How the Old and the Young Can Use “Time-Binding” To Put Us All On the Right Course
With Miroslaw Manicki
Conditions are askew, to be sure. People know that something is wrong, but the sources of the problem are not altogether obvious. This is a particular problem for young people, who know that they will be left to deal with unresolved problems once their elders are gone. They read, as in the recent Centennial Issue of Foreign Affairs, that we live in “The Age of Uncertainty”. How can this be? Aren’t we supposed to be the enlightened ones?
There are many reactions to this. Very little confidence can be garnered from many such efforts. How can you remove the problems in question when conditions that caused them to remain in society? How can you deal with them as their proponents remain in charge in their respective realms? Truly there must be many ‘screams in the dark’ by members of younger generations, attempting to deal with what they see down the road.
The problem is in knowing what needs to be done. Fortunately, this is not the first time in mankind’s long history that reorienting matters has been needed. Our ancestors have faced many crises of many kinds and their means of doing so are documented in various ways. We can learn from these.
The consensus from those with clearer heads is that revitalization is more a goal than trying to creatively put together the pieces out of whole cloth. If something has shown to work in the past, it is much more likely to work in the future. This is the message of Anthony Wallace, who documents that cultures provide “mazeways” for their people to help them to make effective decisions over time (Wallace).
This corresponds with teachings of Alfred Korzybski. He defined the phrase “time-binding” in 1921 (Korzybski, 1921). Like mazeways, time-binding is the means of passing knowledge from one generation to another, to support progress generally and to avoid making repeated mistakes. He notes that animals cannot do this; it is a capability of humans alone.
This is a pretty optimistic perspective, that such a phenomenon exists. If it doesn’t, though, it would be a very good thing to instigate. Is it fantastic and Utopian — which is to say, unachievable? Not according to Korzybski, who attributes many of our problems to a simple misunderstanding that is nevertheless deeply embedded in cultural norms. There are others who would agree. Probably the most well-known among them is Arnold Toynbee (1963), who identified and described civilizations, their growth and their provenance. He noted steps forward and back. Clearly the recognition of dark ages as have been identified several times represents time-binding deficiencies.
Ok, then, let’s get down to it. Let’s make an effort at time-binding, or at least identification of opportunities to time bind.
In essence, Korzybski lays out what needs to be done. Wallace describes how this has been carried out through history. Unfortunate for us — especially the young — these have to a substantial degree been lost. Hence, the emergency.
With this in mind, we will now consider problems contributing to our global conundrum. We will then consider how these may be overcome as found in the teachings of Wallace and Korzybski:
- The world suffers from a massive form of collective amnesia. It wasn’t necessary for all the world to be so vexed, but the effect was sufficient to get us off course. The problem emerged from activities by an energetic but unstable branch of society. [Amnesia]
- Education has been skewed for a considerable time. One result has been a distorted form of physical, mental, and spiritual development, not necessarily organized to support our needs, nor our prospective contributions. We are also left with attitudes that conflict with reality and are counterproductive. [Miseducation]
- Energy policy has distorted global affairs for over a century. None of this was necessary. [Energy]
- The “ism’s” are misunderstood and presented wrongly. To cover this up, the “ists” have long confused important issues and sewn violence. [Ism’s]
- Ever since Father Adam set out to name everything, we have been obsessed with categorizing and classification, but nature knows nothing of these. Nature functions via processes and cycles and we would do well to learn of these and try to mimic them. [Process & Cycle]
- Even with all of our collective talents, we are a very forgetful race unless we find ways of not forgetting what our predecessors and some of our contemporaries have learned and acting accordingly. [Time-Binding]
- Religions are not about beliefs, but commitments and behaviors. [Commitments & Behaviors]
- Most of the good guys in tech died decades ago, but they left clues as to how we can make use of what they provided for us. [Tech Breadcrumbs]
- People with certain kinds of obsessions are keys to a safe and productive future. By this we mean people who are obsessed with understanding, who dedicate their time and resources — and their educations — to gaining knowledge and experience. Such people are not necessarily talented or oriented toward effectively sharing such knowledge. These need to be identified and supported. [Knowledge-related Obsessions]
To be fair, you should know that many older people have no clue as to the above points. Confused themselves, many have not been altogether worried about the problem, at least as to themselves and their fates. Children of the long postwar peace, they have little first-hand knowledge of what can happen as society falls part — or the experience to know that it can indeed happen.
For the most part, they think that they are taken care of via retirements and security supports and whatnot. Having attained such goals under the conditions thus outlined, they will have little knowledge of how to deal with them now.
Sure, they love you. For the most part, they did not work to create the problem. They may be highly anxious as to your future, but they do not have very much to offer as to how to resolve the global situations in question.
Older people actively contributed to the problem, however, many of them enthusiastically so. They may have felt queasy in doing so at the time, or later. They may have justified what they did because they believed that there was no other way, or that it didn’t matter in the long run. They may have simply gambled with the future with the hope of kicking problems down the road with little apparent personal consequence, at least.
Two commitments are critical for success at this point.
First, it is essential to absolve the people in question — individually and as a group. Do so now. At least commit to move toward a charitable attitude toward them regarding this problem over time.
By forgiving them, you release any burden on yourselves and you can live in love and equanimity with the people in question. They are your parents and your predecessors. They made it possible for you to be what you are and to do what you can do. There is no reason to hold them accountable for generalized conditions that they had little cause to know about.
Certainly, if they had reacted in what may now be considered rational ways in the long run, they likely would have been personally and professionally ostracized and your conditions would be worse than they are currently.
There is an interesting story that can help you to understand the conditions under which your parents and other older people have had to work. The following is summarized from account from American journalist John Rettie, who broke the story to the Western press.
