From the SynEARTH Archives.

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Beyond Crime and Punishment

In our present world, it is widely believed that mistakes are the result of badness. So when mistakes occur, we investigate, blame and punish. This belief has resulted in a world where violence, hate and judgment are common.

Synergic science reveals that mistakes are in fact the result of ignorance. If we understand this, then when a mistake occurs, we would analyze, determine responsibility, and educate. This could soon lead to a world where public safety, love and compassion are common.

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The Uncertainty of Human Knowing

Timothy Wilken, MD

We can never know all there is to know about anything — this is a fundamental ‘law’ of Nature. This is in fact is the only cause of mistakes.

Ignorance is the word that best describes the human condition. Alfred Korzybski explained this condition scientifically as the  Principle of Non-Allness. By this he meant that we humans make all of our decisions with incomplete and imperfect knowing. We make every choice without all the information. All humans live and act in state of ignorance. Korzybski felt that developing an awareness of this ‘law’ of Nature was so fundamentally important to all humans, that he developed a lesson especially for children. Korzybski would explain:

“Children, today we want to learn all about the apple.”

He would place an apple in view of the children, “Do you children know about the apple?”

“I do!”, “I do!”, “Yes, I know about apples!”

“Good” Korzybski moved to the blackboard. , “Come, tell me about the apple?”

“The Apple is a fruit.”, “The apple is red.”, “The apple grows on a tree.”

Korzybski would begin to list the characteristics described by the children on the blackboard.

The children continued, “An apple a day keeps the Doctor away.”

Korzybski continued listing the children’s answers until they run out of ideas, then he would ask, “Is that all we can say about the apple?

When the children answered in the affirmative, Korzybski would remove his pocket-knife and cut the apple in half, passing the parts among the children.

“Now, children can we say more about the apple?

“The apple smells good.” “The juices are sweet.” “The apple has seeds.” “Its pulp is white.” “Mother makes apple pie.

Finally when the children had again run out of answers, Korzybski would ask, “Now, is that all-we can say about the apple?” When the children agreed that it was all that could be said, he would again go into his pocket only this time he removed a ten power magnifying lens and passed it to the children. The children would examine the apple, and again respond:

“The apple pulp has a pattern and a structure.” “The skin of the apple has pores.” “The leaves have fuzz on them.” “The seeds have coats.”

Thus Korzybski would teach the children the lesson of Non-ALLness.

Now we could continue to examine the apple—with a light microscope, x-ray crystallography, and eventually the electron microscope. We would continue to discover more to say about the apple. However, we can never know ALL there is to know about anything in Nature. We humans have the power to know about Nature, but not to know ALL.

Knowing is without limit, but knowing is not total. Universe is our human model of Nature. Our ‘knowing’ can grow evermore complete. It can grow closer and closer to the ‘Truth’, but it cannot equal the ‘Truth’. It must always be incomplete. We are not ‘GOD’. We cannot see and know ALL.

Jacob Bronowski speaking in 1976 his famous public television series the Ascent of Man said:

“One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the Twentieth Century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. This is the human condition; and that is what Quantum Physics says. I mean that literally.

“Let us examine an object with the best tool we have today, the electron microscope, where the rays are so concentrated that we no longer know whether to call them waves or particles. Electrons are fired at an object, and they trace its outline like a knife-thrower at a fair. The smallest object that has ever been seen is a single atom of thorium. It is spectacular.

And yet the soft image confirms that, like the knives that graze the girl at the fair, even the hardest electrons do not give a hard outline. The perfect image is still as remote as the distant stars.

“We are here face to face with the crucial paradox of knowledge. Year by year we devise more precise instruments with which to observe nature with more fineness and when we look at the observations, we are discomfited to see that they are still fuzzy, and we feel that we are as uncertain as ever. 

“We seem to be running after a goal which lurches away from us to infinity every time we come within sight of it. 

   

“The paradox of knowledge is not confined to the small, atomic scale; on the contrary, it is as cogent on the scale of man, and even of the stars.

“Let me put it in the context of an astronomical observatory. Karl Freidrich Gauss’ observatory at Gˆttingen was built about 1807. Throughout his life and ever since (the best part of 200 years) astronomical instruments have been improved.

“We look at the position of a star as it was determined then and now, and it seems to us that we are closer and closer to finding it precisely. But when we actually compare our individual observations today, we are astonished and chagrined to find them as scattered within themselves as ever.

“We had hoped that the human errors would disappear, and that we would ourselves have God’s view. But it turns out that the errors cannot be taken out of the observations. And that is true of stars, or atoms, or just looking at somebody’s picture, or hearing the report of somebody’s speech.”

Incomplete and imperfect knowing means that every human belief is an assumption. We can never know for sure. We can never know ALL.

As you sit in your chair reading these words, you assumed the chair would hold you. You did not check under the chair to see if it had broken since its last use. When you ate lunch at your favorite restaurant last week, you assumed the waitress had washed her hands. You assumed the cook did not have hepatitis. If you had assumed otherwise, you would not have walked into that restaurant. You would not have eaten your lunch. We humans assume. Herein lies our uncertainty — that’s all we humans can do. There is nothing wrong in our assuming, we are simply obeying a fundamental ‘law’ of Nature.

We humans have always believed that mistakes are bad. We have always believed that those who make mistakes are bad. They are stupid or careless — lazy or incompetent — just no damn good. If they were good, they wouldn’t make mistakes. Everyone knows that. Decent people don’t make mistakes. This is nearly a universal belief.
 

Mistakes = Badness

Korzybski coined the word space-binding to describe the world of the animal. In the world of the animal, cause and effect can not be distinguished from each other. They are the same — they equal each other — they are identical. If the effect of a mistake is bad, then the cause of a mistake is also bad. Human intelligence is build on animal intelligence. All humans have a space-mind. It is a powerful and often dominant part of our human intelligence. As children the space-mind is primary. The uniquely human mind creates what Korzybski called the world of Time-binding. The time-mind doesn’t even begin to become operational in children until they reach the age of four.

So our human belief that mistakes are ‘bad’ is legitimate. Most of us learn about mistakes as small children. If I stumble while running, I get hurt and that is bad. If an animal is running for its life and stumbles, it dies and that is bad. For space-binders, mistakes are a part of bad space.

In the world of space-binding, a mistake can cost not only the life of the individual space-binder, but also the lives of others in the group — pack, pride, herd, or troop. Therefore the result of a mistake was often bad, and not just for the individual, but for others in the group as well. Since 99.9% of all human history has been adversary — 99.9% of our history dominated by space-binding, it is no wonder that we humans have believed for countless centuries that mistakes are bad.

The belief in the badness of mistakes was further reinforced and given Divine sanction by our human religions. God is good. God is omniscience — ALL knowing. God makes no mistakes. He is perfect. We humans are admonished to be as God-like as possible. If making no mistakes is ‘good’, then obviously making mistakes is ‘bad’. Our religions institutionalized the adversary processing of mistakes — Sin, Hellfire, and Damnation.

Science has also added credence to the ‘badness’ of mistakes. The world view created by the ‘objective science’ of Galileo, Kepler, Hooke, and Newton was a ‘perfect’ Universe. Newton’s System of the Worlds described a precision clockwork perfection that controlled all in Universe. If the Universe is perfect, then humans too must evolve towards perfection.

Dealing with badness

Since mistakes are bad, when one occurs, we investigate to determine who is at fault. Who made the mistake? Once that is determined, we blame those responsible. Following blame, we are ready to punish. More pain and suffering has been inflicted on humankind for making mistakes than for any other cause. This should not surprise us.

Punishment is the proper way to deal with ‘badness’. And,if we are anything, we are fair. So when we are the one who made the mistake, we self-punish. Self-punishment is called “guilt”. Humans are the only class of living systems that feels guilty. The only class of living systems that teaches their pets to feel guilty. 

MISTAKES = Badness
INVESTIGATE
BLAME
PUNISH —> self punish
                         “Guilt”
 

Korzybski’s Error of Identity

When humans rely only on their spacial intelligence, they see cause as being identical to effect. They are in essence time-blind, and so they confuse cause with effect.

Korzybski explained that when humans see things as being identical that are not identical, they are making an identification that is false to facts. Korzybski called this the Error of Identity.

When we confuse cause with effect, we are making the error of identity. Today most humans make this error. We assume without analysis that cause and effect are the same — that they are equal — that they are identical. If the effect of a mistake is bad then the cause of that mistake must also be bad.

We don’t analyze the event for sequence. We don’t use our time-binding power to understand. And so,we act without hesitation, without doubt on our belief. We act in certainty. And, certainty as explained earlier by Korzybski, Heisenberg, Eddington and Bronowski is not possible, because knowing is uncertain.

Certainty

We humans always act without all the information. We humans are always assuming. If we are unaware that we are assuming, then we are ignorant of our ignorance. Certainty means that we don’t know that we don’t know. We cannot seek knowing when we believe our ignorance is knowing. Ignorance of ignorance is leveraged ignorance — ignorance masquerading as knowledge. Ignorance of ignorance is certainty.

When we are certain, we are surprised and disheartened by our mistakes. This attitude toward human error is the most damaging of human ignorances. We humans make mistakes because, we make all our decisions without ALL the information. This is a major point that all humans must understand. The only cause of mistakes is ignorance.

We humans must become aware of our ignorance. When we humans have knowledge of our ignorance, we can learn from our mistakes and protect ourselves in the future. When an individual knows he doesn’t know, he is wise. Wisdom is the opposite of certainty. The knowledge of our ignorance is wisdom.

To error is the human condition

This truth, whether we call it the Principle of Non-Allness, the Principle of Uncertainty, the Principle of Indeterminacy, or the Principle of Tolerance, leads us to the conclusion that to error is human, and there is no need too ask forgiveness. All mistakes are innocent.

Universe is not certain — it is not structured as we humans have believed for countless centuries. Religion and the objective scientists were wrong. The physics of relativity and quantum mechanics describe a Universe in which things are not and cannot be perfect. A Universe in which, we humans are constrained to make all our choices without ALL the information. Mistakes are simply holes or gaps in our knowing — lapses in our understanding.

I am often asked, “But, what if I knew better?” If I knew better and then make a mistake. Isn’t that the result of stupidity. If I knew better, but still made an error, then surely that is my fault and not the result of ignorance.

What if I knew better?

I recall a young women I once treated. She had opened her hotel room door to a man claiming to be a maintenance worker, who then attacked and raped her. The attacker has stolen a hotel uniform from a laundry hamper and so seemed legitimate. However, something about his appearance disturbed her, but on second thought, she assumed she was just being silly and so unlocked her door. When I saw her several months later she was still struggling with guilt.

