which innate human possibilities for a radically better life, not an afterlife but a life here and now, are pursued through a deep inner transformation. Seeing this, Buddhadasa made a leap of intuition – and postulated that <em>all</em> religions share the same essence. And that all of them suffered from the same problem of misunderstanding of this essence, and deformation of the practice. We'll come back to that in a moment.</p>
 +
<p>Perhaps you'll understand the larger relevance of this insight if we frame it in the context of The Paradigm Strategy dialog above: While it is true that we the people have a strong "Odin the horse" component that governs our private and communal life, that is not at all the whole story. Odin is also the divinity. The horse can be tamed – and the divine side can become the ruler. But this is of course using once again the religious language, which may be unappealing to some of our readers. So let us now bring this conversation <em>completely</em> down to earth, by talking about an issue that everyone can relate to and understand – the pursuit of happiness.</p></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-3 round-images">[[File:Buddhadasa.jpg]]<br><small><center>[[Buddhadasa]]</center></small></div>
 +
</div>
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Understanding Buddhism</h3>
 +
<p>So let us mention some of the differences between Buddhadasa's interpretation of Buddhism and the way we understood this subject.</p>
 +
<p>First of all (you may not think much of this now, compared to what we'll talk about next – but this <em>is</em> central) – the word "suffering" is a rough translation of a technical term "dukkha" – whose meaning is <em>a certain kind of</em> suffering. You want to imagine the forests of India 25 centuries ago as laboratories where a certain kind of research, and culture, were blossoming (see the blog post The Garden of Liberation linked below). Those people had their technical language which made it possible for them to deal in precise ways with the kind of issues Peccei thought we shoud focus on – incomparably better than we do today. A nice federation challenge, isn't it? We'll say more about this in a moment.</p>
 +
<p>The second point is that what the Buddha discovered was how to eliminate dukkha through a certain conscious practice. The heart of the matter is to eliminate the arrival of self-consciousness or greed or desiring of any kind – through certain kinds of praxis. The "incarnation" that the Buddha talked about was of this kind – the arousing of self-consciousness, which could happen one hundred times in a day!</p>
 +
<p>So Buddhism – as we learned from Buddhadasa – is purely about pursuing happiness here and now. The difference from what we thought we knew about this is astounding: While it appeared  to us that the essence of Buddhism was a belief that we are stuck with a certain identity which we cannot get rid of even when we die – it turned out that the very <em>problem</em> that Buddhism was to heal was of us holding on to any kind of identity; that the praxis was the one of dissolving our identity in the larger identity of the All, and of the moment.</p>
 +
<p>Furthermore – the essence of Buddhism, and of religion at large (according to Buddhadasa) is not a certain kind of belief, but on the contrary – the <em>liberation</em> from all fixed beliefs; and with it, the liberation of our minds our bodies, our thought and action, through the various power structures that would control our lives; and from our own inclination to partake in those power structures, and in controlling other people's lives...</p>
 +
<p>But OK, these are abstractions – let us now see how they reflect upon our issue at hand, our <em>earthly</em> pursuit of happiness</p>
 +
<h3>Understanding happiness</h3>
 +
<p>So how important is dukkha? We'll answer this key question in three steps.</p>
 +
<p>The first is to observe that dukkha is really what motivates Odin the horse in us to engage in territorial behavior. It's what creates our [[power structures|<em>power structures</em>]]. The message here is that – while this may be <em>a part of</em> the human nature – it is definitely not the whole thing. Odin the horse has a "divine" side too – and that is the one to be cultivated and elevated, if we should create a better world. And we even know how – we only need to enquire, and to connect the dots.</p>
 +
<p>The second observation – which may need a bit of time and reflection, to get used to this way of looking and thinking – is to realize how much of our emotional life, what enormous proportion of our everyday suffering, is due to this atavistic part of our psychological makeup! Not only our professional life, but even our love life – what we know as "love relationships", and even so incredibly much of our love-related music and poetry – is just soaking in the dukkha-related emotions of clinging and controlling. </p>
 +
<p>Yet even when all this is put together, things don't quite add up yet to the real picture, to the real size of this issue. To get there – and this is the communication opportunity and challenge that is taken in the book – we must understand the Buddha's discovery, and "the essence of religion" in a larger context.  We identify happiness with the kind of things that give us a pleasant stimulation <em>at the moment</em>. What percentage of "happiness" does this leave in the dark? What should a more informed or systemic look at this issue reveal?</p>
 +
<p>So let's imagine that all we know about happiness is on the scale between 0 (no happiness at all, or complete misery) and 1 ("normal" happiness, that is, the kind of thing we have experienced, and what we see around us). Let's postulate the possibility that there is a whole big range beyond – between 1 and + ∞ – that we've consistently ignored! And that the essence of the Buddha's vision is really how to access and traverse <em>that</em> space. </p>
 +
<p>Buddhadasa portrays the Buddha as essentially a scientist. At his time in India, many young men withdrew into the forest to explore the science and art of (as Peccei framed it)
 +
"substantial improvement in human quality", because that was what the culture most highly valued. And as the case is in the academia today, people learned from each other, and improved the art. What the Buddha found was what allowed one to go <em>beyond</em> what otherwise seemed possible. </p>
 +
<p>What is most interesting, then, for our overall story, for seeing the emerging [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] or the metaphorical [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]] – is that this key insight points in the opposite direction from the one in which we normally seek happiness!</p>
 +
<p>And that it also contradicts the way how we normally see the essence of religion.</p>
 +
<p>The key point of the technique is to relinquish any sort of clinging – to material possessions... to cultural identities... and even – to firmly held beliefs! The core praxis is the <em>liberation</em> from all forms of clinging. Or put differently – the liberation from exactly the kind of drives that motivate Odin the horse to behave like a (territorial) animal!</p>