Upon the death of Josef Stalin in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, held a famous overnight meeting to denounce Stalin and his acts of brutality. He had been a senior assistant to Stalin. …somebody had stood up while Khrushchev was listing the [atrocities] [and] shouted, “Well if he was so bad, why didn’t you get rid of him?”
And Khrushchev stopped and said, “Who said that?” And there was silence in the hall. So he repeated himself. “Who said that?” And there was still silence, and he said, “Well, now you understand why we didn’t do anything”. (Simon)
Your parents and others suffered through something like that — perhaps not with their lives on the line, but certainly with their careers in the balance. The vast majority elected to lay low and collect their rewards in the absence of any clear path otherwise.
Second, it is equally critical that you commit to not make the same mistake. You must realize that every day is a gift, and it is high time for us all to work together to make sure we keep having them. There has been a common lie in circulation in our era:
He [or she] who forgets history is doomed to repeat it.
This is not true at all. The correct element of understanding is thus:
He [or she] who is favored to remember history is blessed to repeat it.
History is a good thing. It is what has gotten us to where we are, which is pretty great. As can be seen in the collection of Egyptian temple wall carvings, for example, many kinds of activities represented there resonate with lifestyles in our day.
The reason for the difference, and the hope that a more positive assessment of history brings, lies in the knowledge that the human race is thousands of years old. Many of the keys to success — living with nature and living with each other — have been known for a very long time. Some of this can be seen in indigenous cultures that were not altogether destroyed via colonization.
Such norms and patterns can be brought to bear to significantly raise prospects for your future and those who come after you for a very long time.
We know of the modern assumption of depravation in ancient times by moderns, particularly with respect to monument-building. There is also a presumption of simplicity with respect to social relations. Neither of these bears out as a rule. Indeed, ancient life has shown to bear striking similarities to our own life patterns (Bottéro). Even nomadic life involved high degrees of knowledge and sophistication (Cohen, M. N.).
We can see signs of a long pattern of progress based on findings from the various sites of ancient urbanization.
In the “Old Stone Age” (paleolithic period) men relied on a living entirely on hunting, fishing, and gathering wild berries, roots, slugs, and shellfish. Their numbers were restricted by the provision of food made for them by Nature, and seem actually to have been very small. In the “New Stone Age” (neolithic times) men control their own food supply by cultivating plants and breeding animals. Given favorable circumstances, a community can now produce more food than it needs to consume, and can increase its production to meet the requirements of an expanding population… From a biological standpoint, the new economy was a success; it had made possible a multiplication of our species. (Childe, 35.)
This is a snapshot of one important element in human advancement among many. Now we will consider the nine areas of misunderstanding in our times and what might be done about them.
Amnesia
It is cooperation that has brought the rewards of civilization to us all. Our ancestors have been smart for a long, long time. Recent work by dedicated scientists point to at least 100,000 years in which humans have had equivalent cognitive capacity as we have now. The United States Population Research Bureau points to a population of 52 billion people having lived before the Common Era, the year 0 CE, widely referenced as the birth year of Jesus Christ.
The earliest known written language emerged about six thousand years ago. Moderns have been able to translate them for about 150 years. The challenge to scholars translating many of them is that they are highly technical and sophisticated. They had to pull in specialists from medicine, astronomy, minerology, mathematics, political science, and other fields to translate concepts that they could not otherwise understand.
These represent forms of lost knowledge, although it has been noted that much of Sumerian culture can be seen throughout the world in attitudes and practices of the people.
One example of something recovered is a medical protocol, or at least a therapeutic protocol, that had been shown to be used for millennia. Contemporary evaluation of the protocol indicates…
… that it was functionally designed and efficient in problem solving, explaining its prolonged use over millennia. The structure relies on brain mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex that promote both executive functions and placebo responsiveness (Annus, 26).
That alone sounds like a solution, given our cruel world of pill-popping chaos.
Lost knowledge is a favorite theme of stage and screen, and of high and low forms of literature. It is the loss of process that does the most harm — the knowledge of how more than the knowledge of what.
Some work has not been condoned generally. These may bear fruit upon investigation. A system that blithely declares “An Age of Uncertainty” should likely not be too picky as to what previously unsupported alternatives of historical inquiry might be taken.
Miseducation
It’s not that public education was not a good idea in principle, but it addressed the wrong priority. Rather than to give you a body of knowledge with the idea that you will become some kind of general-purpose philosopher with a paying job, it should have worked to help you to discover yourself and help you to find your place in the world. Armed with this, you are in a much better position to get what you want out of life and to offer more to your loved ones and your communities.
There are many kinds of abilities; many prospects for carrying out a happy and prosperous life. A more effective educational system would focus on helping people to identify these and gain insertion into associated communities and work environments. If you happen to be a nascent philosopher, so be it. If you have mechanical or creative skills and could care less about philosophy and science — or analytics and higher mathematics — you shouldn’t be punished for it.
Energy
Energy policy has distorted global affairs for over a century. Think of the story of Nicholai Tesla. He learned of how electrical energy could be made available for the masses at very low rates.
This played out in his partnership with Westinghouse Electric. Together, they demonstrated the alternate current systems could provide inexpensive power to the mases. He indicated that he could development the capacity to provide virtually free electricity and communities. His then sponsor, J. P. Morgan, did not like that idea and promised support for Tesla’s projects flagged. Only now do we see interest in applying additional ideas brought forward by Tesla (Cheney).
It isn’t just his ideas; there are many. They do converge on electricity, as has been the case for a hundred years:
…the shift to electricity is happening because the technologies are at hand to make it possible, and because electricity can do more faster, in much less space — it is by far the fastest and densest form of power that has been tamed for ubiquitous use. Electricity moves at the speed of light; all other forms move at the speed of sound, or slower. The ten thousand Pontiacs in the parking lot require ten thousand steel drive shafts to transmit their power. The single power plant dispatches the same amount of power through a few dozen high-voltage wires (Huber and Mills, 20).