“Doctor, it was my own fault. I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have opened the door. I knew something was wrong. I was so stupid. I knew better, but I opened the door anyway.”

I responded, “You weren’t stupid. You were only ignorant.”

She replied, “No, Dr. Wilken, I knew better, I should never have opened the door, I was just so stupid.”

“NO!”, I told her, “You weren’t stupid, you were only ignorant and I can prove it with one simple question. She looked deep into my eyes desperate to know what I meant.

I asked: “If you had known that the man behind the door intended to rape you, would you have opened it?”

“No, of course not.”

No of course not. None of us would make a mistake if we knew we were about to make a mistake. Even when we humans repeat our mistakes, it is because we assume the mistake will not happen this time. We are ignorant of what will happen this time. As I have stated, the only cause of human error — the only cause of human mistakes is ignorance.

Scientists as well as non-scientists who seek to know must therefore embrace humility when we stand before the totality of Nature.

The Principle of Non-Allness is a fundamental law of Nature. And the first corollary to the Principle of Non-Allness is what I call the Principle of Innocence.

Principle of Innocence

All actions occur in ignorance. All human actions and all human choices are made without all the information. We are always acting and choosing without ALL the information. What we don’t know we must ignore and what we ignore may hurt us. Therefore all errors and and all mistakes are made in innocence.

Good news

I don’t mean that mistakes are good things or that getting hurt is a good thing. I mean that since the cause of mistakes is ignorance and the proper response to ignorance is education, then we can learn from our mistakes.

We can acknowledge the mistakes of history and those that are occurring in our present world and work to correct them. This is good news. It will make it infinitely easier to build a better world.

When we understand the truth of “to error is human”, we can then begin to process our mistakes in a synergic manner. The human who understands that mistakes are a natural part of life does not investigate the mistakes like a detective, he analyzes the mistake as a scientist. He does not blame when a mistake occurs, he seeks to learn from the mistake and to learn he must accept responsibility and seek responsibility in others for their mistakes. Once he knows who is responsible for the mistake he educates.

Education is the proper response to ignorance. Education and learning is the synergic alternative to adversary punishment and guilt. However there is something in guilt worth keeping. It is certainly not the badness, it is certainly not the blame, and of course it is not the punishment.

Guilt also contains regret and this is worth keeping. When a mistake happens there is always regret. In the adversary world where there is blame and punishment of course I might regret being blamed and punished. I also might regret being considered bad by those who are blaming and punishing me. But there is almost always another component of regret. When I make a mistake that hurts someone else, I regret that as well. This is the regret worth keeping.

And, this is often why we humans tend to hang onto our guilt feelings when we make a mistake. We regret injuring others. We can solve this dilemma by moving regret over into the synergic processing of mistakes, where it is called restitution. Restitution means to restore, to repair the damage caused by the ignorance of our behavior.

The synergist does not feel guilty when he makes a mistake, but he is sorry if his ignorance injured other. As a synergist, he will freely try to repair things. He will freely offer restitution.  

Adversary	Synergic
MISTAKES = Badness	MISTAKES = Ignorance
INVESTIGATE	ANALYZE
ACCUSE & BLAME	DETERMINE RESPONSIBILITY
PUNISH —> self-punish	EDUCATE —> self-educate
“Guilt”	“Learn”
regret->	RESTITUTION

We humans have a choice as to how to deal with mistakes. If we process our mistakes adversarily we get pain and no learning. If we process our mistakes synergically, we get learning and no pain.
In fact, you cannot learn when you adversarily process mistakes. We humans cannot tolerate the pain of blame, punishment, and guilt. We will deny that we make a mistake. We will project the blame for the mistake onto others. “I didn’t do it.” — “It wasn’t my fault.” — “And, if it isn’t my fault, why should I have to learn anything.”

In fact, if I am to learn from a mistake, I must first admit it was my fault. This is the real force behind what I call the “anti-learning barrier”. If I am to learn from my mistake I am trapped into accepting responsibility for my error. If I am adversarily processing the mistake, I cannot accept responsibility without feeling guilty. To avoid guilt I must deny responsibility. And if I wasn’t responsible then I have nothing to learn.

The “anti-learning barrier”

This barrier became evident to me by another one of my patients. I once had the occasion to treat a young woman in the early stages of her fifth pregnancy. She informed me she had had four abortions previously and was pregnant and planning to abort this pregnancy as well. I thought to myself, why can’t she learn to use birth control?

If we examine her situation in light of our new understanding, we see that for her to use birth control, she would have to admit that it is her responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies. That admission would lead her to the further conclusion that she was then also responsible for her previous unwanted pregnancies and their abortions.

This young woman was a Catholic and to admit responsibility for unwanted pregnancies and abortions were far too painful for her. She opted to deny any responsibility. “My boy friend got me drunk, and made me pregnant. It wasn’t my fault, so I don’t need to take birth control. Besides using birth control is a sin, I would never do that.”

The human brain is the most powerfully precise computer in the Universe. If we program it to believe mistakes are bad, it will function to prove it does not make mistakes. The human brain rebels at the idea that mistakes are bad. It will defend itself in any way possible, it will defend itself by lying. When I am accused of badness, I must lie to protect myself — to protect myself from blame and punishment — to protect myself from guilt. Confronted with an adversary reality that we live with today, it is rational to lie. Lying leads to distrust — “I assume you are my enemy”. Thus, the processing of mistakes as bad always leads to conflict and adversary behavior.

If on the other hand, I process my mistakes in a more scientific manner — as simply ignorant — choices made without all the information, then I must tell the truth to protect myself — to protect myself from repeating the mistake — to protect myself and others from further injury — to protect myself from paying unnecessary restitution.

Telling the truth leads to trust — “I assume you are my friend”. Processing mistakes as ignorance leads to co-Operation and synergic behavior.

Adversary	Synergic
MISTAKES = Badness	MISTAKES = Ignorance
INVESTIGATE	ANALYZE
ACCUSE & BLAME	DETERMINE RESPONSIBILITY
PUNISH —> self-punish	EDUCATE —> self-educate
“Guilt”	“Learn”
regret->	RESTITUTION
I must lie to protect myself.	I must tell the truth to protect myself.
I assume you are my enemy.	I assume you are my friend.
Distrust	Trust
Conflict	Co-Operation

Scientists and all humans who seek to know must embrace humility when they stand before the totality of Nature. The principle of Non-Allness is a fundamental law of nature.

The fact that all actions occur in ignorance is a fundamental ‘knowing’ derived from the Principle of Non-Allness.

And the first corollary of that principle — the Principle of Innocence is an even more important extension of our human ‘knowing’. If we understand that all errors are committed in innocence, then how we treat those who err will change forever.

What about Bin Laden ?

How could the attack on the World Trade Towers have resulted from ignorance. How could those behind the murder of 3000+ thousand innocents themselves be innocent?

What don’t they know?

They don’t know that “As you sow, so shall you reap”. They don’t know that:

Adversary action usually provokes adversary reaction ending in an adversary resultant or loss.

They don’t know how powerful the United States really is. They have forgotten the lessons learned by Japan and Germany by the end of World War II. They to have wakened the sleeping Giant. Their acts will not make the world better and safer for themselves or for those they claim to represent. They don’t know that the end never justifies the means. In fact, the means always end up becoming the ends.

They don’t know that there is no heaven for murderers. They don’t know that an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, ends up with no winners only losers in a modern world with high technology and knowledge.

They don’t know that:

Progress + Warfare = Human Extinction 

We humans are Time-binders, we have the power to create knowledge without limit. When knowledge is incorporated into matter-energy, it becomes a tool. As Andrew J. Galambos explained:

“Humans develop evermore powerful knowledge and therefore evermore powerful tools. When tools are used to harm other humans they are called weapons. Since human knowledge can grow without limit then tools themselves can be made without limit. And limitless tools can will produce limitless weapons.”

And, limitless weapons (progress) combined with leveraged adversity (warfare) must by all definitions and understanding of science produce human extinction.

All of today’s law enforcement agencies use adversary processing in an attempt to protect the public safety. Unfortunately, adversary processing results only in pain and no learning. The war on crime has been lost and always will be lost. Adversary behavior cannot be stopped with adversary behavior. The means always become the ends. The abolition of crime will require the abolition of punishment.

Only then can we move towards a world where, love, wisdom and compassion will replace hate, ignorance and judgment. Only then can we move beyond crime and punishment.

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Read Timothy Wilken’s A Limit to Knowing.

Read Timothy Wilken’s Protecting Humanity.

From the SynEARTH Archives. … In response to my December 25th, 2003 essay What’s wrong with Merry Christmas? a reader wrote asking: Are you a Christian? I think that in the past I avoided this question because I didn’t want to polarize my readers. I do consider myself a strong disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. … According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a disciple is: “one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another. Synonyms include: follower and adherent. Disciple implies a devoted allegiance to the teachings of one chosen as a master (disciples of Gandhi). A follower may apply to people who attach themselves either to the person or beliefs of another (an evangelist and his followers). Adherent suggests a close and persistent attachment (adherents to a political cause).” … By this definition, I am a disciple, a follower, an adherent of Jesus of Nazareth. However, I don’t think that Jesus of Nazareth was a supernatural being. While I believe in God, I don’t believe Jesus was a God or the son of God, except in the metaphoric sense that all forms of life are sons and daughters of God. As I wrote in my article on The Golden Rule, Jesus of Nazareth was an enormously important human being. He may have been the very first synergist.  And, while I believe he was only human, I think he was an exception human — a spiritual genius. Therefore I would not call myself a Christ-ian even though I am a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.  In the following article I write: Humanity has used the term God to represent ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. We have used the term God to represent ‘that’ which is the source of Universe — ‘that’ which is the source of Heaven and Earth — ‘that’ which is the source of Life and Humanity. I make no argument against the existence of God. I am in full belief that there exists ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. I am in full belief that there is a ‘source’. And I also call that source God. Let us agree then that the source of Universe — the source of Heaven and Earth — the source of Life and Humanity — is God. This agreement does not require that we define or describe God in anyway. … Under this premise, I am a strong believer in God. But my view of God is not anthropomorphic–I do not attribute human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to God. 

