The Intersection of Man and World es Alexander Carpenter

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rl alexander@nmci.com
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13 March 2010

Net Cumulative Copyright 2008-2010

Determinants All Rights Reserved
The Pl of Human Behavior
an
Human e of
Proces
ses
Technological/Material Level

Economic Level
“Politics”
Social Level

Cultural Level
“Human Nature”
Biological (including genetic) Level

Natural Laws

Human sustainability is to an extent determined by net human behavior, which is the resultant of net determinants
accumulated through each successive level, with each level forming the basis for levels above, and lower levels having the
greatest power and effect (see Concordance). As a holarchy, each level includes and transcends (to an extent) the levels
below, and its native behaviors are constrained (to a larger extent) by those lower-level parameters. Positive and negative
feedback loops and other interactions abound between all levels and both planes.

Other planes may exist and intersect: e.g., Spiritual Plane, and that’s a whole ‘nother conversation…
The “Spiral Dynamics” conversation is related more integrally; summarized at http://www.fudomouth.net/rhizome/kwintegralvision.htm
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Concordance
Influence on Storage
Level Consciousness Choice Stability‡ Tools Constructs
Behavior in…
Technological, Total in Great:
within Most Conscious Principle; Lower: Machines, Parameters & Static Constructs of
Things
Environmental (but not highly) Little in Sculpture Material Boundary Matter
Limits Practice Conditions

Symbols ($,€) Least; ad hoc

Power and
Increasingly Lowest: Mob for combined Activity. Static Constructs of
Economic More Force;
Conscious Dynamics Values and Extrinsic Economic Value
Habits
Material Motivators

Less;
Low: Explicit Rules, Writing, Static Constructs of
Somewhat Neurological.
Social Some Software, Symbols for Attitudes Social Value: Law,
Conscious Extrinsic
Mental Values Deeds Mission & Means
Motivators

Speech, Static Constructs of

Memory, Group Viability:
Medium: Impulse: Values Much; Endocrine.
Some Conscious; Rituals, Governance &
Cultural Very Little Firmware, Intrinsic
Mostly Unconscious Algorithms * Memes, Ownership, Purpose &
Emotional Motivators
Myths,
Vision *
Genes

Genes, Static Constructs of

Biological, High: Instinct: Greatest;
Almost Entirely Essentially Epigenetic Individual and Group
within Hardware, Survival Cellular. Intrinsic
Unconscious None Systems, Survival:
Natural Laws Visceral Algorithms * Motivators
Cells Reproduction, Power*

Dynamic Improvisation and interaction within and between Levels leads to Systemic Change.
All impulses and constraints on behavior accumulate and overlay upward; net behavior results.

‡ The inverse of responsiveness to change, both from within and from without.
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* Behavioral algorithms proven to work over evolutionary time (as opposed to historical time)
 Standard binary (“run/not-run”) algorithms (universal)

Holarchies Clever syntheses and combinations of standard algorithms (common)

New “human-processes” behavior (rare)

True learning (very rare), then
Algorithmized in memes or genes (extremely rare and slow to manifest)

To be conscious means to have made distinctions.

To be conscious means to make choices (a behavior in itself).
Consciousness evolves and human behavior reflects expression of genetically mediated algorithms, which
bound cultural algorithms (to an extent), which bound social algorithms (to an extent); then expression of
environmental constraints and cumulatively bounded personal choices.
It is in the deepest levels that we have the greatest power (and most difficult access) to cumulatively
influence choices in higher levels. The strongest influences we can have on personal choices start in the lower
levels. Every propagandist knows this. Every Oligarch knows this. Every religious leader knows this.