Think of the challenges brought on from commitment to fossil fuels for various purposes of transportation for the last hundred years of so in the fact of better alternatives — electricity being in the lead in that category. In the final analysis, it is important for energy to be at last decoupled from geopolitics. Ever since the secretive Sykes Picot agreement served to tie dependence on fossil fuels to the Great Game of global economic dominance, the world has been turned upside down with respect to energy.
Ism’s
As we have documented earlier, the very mention of the ‘ism’s sets people on edge. Their use virtually eliminates the prospects for useful dialog. They elicit visceral reactions that are not helpful in any way. We need to call attention them in any regard.
History before the ‘Ism’s’
First, we must call attention to the conditions that brought the ‘ism’s’ about. We will consider history that has led to them. Then we will consider the nature of commerce and how they have grown out of that. The three ‘ism’s’ we will consider are socialism, capitalism, and communism.
The ‘ism’s’ are modern. In some sense, their underpinnings came from study of Greek philosophy, which was itself a shadow of a shadow of earlier glories of civilization that they were trying to understand and emulate. It is not that the Greeks did not innovate in important ways. They created something new with the concept of the demos, which was novel. They did not do so well with respect to the use of power, inordinately grounding it in the land in all respects. Earlier Sumerian governance had been largely rooted in knowledge and its various applications and contexts (Kramer).
Contemporary scholarship has brought understanding of much of this, but there is much to be done to more emphatically complete out the record. Renewing commitments to cooperation are a start, but commitment to knowledge-based leadership in those efforts is key. The Greek program was to tie all aspects of public governance to control of a segment of land, a place. Earlier Sumerian governance clearly was based on correct application of method in a comprehensive listing of areas. These covered social responsibilities, governance skills, medicine, the arts, trade, etc.
Sumer was a collection of cities. These were built up along the lower Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq. These are now referred to as city-states, but that has more to do with our mind-set than it seems to have been the case with them. Although they did not have hills, each Sumerian city was the equivalent to a shining city on a hill in our parlance.
All were not equal. The heart of Sumer had come from the most southern city, Eridu. This ancient city’s provenance is very, very old — thousands of years older than the others. The main cities supporting Sumer’s growth were Uruk — referred to in the Bible as Erech — and Ur. There were actually two. Ur is a more northern one established near Harran, where Abraham of the Bible went to after he left the original one on his famous journey.
Uruk was the key city. It was Uruk that led out in the application of knowledge. It was Uruk that established the cultural and economic underpinnings of Sumer. It was Uruk that most famously set up the Great Organizations to support the needs of the people while encouraging extra efforts on their part to gain extra rewards, including wealth and privilege.
It is acknowledged that Uruk’s predominance represented about a thousand years of prosperity and peace. Only presenting with water and agricultural capacity, Uruk had become a central avenue of wealth for the known world of that time. Using barley as the key resource for trade and advancement, Uruk brought in all other resources by means of its relationships with other peoples. There just didn’t seem to be a need for larceny and conquest on their point. The “golden goose” of southern Mesopotamia just kept functioning as planned and the people enjoyed a time of freedom and expression that was remembered by remaining people in the region and elsewhere for thousands of subsequent years.
Growth, maturity, and decline-induced imbalances, leading to the ‘ism’s’
Based in commercial transactions founded in fundamental needs of the people, the Southern Mesopotamian system was remarkably stable — lasting for over a thousand years of relative stability and peace.
In our environment, products represent life cycles that are certainly shorter than thousands of years, although basic foodstuffs have supported the needs of all generations. As seen below, such cycles are characterized by growth, maturity, and decline. How long those cycles are is highly variable. The markets for grain, for example are almost as old as time. Products made from grain can be highly variable, adapted to tastes and preferences, as well as commercial availability.
As can be seen, from a business standpoint, cash flows are not even in the various categories. Beginning new product efforts tends to be expensive. As a result, there may be periods of negative financial rewards that must come from somewhere. A fortunate enterprise can stand up to the challenge by paying for such cost themselves so that they do not need to share the rewards later.
Companies can have one or more products. If a company only has one, its product cycle is the same as that one product. Most company supporters work to expand on such cycles, many achieving a broad collection of products that can balance one another out. Large consumer products companies like Proctor and Gamble have achieved very long company cycles by bringing in an out many products, while some stable products help to provide stability.
Once established, new product lines tend to be more profitable. As can be seen above, after the growth period profits can catch up in the mature phase. At such a point, a product line can be very profitable. Such products under such conditions are referred to as “cash cows” because they result in a good deal of profit over an extended period with minimal effort.
As also can be seen in the chart above, cash can continue to flow even when the product enters a state of decline — but only for so long. Eventually, it will just stop. Without some compensative factor, it can leave any party in want, whether they be customers, employees, investors, managers, or members of related communities.
As seen below, what we have described is the basic definition of commerce. Since the beginning of trade, perhaps even in nomadic times, such activities have allowed for civilized living and economic growth generally. As in Sumer, where they only had sandy soil and water, they could trade barley they could grow themselves for all else they needed and wanted.
Owners and supporters of such efforts may never need outside capital. It is possible that through “sweat equity” from their own efforts and initial and ongoing profits they can finance themselves. This may come from sheer sacrifice. Extra capital can come from loans from others, including banks. This is accompanied with interest payments to lenders for the use of their money under some mathematical arrangement. Investment can come from others as well, in such case, owners sell a portion of their ownership to others, who thus have some share of profits.
As seen below, this sets up a matrix of roles and interests in society. Sixteen key roles are identified, representing different kinds of responsibilities and expectations of benefits based on the state of underlying product cycles — as represented by underlying cash flows. Between customers, managers, employees, investors, and policy makers, growth represents future expectations, maturity brings current rewards, and decline is mostly scary. Market theory dictates that such conditions are to be determined by consumer preferences and decisions. As we will discuss, it does not always turn out that way.