 +
<p>What we have here is really a key element in our puzzle – the one that links our <em>personal</em> pursuit of happiness with our <em>societal</em> one...</p>
 +
<p>Of the ten chapters of the Liberation book, the first four federate suitable knowledge from a variety of sources and traditions, to give a broad outline of the territory of "happiness between 1 and + ∞", which is now opening up before us. Chapters 5 and 6 place the Buddhas (and Buddhadasa's) discovery into this picture – whereby it becomes transparent how exactly this insight fits in, and completes the puzzle. The last four chapters are then about our societal pursuit of happiness, that is, about the kind of environment that we would need – to both live in and to create – if this sort of pursuit of happiness should become possible. </p>
 +
<h3>Religion for the third millennium</h3>
 +
<p>So what will be the future of religion (according to the "Liberation" book)?</p>
 +
<p>You see, here is where what we've told about [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] in Federation through Images comes in handy: We don't really need to predict the future. We don't need to – and indeed we cannot – say what religion "really is" or needs to be in the third millennium. We can just <em>postulate</em> the meaning of this word, and of the related words! We can create a convention which does no more than explain how <em>we</em> are using those words.</p>
 +
<p>And even then we didn't need to do more than just [[knowledge federation|<em>federate</em>]] an authority, Martin Lings. We remind you that there are no "metapysical" assumptions here, that the only thing we ever rely on is the observation of (here everyday) phenomena, or "phenomenology". </p>
 +
<p>The observation is that there <em>is</em> indeed a source of human motivation that is beyond Odin the horse-style (uncultivated, uninformed, turf battle-motivated...) self-interest. Great works of art, and of science, acts of selfless courage and advancements toward liberty and freedom... would have been impossible without it. Examples are abundant and don't even need to be mentioned. So imagine those sources of motivation arranged around a periphery of a circle: "beauty", "truth", "justice", "motherhood"...; we chose to (follow after Carl Jung and) call them [[archetypes|<em>archetypes</em>]]. Imagine that there is a central archetype in the center of the circle. Do you want to call it "God"? Or do you prefer to call it just "love"? That is entirely up to you. The important point is that when one is in contact with any of them, when one is connected with or "plugged into" an archetype, then one is motivated and empowered in a different way.</p>
 +
<p>We may then think of [[religion|<em>religion</em>]] as (any) praxis whose goal is to stimulate and enable this connection. Religion, understood in this way, is simply an aspect of culture – whose importance we'll easily understood in the context just provided.</p>
 +
<p>We hope that the story we just told – in the context we provided above – will add appeal and adventure to the impending development of this praxis.</p>
 +
<p>You will have no difficulty understanding that [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] resolves the issue that was associated with religion in the old [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] ("does God exist") in exactly the same way in which science resolved the disputes of the scholastics ("how many angels can dance on a needlepoint") – by changing the way of looking,  so that the questions is seen as both undecidable and irrelevant. Indeed, if you've looked at Federation through Images, you'll know that – by convention – concepts here are just concepts that is, our own creation, which determine how we look at the world and what we are able to see and communicate. By the same convention, it is impossible and also meaningless to try to decide the "reality" of a concept.</p>
 +
<p>You will also have no difficulty understanding why the issue of directing or re-directing our "pursuit of happiness" acquires an entirely different status. It is no secret that we have abandoned this question – and with it also the creation of values, and of culture at large – to commercial interests; you just need to look around. Even great Google earns 90% of its revenue from advertising! Of course in the old scheme of things this is just the operation of the old god, the Market. But if we should be serious about changing course, or the paradigm, we should be able to do better than that.</p>
 +
<h3>Can religion become a <em>cause célèbre</em>?</h3>
 +
<p>There are several reasons why we chose this book, Liberation, and this theme, "religion for the third millennium", to serve as the 'Trojan horse' with which we will break the news about Knowledge Federation and the emerging paradigm to general audiences, and ignite the general dialog. To most people, "religion" means believing in something, typically in "the existence of God", and then usually in some specific variant of this belief, such as that Jesus was the son of God, or that Mohamed was God's last prophet. The related beliefs – both when they are religious, and when they are <em>anti</em>–religious – tend to be strongly and passionately held, and often maintained against counter-evidence. (Is it because those beliefs have been a product of our socialization?)</p>
 +
<p>In a way we want to play a Judo trick on the current narrow scope of interest of the people and the media – by offering a story that they won't be able to refuse. Which will at the same time bring forth insights and ideas that can radically transform those interests.</p>
 +
<p>The space is open to us to <em>resolve</em> the issue of religion – but in a new-paradigm way. The presented evidence (which will be submitted to prime this conversation) will challenge the beliefs of <em>all</em> those camps – both the people who consider themselves as religious, and those who may be devoutly <em>anti</em>-religious. It has turned out that we can do that in <em>the</em> most innocent way imaginable – by just telling stories (once again those real-life ones, the [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]]). Or in other words, by federating [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. </p>
 +
<p>While as always insights of a multiplicity of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] are combined to make a point, here too the story has a central hero. His gave himself the name Buddhadasa, which means "the slave of the Buddha" – and thereby made it clear that he too was just federating the insights of an earlier and more worthy master. </p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Knowledge federation dialogs</h2></div>
 +
  <div class="col-md-7"><h3>A conversation that matters</h3>
 +