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God and Purpose in Universe

Timothy Wilken, MD

The words ‘evolution’ and ‘Darwin’ are powerful polarizing triggers even in today’s (2003) so called modern world. This has been primarily because Darwin’s theory of evolution and the evolutionary science that developed from it seem at first glance to refute the Holy Bible’s narrative of God’s creation of Heaven and Earth and to threaten one’s belief in God. Scientist Michael Behe writing in 1996:

From the time it was first proposed, some scientists have clashed with some theologians over Darwin’s theory of evolution. Although many scientists and theologians thought that Darwinian evolution could be reconciled rather easily with the basic beliefs of most religions, publicity always focuses on conflict. The tone was probably set for good when Anglican bishop Samuel Wilberforce debated Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist and strong advocate of evolution, about a year after Darwin’s seminal book was published. It was reported that the bishop—a good theologian but poor biologist—ended his speech by asking, I beg to know, is it through his grandfather or grandmother that Huxley claims his descent from a monkey? Huxley muttered something like, The Lord has delivered him into my hands, and proceeded to give the audience and the bishop an erudite biology lesson. At the end of his exposition Huxley declared that he didn’t know whether it was through his grandmother or grandfather that he was related to an ape, but that he would rather be descended from simians than be a man possessed of the gift of reason and see it used as the bishop had used it that day. Ladies fainted, scientists cheered, and reporters ran to print the headline: War Between Science and Theology.

The event in America that defined the public perception of the relationship of science to theology was the Scopes trial. In 1925 John Scopes, a high school biology teacher in the tiny town of Dayton, Tennessee, volunteered to be arrested for violating a previously unenforced state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. The involvement of high-profile lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense and three-time losing presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution guaranteed the media circus that ensued. Although Scopes’s team lost at trial, his conviction was overturned on a technicality. More importantly, the publicity set a tone of antagonism between religion and science.

The Scopes trial and the Huxley-Wilberforce debate happened long ago, but more recent events have kept the conflict simmering. Over the past several decades groups that, for religious reasons, believe that the earth is relatively young (on the order of ten thousand years) have tried to have their viewpoint taught to their children in public schools. The sociological and political factors involved in the situation are quite complex—a powerful mix of such potentially divisive topics as religious freedom, parental rights, government control of education, and state versus federal rights—and are made all the more emotional because the fight is over children.

Because the age of the earth can be inferred from physical measurements, many scientists quite naturally felt that the religious groups had entered their area of expertise and called them to account. When the groups offered physical evidence that they said supported a young earth, scientists hooted it down as incompetent and biased. Tempers flared on both sides, and much ill will was built up. Some of the ill will has been institutionalized; for example, an organization called the National Center for Science Education was set up a dozen years ago-when several states were passing laws congenial to creationism—to battle creationists whenever they try to influence public school policy.

These and numerous other examples of historical events in which scientists have clashed with religious groups are real and cause real emotional reactions. They make some well-meaning people think that a demilitarized zone should be maintained between the two, with no fraternization allowed. However, the importance of the historical clashes for actual scientific understanding of the development of life is essentially zero. (1)

If we are going to heal ourselves and solve our human crisis, we must not fall into the ‘evolution versus creationism’ trap. This is just another example of ‘either/or thinking’ and ‘mixing levels of organization’. Many humans including a number of otherwise good scientists are presently caught up in this trap.

One false assumption that results from this trap is the belief that science must explain everything about life and its origins. After all if ‘God’ is the alternative explanation for all in universe. Then our ‘either/or’ thinking requires that for ‘evolutionary science’ to be true, it too must explain all in universe. However recall from the science section that to explain ‘ALL ’ in universe is very large task indeed.

Evolutionary science (2003) does explain a great deal and many of its aspects have been scientifically corroborated. However, Darwin offered no explanation for the origin of life. And, evolutionary science (2003) while explaining how simple organisms can become more complex organisms, and how organisms have adapted to better fit their environments, has not provided a clear step by step explanation for the beginnings of life nor provided proven explanations for the development of complex organs like the human eye.

When scientific theory does not answer a question placed to it, one of two conditions may exist. First, the theory is incomplete and when more is discovered and the theory expanded, it will better answer the question. Or, two the theory may be wrong and there exists an alternative explanation that better answers the question.

I believe that the first condition exists here. I believe that evolutionary science (2003) is young and like many young theories it is still incomplete. For example, it clearly needs integration with synergic science. And, I believe when and as we discover more, we will come to understand life and evolution better, and I predict we will then develop better answers to these important questions.

However, there are a number of humans including some very good scientists who believe the second condition exists here. They believe that an alternative explanation exists that better explains life.

Intelligent Design

Michael Behe argues for intelligent design as a better explanation for life:

The impotence of Darwinian theory in accounting for the molecular basis of life is evident not only from the analyses in this book, but also from the complete absence in the professional scientific literature of any detailed models by which complex biochemical systems could have been produced. In the face of the enormous complexity that modern biochemistry has uncovered in the cell, the scientific community is paralyzed. No one at Harvard University, no one at the National Institutes of Health, no member of the National Academy of Sciences, no Nobel prize winner—no one at all can give a detailed account of how the cilium, or vision, or blood clotting, or any complex biochemical process might have developed in a Darwinian fashion. But we are here. Plants and animals are here. The complex systems are here. All these things got here somehow: if not in a Darwinian fashion, then how?

Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory. Graduate students in untied tennis shoes scraping around the lab late on Saturday night; postdoctoral associates working fourteen hours a day seven days a week; professors ignoring their children in order to polish and repolish grant proposals, hoping to shake a little money loose from politicians with larger constituencies to feed — these are the people that make scientific research move forward. The knowledge we now have of life at the molecular level has been stitched together from innumerable experiments in which proteins were purified, genes cloned, electron micrographs taken, cells cultured, structures determined, sequences compared, parameters varied, and controls done. Papers were published, results checked, reviews written, blind alleys searched, and new leads fleshed out.

The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell — to investigate life at the molecular level — is a loud, clear, piercing cry of design! The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrˆdinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun or that disease is caused by bacteria or that radiation is emitted in quanta. The magnitude of the victory, gained at such great cost through sustained effort over the course of decades, would be expected to send champagne corks flying in labs around the world. This triumph of science should evoke cries of Eureka! from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take a day off.

But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead, a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that.

Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the coin is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled God. (2)

Behe argues that intelligent design is necessary to any satisfactory explanation for the complexities of molecular biology. Design has also been offered by many others as the only satisfactory explanation for complex biological organs like the human eye.

The arguments for design presented by Behe and other advocates usually involve three issues: 1) Complexity— The probability that life could originate by chance, or that the complexity of molecular biology or the human eye can be explained by random chance is enormously unlikely. 2) Intelligence— There is evidence for intelligence in the form of controlled choice which can be found in all life forms—plants, animals, and humans—which cannot be explained by random choice. And, 3) Purpose— There is evidence of purpose in the form of goal seeking behavior which is found in all forms of life and which cannot be explained by random chance.

Complexity, intelligence, and purpose are all strong arguments against random chance. Therefore evolution stands refuted, and the only alternative offered to explain life is design.

However, all these arguments at least in part presume that Darwinian theory and evolutionary science is based on random chance. Is Darwinian theory and evolutionary science based on random chance?

Evolution Does Not Equal Random Chance

British scientist Richard Dawkins, one of world’s leading experts on evolutionary biology, discusses this presumption in his 1996 book Climbing Mount Improbable:

One of Britain’s most famous physical scientists, Sir Fred Hoyle frequently expresses a similar view with respect to large molecules such as enzymes, whose inherent ‘improbability’—that is the probability that they’d spontaneously come into existence by chance—is easier to calculate than that of eyes. Enzymes work in cells rather like exceedingly numerous machine tools for molecular mass production. Their efficacy depends upon their three dimensional shape, their share depends upon their coiling behaviour, and their coiling behaviour depends upon the sequence of amino acids which link up in a chain to make them. This exact sequence is directly controlled by genes and it really matters. Could it come about by chance?

Hoyle says no, and he is right. There is a fixed number of amino acids available, twenty. A typical enzyme is a chain of several hundred links drawn from the twenty. An elementary calculation shows that the probability that any particular sequence of, say 100, amino acids will spontaneously form is one in 20 x 20 x 20 … 100 times, or 1 in 20¹⁰⁰. This is an inconceivably large number, far greater than the number of fundamental particles in the entire universe. Sir Fred, bending over backwards (unnecessarily, as we shall see) to be fair to those whom he sees as his Darwinian opponents, generously shortens the odds to 1 in 20²⁰. A more modest number to be sure, but still a horrifyingly low probability. His co-author and fellow astrophysicist, Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, has quoted him as saying that the spontaneous formation by ‘chance’ of a working enzyme is like a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and spontaneously having the luck to put together a Boeing 747. What Hoyle and Wickramasinghe miss is that Darwinism is not a theory of random chance. It is a theory of random mutation plus non-random cumulative natural selection, Why, I wonder, is it so hard for even sophisticated scientists to grasp this simple point?

Darwin himself had to contend with an earlier generation of physical scientists crying ‘chance’ as the alleged fatal flaw in his theory. William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was perhaps the greatest physicist of his day and Darwin’s most distinguished scientific opponent. Among his many achievements he calculated the age of the Earth based on rates of cooling, assuming that it had once been a part of the ‘fires’ of the Sun. He concluded that the Earth was some tens of millions of years old. Modern estimates put the age up in the thousands of millions of years, it is no discredit to Lord Kelvin that his estimate was one hundredth part of the right answer. Dating methods using radioactive decay were not available in his time, and nuclear fusion, the true ‘fire’ of the Sun, was unknown, so his cooling calculation was doomed from the start. What is less forgivable was his lofty dismissing, ‘as a physicist’, of Darwin’s biological evidence: the earth wasn’t old enough; there hadn’t been enough time for the Darwinian process of evolution to have achieved the results we see around us; the evidence of biology must simply be wrong, trumped by the superior evidence of physics. Darwin might just as well have retorted (he didn’t) that the biological evidence clearly indicates evolution, therefore there must have been time for evolution to occur, therefore the physicist’s evidence must be wrong!

To return to the point about ‘chance’, Lord Kelvin used the prestigious platform of his Presidential Address to the British Association to quote, with approval, the words of another distinguished physical scientist, Sir John Herschel, who also, by the way, referred to Darwinism as ‘The Law of Higgledy-Piggledy’:

We can no more accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variation and natural selection as a sufficient account, per se, of the past and present organic world, than we can receive the Laputan method of composing books (pushed ‡ I’outrance) as a sufficient one for Shakespeare and the Principia.

Herschel’s allusion was to Gulliver’s Travels in which Swift had mocked the Laputan method of writing books by combining words at random. Herschel and Kelvin, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, my anonymously quoted physical scientists and any number of Jehovah’s Witness tracts all make the mistake of treating Darwinian natural selection as though it were tantamount to Laputan authorship. To this day, and in quarters where they should know better, Darwinism is widely regarded as a theory of ‘chance’.