It is often stated that capitalism is the miracle-bringer. Although there is no doubt that capitalism brings great rewards, it is also tricky. It brings additional costs. It compromises management. Of course, all capitalists consider themselves to be talented and expert businesspeople, but this may not be the case. Even if they are skilled, they may not understand a particular business. They may also have a penchant for controlling and leveraging their positions for purposes other than the benefit of the enterprise or the other role players.
Author Tingey was a venture capitalist early in his career. Enamored with the idea of “building companies”, he went to Southern California in the early 1980s. There, he worked to build a fund management partnership with to elder businesspeople. They were able to raise support for their fund from banks, insurance companies, and corporations from around the world.
At one point, one of the partners told Tingey in a private meeting to stop referring to their activity as “building businesses”. The discussion played out as below, in the first person by Tingey.
I responded that that was exactly the business we were in. My partner said, “No, we are in the business of making money for our investors.” If one of our companies were to go out of business the day after we got our money out, we would have done our job.”
I responded, “That seems to me at least that we would be selling a very bad product, and that would catch up to us.”
This mirrored another experience Tingey had had a couple of years earlier. To gain support for the venture fund effort in Newport Beach California, a group was organized through the local Chamber of Commerce to educate the local business community of what a venture fund was. The initiative was called the Orange County Task Force for Capital Formation. Monthly meetings were held in conjunction with local entrepreneurs and civil leaders.
At one point in 1982, the Chamber became aware of legislative efforts in Sacramento to institute plant closure legislation. The point of the legislation was to limit plant closures in cases where large numbers of employees were involved. Tingey and others from the Chamber and the Task Force travelled to Sacramento to counter the legislation and to make the case for growth rather than retrenchment.
Once again, in the first person, this story is related by Tingey.
I lined up to make a speech to the California State Assembly to counter the plant closure legislation. The hall was filled to the brim. It was a high-profile bill and many people had been brought to the proceeding from around the state.
Maxine Waters was the key legislator. Willie Brown was Speaker. I was introduced as member of the Task Force and the Chamber and a venture capitalist. I made the case that whatever limit they made as to the number of employees that couldn’t be let go, it would constitute a limit in the number of employees businesspeople would hire in the state.
That seemed to be dangerously persuasive because no one questioned it. One representative from San Diego, however questioned my integrity as a venture capitalist, indicating that it was well-known that venture capitalists typically take businesses away from their founders.
I denied it. I said that wasn’t the case in “our fund”.
That was how the presentation ended.
Little did I know that I would have that other conversation with my partner years later. In the course of my time with the fund, I was vexed to note that out of fourteen portfolio companies, we had replaced founder-managers of eleven.
There are other examples of divergent interests between capitalists, entrepreneurs, and managers. We will discuss a few of these presently.
As to their economic prospects, enterprises face unsure current and future prospects under conditions of growth. There is no telling if there will be growth at all. The mature stage brings predictability with current and future cash. This is where the greatest rewards lay. Under decline, there are predictable current, but unpredictable future cash flows. This is problematic at best but can be catastrophic without adequate planning.
The growth stage is inherently entrepreneurial. This is where product differentiation and quality expectations are paramount. No one is adequately compensated for their efforts in doing this — except possibly where entrepreneurs make personal commitments or outside capital is brought in. Basically, for growth to occur, there must be a good deal of believing in the effort by all parties.
Maturity is where everyone would want to be. In some cases, rewards may flow with minimal effort. One thing that may bring imminent decline, however, is complacency. This may open the door to contenders.
With continued quality, there may be long mature periods — decades or even centuries in some cases. Think of the longstanding brands like Levi Strauss, LL Bean, John Deere, and others.
A strong economy makes use of the benefits for mature and growth sector enterprises to support the interests of both. Growth enterprises may have ideas and technologies that can be acquired by existing providers to lengthen out their maturity. There may be symbiotic aspects to relationships between such companies.
Decline is challenging. It might be an environment that allows for changes that were ignored during mature conditions. One example of this was the reinvigoration of Chrysler by Lee Iacocca in the 1980s, using the idea of a minivan, which had been developed, but not used, at Ford Motor Company.
Companies that have existed for a long time in a mature stage is in position exploit this. It can take extra-market and extra-legal steps to extend a kind of zombie-like maturity for the product cycle. It can do this by using its political and economic powers to attack new ventures and new products. This is not at all uncommon. It can make use of legal and political relationships to corrupt regulatory and standards-based requirements in their favor. There are ways that companies can exploit customers as well. We will consider some of these presently.
One question here is in the behaviors of capitalists themselves. As maturity descends into decline, capitalists find many opportunities for exploitation. They can do so through mergers and acquisitions, effectively stripping the still viable enterprise from cash and other assets. They can progressively break the compact between the enterprise and its consumers as to quality and other expectations.
Understanding these dynamics, then, leads us to an understanding of the ‘ism’s’, their histories and implications. As seen below, socialism can be considered as the means of sharing the rewards where mature cycle conditions. It represents a negotiation. Out of the various parties, particularly employees and owners, is there fair treatment. There is little risk. The question is how to divide up known resources.
Capitalism has been described generally above. Here we refer to “extreme financial capitalism”. This refers to conditions under which the interests and prerogatives of financial capitalists are enforced to the detriment of all else. This is where decisions are made by them for them, corrupting legal, market-related, and political norms and laws with the sole purpose of financial gain. Mostly this involves artificially and corruptly extending product cycles, but there are other perversions that are commonly carried out by extreme financial capitalists under such conditions.
Communism, the third ‘ism’ represents an assumption of ownership by employees, typically through violent means. This is justified on moral grounds that resources are not justly shared under conditions of maturity and negligible risk. Karl Marx developed this philosophy in 19th century England in the face of unquestioned misbehavior on the part of other interested parties, most particularly investors and management (Marx). There is no aspect of communism that deals with growth or decline stage economics as discussed herein (Erlich; Gregory and Stuart; Grossman).