<p>In the midst of all the systemic incongruences and devolutions, we've managed to do one thing right – through the mechanism of academic tenure, and the culture of academic freedom, our society has developed the capability to select, educate and sponsor a sub-society of free-thinking people. The question is  – How is this capability being used?</p>
 +
<p>The importance of how we answer this question in this historical moment cannot be overstated. The transition that is now before us, from a society whose evolution and daily functioning are marked by turf rivalry, to a society capable of creating a well-functioning world by co-creating its well-functioning components, will have to depend on such a degree of freedom. Furthermore, this transition will naturally have to begin at the university, because new thinking and new knowledge are what is needed to illuminate the way to all those other re-evolutionary changes.</p>
 +
<h3>Our proposal</h3>
 +
<p>“[T]he university should make structural changes within itself toward a new purpose of enhancing society’s capability for continuous self­-renewal", Erich jantsch wrote, and lobbied at a leading university for such changes to be put into place. When now, a half-century later, we are proposing to make this question the subject of an academic dialog, we are supporting this proposal by a blueprint of an entire paradigm proposal – that's been outline on these pages. The rationale, as we have seen, is that we can now talk about co-creating 'the light bulb', instead of being focused on 'improving the candle', and ignoring whatever doesn't seem to fit that task.</p>
 +
<p>We have motivated our paradigm proposal by three profound changes that developed  during the past century – of our understanding of the nature of knowledge (or [[epistemology|<em>epistemology</em>]]), of information technology, and of the needs our society has with regards to information, owing to the new situation it's in. We shall now revisit those three changes and summarize how our proposal responds to them, based on what's been told on these pages. </p>
 +
<h3>Change of epistemology</h3>
 +
<p>We have seen – in Federation through Images – how the leading physicists saw that the results they were reaching challenged the age-old assumptions about the nature of knowledge and reality. In Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg in particular gave a direct and clear account how the 19th century created a limited and narrow way of looking at the world, which determined not only what the scientists were doing but also and most importantly the zeitgeist of our culture. And how fortunate we were that the modern physics reached <em>a rigorous disproof</em> of this narrow frame of concepts! And Albert Einstein diagnosed that the age-old "correspondence with reality" as the foundation for creating truth and worldview, had the disadvantages that (1) it cannot be rationally verified and (2) it is the major source of illusions that dominate both human lives and academic practices.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen how a different foundation for truth and worldview can be developed that is broad and solid in three independent ways, because (1) it is based on a convention (and conventions are true in a rigorous sense, just as mathematical definitions are true "by convention"); (2) the conventions are written so that they reflect the new epistemological findings; (3) the whole thing is a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] – which means that it is capable of evolving and correcting its structural errors by updating itself, when the available knowledge and the 'environmental conditions' demand that.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen how, on this new foundation, we can liberate knowledge and knowledge work from "narrow frames of concepts" of any kind – by allowing for concepts, and methods, to be freely created.</p>
 +
<p>We have seen how, on this new foundation, we can develop knowledge work, which we called [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], whereby guiding insights and rules of thumb can be developed on any practically important or interesting topics, and on any desired level of generality. The information of this kind can then give us suitable orientation, help us handle the complex realities we have created – and reduce the cognitive burden that our present information has imposed on us. </p>
 +
<p>The simple point, the takeaway, is that we can no longer rely on any single individual, be she a voter or a leader of a country – to assemble all the relevant details and see through them and make a decision. We must do our thinking and digesting and deciding <em>collectively</em>, by dividing, specializing and self-organizing our knowledge work – by developing the praxis that we've been calling [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]. </p>
 +
<h3>Change of information technology</h3>
 +
<p>We have seen – by telling the "incredible history of Doug" in Federation through Stories, that the new media technology was <em>created</em> for this very purpose – of enabling an incomparably more efficient and effective or "concurrent development, integration and application of knowledge" – compared to what was possible based on printed text and its derivatives. And how to to take advantage of this opportunity, "different thinking" also needed to be in place. We have seen that not only the "new thinking" is yet to be developed – but that this "thinking gap" even left us in the dark regarding this Engelbart's all-important message – <em>for an entire half-century</em>!</p>
 +
<h3>Change of our society's condition and needs</h3>
 +
<p>We have seen, on this page, that according to [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] who organized the federation of knowledge on this most timely of issues, our global condition is so new that we are culturally unprepared to even understand it clearly. We have then seen how this challenge can be turned into a sensationally positive vision of an emerging larger societal paradigm – which can engage us in a co-creative and free rather than "sustaining" or worrying way. </p>
 +
<p>We have seen, further, that the approach to knowledge we are proposing <em>both</em> shows the way to the emerging paradigm and thus calls it into existence <em>and</em> suits the emerging paradigm as its functional element, just as the conventional science suited the Enlightenment as we've had it and the Industrial Revolution. </p>
 +
<h3>A new paradigm</h3>
 +
<p>Not in a specific discipline, but in knowledge work and creative work at large!</p>
 +
<p>Thomas Kuhn pointed to two key characteristics of a new paradigm: It (1) resolves the reported anomalies and (2) opens up a new frontier to research. What we've just discuss amounts to three categories of anomalies – in three core areas that determine knowledge work's 'environmental conditions' (fundamental, technological and pragmatic or societal). We have seen how [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as paradigm can resolve those anomalies in a quite thorough or "academic" way. And in Federation through Applications we have seen how this new approach to knowledge opens up a vast frontier for creative engagement and contributions. </p>
