Douglas P. Wilson wrote:
> (snip)
>
> It might help if I use (and abuse) a metaphor from the days of logical
> positivism. Let us imagine our society (and system) as a boat
> floating in the middle of the ocean.
I would prefer thinking of it as a body that contains all of thepersonalities that
are the sum total of its experiences. At the
present it is in the process of trying to negotiate the meaning
of and perpetuation of its physical health. The boat is dead,
the body is alive. I find the consideration of a relationship
between an alive system and the entities within that system a
more realistic metaphor for my imagining.
> Actually requirements analysis should precede designing or planning,
> (viz. http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/requirements.html) but that's
> another issue.
True for a bridge but again, I believe the problem is the belief inthe very
objectivity which you seem to strive for. Am I wrong?
Plans always go before that which is known. But the future is
more appropriately explored as an unknown with history to
keep us from being totally blind.
> But what Mr. Atlee has is (apparently) a resolve, or resolution, or
> firm intention to plan things very well -- it is not itself a plan for
> anything. That's why I said I couldn't actually detect any idea in
> Mr. Atlee's prose -- all I saw were good intentions.
What I saw was a critique with an implication.
> I could well be wrong about that -- I'm wrong about lots of things,
> though I never admit it. Perhaps there is some idea there that I've
> missed.
Me too.
> As for the comments of Thomas Lunde, I am sure I have missed something
> in what he wrote, because I just didn't understand much of it.
>
> > Try the formula "Structure determines the form of the processes" in which
> > structure is a defined state. ...
Tom is capable of speaking for himself but I read it asa statement of simple
classicism. In the Classical
style of Western music (like Mozart, Haydn, etc. )
"Structure determines the form of the processes." or
we could use terms like Mies Van der Rohe in architecture
"form defines content" or "less (content) is more."
> Have you ever read Process and Reality, by Alfred North Whitehead?
> Ah, I didn't think so -- I don't think anybody has.
I've read some of Whitehead and liked him but not the above.My favorite was a
little practical book called "The Aims of
Education" and I once slogged a little of his and Russell's
Principia (how's that for name dropping?).
> To the best of
> my knowledge he is saying "Process determines the form of the structures",
> but I've never figured out what that means, either.
That is "Romantic" within the same artistic structure.Emerson in America with Lord
Byron, Marx, Darwin,
Freud and Wagner in Europe. An interesting deviant
from this is Ives and Frank Lloyd Wright, both of whom
insisted that form defined content but that each
form was the content of a greater form. Generally
Romanticism says that the form is the "skin" of content
and exists as a kind of limit to the process that is going
on within the content of the form. In art they are not
polar opposites but exist as a dual symbolization of the
whole. They are synergistic and also a conception of
the human mind meant solely to make the incomprehensible
useful. First Nations peoples generally consider that there
are not two but seven. Each as aspects of time/space which
is a unity. On the other hand you might also consider it
with the Greeks Dionysian (you and Whitehead) or Apollonian
(Tom Lunde).
> > Representative Democracy is in my opinion a structure for political
> > goverance selection. ...
>
> I'd be happy calling it either a system or a process, not a structure.
> But the words don't really matter.
I think the problem here is the way English mixes time andplace. Systems
generally refer to time while structure refers
to place. But you would not call a Sonata Allegro a system even
though it is a form in time. Instead it is called a structure, i.e.
one of the structures of music. Process is analogous with
system because they are both time rather than space but
even that is not really true. English is not Latin. It flows and
becomes an objectified structure when needed or a system
and process when that is required needed. Music provides
the reverse phonetic of speech while nouns become verbs,
adjectives become nouns, etc. and the reverse based upon need.
The process here is a Gestalt one. The first person to define
the reality being discussed is the one followed no matter
what you believe unless you wish to destroy them with a
withering criticism. That is the realm of Thesis committees
and Ivy league academics. So I find you picky on this one
but not convincing.
> What matter is that Representative
> Democracy isn't a very good (whatever it is). I think of it as
> technology, a tool or technique for making government work. Something
> we invented. A long time ago. Before we really knew what we were
> doing.
>
> I often compare it to the ox-cart or waterwheel -- not hi-tech at all,
> something that just barely works.
I find this difficult to follow. On the one hand you ask fora coherency between
"system and process" while on the
other you break that coherency by comparing a human
process, not unlike the negotiation that goes on in the brain,
to a primitive machine which is a projection not of the brain
but of the joints and circulatory system of the body.
> But Representative Democracy is much, much, better than the political
> or social technology of Absolute Monarchy, tyranny, dictatorship,
> aristocracy and all the other undemocratic forms of government that
> came before it.
Under what circumstances? Societies in stress often choosea dictator, then
discard him when there is no longer a crisis.
Note how many people defend Churchill to the death while the
electorate discarded him as too rigid and tyrannical. Of course
they loved and honored him as well.
> > Now, at one time, we had as a structure, heriditary monarchy. Over time, it
> > became apparent that we got a lot of stupid monarch's who created a stupid
> > nobility which did really stupid things with the resources of a country.
>
> Yes, of course, but hereditary monarchy was also a social invention,
> and a very civilizing one. Prior to the invention of hereditary
> monarchy the ruler was the person who killed his predecessor -- and as
> many of his precessors conscripted soldiers as possible.
This sounds more theory than history as I know it.
> > ... We need a new structure and from that will flow new processes
> > which will produce different results.
> I think that sentence is something I can agree with, but I'm not sure.
Artists do the same by driving themselves crazy tryingto invent the next style
system. It never works. There
probably are not any new systems at all, just repeated
ones slightly altered to fit new circumstances.
Artists
also try to compose the definitive masterwork that finishes
off the current system, (sort of a style murder). According
to that line of thought Beethoven finished off the fugue in
the Hammerklavier sonata and so no one need write
another lest they be derivative. A lot of good music and
creative thought has been lost by such nonsense. I
don't think we need new processes but "intelligent diminishers
of complexity. In other words, don't try to invent somethingnew until you are a
Master at what you wish to escape.
> > So we invented a new structure for the times - representative democracy.
>
> Structure? Oh, well. Terminology aside, I can agree that we invented
> representative democracy and now need to invent something new. That's
> true.
The Great Chief at Onondaga will be interested to hear the above.You might
consider some of the writings of Benjamin
Franklin on where those systems originated that were
codified first in the Articles of Confederation and later the
Constitution.
REH