This explains the long period of policy inaction by Vladimir Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders when they took over the government of Russia (Cohen, S. F.). Lenin himself established the New Economic Policy to try to build important elements of a consumer economy (Silverman). The plans ultimately carried out by Stalin were decidedly not market-related (Kuromiya).
What is left, as seen above, is the sorry state of consumers in an environment driven by extreme financial capitalism. Early adoption on their part created an environment with market guardrails that is virtually impossible for them to break free of. Their loyalty is not only exploited, but their market power is marginalized by corrupt practices. We will consider the nature of these.
Concern for needs of consumers
Extreme financial capitalism is one of the challenging outgrowths of cyclical imbalances in contemporary life. It affects consumers in particular ways, given the wholesale commitment on their part to markets to meet there needs, a particular challenge.
Extreme financial capitalism works on the nature of the product cycles themselves. Using the rewards of prior successes, they exploit compacts between consumers and producers — often having either bought out the original owners and managers of the enterprises in question or having defrauded them in the first place.
We see below the kind of life cycle that meets the needs of consumers — particularly with respect to products that they need to live, such as basic foodstuffs, living arrangements, health care, clothing, etc. People benefit from moderate prices.
Economies of scale should support price reductions. Ongoing learning as to production methods and improved equipment should support continued low prices — even reduced prices. This is what the quality movement promises — improved quality at lower costs over time. This is the “lean production” promise (Womack, Jones, and Roos).
Consumers furthermore benefit from predictability as to product features, availability, and quality. This is particularly true with respect to needed items and services.
Such conditions are skewed in many ways under extreme financial capitalism. High prices are artificially imposed from the beginning — even with regard to new products needed by consumers under realistic conditions. Cycles themselves are manipulated via acquisitions as well as means of controlling logistics and commercial vehicles. The result is artificial product extension.
As seen below, a favorite manipulation is to ratably shrink package sizes. This is done in subtle ways that may not be discernable. Such tactics do levy a toll even when introduced in effective ways.
There is nothing inevitable about the effects of product life cycle manipulations. It is important to call attention to the sources of the problem. In the current environment, the manipulations of extreme financial capitalists are not subtle, nor are they benign.
It is important for consumers to distinguish between needs and wants as outlined below. Efforts should be employed to differentiate between the two kinds of markets. Sure, if people want to spend more for something unique — and if they can — this is entirely warranted. If people are being forced into unwarranted traps to overpay and if providers are allowed to underdeliver, the problems will only get worse.
The ‘ism’s’, then, are not necessarily as they have seemed. It is commerce that saves the day, not capitalism. It is incumbent on policy makers to assure that people can get what they need when they need it under reasonable and sustainable terms. Otherwise, stable, peaceful conditions cannot be achieved.
Process & Cycle
Nature doesn’t care, but it will also not let you down. Processes can be understood, and they can be relied on. Functional knowledge can be seen as an ability to understand process under identifiable conditions. Alfred North Whitehead is a key expositor and promoter of cycles in all natural and social phenomena.
We have identified five levels of nested processes that have much to do with our well-being. Characterized as cycles, this makes clear the relationship between them, as cycling processes create cycles in their path — each represent both sameness and variation, as they encounter different conditions each time they are traversed and the processes themselves can adapt.
These five represent natural cycles, as identified by David Bohm, social cycles as documented by Talcott Parsons, economic cycles as identified by Joseph Schumpeter, market cycles as studying by Frederick Hayek, and monetary cycles, the parvenu of John Maynard Keynes.
Nature — Bohmian
Social — Parsonian
Economic — Schumpeterian
Market — Hayekian
Monetary — Keynesian (Tingey and Manicki, 1–62).
Nested processes, leading to nested cycles, represent underpinnings for historical conditions, certainly underpinnings for these. As seen here, expectations can be developed based on such patterns.
Each of these is real, they are nested as to impact, and they have downstream effects on one another. It serves little purpose to ignore these, nor to overemphasize any of them to the exclusion of the others. Therein lied answers to questions of science, of climate and conditions for well-being, and well-being itself.
Time-Binding
Alfred Korzybski defined this concept in 1921. To understand it, you should know something about him. He was szlachta, a Polish aristocrat. A Russian officer in World War II, he ended up in the United States after the war — a fortuitous condition, as he had been commissioned to go to Canada to contract for weapons as the war ended. He was an engineer and had been a precocious youth, managing large teams of workers on family properties from a very young age (Kodish).
He was furious as to the nature of the war, its obvious senselessness. He perceived that it ironically came at a most propitious time — as mankind was capable of leaving its long childhood behind it and growing up. We will consider presently what he meant by that, but it is important to note now that this didn’t happen; his desire was not achieved in his lifetime.
Can we do so now? He did leave some hints in a later book on how this might be done. Please bear with us in quoting and discussing Korzybski’s reference to men in a generic sense to include men and women. We presume that he intends this. We do.
Time-binding according to Korzybski was inevitable, a defining element of being human, but the fruits of this could not be consistently achieved in the face of strong opposition. He observed and described the nature and implications of such obstruction.
First, though, to understand his conception of time-binding itself:
We know that time-binding capacity — the capacity for accumulating racial experience, enlarging it, and transmitting it for future expansion — is the peculiar power, the characteristic energy, and definitive nature, the defining mark, of man; we know that the mental power, the time-binding capacity, of our pre-historic ancestors, was the same in kind as our own, if not in degree; we know that it is natural for this capacity, the highest known agency of Nature, to produce ideas, inventions, insights, doctrines, knowledge and other forms of wealth; we know that progress in what we call civilization, which is nothing but progress in the production and right use of material and spiritual wealth, has been possible and actual simply and solely because the products of time-binding work not only survive, but naturally tend to propagate their kind — ideas begetting ideas, inventions leading to other inventions, knowledge breeding knowledge; we therefore, know that the raw material and be unhampered by hostile circumstances, depends, not only upon its native capacity for binding time but also — and this is of utmost importance — upon the inherited fruit, that is, of the time-binding toil of the dead… (Korzybski, 1921, 61)
He develops this theme of mankind’s potential for conquest of time, not individually, but as a race if not as families and cultural clusters of people.