It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn’t work. You don’t need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck. Far from being a difficulty peculiar to Darwinism, the astronomic improbability of eyes and knees, enzymes and elbow joints and the other living wonders is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve, and that Darwinism uniquely does solve. It solves it by breaking the improbability up into small, manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes, inch by million-year inch. Only God would essay the mad task of leaping up the precipice in a single bound. And if we postulate him as our cosmic designer we are left in exactly the same position as when we started. Any Designer capable of constructing the dazzling array of living things would have to be intelligent and complicated beyond all imagining. And complicated is just another word for improbable—and therefore demanding of explanation. A theologian who ripostes that his god is sublimely simple has (not very) neatly evaded the issue, for a sufficiently simple god, whatever other virtues he might have, would be too simple to be capable of designing a universe (to say nothing of forgiving sins, answering prayers, blessing unions, transubstantiating wine, and the many other achievements variously expected of him). You cannot have it both ways. Either your god is capable of designing worlds and doing all the other godlike things, in which case he needs an explanation in his own right. Or he is not, in which case he cannot provide an explanation. God should be seen by Fred Hoyle as the ultimate Boeing 747.

The height of Mount Improbable stands for the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in eyes and enzyme molecules (and gods capable of designing them). To say that an object like an eye or a protein molecule is improbable means something rather precise. The object is made of a large number of parts arranged in a very special way. The number of possible ways in which those parts could have been arranged is exceedingly large. In the case of a protein molecule we can actually calculate that large number. Isaac Asimov did it for the particular protein haemoglobin, and called it the Haemoglobin Number. It has 190 noughts. That is the number of ways of rearranging the bits of haemoglobin such that the result would not be haemoglobin. In the case of the eye we can’t do the equivalent calculation without fabricating lots of assumptions, but we can intuitively see that it is going to come to another stupefyingly large number. The actual, observed arrangement of parts is improbable in the sense that it is only one arrangement among trillions of possible arrangements.

Now, there is an uninteresting sense in which, with hindsight, any particular arrangement of parts is just as improbable as any other. Even a junkyard is as improbable, with hindsight, as a 747, for its parts could have been arranged in so many other ways. The trouble is, most of those ways would also be junkyards. This is where the idea of quality comes in. The vast majority of arrangements of the parts of a Boeing junkyard would not fly. A small minority would. Of all the trillions of possible arrangements of the parts of an eye, only a tiny minority would see. The human eye forms a sharp image on a retina, corrected for spherical and chromatic aberration; automatically stops down or up with an iris diaphragm to keep the internal light intensity relatively constant in the face of large fluctuations in external light intensity; automatically changes the focal length of the lens depending upon whether the object being looked at is near or far; sorts out colour by comparing the firing rates of three different kinds of light-sensitive cell. Almost all random scramblings of the parts of an eye would fail to achieve any of these delicate and difficult tasks. There is something very special about the particular arrangement that exists. All particular arrangements are as improbable as each other. But of all particular arrangements, those that aren’t useful hugely outnumber those that are. Useful devices are improbable and need a special explanation. R. A. Fisher, the great mathematical geneticist and founder of the modern science of statistics, put the point in 1930, in his usual meticulous style (I never met him, but one can almost hear his fastidiously correct dictation to his long-suffering wife):

An organism is regarded as adapted to a particular situation, or to the totality of situations which constitute its environment, only in so far as we can imagine an assemblage of slightly different situations, or environments, to which the animal would on the whole be less well adapted; and equally only in so far as we can imagine an assemblage of slightly different organic forms, which would be less well adapted to that environment.

Eyes, ears and hearts, the wing of a vulture, the web of a spider, these all impress us by their obvious perfection of engineering no matter where we see them: we don’t need to have them presented to us in their natural surroundings to see that they are good for some purpose and that, if their parts were rearranged or altered in almost any way, they would be worse. They have ‘improbable perfection’ written all over them. An engineer can recognize them as the kind of thing that he would design, if called upon to solve a particular problem.

This is another way of saying that objects such as these cannot be explained as coming into existence by chance. As we have seen, to invoke chance, on its own, as an explanation, is equivalent to vaulting from the bottom to the top of Mount Improbable’s steepest cliff in one bound, And what corresponds to inching up the kindly, grassy slopes on the other side of the mountain! It is the slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants that Darwin called natural selection, The metaphor of Mount Improbable dramatizes the mistake of the sceptics quoted at the beginning of this chapter, Where they went wrong was to keep their eyes fixed on the vertical precipice and its dramatic height. They assumed that the sheer cliff was the only way up to the summit on which are perched eyes and protein molecules and other supremely improbable arrangements of parts. It was Darwin’s great achievement to discover the gentle gradients winding up the other side of the mountain.

But is this one of those rare cases where it is really true that there is no smoke without fire? Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn’t it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. One stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process—mutation, Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it is usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss that they do about the ‘randomness’ of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection, the other side of the process. It is not necessary that mutation should be random in order for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation ran be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance. (3)

When we find complexity, intelligence and purpose in a human made tool or artifact, we speak with great assurance that a human designer of that tool or artifact exists. And, that the complexity, intelligence and purpose that we find in our tool or artifact represents the complexity, intelligence and purpose of the human designer. And when we look for evidence of a human designer, we find it. We find the design plans for the tool or the blueprints for the artifact. We find the workshop of the designer or maybe his studio. And often, we find the designer himself perhaps even in the act of designing.

However, while we find complexity, intelligence and purpose in our examination of universe — in our examination of heaven and earth — in our examination of life and human — we have not found evidence of a designer of universe — evidence of a designer of heaven and earth — evidence of a designer of life and humanity — we just haven’t found it.

Our failure to find a designer or even evidence of designer is not proof that no designer exists or even that there is no evidence of design. However, we have found complexity, intelligence and purpose and this by itself is highly meaningful to the human mind.

Humanity has used the term God to represent ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. We have used the term God to represent ‘that’ which is the source of Universe — ‘that’ which is the source of Heaven and Earth — ‘that’ which is the source of Life and Humanity.

I make no argument against the existence of God. I am in full belief that there exists ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. I am in full belief that there is a ‘source’. And I also call that source God. Let us agree then that the source of Universe — the source of Heaven and Earth — the source of Life and Humanity — is God. This agreement does not require that we define or describe God in anyway.

Evolution Does Not Prove a Godless Universe

Scientists in 2003 are as human as their fellow inhabitants of the planet, and most are just as ignorant of synergy. Sensitivity to both-and thinking requires knowledge of synergy. This is why many scientists make mistakes of ‘either/or’ thinking. They are just as caught up in the ‘evolution versus creationism’ trap. Their failure to find evidence of a designer and their desire to be ‘good’ scientists — true to their intellect — compels them to deny God. Therefore they miss the fact that to explain universe will require both God and evolution.

So let us agree to end this false argument of ‘evolution versus creationism’. Let us further agree that humanity — individual or collective — scientific or religious has no ability to limit God as to what mechanism or mechanisms the act of creation or the workings of the universe will take. The mechanisms that we discover through the careful use of the scientific method will by definition be God’s mechanisms.

Synergic Evolution —One of God’s Mechanisms

In our earlier discussions we found that life’s power is to create syntropy. This ability to ever increase order, organization, pattern, and form is a defining characteristic of life. Life evolves towards ever-increasing syntropy — ever increasing order — ever increasing organization, form, pattern, and heterogeneity.

Young’s Theory of Process explains that this transition is from simple process to complex process — from light to particles, from particles to atoms, from atoms to molecules, from molecules to plants, from plants to animals, and from animals to humans. This process of synergic evolution then is another of the defining characteristics of life. This brings us to a new definition of evolution:

Evolution—def—> The transition of process from a state of lower syntropy—order, organization, pattern, and form to a state of higher syntropy—order, organization, pattern and form.

Science in 2003 has discovered that evolution is synergic. Then the purpose of life is to evolve. To transition from a state of lower syntropy to a state of higher syntropy. Life advances through actions both small and large. And purpose is the driving force behind all actions. So purpose is found everywhere in both both small and large amounts.

Unfortunately, today many humans hold the belief that evolutionary science has refuted the very concept of ‘purpose’ in Universe. And, a universe without purpose is perhaps even more pernicious than a universe without God.

However, evolution does not prove a purposeless Universe.

Recall from our earlier discussions that reductionistic science focuses on ‘parts’, energy, and entropy. Remember entropy is the trend towards disorder that dominates the simpler processes of light, particles, atoms, and simple molecules. Reductionistic science is insensitive to ‘wholes’, synergy and syntropy. Syntropy is the trend towards order that dominates the more complex processes of complex molecules, plants, animals, and humans. Remember further that while entropy dominates simpler processes syntropy is found at every level of process. And while syntropy dominates complex processes, entropy is found at every level of process.

Reductionistic science focuses on ‘parts’ and not on ‘wholes’. Purpose is found in the ‘wholes’ and not in the ‘parts’. Reductionistic science is blind to purpose.

Evolution is a synergic phenomenon, however it was discovered and first described by Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, and Huxley. These classical scientists were of course time-binders and also bound in time. They lived and thought in the 19th century when reductionistic science ruled.

The belief that purpose cannot be found in universe is a reductionistic error that persists even today among many evolutionary scientists. Young writing in 1976 commented:

Process is defined as a series of actions or operations taken to reach an end, therefore process projects a goal. The notion of purpose or teleology is forbidden in science, among biologists especially, who, while they must be strongly tempted to invoke it at every turn, avoid it as reformed alcoholic avoids a drink. (4)

Richard Dawkins is perhaps one of today’s (2003) best living scientists. However, he is ignorant of synergy, and so makes the mistake of ‘either/or’ thinking. He is caught up in the ‘evolution versus creationism’ trap. His failure to find evidence of a designer and his desire to be a ‘good’ scientist—true to his intellect—compels him to deny God. It should therefore come as no surprise that he is an avowed atheist. However, if we step carefully to avoid his mistakes, he has much to teach us. I will quote extensively from his writings a little later, but first lets examine what he has to say about purpose:

Charles Darwin lost his faith with the help of a wasp: I cannot persuade myself, Darwin wrote, that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. … The macabre habits of the Ichneumonidae are shared by their cousins the digger wasps. … A female digger wasp not only lays her egg in a caterpillar (or grasshopper or bee) so that her larva can feed on it but, according to Fabre and others, she carefully guides her sting into each ganglion of the prey’s central nervous system, so as to paralyze it but not kill it. This way, the meat keeps fresh. It is not known whether the paralysis acts as a general anesthetic, or if it is like curare in just freezing the victim’s ability to move. If the latter, the prey might be aware of being eaten alive from inside but unable to move a muscle to do anything about it. This sounds savagely cruel but, as we shall see, nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous — indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

We humans have purpose on the brain. We find it hard to look at anything without wondering what it is for, what the motive for it is, or the purpose behind it. When the obsession with purpose becomes pathological it is called paranoia — reading malevolent purpose into what is actually random bad luck. But this is just an exaggerated form of a nearly universal delusion. Show us almost any object or process, and it is hard for us to resist the Why question — the What is it for? question.