 +
<p>And so we are now able to submit to this conversation our [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] proposal as a way to enable, or trigger, a sweeping change – by doing no more than what we anyway need to do, namely align knowledge work with the relevant knowledge. Self-reflect and act. Use the academic [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] to create an even larger mirror where we the people may see the world we are creating, and ourselves in it – and adapt our way of being in the world accordingly.</p>
 +
<h3>The time to act is now</h3>
 +
<p>This year we are celebrating the
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>60th anniversary of the publication of Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy</li>
 +
<li>50th anniversary of Engelbart's famous demo (where the technology was shown that provides the CoDIAK capability)</li>
 +
<li>50th anniversary of the Club of Rome (by which the nature of our society-s condition has been mapped)</li>
 +
</ul></p>
 +
<p>During the past half-century, and especially in recent years, our shared awareness of our new condition (of the "global issues") has grown. The technology that Doug envisioned 50 years ago is on everyone's desk. The time is now ripe to turn the page and act.</p>
 +
<h3>We are <em>not </em> starting a turf strife</h3>
 +
<p>By proposing this new paradigm, we are not saying that conventional science is dysfunctional and needs to be replaced. Science has served us extremely well for the purposes for which it has been developed! But our post-traditional society now also has  <em>new</em> needs and purposes that need to be served. Those two [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] – traditional science and (the one pointed to by) [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] – are (to use Thomas Kuhn's useful keyword) <em>incommensurable</em>; which means that each of them is more suitable for its own purpose or purposes; each of them allows us to see certain things better than others.</p>
 +
<p>It would be contrary to the spirit of the societal paradigm that now needs to emerge, and in strife with its needs, to create an academic-political power battle around this paradigm proposal. Indeed, we shall not even press the issue. The emergence of the new paradigm will have to depend on <em>some</em> of our academic colleagues having the kind of integrity and courage to face the issues we are proposing to put on the academic agenda and work on them.</p>
 +
<p>The ball is, in other words, now in <em>your</em> part of the field</p>.
 +
<h3>See also</h3>
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Proposal to Stanford and Google. Opportunity for new leaders and centers of excellence to emerge? But isn't that what new paradigm's are about?</li>
 +
<li>The Lighthouse proposal; both ended up being [[Quixotte stunt|<em>Quixotte stunts</em>]].</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
<!--
 +
** OLD **
 +
 +
<h3>A theme that matters</h3>
 +
<p>And finally – we need to talk about our proposal, and [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] – that's been showcased on these pages. But the focus here – and relevance – is not on our proposal as such, but the larger theme it "proactively problematizes" – which is the nature and the ecology of <em>academic</em> creative work.</p>
 +
<p>In spite of all the commercialization, commoditization, devolution... that's been plaguing our institutions through the centuries, and at an accelerated speed lately – there's been one thing we've done right: the academic tenure. And the tradition of "academic freedom" that goes with it. The idea is that there needs to be a category of people who are suitably selected, educated and sponsored to think completely freely – with no bonds to commercial and other interests. If some of the insights shared above did strike a chord and you are agreeing with us that we cannot entrust the evolution of our culture and our society on the market, the competition and "the survival of the fittest", if you see how Peccei might have been right when concluding that we must "find a way to change course", then you'll agree with Jantsch that the university that is, the mentioned category of people, will have to play a key role in this transformation. The key question is then – about the way in which we are using this most valuable resource, the human creativity, and the support that the society has given it. It is <em>that question</em> that we want to put on the agenda by presenting this alternative.</p>
 +
<h3>The crux of our proposal</h3>
 +
<p>
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>To institute the academic and real-life praxis of federating knowledge according to basic information needs of contemporary people and society – create basic insights, principles, rules of thumb... which can help us the people orient ourselves in the complex realities we've created, and handle them accordingly</li>
 +
<li>To institute the academic and innovation praxis of creating knowledge federation systems – and give it the status of "basic research". </li>
 +
</ul>
 +
Or – put more simply – to establish [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] as an academic paradigm parallel to and incommensurable with the conventional paradigm.</p>
 +
<h3>What we might learn from our prototype</h3>
 +
<p>An academic reader may have recognized that our [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] presentation on these pages is in fact a careful presentation of – and a case for – a new [[paradigm|<em>paradigm</em>]] in creative work. On the front page we motivated this proposal by three changes that developed during the past century (in our understanding of epistemology, what knowledge and meaning are all about; in information technology; and in societal needs). We provided  four pages that elaborated the details, where we showed how the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] prototype
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>provides a new methodological foundation for creating truth and meaning, which allows us to repair the reported fundamental anomalies <em>and</em> align knowledge work with contemporary needs of people and society</li>
 +
<li>provides a platform for taking advantage of contemporary information technology that fixes the core anomaly we have in this domain – namely that the information technology we have was <em>created</em> to enable re-configuring of knowledge work that we are calling [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]], and yet we used the technology to merely re-implement the old patterns that emerged based on the printed text (or to use Engelbart's metaphor – he created the technology to give our 'vehicle' a whole new source of illumination, the light bulb – and we used this technology to merely recreate the candles) </li>
