Concept Maps, the Problem with Laws, and Community Partnerships
First you create riddles; then you try to interpret them
With Miroslaw Manicki
We have inherited a most awkward way of dealing with knowledge. We go to a lot of effort to learn things — even deep, nuanced, complicated things — then we seem satisfied to let that knowledge languish in documents, in static data forms, and in the minds of inventors alone.
Much of what we learn does not work its way into general usage. It isn’t used to get better performance from the machines and systems we use. It doesn’t work into laws and social norms. Knowledge products are expected to inch their way through forests of red tape, barriers, and distractions like a wild salmon working their way upriver to their ancestral breeding grounds.
I had a bizarre experience as a student. I took an undergraduate business law course from the older brother of a friend of mine. He had a freshly-minted law degree from Yale, so I entered into the course with a mixture of awe and trepidation. He started out by ripping into the assigned text. To make a very long story short, he didn’t like it. I didn’t know what to make of that except that the tirade represented so many minutes of life I wasn’t going to get back. Apparently, the administration had previously decided on the textbook to be used.
It because clear in the course of the class that his sights extended beyond teaching excellence and it seemed that he was more than a little irritated that he needed to slow down the trajectory of his life to deal with the likes of us. This manifested itself in part in his means of evaluating our progress: He graded us by means of multiple choice questions using the famous Scantron scanners. This is to say that the evaluation process in the class consisted solely of reading questions presented to us, then choosing one of four provided answers using a fun little dot with our No 2 pencils.
This is to say, he was evaluating the vagaries of the law and its many contexts and interpretations through very precise means, but one that presumed ill-defined contexts and no meaningful interpretation. I might add, they were through very arbitrary means. I had studied the subject and had a good understanding of the material, yet there was considerable “blood on the floor” as per the Scantron machine.
I found myself in his office arguing for alternate meanings and applications — perhaps I could say, my nascent legal theories and applications. One might say I was endeavoring to work through the material presented with my tiny little brain, pointing out perhaps tiny little implications and factors his highly-touted very big brain might like to consider.
Wow. Wow. Using a phrase my son, Abe, minted, this professor “poppa his head off.” It was difficult to peel away the layers of my impertinence at the moment based on his reaction, but the main point he seemed to be making was that I was breaking the immutable law of the Scantron. There was an answer expressed in dots right in front of me and somehow I was to stupid to comprehend the fact that I had filled in the wrong one. The clear and present remedy was that I needed to stop soiling the chair I was occupying by being there. He very abruptly ushered me out.
Later, it occurred to me that it wasn’t the acts of reasoning and questioning that were problematic, but it was that I was not worthy. I was far shy from being a useful vessel for engaging in the elevated art of legal reasoning.
There were two points in my career that I took steps to get a law degree, but elected to not go through with it. I did have more business law studies and the like, so this wasn’t my only brush with the law, as you might say, in abstract way. I have figured out, though, that there is a definite line in the minds of those of the cloth, you might say, between those who are allowed to think in some way and those who are relegated to fill in the dots and no more.
The way it works is that lawyers engage in wordsmithing, for the most part. Acting in the role of legislators, they set up concept maps. Once such decisionmakers come to some level of agreement as to the concepts that appear in their creations, they formally legitimize them as designated by rules and traditions and declare them to be the laws of the land — or, at least some part of the land, as they are authorized.
As to subject, these creations are pretty much grabbags of concepts. The idea on legislatures as creators of comprehensive, compulsary laws lies at the heart of the demos as conceived by the Greeks. Their purpose was to break a cycle of dictatorial monarchies that plagued their people. They put more effort into breaking the old cycle than in establishing a fully-functional new one. Rather than to be controlled by a king in person, the plan was to create a collection of laws euphemistically declare them — and obedience to them — to be the king, or Basileus in their description.
Then, based on how such declarations match up with real conditions, they are judged to apply — or not — to a particular situation. This happens typically with the assistance of attorneys with knowledge and successful reputations. In the case on some disputes, such declarations are made by juries and judges.
This is all very vague. This has been pointed out by many, not the least of which by Alfred Korzybski, who is considered the father of general semantics. Over a hundred years ago, he pointed out a fundamental problem with language use as typically applied. Words have meaning, but their application is vague. Numbers are precise, but they do not mean anything on their own. His concern, published in 1933, reiterated in subsequent publications to his death in 1950, is that no workable means of combining the two had arisen.
In 2014, Miroslaw Manicki and I published a book “Integration, legitimacy, and the law: Ensuring biology-based regulation.” These questions are considered here.
There is another factor we need to consider. There are structures to society based on longstanding ethnic, religious, and regtional traditions. These have significant influence on the motivations, as well as the behaviors, of people. They need to be understood and supported in formal way, encouraging commitments and expectations of established social and cultural groups.