It is from the biological level that we can influence and liberate culture; it is from the cultural level that we
can influence and liberate society; it is from the social level that we can influence and liberate politics and its
“economy;” it is from the political level that we look back down-level and can influence and liberate the
individual — with that “liberation” consonant with natural laws and environmental constraints, and each
level’s liberation consonant with its bounding levels’ imperatives, either natively or through compensations
and constraints.
Any advocacy or sustainability conversation that seeks to change individual and collective human
behavior will be successful in direct proportion to its origination in the lower levels and how effectively,
coherently, and explicitly it connects them to the upper levels so more-conscious choices can be made.
It must also synthesize a values-centric post-post-modern and trans-disciplinary integration of “chaos math”
(the properties of complex non-linear open systems with emergent events and properties, and fractal
iteration), world-cultural wisdom-tradition metaphysics (over dualistic subject-object metaphysics), matrix-
systems awareness (over linear cause-and-effect), modern hypothesis-falsifying quantum and evolutionary
sciences (over Positivist “science” including the “social sciences” and “economics”), and modern business
best-practices (cultural evolution in operations and with accountability, over command-and-control) and
modern managerial accounting methods with no “externalities.”
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Holarchic versus Hierarchic
Holarchy Hierarchy
Defining relationship: “Include and Transcend” “Separate and Dominate”
Visual geometric style: Fractal Euclidian
Native mathematics: Complex non-linear open systems, matrices Differential equations, closed systems
Operational rhythm: Iterative, parallel, and expansive Sequential, linear, reductionist, teleological
Evolution: Most of nature is evolving, This is how the human psyche
and is organized, this way (and polity) has evolved
Expression of will: Align and Enroll Command and Control
Elicit Commitment Force and Punishment
Social style: “Us” and “Them” “Us” versus “Them”
Type of belief systems: Gnostic “Natural Philosophy” Authoritarian Ideology
Political instincts: Optimize systems Sequester resources
Due process Realpolitik
Relating: Compassion Pity
Surrender Submission
Economics: Open system with natural limits Closed system with “externalities”
Generative systems Zero-sum accounting
(the whole is greater than the sum of parts) (my whole is greater than your parts)
Projected relations: Synergistic, synchronistic Syllogistic linear cause-and-effect
“There is no cause; there is only effect” Dominion over Nature
Web of Life Chain of Command

Examples of Holarchies

Sub-atomic particles Participant Data Outcomes

Atoms Program Information Activities/Outputs
Molecules Agency Knowledge Tools
Cells Community [Wisdom] Techniques
Tissues State Knowledge Tactics
Organisms Civilization Information Strategy
Ecosystems Culture Data Mission
Humanity Vision
Values 4
Quotations
The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The
political system is simple. It operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and
poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a
simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.
Andrew Gelman

If you don’t understand how thing are connected, the cause of problem is solutions.
Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

‘The prevailing system of management has destroyed our people,’ says Dr. [W. Edwards] Deming. ‘People are born with
intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning.’Intrinsic motivation lies at the heart of
Deming’s management philosophy. By contrast, extrinsic motivation is the bread and butter of Western management... A
corporate commitment to quality that is not based on intrinsic motivation is a house built on sand.
Peter Senge, Building learning organizations, Journal for Quality and Participation, March 1992

All traits and tendencies of all living creatures — no matter how they are generated during ontogeny or learning, including
all aspects of culture, or whether they are a result of environmental variations or chance — are necessarily products of
organic evolution. There is no alternative.

Richard D. Alexander, Other Voices, 16 May 2009

We must recollect that all our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably one day be based on an organic
substructure.
Sigmund Freud, On Narcissism, 1914

In assembling complexity the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time. As various parts reorganize to
a new whole, the system escapes into a higher order.
Ilya Viscount Prigogine
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More Quotations

Our most significant adaptation is a brain that is run by an operating system called “culture.” It is in our genes, so to
speak, to learn and think within a cultural system. The food we eat (cheeseburgers, fermented puffins, grilled grubs, raw
whale blubber) will vary with our culture, but what we crave (fats, high energy sugars, and proteins) will not. The ideas we
think with (magical, philosophical, religious, scientific, individualistic, conformist) will also vary with our culture, but the
fact that we think with ideas will not.
We have the most complex brain of any known animal, and at least some scientists think it got this complicated so that it
could learn cultural systems: But can we distinguish the hardware from the operating system?
Helga Vierich-Drever, anthropologist, personal communication, 2009

This operating system is written in a “programming language” that is language itself. Every word represents an algorithm
that defines experience and combinations of experiences. We can talk about what we have ideas and names for. We can
act alone without that communication; we can’t act collectively without that communication through language. Acting
collectively means society and culture to record and propagate its rules for workability… With the bicameral mind intact,
there was resonance-effect for alignment and movement if not actual “communication,” when that broke, language took
over as the means for social coherence.

Symbols replace shared experience, but values of the algorithmic kind came from shared experience. So symbols must
drive shared experience, universal throughout society. Divide and conquer must end. [J.J.Rousseau: “The principal
function of the modern state is to keep people apart.] Actions become symbolic, as does the act of professing values (and
not necessarily acting in consonance with those values). The “Big Lie” takes power…

And yes, things are getting more and more complicated and faster and faster, as well…..

Alexander

It is impossible to reason a man out of something he has not been reasoned into. When people have acquired their beliefs
on an emotional level they cannot be persuaded out of them on a rational level, no matter how strong the proof or the
logic behind it. People will hold onto their emotional beliefs and twist the facts to meet their version of reality.

Sidney J. Harris, American Journalist

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Memes

Memes carry codons that represent associations of content that link experiences from multiple levels with an
action invitation and a promise of status. Memes represent a suite of associated symbols that cross levels (cultural,
social, personal), with consciousness appropriate to the level. Some symbols glyphic, some action/motion
connected, some syntactical.