 +
<li>provides exactly the kind of information, the "evolutionary guidance" that can help us "change course" – by doing no more than just taking advantage of the knowledge we already own (by fitting the pieces into the new emerging reality, the metaphorical [[invisible elephant|<em>elephant</em>]], instead of fitting the pieces in an old and outdated paradigm – and throwing away or ignoring whatever fails to fit in</li>
 +
</ul></p>
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>See</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>The dialog</h3>
 +
<p>David Bohm saw the "dialogue" as simply what we must do in order to shift our present paradigm (or put even more simply "what we <em>must</em> do") – see [http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/Chaos-Complexity/dialogue.pdf On dialogue]. Two volumes edited by Banathy and Jenlink deepened and refined our understanding – download a copy of one of them [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200025879_Dialogue_as_a_Means_of_Collective_Communication here]. Bohm's dialogue is a slow and completely unguided process. We experimented with turning Bohm's dialog into a 'cyclotron' by increasing vastly its energy – see [https://keypointdialog.wiki.ifi.uio.no/Category:Key_Point_Dialog_Zagreb_2008 the project's web site].</p>
 +
<p>Issue Based Information Systems were conceived in the 1960s by Horst Rittel and others to enable collective understanding of complex or "wicked" issues – see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue-based_information_system this Wikipedia page]. Dialog mapping tools such as the IBIS / Compendium, and [https://debategraph.org Debategraph] have been conceived to empower people and communities to tackle "wicked problems" of people to co-create knowledge  – and even to turn the usual debate into a genuine dialog. See [https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Dialogue+Mapping%3A+Building+Shared+Understanding+of+Wicked+Problems-p-9780470017685 Jeff Conklin's Dialog Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems].</p>
 +
<h3>The Paradigm Strategy</h3>
 +
<p>[http://knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf Poster], [http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Abstracts/ThePS.pdf abstract], [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/the-paradigm-strategy/ blog post]</p>
 +
<h3>The Liberation</h3>
 +
<p>[http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/Liberation.pdf Book introduction]; background in blog posts [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/the-garden-of-liberation/ Garden of Liberation] and [https://polyscopy.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/science-and-religion/ Science and Religion]</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
<!-- INSERT
 +
-----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Liberation dialogs</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>XXXXXXX</h3>
 +
<p>While the choice of themes for our dialogs is of course virtually endless, we have three concrete themes in mind to get us started.</p>
 +
<p></p>
 +
XXX
 +
<p>Point: Federates knowledge across disciplines. Threads... whole methodology. POINT: How to handle issues. RHS – prototypes.</p>
 +
<p>POINT: invitation to bootstrap together. Created for RSD6. Invitation. An intervention. Central point.</p>
 +
<h3>Conversation about socio-cultural evolution</h3>
 +
<p>This is a simplified version of the [[power structures|<em>power structure</em>]] theory, still rich enough to strike a good conversation. The point is the de-volution. The unguided evolution. What do we do when we don't have knowledge? A careful indeed snapshot of our evolutionary moment. We have been evolving destructive systems from the beginning of time. The more aggressive ones prevailed. Further, they create our awareness. FAAAAR from being "free to choose", we become our own worst enemy. ...</p>
 +
<p>Key point: We look left, look right, and we adjust what we do according to "interests". The result feels safe... but the systems we create can be arbitrarily meaningless, making us work, compete... Can we do better than that?</p>
 +
<h3>Conversation about strategy</h3>
 +
<p>POINT: There's a better way to do it! Excerpt from the abstract...</p>
 +
<p>Even the environmental movement seems to have forgotten its own history! How should we direct our efforts so that they <em>do</em> have an effect?</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Liberation dialogs</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Conversation about the book</h3>
 +
<p>The book breaks the ice – offers a theme that cannot be refused</p>
 +
<h3>Conversation abut science</h3>
 +
<p>Heisenberg – 19th cent. science damaged culture. Can we, in 21st century, do the opposite – and empower culture. Even do the kind of things that were NOT done in the past? </p>
 +
<h3>Conversation about religion</h3>
 +
<p>Enlightenment liberated us from... Can it be again? Really conversation about pursuit of happiness...</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
 +
<!-- OLD
 +
 +
 +
<p>This [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] has been designed for a specific audience – the RSD6 conference of of the Systemic Design Research Network in 2017 in Oslo. The members of this community are mostly academic researchers who are <em>already</em> focusing their energies on characteristic contemporary issues; and who have <em>already</em> recognized the systemic approach as an essential component, and are applying it in their work. Can we still tell these people something that might be new and relevant? Could we perhaps even surprise them? And most importantly – can we add a capability, a course of action, to their already so well-developed repertoire, and help make it more impactful?</p>
 +
<h3>A strategy</h3>
 +
<p>Among a number of messages and lines of action that are woven together in The Paradigm Strategy poster, there is of course the main message, which is conveyed by the very title. We wrote in our [http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Abstracts/ThePS.pdf abstract]:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
Polyscopy points to the pivotal role of a community-wide gestalt (high-level view of a situation or issue, which points to a way in which it may need to be handled). The motivation is to allow for the kind of difference that is suggested by the comparison of everyone carrying buckets of water from their own basements, with everyone teaming up and building a dam to regulate the flow of the river that is causing the flooding. We offer to the RSD community what we are calling The Paradigm Strategy as a way to make a similar difference in impact, with respect to the common efforts focusing
 +
on specific problems or issues. The Paradigm Strategy is to focus our efforts on instigating a sweeping and fundamental cultural and social paradigm change – instead of trying to solve problems, or discuss, understand and resolve issues.