The desire to see purpose everywhere is a natural one in an animal that lives surrounded by machines, works of art, tools and other designed artifacts: an animal, moreover, whose waking thoughts are dominated by it own personal goals. A car, a tin opener, a screw driver and a pitchfork all legitimately warrant the What is it for? question. Our pagan forebears would have asked the same question about thunder, eclipses, rocks, and streams. Today we pride ourselves on having shaken off such primitive animism. If a rock in a stream happens to serve as a convenient stepping-stone, we regard its usefulness as an accidental bonus, not a true purpose. But the old temptation comes back with a vengeance when tragedy strikes — indeed, the very word strikes is an animistic echo: Why, oh why, did the cancer/earthquake/hurricane have to strike my child? And the same temptation is often positively relished when the topic is the origin of all things or the fundamental laws of physics, culminating in the vacuous existential question Why is there something rather than nothing? …

The mere fact that it is possible to frame a question does not make it legitimate or sensible to do so. There are many things about which you can ask, What is its temperature? or What color is it? but you may not ask the temperature question or the color question of, say, jealousy or prayer. Similarly, you are right to ask the Why question of a bicycle’s mudguards or the Kariba Dam, but at the very least you have no right to assume that the Why question deserves an answer when posed about a boulder, a misfortune, Mt. Everest or the universe. Questions can be simply inappropriate, however heartfelt their framing.

Somewhere between windscreen wipers and tin openers on the one hand and rocks and the universe on the other lie living creatures. Living bodies and their organs are objects that, unlike rocks, seem to have purpose written all over them. Notoriously, of course, the apparent purposefulness of living bodies has dominated the classic Argument from Design, invoked by theologians from Aquinas to William Paley to modern scientific creationists.

The true process that has endowed wings and eyes, beaks, nesting instincts and everything else about life with the strong illusion of purposeful design is now well understood. It is Darwinian natural selection. Our understanding of this has come astonishingly recently, in the last century and a half. Before Darwin, even educated people who had abandoned Why questions for rocks, streams and eclipses still implicitly accepted the legitimacy of the Why question where living creatures were concerned. Now only the scientifically illiterate do. But only conceals the unpalatable truth that we are still talking about an absolute majority.

Actually, Darwinians do frame a kind of Why question about living things, but they do so in a special, metaphorical sense. Why do birds sing, and what are wings, for? Such questions would be accepted as a shorthand by modern Darwinians and would be given sensible answers in terms of the natural selection of bird ancestors. The illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design as a working tool. Zoologist and Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch discovered, in the teeth of strong orthodox opinion to the contrary, that some insects have true color vision. His clinching experiments were stimulated by the simple observation that bee-pollinated flowers go to great trouble to manufacture colored pigments. Why would they do this if bees were color-blind? The metaphor of purpose—more precisely, the assumption that Darwinian selection is involved—is here being used to make a strong inference about the world. It would have been quite wrong for von Frisch to have said, Flowers are colored, therefore bees must have color vision. But it was right for him to say, as he did, Flowers are colored, therefore it is at least worth my while working hard at some new experiments to test the hypothesis that they have color vision. What he found when he looked into the matter in detail was that bees have good color vision but the spectrum they see is shifted relative to ours. They can’t see red light (they might give the name infra yellow to what we call red). But they can see into the range of shorter wavelengths we call ultraviolet, and they see ultraviolet as a distinct color, sometimes called bee purple.

When he realized that bees see in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, von Frisch again did some reasoning using the metaphor of purpose. What, he asked himself, do bees use their ultraviolet sense for? His thoughts returned full circle—to flowers. Although we can’t see ultraviolet light, we can make photographic film that is sensitive to it, and we can make filters that are transparent to ultraviolet light but cut out visible light. Acting on his hunch, von Frisch took some ultraviolet photographs of flowers. To his delight, he saw patterns of spots and stripes that no human eye had ever seen before. Flowers that to us look white or yellow are in fact decorated with ultraviolet patterns, which often serve as runway markers to guide the bees to the nectaries. The assumption of apparent purpose had paid off once again: flowers, if they were well designed, would exploit the fact that bees can see ultraviolet wavelengths.

When he was an old man, von Frisch’s famous earlier work on the dance of the bees—was called into question by an American biologist named Adrian Wenner. Fortunately, von Frisch lived long enough to see his work vindicated by another American, James L. Gould, now at Princeton, in one of the most brilliantly conceived experiments of all biology. I’ll briefly tell the story, because it is relevant to my point about the power of the as if designed assumption.

Karl von Frisch had made the epoch discovery that honeybees tell each other the whereabouts of flowers by means of a carefully coded dance. If the food is very close to the hive, they do the round dance, This just excites other bees, and they rush out and search in the vicinity of the hive, not particularly remarkable. But very remarkable is what happens when the food is farther away from the hive. The forager who has discovered the food performs the so-called waggle dance, and its form and timing tell the other bees both the compass direction and the distance from the hive of the food.

Wenner and his colleagues did not deny that the dance happens. They did not even deny that it contains all the information von Frisch said it did. What they did deny is that other bees read the dance. Yes, Wenner said, it is true that the direction of the straight run of the waggle dance relative to the vertical is related to the direction of food relative to the sun. But no, other bees don’t receive this information from the dance. Yes, it is true that the rates of various things in the dance can be read as information about the distance of food. But there is no good evidence that the other bees read the information. They could be ignoring it. Von Frisch’s evidence, the skeptics said, was flawed, and when they repeated his experiments with proper controls (that is, by taking care of alternative means by which bees might find food), the experiments no longer supported von Frisch’s dance-language hypothesis.

This was where Jim Gould came into the story with his exquisitely ingenious experiments. Gould exploited a long-known fact about honeybees. Although they usually dance in the dark, relying on their gravity sense to detect differences between the direction of the dance and the straight-up direction in the vertical plane that stands as token for the sun’s direction in the horizontal plane, they will effortlessly switch to a possibly more ancestral way of doing things if you turn on a light inside the hive. They then forget all about gravity and use the lightbulb as their token sun, allowing it to determine the angle of the dance directly. Fortunately, no misunderstandings arise when the dancer switches her allegiance from gravity to the lightbulb. The other bees reading the dance switch their allegiance in the same way, so the dance still carries the same meaning: the other bees still head off looking for food in the direction the dancer intended.

Now for Jim Gould’s masterstroke. He painted a dancing bee’s eyes over with black shellac, so that she couldn’t see the lightbulb. She therefore danced using the normal gravity convention. But the other bees following her dance, not being blindfolded, could see the lightbulb. They interpreted the dance as if the gravity convention had been dropped and replaced by the lightbulb sun convention. The dance followers measured the angle of the dance relative to the light, whereas the dancer herself was aligning it relative to gravity. Gould was, in effect, forcing the dancing bee to lie about the direction of the food. Not just lie in a general sense, but lie in a particular direction that Gould could precisely manipulate. He did the experiment not with just one blindfolded bee, of course, but with a proper statistical sample of bees and variously manipulated angles. And it worked. Von Frisch’s original dance-language hypothesis was triumphantly vindicated.

I didn’t tell this story for fun. I wanted to make a point about the negative as well as the positive aspects of the assumption of good design. When I first read the skeptical papers of Wenner and his colleagues, I was openly derisive. And this was not a good thing to be, even though Wenner eventually turned out to be wrong. My derision was based entirely on the good design assumption. Wenner was not, after all, denying that the dance happened, nor that it embodied all the information von Frisch had claimed about the distance and direction of food. Wenner simply denied that the other bees read the information. And this was too much for me and many other Darwinian biologists to stomach. The dance was so complicated, so richly contrived, so finely tuned to its apparent purpose of informing other bees of the distance and direction of food. This fine tuning could not have come about, in our view, other than by natural selection. In a way, we fell into the same trap as creationists do when they contemplate the wonders of life. The dance simply had to be doing something useful, and this presumably meant helping foragers to find food. Moreover, those very aspects of the dance that were so finely tuned—the relationship of its angle and speed to the direction and distance of food—had to be doing something useful too. Therefore, in our view, Wenner just had to be wrong. So confident was I that, even if I had been ingenious enough to think of Gould’s blindfold experiment (which I certainly wasn’t), I would not have bothered to do it.

Gould not only was ingenious enough to think of the experiment but he also bothered to do it, because he was not seduced by the ‘good design’ assumption. It is a fine tightrope we are walking, however, because I suspect that Gould—like von Frisch before him, in his color research—had enough of the ‘good design’ assumption in his head to believe that his remarkable experiment had a respectable chance of success and was therefore worth spending time and effort on. (5)

And, so we see that like many evolutionary scientists Dawkins adds the denial of purpose to his denial of God. Dawkins and company are indeed walking a fine tightrope. He begins the preceding discussion with strong denial of purpose, but then almost immediately finds it necessary to qualify his denial with a number of permited exceptions to the exclusion of purpose. His reductionistic bias forces him to lock the front door to purpose, but expediency requires that he let it in the back door in a special, metaphorical sense. (6) Young could have been describing Dawkins when he said: The notion of purpose or teleology is forbidden in science, among biologists especially, who, while they must be strongly tempted to invoke it at every turn, avoid it as reformed alcoholic avoids a drink. (7)

So we see that even today 2003, Dawkins like many evolutionary biologists is under the influence of the reductionistic bias and cannot acknowledge the role of purpose in universe, and yet he invokes it at every turn, but hides it by speaking of ‘good‘ design rather than ‘purposeful‘ design.

We cannot criticize Dawkins for invoking purpose. Evolution cannot be explained without it. However, his need to deny and hide purpose is a scientific mistake resulting from his ignorance of synergy and his commitment to the reductionistic bias. Recall reductionistic science focuses on ‘parts’ and not on ‘wholes’. Purpose is found in the ‘wholes’ and not in the ‘parts’. Reductionistic science is blind to purpose.