…the proper life of man as man is not life-in-space like that of animals, but is life-in-time; we thus see that in distinctively human life, in the life of man as man, the past is present and the dead survive destined to greet and to bless the unborn generations; time, bound-up time, is literally of the core and substance of civilization. So it has been since the beginning of man. (Korzybski, 1921, 61)
Why aren’t we better of than we are? Natural disasters have presented formidable obstacles to success and progress.
…the time-binding energies of our remote ancestors were hampered and baulked in a measure too vast for our imaginations, by immense geologic and climatic changes, both sudden and secular, unforeseen and irresistible — by earthquake and storm, by age-long seasons of flood and frost and heat and drought, not only destroying both natural resources and the slowly accumulated products of by-gone generations but often extinguishing the people themselves with the enters and abodes of struggling civilization. (Korzybski, 1921, 62)
The bigger problem according to Korzybski is not as might be expected. We might think that as a child of war — whose life and those of his family and nation were grossly damaged if not destroyed by war — would attribute bad behavior to the problem of incivility. Surely most of us would.
He does reference evil as a problem, but interestingly as a result of “a most potent cause and most disastrous” rather than as the cause itself. He attributes the cause to more benign sources: Ignorance and misunderstanding. It can be deduced that he means that reactions to ignorance and misunderstanding result in pernicious ends.
Of all the hostile circumstances, of all the causes which throughout the long period of humanity’s childhood have operated to keep civilization and human welfare from progressing in full accord with the natural laws of the time-binding energies of man, the most potent cause and most disastrous, a cause still everywhere in operation, remains to be mentioned. I mean human ignorance. I do not mean ignorance of physical facts and the laws of physical nature for this latter ignorance is in large measure the effect of the cause I have in mind. The ignorance I mean is far more fundamental and far more potent. I mean human ignorance of Human Nature — I mean man’s ignorance of what Man is — I mean false conception of the rightful place of man in the scheme of life of life and the order of the world… They are two. One of them is the conception according to which human beings are animals. The other one is the conception according to which human beings have no place in Nature but are hybrids of natural and supernatural, animals combined with something “divine”. Both of them are characteristic of humanity’s childhood; both of them are erroneous, and both of them have done infinite harm in a thousand ways… (Korzybski, 1921, 62)
Thinking that mankind were a typical kind of animal breed and nothing more would mean that we were space-binding rather than time-binding. The dimension of life would be thus geopolitical rather than conceptual. We can see this played out in the newspapers every day — from domination in the home to autocratic tendencies in organizations, including commercial and governmental regimes. Played out on the plane of domination and force, they cannot extend themselves beyond simple, gross, and childish behaviors, even as adults themselves.
The second misunderstand may well itself be misunderstood. This question of thinking of mankind as being divine is not a slap at spirituality, which he describes in vivid detail. It is a sense of inherent superiority, one that is inherent and beyond questioning…
…it is not to be wondered at that human beings have falsely believed themselves to be animals. So, too, of the rival belief — the belief that humans are neither natural nor supernatural but are both at once, at once brutal and divine, hybrid offspring of beast and god. The belief is monstrous, it is very pathetic and very sad, but its origin is easy to understand; once invented, it became a powerful instrument for evil men, for imposters, but it was not invented by them; it was only an erroneous result of an honest effort to understand and to explain. (Korzybski, 1921, 62)
Combined, the animal instinct to control territory combined with a confusion that man — or certain men at least — are acceptance of men as gods can serve as justification for carrying out a vast panoply of ills without recourse to common humanity.
To Korzybski, it is time-binding that is the elevating factor. It is time-binding that we seek to encourage. There are two historical events that demonstrate extremes for good and evil. The first was the recovery of the library of Ashurbanipal from the ruins of Nineveh beginning in 1848 (Taylor). A stern leader, he has also been called the first archaeologist in known history, as he used his political and military prowess to gather records from all of Mesopotamia during the 7th century BCE.
This modern discovery brought back to human discourse over a hundred thousand documents of historical, scientific, and social merit — fortunately baked in from fires that destroyed their surroundings. This is to be contrasted with the heinous acts of Romans who purposefully burned the library of Alexandria as a means of subjugating the Egyptian people in those times.
Could this happen now? Through ineffective efforts to organize and use knowledge as it is available to us, and not coming to understand and use traditional, established forms of knowledge, much is thus lost as we speak.
Commitments & Behaviors
Lifestyle matters. Habits matter. States of mind and desired emotional conditions are not achieved without adequate preparation, including arrangement of physical and environmental conditions. How is it that states of mind can be achieved? How is that that we can extend beyond the known to begin to conceive of the unknown?
Talcott Parsons provides guidance in this matter:
In the discussion of Durkheim religious ideas were treated in the main negatively, as ideas concerned with the nonempirical aspects of the world. Weber’s results make it possible to define them more closely. They are ideas concerning not merely how the world works, but why in a teleological sense; they concern the “meaning” of the world. From this point of view religious ideas are inseparably bound up with human interests and vice versa. Weber has shown how the problem of evil, especially suffering, forms a central starting point for the formulation of the question of meaning. Conversely, what human religious interests can be, comes to be defined in terms of the conception of the meaning of the world (Parsons, 667).