 +
</blockquote>
 +
</p>
 +
<h3>A federation of insights</h3>
 +
<p>[http://www.knowledgefederation.net/Misc/ThePSposter.pdf The poster] federates a number of insights and points of evidence to support the above main point. The poster is fairly self-explanatory, and if you explore it you'll might find some food for thought for yourself as well. The insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] across fields of interest are combined together into [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], which are then woven together into [[patterns|<em>patterns</em>]]. There are only two, so let's focus on them for a moment.</p>
 +
<p>If you've skimmed through Federation through Stories, then the Wiener's paradox will be already familiar. The message is that even the most basic insight of the systems movement, and the one most that is most relevant to people – because it shows why all the rest is relevant – has not yet been communicated to the public! But the Wiener's paradox is of course a more general [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]], from which all of our academic and other culturally relevant knowledge work tends to suffer. Insights are reached, but they are not turned into common knowledge! The communication-and-feedback of our society are broken, the insights we produce are not listened to.</p>
 +
<p>So if our society does not have – and does not use – suitable information to navigate through the complexities of modernity, then how in the world do we manage? We must have developed a substitute? And indeed we have! The second [[patterns|<em>pattern</em>]], the [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]], provides an answer. It is an insight that combines an old book with the same title, but makes its message incomparably more agile and sharper, by combining the insights of Pierre Bourdieu with the ones of Antonio Damasio, and through four similar combinations or [[threads|<em>threads</em>]], and thereby also demonstrating some of the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] techniques. The message is that – being unable to penetrate through our complex reality, and for other more subtle reasons as well, we have been devolving culturally as [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]]. The <em>homo ludens</em> is the cultural species that is ignorant of – and generally uninterested in – the questions of meaning and purpose. The <em>homo ludens</em> simply learns its different roles, and importantly his profession, as one would learn the rules of a game; and then plays competitively, to maximize what he perceives as "his own gain".</p>
 +
<p>You might recall now – if you've been looking at Federation through Images – that there is no single "true reality picture" here; everything is just models, angles of looking, points of view. The idea is that a certain way of looking will explain <em>certain things</em> better than another one, which may have of course its own advantages. And so we'll mention one out of many points of view that this poster makes available –  namely that the academic tradition too may be suffering in some degree to this same [[homo ludens|<em>homo ludens</em>]] devolution. This little piece of [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]-enabled theory would then postulate the existence of a most curious cultural sub-species, called the <em>homo ludens academicus</em>, which according to common logic should not exist at all. As everyone knows, our social role is to make sure that the biological <em>homo sapiens</em> is evolving as the <em>homo sapiens</em> also culturally.. But we can fulfill that role only to the extent that we ourselves are still on the <em>homo sapiens</em> track! We left the exploration of this most interesting question, of the real-life existence of the <em>homo ludens academicus</em>, to some future conversation.</p>
 +
<p>The question that we offered to the Research in Systemic Design community was to look into <em>their</em> system – which is of course also <em>our</em> system – the academic discipline, and its standard equipment and procedures including the conferences, presentations, publications and the rest. The Wiener's paradox suggests that our contributions to this system and within this system may have little or no real-life effect. The poster explains how and why this unpleasant situation may result. Shall we take this opportunity and examine carefully what is going on? Or shall we be uninterested, and resume our business as usual?</p>
 +
<p> But if the academic publishing is a paradox and hence not a solution – then in what way <em>can</em> we fulfill our all-important role? The poster presents an answer in terms of a single keyword – <em>bootstrapping</em>. If our own system is no longer suitable for the purpose it needs to achieve – then we need to change it! We need to <em>create</em> new ways to collaborate, and communicate, and achieve impact. But isn't that what we've been talking about here all along?</p>
 +
<h3>A call to action</h3>
 +
<p>The poster both made a call to action – and enabled a suitable response. We invited the RSD community to co-create the poster together with us. The <em>bootstrapping</em> link in the middle leads to a copy of the poster where suggestions and comments can be made online. In this way the poster becomes an online collaboration or federation tool that federates the knowledge of the community – and joins it with the insights of the represented [[giants|<em>giants</em>]], and with our own insights. Our invitation was of course to help co-create both the tool itself and its messages.</p>  </div>
 +
</div>
 +
----
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Liberation dialogs</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>A dialog for general audiences</h3>
 +
<p>It is clear that – if we should truly break the bubble created by contemporary media's messages and interests – we need a stronger medicine that what The Paradigm Strategy poster might produce. You might recognize the themes represented there (What strategy may really make it feasible or even easy to resolve the large contemporary issues?) as hugely relevant and interesting – yet they are not what the majority of people are interested in. So how can we break the silence and strike a conversation that matters?</p>
 +
<p>We here put forth a theme that is so close to everyone's socialized identities, which is so loaded with emotions, that it is highly unlikely that it <em>can</em> at all be ignored.</p>
 +
<h3>A meme</h3>
 +
<p>This dialog, and the book that the dialog is about, are technically steps in a federation of a single idea or meme – the essence of the teachings of the Buddha, as interpreted by Thailand's enlightened monk and scholar Ajahn Buddhadasa. This meme is, however, a key piece in the puzzle of the emerging paradigm – which links personal interest ("pursuit of happiness") with the societal interest (reconfiguring our society's nuts and bolts to meet the needs and the challenges of our new and changing condition). It's like a piece of magic – linking most snuggly and seamlessly with one another! The following excerpt from a speech heard at the Suan Mokkh forest monastery that Buddhadasa created is found in Liberation's introduction:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
We are living in a world laden with problems that are so new and so complex, that even our best minds hardly have a clue what we might do about them. And here we are offered an insight, or we may also call it a meme, which – if we could bring it back home with us and put it to use in our daily lives and workplaces – would transform our world so thoroughly, that those problems would naturally disappear!