Little Purpose

When evolutionary scientists do allow themselves to speak of purpose they are never speaking of big purpose—the ultimate purpose for the universe or the goal of Nature, or the Why of life, or the Why of humanity. To do so might require an acknowledgement of ‘God’. So when they speak of purpose—it is always of little purpose. By this I mean they are willing to admit purpose in their special, metaphorical sense. Why do birds sing, and what are wings, for? They are willing to admit purpose to explain eyes, beaks, nesting instincts, color vision in bees, and the communication dance of the bees. (8)

Synergic science focuses on ‘wholes’. And purpose is found in wholes. Synergy scientist Arthur Young lets purpose in the front door. He found purpose begins within the first stage of process — light and is found as well at all other stages of process — particles, atoms, molecules, plants, animals, and humans.

Recall from my earlier discussion of action in the basics section. We can view universe as action — universe as dynamic. Action implies motion, movement, animation — by definition process.

Now recall action, is always accompanied by two other phenomena—the reaction, and the resultant. Recall further that actions can not and do not occur in isolation. If they impinge on the environment or on others, they will effect or impact on the environment — they will effect or impact on others. The environment or other reacts at the beginning of the action. And the effect or impact on the environment or other at the end of the action produces a resultant.

Process is then action-reaction-resultant. Now recall that process is either random or controlled, and actions, reactions and resultants are also either random or controlled.

Imagine you are throwing a ball. There is a target on the wall at the end of the room. Now lets imagine you are just throwing randomly. You have no intention to hit the target. You are not avoiding the target. You are ignoring it. Perhaps to keep yourself honest you cover your eyes with a blindfold. When we analyze your throws we will discover that the few times the ball struck the target would be no more frequent then the times the ball struck any other area of equal size on the wall. This finding would correspond to the probability of a random event. This is what we would expect if you had no purpose.

Now lets imagine you are throwing a ball, and this time you are throwing with the goal of hitting the target. Your eyes are not covered and it is your intention to hit the target every time if possible. When we analyze your throws this time we discover that the ball is striking the target more frequently then it is striking other areas of equal size. This finding would correspond to the probability of a controlled event. This is what we would expect if you had purpose.

There is nothing mysterious about purpose. We can easily detect it by simply examining process to determine if a non-random pattern exists. Non-random pattern is evidence of control. Evidence of control is by definition goal seeking behavior, and that by definition requires purpose.

How do you determine if a non-random event has occurred?

This is a question that requires temporal intelligence. Events by definition occur over time. Only Time-binding intelligence can analyze process. We humans see purpose everywhere not because we are surrounded by machines, works of art, tools and other designed artifacts and not because our waking thoughts are dominated by our own personal goals. (9) But because we humans are time aware — we humans are the only class of life capable of detecting purpose.

Understanding purpose also requires perspective. Imagine you live along a road. Everyday you observe a blond man drive an automobile past your house at about 8:00 am. Later in the day the same man drives past your house again, but this time in the opposite direction and always at about 5:00 pm. This happens nearly everyday Monday through Friday. You can see that this behavior represents a non-random event. There is a regular pattern here. There is order here. You know that this pattern of behavior represents purposeful behavior. But from this perspective you can’t discover what that purpose is. You cannot answer the question, Why does the blond man drive past your house?

Now imagine one day a friend of yours picks you up in his helicopter. You are now able to observe the same man in his automobile from a different perspective. With your new ability to observe from above and to follow the man in his automobile, you soon discover that he is traveling from a nearby residence in the morning to a factory in the next town, and from that factory in the evening back to the nearby residence.

With your new perspective you can determine the purpose of the behavior that was hidden from you when you watched the road only from your house. The ability to determine purpose is dependent upon the perspective available during observation.

The history of scientific advancement can now be seen in many ways to be the result of improving perspective. The invention of telescopes and microscopes gave the observer new perspective from which to view process.

Big Purpose

Science has no answer to the the questions of who or why universe. Science has made no attempt to define or describe the source of Universe. Science seeks rather to understand how the universe works — to understand the mechanism that the source uses to create Heaven and Earth — to create Life and Human — to create the Universe itself.

Neuroscientist William H. Calvin writing in 1996 discusses the scientific how as used to try to understand human intelligence: 

Answering the how questions is often our closest approach to answering a why question. Just remember that the answers to how mechanisms come in two extreme forms, which are sometimes known as proximate and ultimate causation. Even the pros sometimes get them mixed up, only to discover that they’ve been arguing about two sides of the same coin, so I suspect that a few words of background are needed here.

When you ask, How does that work? You sometimes mean how in a short-term, mechanical sense — how does something work in one person, right now. But sometimes you mean how in a long-term transformational sense — involving a series of animal populations that change during species evolution. The physiological mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior are the proximate how; the prehistoric mechanisms that evolved our present brains are the other kind of how. You can sometimes explain in one sense without even touching upon the other sense of how. Such a false sense of completeness is, of course, a good way to get blindsided.

Furthermore, there are different levels of explanation in both cases. Physiological how questions can be asked at a number of different levels of organization. Both consciousness and intelligence are at the high end of our mental life, but they are frequently confused with more elementary mental processes — with what we use to recognize a friend or tie a shoelace. Such simpler neural mechanisms are, of course, likely to be the foundations from which our abilities to handle logic and metaphor evolved.

Evolutionary how questions also have a number of levels of explanation: just saying that a mutation did it isn’t likely to be a useful answer to an evolutionary question involving whole populations. Both physiological and evolutionary answers at multiple levels are needed if we are to understand our own intelligence in any detail. They might even help us appreciate how an artificial or an exotic intelligence could evolve — as opposed to creation from top-down design. (10)

Is Dawkins right in his belief that it is a vacuous existential question to ask Why? Is he right when he says, Before Darwin, even educated people who had abandoned Why questions for rocks, streams and eclipses still implicitly accepted the legitimacy of the Why question where living creatures were concerned. Now only the scientifically illiterate do. But only conceals the unpalatable truth that we are still talking about an absolute majority? (11)

Is Dawkins right that there is no big purpose? That nature, universe, life, and humanity have no purpose? Perhaps the absolute majority of scientifically illiterate humanity are wiser than trained evolutionary biologists when it comes to understanding purpose.

Contrary to Dawkins, I believe that it is completely legitimate to ask the Why questions. I believe there is big purpose in the universe. However, we may not yet have the necessary perspective to answer the big questions. Why Nature? Why Universe? Why life? Or, why humanity? But the lack of the necessary perspective to answer those questions does not mean that Nature, Universe, life, and humanity are without purpose.

While we humans are time-binders, and the only class of life that asks or answers questions, we have not been asking and answering questions for very long.

Modern humanity—Homo sapien sapien—only appeared on Earth 90,000 years ago, and the most ancient human civilization known began only 5500 years ago. Gutenberg only invented the printing press 543 years ago. And, the Wright brothers invented the airplane less than 100 years ago. We have only had the personal computer for 25 years. If we represented the 3.4 billion years that life has existed on Earth by a yearly calender with the beginning of life occurring on January 1st, then humanity does not appear until one minute before midnight on December 31st.

So while we humans may not yet be able to answer the big Why questions, this fact in no way invalidates those questions. We may need a better perspective. We may even have to get off the planet and explore the Universe before we have the necessary perspective to answer the big questions. … Why Nature? … Why Universe? … Why life…? And, why humanity?

Levels of Purpose

Purpose works at many levels. In my example of throwing the ball without intending to hit the target, we could say at the level of the target there was no purpose, but at level of just throwing the ball there was purpose.

Once you start looking for purpose you will find that like syntropy — it is everywhere in universe. Simple processes have simple purposes. Complex processes have complex purposes. Purpose simply implies a ‘goal’. Purposeful behavior is just goal seeking behavior.

Reductionistic science — the science of the ‘part’ has been responsible for most of the past advances in human knowledge. However it is an incomplete picture of universe. Reductionistic science suffers from an ignorance of the ‘whole’ — from an ignorance of synergy. This ignorance produces errors of ‘either/or thinking’ and ‘mixing levels of organization’. As we review the current thinking of evolutionary biology, we must step carefully to avoid these errors.

Do not view my comments as critical of Dawkins. That is not my intention. If I had lived his life and had his life experiences, I would most sincerely believe as he does. I am writing later, and I have the benefit of the synergic perspective.

However, it must be clear to the reader, I am not an athesist nor am I an agnostic. Although much of what humans call religion today is nonsense, I do believe that there exists ‘that’ in universe that is larger than ourselves. I am also in belief that there is a ‘source’ to the complexity, intelligence and purpose that we find everywhere in our examination of living universe. And, I am comfortable to call that source God. So while I share Hawkin’s disbelief in ghosts, elves, the Easter Bunny, black magic and life after death, I do believe in God.   And, while I do consider myself to hold a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist world view, I find God and Purpose quite at home in my view of Nature. 

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Sources:

1)  Michael J Behe, DARWIN’S BLACK BOX—The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996

2) Michael J Behe, DARWIN’S BLACK BOX, 1996, ibid

3)  Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company, New York-London, 1996

4) Arthur Young, The Reflexive Universe, Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1976

5)  Richard Dawkins, RIVER OUT OF EDEN—A Darwinian View Of Life, BasicBooks, New York, 1995

6)  Richard Dawkins, RIVER OUT OF EDEN—A Darwinian View Of Life, 1995, ibid

7) Arthur Young, The Reflexive Universe, 1976, ibid

Richard Dawkins, RIVER OUT OF EDEN—A Darwinian View Of Life, 1995, ibid

9) Richard Dawkins, RIVER OUT OF EDEN—A Darwinian View Of Life, 1995, ibid

10) William H. Calvin, HOW BRAINS THINK—Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now, BasicBooks/HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1996

11) Richard Dawkins, RIVER OUT OF EDEN—A Darwinian View Of Life, 1995, ibid

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From the SynEARTH Archives. The Protecting the Future series: 1) Beyond Property 2) Wealthy Beyond our Dreams 3) Synergic Trusts – Moving Beyond Property 4) Trustegrities could change our Future

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“We know how to solve our problems, we just don’t use what we know.” 

— Alfred Korzybski

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Synergic Guardians — Protecting the Future

Timothy Wilken, MD

Science fiction is a form of Time-binding. “Science fiction differs from science fantasy in that science fiction must obey the Laws of Nature.” A simple example is found in motion picture films. ≠In Gary Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy≠ we hear explosions of battle in the vacuum of Space although sound cannot be conducted in a vacuum. However, in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odessey all the scenes in space were truly silent. The film 2001 is science fiction while Star Wars is science fantasy.

The best science fiction writers are always good scientists. And the best science fiction often predicts future science. Many scientific discoveries and technologies are described in science fiction stories years or even decades before they become realities. Jules Vern, described travel from the earth to the moon in 1865 and ocean going nuclear submarines in 1869.