Parsons’ discussion goes on to demonstrate connectedness between religious ritual and meaning, sacred action and meaning, which helps us to understand contributions of religion and belief to good social outcomes.
Ritual involves both symbolism and sacredness. The element of sacredness forbids drawing an act into the ordinary utilitarian calculations of advantage — by virtue of that alone it would cease to be sacred. Hence once a practice is “proved” efficacious, it becomes immediately stereotyped… (Parsons, 675).
…there is undoubtedly a place in Weber’s system for an element of the structure of action which involves charisma, and at the same time falls outside the ordinary intrinsic means-end analysis, above all through the fact that it involves symbolic elements in particular ways. These are the essential features of Durkheim’s treatment of ritual for purposes of analysis of the structure of action The correspondence between the two is complete (Parsons, 676).
This is where Wallace’s guidance with respect to mazeways is most helpful. Among other things, it can be observed, deity tends to be practical. Based on Abrahamic traditions (including Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), God encourages cleanliness, cordiality, peaceful co-existence, and familial responsibility (Armstrong, 1993). These are encouraged in religions generally— hardened, you might say — via performances, ordinances, prayers, recitations, works of musical and visual art, and various literary forms. There are daily performances and traditions, monthly and annual festivities, celebrations, and performances, and lifelong behavioral norms that mold characters as well as guide practitioners through beneficial health and social habits.
Key traditions of this kind were introduced in world traditions generally in the now-famous Axial Age, from 900 to 200 BCE.
From about 900 to 200 BCE, in four distinct regions, the great world traditions that have continued to nourish humanity came into being: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. This was the period of the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, and Jeremiah, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. During this period of intense creativity, spiritual and philosophical geniuses pioneered an entirely new kind of human experience (Armstrong, 2006, xvi).
Belief might serve to motivate these, but the reverse is also true; actions can stimulate feelings and beliefs. This can apply in any and all social situations. Some may think that abstract beliefs of various kinds may save them from actions taken or not. A strong case for religion can be found even among those who profess to no faith:
It is when we stop believing that religions have been handed down from above or else that they are entirely daft that matters become more interesting. We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: First, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones, and to our decay and demise…
The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed. Once we cease to feel that we must either prostrate ourselves before them or denigrate them, we are free to discover religions as repositories of a myriad ingenious concepts, with which we can try to assuage a few of the most persistent and unattended ills of secular life (De Botton, 2012, 12–13).
Is there such a thing, then, as a secular religion? There have been many attempts at this.
One problem exists in attempts to pull everyone into one belief system with associated behavioral expectations. As a goal, religions attempt this via missionary and other efforts. Free to do so, forceful inclusion or exclusion fights against modern sensibilities and civilized norms. There is a good deal of this in the haze of public affairs and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. We propose an organized effort to support multiple cultural arrangements within individual countries — a tradition with significant historical precedent (Tingey and Manicki).
It is interesting to quote an associated statement by James E. Talmage, a scientist, author, and Mormon leader of a hundred years ago, as he spoke in the Logan, Utah Temple…
Our rational conclusions regarding the propriety of any occurrence or cause of action are based on two distinct mental processes: (1) observations and apprehensions of facts, and (2) the shaping of opinions and judgments in accordance with those facts. Concerning such Winchell has said, “Aptness, readiness, and spontaneity in the execution of those processes constitute what we mean by the scientific habit. Eagerness to act on determinations reached by such processes is the scientific spirit. The scientific habit of mind is therefore the precise habit required for most just judgments within the sphere of all activities possessing an ethical character. This spirit first of all loves the truth supremely. It feels that the passive acceptance of error is an affront to truth and intelligence. It therefore seeks earnestly to arrive at truth and to avoid error either in conception or conclusion. It therefore maintains a habit of watchfulness and scrutiny. It seeks to be accurate in its observation of facts, in its collocation of them, and in the inferences drawn from them… (Talmage, 76)
Rigor of thought and directed action are desirable traits in any sense.
Man is a creature of bias, a bundle of prejudices, some of them good and many of them assuredly bad. The world teems with dread examples of this prejudice; we scarcely know where to look for an unbiased decision. this spirit sits in judgment, but not as the dumb jury in the box, sworn to decide upon such evidence and that only, as sharp-witted lawyers are able to bring forward, or such as a biased judge may see fit to allow; compelled to ignore every fact, the admission of which has been ruled out through some technical victory of the interested pleader; not sworn to render a verdict according to the law as construed by the court, who may or may not be true and worthy; but sworn to try every issue by the most crucial tests, to search for evidence in every nook and corner of the world; to count no costs of court in securing testimony, to search not for evidence on one side alone, but for evidence though it prove or disprove, to construe the law in the spirit of the law-maker and according to equity, to strive not for triumph but for truth, to know no victory but the discomfiture of error and the vindication of right (Talmage, 76–77).
We add to that one more step. Ideas should not be left in tacit and explicit forms. They should be extended to what we call “expressive” forms of processes. In such ways they can be digitized and extended for general use.
Tech Breadcrumbs
A renaissance in computing, envisioned in and around 1970, never happened. This isn’t to say that progress in the development of languages and tools was not made, but their purpose was subsequently purloined and most everyone got sidetracked.
The key to effective computing isn’t on the side of consumption, on that of supply, of creation of content for important purposes. This can be done by organizing technology to empower these and in applying the principles first effectively documented in that computing “Axial Age” in and around 1970.
This can be achieved by bringing information technologies into the formal governance model in a way that leverages the power of digital technologies while freeing us all from the ‘command-and-control’ model responsible for system features. Manuel Castells wrote the principal ode to the Silicon Valley in 1996 that presented digital networking as a general-purpose elixir while qualifying that assessment more recently:
We know of many cases (e.g. California) in which informational development is one-sided and operates in the absence of deliberate governmental policies to enhance human development…
The split between informational development and human development may lead to pathologies in the two processes (Castells and Himanen, 16–17).