 +
</blockquote>
 +
</p>
 +
<h3>A conversation about religion</h3>
 +
<p>It would be difficult to find a theme that better represents, both as an example and as a metaphor, the general societal paradigm shift we've been talking about. "Religion" for most people means believing in something – for ex. that Jesus was "the son of God", or that Muhammed was "the last prophet". Science too means believing in something – which again for many people means believing in something opposite from what the religious people believe. So whether one is pro or against religion, this conversation is bound to arouse strong feelings – because it will challenge the beliefs of <em>both</em> traditional camps. The interlude might be as follows: At the dawn of the Enlightenment the people liberated themselves from a stringent religious worldview to became free to "pursue happiness" here and now. But what if in the process we have misunderstood <em>both</em> religion <em>and</em> happiness? What if at the inception of our great religious traditions we will find a <em>phenomenon</em>, we may even call it "a natural law", which brings with it a possibility to create an incomparably better human life, and society.</p>
 +
<p>The issue here is at the core of the paradigm shift. Sketch: Today our [[religion|<em>religion</em>]] is a combined belief in the naturalness / value of selfishness, which is turned into the best world for all by the survival of the fittest. In this sort of ideology it is difficult to find a place where [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] can truly blossom. And vice versa...</p>
 +
<h3>A conversation about science</h3>
 +
<p>The liberation book quotes a whole page-and-a-half from Heisenberg's "Physics and Philosophy" – the excerpt that tells how the 19th century science created a "narrow and rigid frame of concepts" (a way of looking at the world) which marked not only science but also the worldview of the majority of people. And "how lucky we are" that the modern physics disproved this "narrow frame" and the corresponding worldview. This sets the stage for science giving the people back what is due to them – a broader worldview, that will help them rebuild whatever in culture has been damaged. Heisenberg pointed to religion as <em>the</em> prime candidate.</p>
 +
<p>The "liberation" we are talking about is not only the essence of religion; it is also what may be needed to put science on a new and better track. Buddhadasa talks about "seeing the world as it truly is" as the goal of Buddhism. Athletes work on themselves, on their own material. It appears that the scientists don't need to, that "the scientific method" and being "objective observers" are enough to secure the best results. The nature of human creativity, however, turns out to be something else, not how we see it today (...). The development of creativity, of humans with clear vision, has its dynamic and its "natural laws" that underlie it. Do we know them? Can we harness them?</p></div>
 +
</div>
 +
 +
<!--- KF DIALOG
 +
 +
<div class="row">
 +
  <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Knowledge federation dialogs</h2></div>
 +
<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Conversation about the prototype</h3>
 +
<p>Prototype becomes complete when there's a feedback loop that updates it continuously. And when it lives in the community, acting upon how we think and what we do. This conversation will serve both ends.</p>
 +
<p>The prototype, as we have seen, was carefully designed to serve as a paradigm proposal, and as a proof of concept. We motivated our proposal by pointing to three sweeping changes and trends, and to the need to adapt what we do with knowledge to those trends. We then showed how substantial, qualitative, quantum-leap improvements can be achieved within the order of things or paradigm modeled by [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]]:
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Regarding the foundations for truth and meaning: We saw how in the new paradigm a foundation can be created that is <em>triply</em> solid: (1) it is a convention – and a convention is true by definition (2) it reflects the epistemological state of the art in science and philosophy; (3) it is a prototype – hence ready to be changed when new insights are reached</li>
 +
<li>Regarding the pragmatic side, making knowledge responsive to new needs of people and society: The prototype has that as an explicit goal. The improvements that are possible within it cannot be overstated – and we pointed to them by using various framings such as "the largest contribution to human knowledge", as what we <em>must</em> do to make our civilization sustainable, and as "evolutionary guidance", necessary for meaningfully continuing our cultural and social evolution.</li>
 +
<li>Regarding the IT side – we have seen that this technology offers a whole new <em>principle</em> of communication – and hence a new principle of operation to our knowledge work and our institutions. We have seen that this technology was <em>created</em> with that very purpose in mind, with Douglas Engelbart and his lab, and demonstrated in 1968. We have seen that (was it because it did not fit into the prevailing paradigm?) their proposal was not yet even <em>heard</em>.</li>
 +
</ul>
 +
</p>
 +
<p>Thomas Kuhn's view of new paradigms points to "anomalies" and to new possibilities for creative work as distinguishing characteristics. And so, by telling stories or [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], we could point to large anomalies that were reported a half-century ago by Werner Heisenberg, Vannevar Bush, Norbert Wiener, Douglas Engelbart, Erich Jantsch and very many other [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] – without meeting the kind of response that might reasonably be expected. On the side of the new achievements, we showed a large collection of [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]], each pointing to creative challenges and opportunities, and vast possibilities for improvement and achievement,  in their specific areas.</p>
 +
<p>Is there room for this new academic species at the university? What action should follow?</p>
 +