Memes are capsules of tightly-connected, language-connected symbols to activate pre-adaptive impulses directed
toward social settings and people to elicit action.

So a meme is a story-line that connects pre-existing, well-selected-for, standard somatic and mental algorithmic
reactions through images and words, (mostly simple “names” and verbs). Like an iceberg, most of any given meme
is invisible, deep under the surface of self-aware consciousness, in the warm bosom of the Pleistocene tickling the
twitchy perineum of the mind.

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Change
Interoperating Modalities to influence change

Genetic Engineering around algorithms

“Breeding”
Epi-genetic manipulation through environmental cues
Direct (DNA-level) genetic engineering
Mega-algorithms in all that “Junk DNA,” which preserves modular solutions to prior challenges

Cultural Engineering around values and morality

Memetic manipulation
Archetype manipulation and synergy
Mythology and Religion
Status and knowledge of where we fit is bred into us

Social Engineering around rules (economics = politics) and actions

Legislation (“Law”)
“Regulation” (“Rules”)
Economic pressures (market manipulation with advertising and propaganda)
Motivation enforced by threat of ostracization and violence (military, police)
Interaction between cultural and social goals

Personal Development around inspiration

“Healing” (“completion”)
Individuation and collectivization (interaction between personal and social goals)
Attractor-based motivation is possible at this level

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Miscellanea…
Social engineering is not deep enough to change values, just behavior; leads to contradictions and
dissonances.

Genetic engineering is not fast enough and is too broad-brushed. “Natural selection” through behavior is
too ambiguous and substitutable, behavioral evolution from cultural and social engineering drives
“breeding” and, eventually, morphological evolution.

Cultural engineering may be workable given enough time. What provides motivation to embrace change?
Empirical success of applied values in the collective. Individual variations just “noise,” although clan
and faction variability contributes to breeding stratification and class structures.

Immediate small-scale selection-events and larger-scale punctuation events (“collapse,” disaster…) provide
immediate motivation, and drive selection and thereby evolution, with all that “engineering” playing catch-
up.

Goal: Change values from low-grade-teleological and material “market values” to larger-context husbandry
of the Commons: usufruct values. What is our collective purpose? Who is eligible to gain from it? Qui bono
now? MoQ… De-materialize values without “God” or teleology (actually to find balanced teleology, shifting
focus from immediate “Us” gratification to longer-term advantage (thence including the Commons and the
larger society to be advantaged or at least not damaged).

Fear-based shock doctrine

Junk DNA represents stored modularized behavioral and morphological algorithms as integrated solutions to
prior environmental cue-sets. This makes (re-)evolution much faster and more coherent.

Liebig’s Law of the Minimum: if one crop nutrient is missing or deficient, plant growth will be poor, even if
the other elements are abundant. Related to Goldratt’s “bottleneck” and resource-limitations in general.

“Enlightenment” is not to change the world, but to change ourselves (in non-ad hoc ways), so we have more
adaptability in response to what is rather than what we wish were.
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Philanthropy…
The proper non-parochial, commons-interested role of philanthropy is benign cultural engineering, not
mere palliation of the Oligarchic excesses which make philanthropy both necessary and possible.

This is ironic, like taking a drug that you enjoy more when you use it less; it leads to an interesting
dynamic.

Social engineering is ineffective (can’t legislate morality); genetic engineering is too slow and broad-
stroked.

The dumbing-down of education is bad cultural engineering masked as social engineering. It subtracts.
Addictions (foods, drugs, emotional toxicity, etc.) for profit going in and maintenance are bad cultural
engineering masked as social engineering. Extortion of taxes, fees, premiums is bad social engineering that
reinforces proletarian breeding.

Shared-cultural-values-based social engineering is good (if it strengthens and applies values proven
advantageous through cultural-evolution time-frames)

“Cult” is an integral part of culture, provides focus and matrix of memes. AGW is an attempt to create a
belief-cult (based on proletarian fear, ignorance, and docility) for social engineering, and is a bad
application of cultural engineering, but a good example of a multi-modal technical approach and
integration of disciplines, skillful means even if in self-serving abuse.

Corporate/Statist i.e., Fascist) Oligarchy => money in token philanthropy now for economic and social
engineering for class advantage at any cost; uses education, marketing, fear, exploitation for rudimentary
ad hoc cultural engineering for own control, power, status.

Genuine philanthropy would work to advance the resilience and stability of the Commons and general
social equity and quality of life.

Philanthropy about philanthropy would seek to shift that balance and accomplish genuine cultural evolution
and (eventually subtle genetic evolution, mostly behavioral).
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