We propose a layered approach to accomplishing this, where specialization and control is organized with ultimate functionality is achieved. This can be seen below in a color-coded model similar to the famous aircraft carrier coloring scheme, where responsibilities are clarified, and professional and security boundaries are similarly defined and enforced.
Knowledge-related obsessions
It is hard to account for many obsessions that people develop. Many make obvious sense however, such as is the case with unique and beneficial talents. Knowledge-related obsession is an interesting human pastime; many dedicate their lives to learning, to experimenting and testing out ideas based on what they have learned, often working to extend the findings of others. It has been estimated that meaningful knowledge of this kind can take twenty years or more of dedicated, professional effort to acquire (Leonard and Swap).
Some of these are more than happy to tell the world of what they know. Others find satisfaction and solace in their work and have little interest or incentive to share it with the rest of the world.
More to the point, many have no idea how to do so. In some cases, work arrangements and other limitations do not allow them to spread their knowledge. It is critical that we do so, and in easily accessible, digital forms. These are the critical aspects of knowledge that we need to understand and employ:
1. Experts excel mainly in their own domains.
2. Experts perceive large meaningful patterns in their domain.
3. Experts are fast: They are faster than novices at performing the skills of their domain, and they quickly solve problems with little error.
4. Experts have superior short-term and long-term memory.
5. Experts see and represent a problem in their domain at a deeper (more principled) level than novices; novices tend to represent a problem at a superficial level.
6. Experts spend a great deal of time analyzing a problem qualitatively.
7. Experts have strong self-monitoring skills (Chi, Glaser, and Farr, xvii-xx).
It is important to reiterate that knowledge is subject to context, but in the contexts in question, the application of knowledge to the task at hand is probably the most important way to help work us all out of the conundrum that is surrounding us.
Postlude
There is a shadow over the world. Most particularly, this is a result of the depredations of the 20th century, which was characterized by senseless wars, careless social policies, and perversion of the best knowledge available in those times.
It is not that conditions were favorable before then, either. Colonization in prior centuries wreaked havoc on colonizers and targeted colonial cultures alike. It is ironic that great population growth as occurred in such times were matched with degrading cultural sensitivity and respect.
Further back in time, lingering effects of Rome’s violence were reinforced in the West by a millennium of raiders from the north and the east. Whenever people would get ahead, living in large part in villages under cooperative agricultural arrangements, their lives would be compromised or ended by Vikings, Varangians, Mongols, and other powerful tribal invaders. After centuries of raids — not conquests — hapless Europeans made deals with their oppressors, Vikings in the west, Varangians from the eastern Baltic in the east, and Mongols and Tatars in Eastern and Central Europe.
Such marriages of convenience brought preconditions for the conquest of others around the world via oceanic sorties when colonization became the trend of the times. Ignorant of more nuanced and balanced living conditions of earlier times, Northern European leaders looked no further than Rome for solutions — hardly a meaningful model for peaceful living, with choice.
Justinian law, for example, was compiled by the Roman Emperor from the east. This was a coercive, not a cooperative canon of law, documented very late in Roman imperial times. Justinian put unbridled energy into the development of the “codex” of law, bringing together experts from around the empire. The purpose of the Justinian codex was not to build Rome, but to preserve its imperial foundations, “…a program of preparing a code of all Roman law on the grounds of rationality, coherence, equity, and the furtherance of imperial power” (Cantor, 1963/1993, 125–126).
The Justinian code greatly favors absolutism. The emperor is considered the living law, and his will has the unchallenged force of law. “The emperor alone can make law, and his will has the unchallenged force of law”… In this autocratic doctrine, as well as in its rationality and organization, its overriding principles of equity, its adherence to a system of legal procedure in which the authority of the judge as the representative of the emperor dominates that court, the Justinian code stands in boldest contrast to Germanic folk law (Cantor, 1963/1993, 125–126),
In a sense, to the degree that Roman legal concepts hold sway “Rome certainly did not die in its entirety” (Braudel, 1998, 352). This is not entirely good news.
It was assumed by liberal English historians of the nineteenth century that the Germanic legal tradition, descending from the Anglo-Saxon period, was so pure and powerful that Roman law had no chance to overwhelm it. There is some merit in this view, but it does not take into account the real facts of the situation. While Roman vulgate law was obliterated by the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the Germanic legal system exclusively dominated English juristic practice and doctrine during the preconquest period, the Anglo-Norman rulers had no vested interest in preserving it. No English king after 1066 had reason to be enthusiastic about the political implications of Germanic law, which was biased in the direction of the power of local communities and against strong central governments. The legal absolutism and centralism enshrined in the Justinian code were far more in conformity with the policy of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin monarchs than as the old Germanic system (Cantor, 1963/1993 , 125–126, 315–316).
In the 14th century as the European dark age was dissipating, there was a tenuous connection with the Greek past in Northern Europe. This was made challenging due to Roman destruction of Egyptian and later Greek knowledge artifacts generally a thousand years before. Much was ultimately recovered with respect to Greek thought by means of Islamic cooperation, but even those sources lacked a kind of balance and stability as we now know had existed earlier.
How can the world find itself from under such a cloud? First, we must recognize that we need to do so. Second, we must educate ourselves as to what our predecessors have left to guide us along the path. We have worked to provide some of those herein.
Yes, some people say that the current development is just a shadow of previous civilizations and the beginnings of the present civilization (Eridu, Uruk). It is suitable for people to know that the present decadence has come at a time when no goals have been achieved and no new goals have been set. When we realize that remote communication existed in Abraham’s time, there is no progress. The lack of a legally defined and enforced framework for knowledge-made decision-making processes leads to collapse. Such a condition is already on the horizon.
Poster
The “Head, Heart, Hand” poster of the 2020 Program for Global Health is a good reference point for this message.
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