<h3>Conversation about transdisciplinarity</h3>
 +
<p>Knowledge federation defines itself as a [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]]. Norbert Wiener began his 1948 Cybernetics by describing a pre-war transdisciplinary group of scientists in the MIT and Harvard, discussing the issues of the method. Cybernetics emerged, from Mas as a common language and methodology through which the sciences can share their results across their disciplinary dialects. Mathematica biologist / philosopher Ludwig von Bertalanffy developed the general system theory for a similar purpose. In 1954, at Stanford University,  von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, James G. Miller and Anatol Rapoport initiated what later became the International Society for the Systems Sciences. What we've added to these most worthwhile efforts is "the dot on the i", the capacity to turn this into something we the people can understand and be guided by.</p>
 +
<p>All these efforts to melt the disciplinary silos and make knowledge freely flowing and accessible to all were by their nature transdisciplinary, of course. Was <em>that</em> reason why they never really met with the kind of response, at our universities, that would give them universal visibility and impact? Similarly, as we have seen, Douglas Engelbart and Erich Jantsch – whom we credit as "founding fathers" of [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] and [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] respectively – found no response at major universities for their ideas. Engelbart liked to tell the story how he left U.C. Berkeley where he worked for a while after completing his doctorate, when a colleague told him "if you don't stop dreaming, and don't start publishing peer-reviewed articles, you will remain an adjunct assistant professor forever." </p>
 +
<p>"The individual players are compelled by their own cupidity to form coalitions", Wiener observed in Cybernetics, commenting on the kind of social dynamics that develop in a competitive environment, that was diagnosed by von Neumann's results in game theory. Is the academic discipline such a coalition? Can we evolve the university in a collaborative way, and make it more humane and more useful to our society?</p>
 +
<p>Let's begin by acknowledging that this theme could not be more interesting and relevant than it is. To say this more technically, what we are talking about is arguably <em>the</em> "systemic leverage point" with highest potential impact. Every society has a number of especially creative individuals, who are capable of doing what may seem impossible. The question now is about the ecology by which creative people are empowered to contribute to the core issues of our time – or not.</p>
 +
<p>In the conventional order of things, when strengthening the university's usefulness and responsibility or responsiveness to the society is on the agenda, there are essentially two strong voices that are heard: (1) Tighten the funding and the publish or perish, and force the researchers to  prove themselves (or rove the value of their work) on the academic market; let them "publish or perish";  (2) Tighten the funding and make the academic researchers prove themselves on the real-world market; let them survive if they can secure their own funding. We however champion a third possibility – where creative human beings are given the freedom to pursue socially relevant causes. The university that is marked by dialog and collaboration, not strife and competition. While our initiative was largely self-funded (by the enthusiasm and savings of our inspired members), it must also be said that it would have been impossible without at least some of us being on tenured academic positions – and in places such as Japan and Norway where the academic freedom is still valued and carefully protected. We would like to submit to this conversation that <em>more freedom</em> not less is what our general conditions are calling from. The academic "publish or perish" is so obviously "Industrial-age" that we really don't need to say more about that. On the other hand, the university can now take the leadership in the transformation of our society to the extent that it is capable of first of all transforming its own culture and values. It is noteworthy that some of the [[giants|<em>giants</em>]] that initiated [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] and [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]] did not find support for their work at the leading universities. Can we do better now?</p>
 +
<h3>Conversation about knowledge federation / systemic innovation</h3>
 +
<p>There are several themes and questions here. Can we give the university the capability of evolving its own system? Can we direct innovation, or creative work, in a systemic way, and help direct our society's evolution? </p>
 +
<p>Another pivotal issue – how do we use the 'muscles' of our technology? In what direction is our capability to create and induce change taking us the people, and our civilization? Can we refine our steering of this centrally important activity?</p>
 +
<p>Essentially this is what Erich Jantsch tried to do. And what Wiener started. And what Engelbart struggled with. The issue is – shall we let uninformed selfishness and competition, streamlined by "the market" or "the survival of the fittest", guide the way we steer and build our systems? And how we use our capability to create? Or do we need freedom, responsibility, information, and knowledge? And if this latter is the case (which we should be able to show beyond reasonable doubt – but leave it open to conversations which will build something even more important – our capability to talk through this important matter) – then what should this information be like? Who will do [[systemic innovation|<em>systemic innovation</em>]]? In what way? Jantsch's proposal is of course a starting point. Our various [[prototypes|<em>prototypes</em>]] are another. There is infrastructure being built up at the ISSS and the ITBA. Can we build on those?</p>
 +
</div>
 +
</div>
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Latest revision as of 11:33, 6 December 2018

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