Issac Asimov is perhaps one of the best examples of both a great science fiction writer, and a good scientist. His interest in science and writing developed in tandem.

  

He wrote his first story when he was only 11 years old, his first published writing was a column he did for his high school newspaper. While he continued writing, Asimov also attended college and managed to graduate from Columbia University with a B.S. in Chemistry in 1939, and two years later earned his M.A. in Chemistry. He continued studying at Columbia in a Ph.D. program, but with time off for WWII, he was not awarded his Doctorate in Biochemistry until May 1948. During this same period, he also managed to write 36 science fiction stories.

Asimov is most famous for his Robot stories. Asimov’s Robots were something very special. They could take any form, from a small household appliance to large space craft carrying tens of thousands of human travelers. Their most common form however was humiform. Examples of humiform robots are seen in recent science fiction movies. Most notably 3CPO the intergalactic translator in Gary Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy, Arnold Swartzenegger’s performances as terminators in James Cameron’s The Terminator films, Brent Spiner’s performances as Lt. Commander Data in Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek — The Second Generation, and most recently Robin Williams’ performance of The Bicentennial Man based on an original Asimov story.

 

Asimov’s robots were highly intelligent, spoke and understood all human languages, were highly mobile, physically strong and enormously powerful. They were awesome machines. If they had wanted to hurt human beings they could have in an eyeblink. But Asimov’s robots never wanted to hurt humans. Their powerful “positronic” brains were constrained by the Three Laws of Robotics. These laws first appeared in print in 1942 as follows.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (1942)

1) A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Here we see that Asimov’s First Law of Robotics contains the commitment to helping. Not only must the robot not injure a human being it must protect the human being from harm. This is a requirement for helping. His Second Law of Robotics states again that the Robot must help human beings by obeying their orders. In Asimov’s stories the robots were often owned by the human beings they served. Asimov’s robots were almost always very decent and caring individuals, while their owner’s were often only too human. The robots were treated in the best of circumstances as respected and valuable friends, and in the worst as victims and slaves.

Asimov’s robot stories were remarkably interesting and intelligent. He fully explored the ramifications resulting when his robot’s intelligence evolved to a point that it equaled human intelligence and finally surpassed it.

Writing in 1942, Issac Asimov described a futurescape, where Robots had been invented in 2007. He invented the Three Laws Of Robotics to insure that this servant class of robots were safe to be with human beings. His futurescape spanned 6 decades and by 2064, positronic robots governed by the three laws of robotics were a widespread and common phenomena on Earth. They were especially important in humanity’s expansion into space and the colonization of other planets.

Forty-five years later, Asimov was still writing robot stories, but things had changed.

Twelve centuries had passed in his imagined futurescape, the science of robotics had progressed as rapidly as Moore’s Law drives computer design on Earth today. Robots were smaller more intelligent and could be made to look exactly like humans. Theoretically, a robot’s lifespan was unlimited. Robots had an endless opportunity to learn and to think about what they had learned. They were more intelligent than most humans, and their long life experiences meant they were usually much wiser.

It became obvious that the laws of robotics needed to be advanced as well. Asimov rose to the occasion by creating an additional or fourth law of Robotics. It was called the Zeroth Law because although it was created fourth chronologically, it was logically the First Law.

Asimov’s Four Laws of Robotics (1985)

0) A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1) A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2) A robot must obey orders given it by a human being, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth and First Laws.

3) A robot must protect its own existence except where that would conflict with the Zeroth, First or Second Laws.

Robots in Asimov’s earlier stories then became known as 3-Law Robots in contrast to these new more powerful 4-Law Robots.

 

Recall that Asimov’s First Law of Robotics contains the commitment to helping. Not only must the robot not injure a human being it must protect the human being from harm. This is a requirement for helping. His Second Law of Robotics states again that the Robot must help human beings by obeying their orders. Thus within the original Three Laws of Robotics, we see a strong commitment to helping humans. This commitment to helping is expanded with the Zeroth Law.

As 20,000 year old 4-Law Robot Daneel Olivaw explained:

“The Zeroth Law is a corollary of the First Law, for how can a human being best be kept from injury, if not by ensuring that human society in general is protected and kept functioning?”

The Zeroth Law of Robotics introduced the concept of responsibility to and for the entire human species. Now Asimov’s robots were required not only to care for and protect the individual human beings that owned them, but also to protect all human beings and by extension the ecosystem and the earth itself.

Protecting Humanity

Asimov’s Four Laws of Robotics can serve as the basis for developing a code for the Synergic Guardians of the Trustegrities. We can eliminate Asimov’s Second law which does not apply since humans are not property and cannot be slaves, and we can elimate the Third law as redundant since a Synergic Guardian is a human being and so is protected by the First law. This leaves us with only two laws necessary to protect humanity as community and humanity as individuals.

• A Synergic Guardian may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

• A Synergic Guardian may not injure an individual human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First Law. 

The Needs of the Many

In Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek,  Mr. Spock, the Vulcan Science Officer from a race ruled by logic, would remind his shipmates that: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one.”

 

The human body is a community of 40 trillion individual cells. The individual cells are organized synergically to be interdependent upon each other. They cannot separate themselves from the body as community. The survival of the cells depends on the survival of the body. The needs and safety of the body precedes the needs and safety of the individual cells. Sometimes individual cells are injured or even sacrificed to protect and insure the survival of the body as a whole. The needs and safety of the community of cells takes precedence over the needs and safety of the cells as individuals.

With the discovery that humanity is an interdependent species comes the realization that we humans can no longer separate ourselves from community. Humanity as community is larger and contains humanity as individuals. The needs and safety of humanity as community must precede the needs and safety of humanity as individuals.

Our present culture based on the false premise of human independence often places individual needs and safety over community needs and safety. This will shift dramatically in a synergic culture.

The first law of the of the Guardian Trust Code commits to protect Humanity as Community. The second law commits to protect Humanity as Individuals. This represents a major shift in human values from today’s focus with the individual as primary to tomorrow’s focus with community as primary.

While the Trustegrity Guardians are responsible for the safety of both humanity as community and humanity as individuals, the needs and safety of community take precedent over the needs and safety of individuals.

This does not suggest a casual attitude towards the rights of individuals. Trustegrity Guardians may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would cause injury to humanity as a whole — except where that would cause injury to humanity as community. When an adversary event presents no risk to humanity as community then the Trustegrity Guardians’ first responsibility is to the safety of the individual. 

The Bigger Picture

Within synergic community, it is understood that actions that injure the EARTH and environement—the natural resources, fertile soils, waters, minerals, ores, metals, and the very air we breathe—also injures humanity.

 

It is understood that actions that injures LIFE—the plants and animals and the biodiversity of all non-human Life—also injures humanity.

  

It is understood that actions than injures the wealth produced by human action—whether in the form of Time-binding Trust or Property of living humans—also injures humanity.

  

Therefore, synergic community desires the protection of  all Synergic Wealth:

1) the Earth Trust—the planet and all natural resources,

2) the Life Trust—All plants, animals and humans,

3) the Time-binding Trust—the accumulated ‘knowing’ from the time-binding of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology,

4) Human Action—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property of Living Humans 

5) Human Leverage—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property of living humans.

This then forms the basis for a code of behavior for the Synergic Guardians of the Trustegrities.

Code of the Synergic Guardians

1) A Synergic Guardian may not injure the EARTH or, through inaction, allow the EARTH to come to harm.

2) A Synergic Guardian may not injure LIFE or, through inaction, allow LIFE to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First Law. 

3) A Synergic Guardian may not injure HUMANITY or, through inaction, allow HUMANITY to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

4) A Synergic Guardian may not injure an individual HUMAN, or through inaction, allow an individual HUMAN to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First, Second or Third Laws. 

5) A Synergic Guardian may not injure the Time-binding Trust and/or Primary or Secondary Property, or through inaction, allow the Time-binding Trust and/or Primary or Secondary Property to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First, Second, Third or Fourth Laws.  

Best of the Best

The Synergic Trustegrities will seek to attract the best of the best as candidates for Trustegrity Guardianship. Once selected these Trustegrity Guardians would have greater trusteeship privileges with concomitant authority and responsibilities for and to the Synergic Trustegrities. Once selected Trustegrity Guardians can serve in one of the three branches of the Synergic Trustegrities — the Earth Trust, the Life Trust, or the Time-binding Trust.

Trustegrity Guardian Candidates should have repeatedly demonstrated both personal and public honesty, and should have a history demonstrating synergic morality and behavior. In the future, Universities will offer degrees in Trustegrity and Guardian Science to prepare those young humans to desire to serve Humanity as Community. A careful selection process will be developed to select the very best which could include Trustegrity Guardian Academies.

Synergic Guardians of the Trustegritys

Recall the Trustegrities are structured using the principles and mechanism of the Organizational Tensegrity. Decisions are made in heterarchy using synergic consensus. Loss within the organization is eliminated with the synergic veto. Action is carried out by negotiated hierarchical. This eliminates conflict. The three trustegrities would work together. They would be guided by Humanity as Community using Synocracy.

The Earth Trust Guardians would protect and preserve the Earth Trust including the Earth and all natural resources. The Trust would be administered to best serve present and future humanity. 

The Life Trust Guardians would protect the Life Trust including all living systems — all life forms — this includes all humans, all animals, and all plants.

And, thirdly the Time-binding Trust Guardians would protect and preserve the Time-binding Trust — the accumulated “knowing” from the lives and actions of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology. Because of their committment to protecting all who have lived and who have died, they also protect the new  ”knowing” of  humanity — the Intellectual Property of  living humans.

Synergic Guardians are not allowed to hurt anyone through their control of the Synergic Trusts. But in addition they are required to protect and conserve the Synergic Trusts. Further, they are required to help others and to insure that all humans have the basic needs of life —both survival and meaning. This is a binding obligation. Failure to meet these obligations results in the immediate loss of Synergic Trustee privileges. 
  
They will protect and conserve the Earth and the natural resources — including both the renewable resources — soils, water, and minerals — and the nonrenewable resources — coal, petroleum, natural gas, metals and other mineral ores.

They will protect Life — plant, animal and human.  

The Life and Earth Trusts are finite and fragile. Once a species of plant or animal becomes extinct, it is lost forever. Once our nonrenewable resources are consumed they are lost forever. And even the renewable resources can be damaged by careless use. And once damaged, they may not be repairable.

The Synergic Trustegrities hold all land and all the natural resources including native plants and wildlife in synergic trust. Land and natural resources cannot be owned. Land may leased as living sites for individuals and families. Land may be invested as production sites for manufacturing and commerce and earn revenue shares on behalf of the Trust. Natural resources may be invested in synergic production if it serves the interests of humanity as community and public welfare. Such investment would earn revenue shares on behalf of the Synergic Trustegrities.

The revenues the Synergic Trustegrities receive from their leases and investments are used not only to protect and preserve the synergic trusts, but also to help others.

The Synergic Guardians accept as their primary responsibility the protection of humanity as community and humanity as individual. They will seek to ensure that all humans are safe from crime and war; that all humans have access to shelter, nutrition, medical care, and education. They will further accept responsibilty for the provision of good care and life support for all humans in need — children and adults — the ill and injured, the poor and destitute, and the homeless.

On behalf of the Earth Trustegrity, they will provide:

1) Access to land and natural resources for personal use at minimal or no cost, and

2) Access to land and natural resources for synergic production with appropriate charges payable to the Earth Trustegrity in lease or rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares. All rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares are entrusted to the Synergic Trustegrities for Humanity as Community.

On behalf of the Life Trustegrity, they will provide:

3) Safety from crime and war, and full access to:

4) Comfortable, safe, healthy housing.

5) Good nutritious food

6) Good preventitive health services and comprehensive cradle to grave medical care, and access to the privilege of Reproduction based on fairness, equality, and mutual benefit to both humanity as Individuals and humanity as Community. This would include monitoring administrating, adjudicating the Trust privilege of Reproduction.

7) Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for personal use at minimum or no cost.

Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for synergic production with approriate charges payable to the Life Trustegrity in rental fees, licensing fees and/or revenue shares. All payments made are entrusted to the Synergic Trustegrites for Humanity as Community.

On behalf of the Time-binding Trustegrity, they will provide:

9) Full education to an individual’s ability and interest regardless of age,

10) The opportunity to participate in synergic organization and invest their action and leverage to earn revenue shares and acquire property throughout their full lifetime.

11) Access to communication with humanity as individuals and to humanity as community for personal reasons, for synergic production and consumption, and for synergic consensus utilizing Unanimous Rule Democracy.

12) Protection of the intellectual discoveries and inventions of Time-binding whether they be in the Time-binding Trust, or the Intellectual Property of living humans. 
 

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The SafeEARTH series. See: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment, 2) Synergic Containment: Protecting Children, 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community and 5) Synergic Disarmament—Wisdom, we shouldn’t have!

Also see Reaction to Synergic Containment.

From the SynEARTH Archives. The Protecting the Future series: 1) Beyond Property 2) Wealthy Beyond our Dreams 3) Synergic Trusts – Moving Beyond Property

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Trustegrities could change our Future

Timothy Wilken, MD

It must now be obvious to the reader, that most of human wealth is a gift and cannot be claimed as property by any individual or group of individuals. I have divided this gift into three categories — the Earth Trust, the Life Trust and the Time-binding Trust.

I propose the creation of synergic trustee organizations charged with the responsibility to protect, conserve and administer the synergic trusts for the benefit of all humanity — both the living and the unborn. This organization could make use of the Organizational Tensegrity synergic mechanism which utilizes synergic consensus and the synergic veto to elimnate conflict. These Synergic Trust Organizational Tensegrities will simply be called the “Trustegrities”. The Trustegrities could form the basis for a synergic government in the future. They could perform all the positive functions of present government with none of the negative consequences. The Trustegrities would exist to serve humanity as community as well as humanity as individual.

The Trustegrities will be three with separate but complimentary missions in service to humankind. 

The Earth Trustegrity will provide:

1) Access to land and natural resources for personal use at minimal or no cost, and

2) Access to land and natural resources for synergic production with appropriate charges payable to the Earth Trustegrity in lease or rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares. All rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares are entrusted to the Earth Trustegrity for Humanity as Community.

The Life Trustegrity will provide:

3) Safety from crime and war, and full access to:

4) Comfortable, safe, healthy housing.

5) Good nutritious food

6) Good preventitive health services and comprehensive cradle to grave medical care, and access to the privilege of Reproduction based on fairness, equality, and mutual benefit to both humanity as Individuals and humanity as Community. This would include monitoring administrating, adjudicating the Trust privilege of Reproduction.

7) Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for personal use at minimum or no cost.

Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for synergic production with approriate charges payable to the Life Trustegrity in rental fees, licensing fees and/or revenue shares. All payments made are entrusted to the Earth Trustegrity for Humanity as Community.

The Time-binding Trustegrity will provide:

9) Full education to an individual’s ability and interest regardless of age,

10) The opportunity to participate in synergic organization and invest their action and leverage to earn revenue shares and acquire property throughout their full lifetime.

11) Access to communication with humanity as individuals and to humanity as community for personal reasons, for synergic production and consumption, and for synergic consensus utilizing Unanimous Rule Democracy.

12) Protection of the intellectual discoveries and inventions of Time-binding whether they be in the Time-binding Trust, or the Property of living humans.

Funding the Synergic Trustegrities

Future Positive was established to help humanity transition from the present adversary-neutral political-economic mechanisms dominating human life in 2002 to synergic alternative mechanisms available in a Synergic Future. In such a future the entire human species could be organized as a single organization, then there would be no need for politics, economics, or even money. Certainly the forty trillion cells in the synergic organization which comprise our bodies do quite well without politics, economics or money.

As I said earlier, if we humans synergically reorganized, we could all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. If we were to take all the wealth on planet Earth today, 2002 and divide it equally among the 6+ billions of us living on the planet, we would discover to our surprise and amazement that every man, woman, and child is a billionaire. There would never be any need for humans to earn their livings again. With synergic reorganization, and careful utilization of the Earth, Life and Time-binding Trusts, the Earth could comfortably support all of humanity. And this is without any need to damage or degrade our environment.

Our Time-binding Trust is so enormously powerful and gives those of us living today such enormous leverage that it is scientifically possible to solve all our human problems and meet all of our needs.

We humans are bound to the Earth, and our individual fates are linked together — we share a common fate. We can survive and prosper together as a unified species, or we can perish as individuals fighting and fleeing like the animals. There is no separate peace and no separate solutions.

All the land and all the natural resources of the Earth are needed for our species to survive. They cannot be held and used to serve any individual or group of individuals. The land and natural resources are not property, they cannot be owned by anyone. They are a Trust to be shared and carefully utilized by all living humans. They are a Trust to be conserved for all yet unborn humanity. 

“Men did not make the earth…. It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property…. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.”

…..Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

“Ground rents are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.” 

…..Tom Paine (1737 – 1809)

“The land, the earth God gave man for his home, sustenance, and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society, or unfriendly government, any more than the air or water.”

…..Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

 

Henry George

The American writer, Henry George published Progress and Poverty in 1879, in which he made one of the first arguments for the common ownership of land by all people. He seriously argued for the full return of the land to humanity as community. He even suggested a mechanism for that transition. Here in his own words:

“There is but one way to remove an evil and that is to remove its cause. To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands they should be, the full earnings of the labourer, we must substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil, in nothing else is there the slightest hope.

“But this is a truth which, in the present state of society, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, therefore, to meet the objections of those who, even when driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be practically applied.

“In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to a new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by subtraction and multiplication by division, so may we, by testing the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correctness of our conclusions as to the cause of the evil.

“The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the remedy to which we have been led is the true one, it must be consistent with justice; it must be practicable of application; it must accord with the tendencies of social development and it must harmonize with other reform.

“I propose to show that this simple measure is not only easy of application, but that it is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as modern progress goes on, arise from the greater and greater inequality in the distribution of wealth—that it will substitute equality for inequality, plenty for want, justice for injustice, social strength for social weakness, and will open the way to grander and nobler advances of civilization.

“But a question of method remains. How shall we do it?

“We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, declaring all land public property, and letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under such conditions as would sacredly guard the private right to improvements.

“Thus we should secure, in a more complex state of society, the same equality of rights that in a ruder state were secured by equal partitions of the soil and, by giving the use of the land to whoever could procure the most from it, we should secure the greatest production.

“But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not seem to me the best.

“To do that would involve a needless shock to present customs and habits of thought—which is to be avoided.

“To do that would involve a needless extension of governmental machinery—which is to be avoided.

“It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful founders of tyranny have understood and acted upon, that great changes can best be brought about under old forms. We, who would free men, should heed the same truth. It is the natural method. When nature would make a higher type, she takes a lower one and develops it. This is the law also of social growth. Let us work by it. With the current we may glide fast and far. Against it, it is hard pulling and slow progress.

“I do not propose either the purchase or the confiscation of private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.

“Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that the state should bother with the letting of lands. It is not necessary that any new machinery should be created. The machinery already exists. Instead of extending it, all we have to do is to simplify and reduce it. By making use of this existing machinery, we may, without jar or shock, assert the common right to land by taking rent for public uses.

“We already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make some changes in our modes of taxation to take it all.

“Therefore, what I propose is—to appropriate rent by taxation.

“In form, the ownership of land would remain just as now. No owner of land need be dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being taken by the state in taxes, land, no matter in whose name it stood or in what parcels it was field, would be really common property, and every member of the community would participate in the advantages of its ownership.

“Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values, must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other taxes, we may put the proposition into practical form by proposing to abolish all taxation save that upon land values.

“As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning of society nothing, but as society develops by the increase of population and the advance of the arts, it becomes greater and greater. Hence it will not be enough merely to place all taxes upon the value of land. It will be necessary, where rent exceeds the present governmental revenues, to increase commensurately the amount demanded in taxation, and to continue this increase as society progresses and rent advances. But this is so natural and easy a matter, that it may be considered as involved, or at least understood, in the proposition to put an taxes on the value of land.

“Wherever the idea of concentrating all taxation upon land values finds lodgment sufficient to induce consideration, it invariably makes way, but there are few of the classes most to be benefited by it, who at first, or even for a long time afterwards, see its full significance and power. It is difficult for working-men to get over the idea that there is a real antagonism between capital and labour. It is difficult for small farmers and homestead owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the value of land would be to tax them unduly. It is difficult for both classes to get over the idea that to exempt capital from taxation would be to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. These ideas spring from confused thought. But behind ignorance and prejudice there is a powerful interest, which has hitherto dominated literature, education and opinion. A great wrong always dies hard, and the great wrong which in every civilized country condemns the masses of men to poverty and want will not die without a bitter struggle.

—

 “It is impossible for anyone to study Political Economy, or to think at all upon the production and distribution of wealth, without seeing that property in land differs from property in things of human production.

“This is admitted, either expressly or tacitly, in every standard work on Political Economy, but in general only by vague admission or omission. Attention is in general called away from the truth, as a lecturer on moral philosophy in a slave-holding community might call away attention from too close a consideration of the natural rights of men; and private property in land is accepted without comment, as an existing fact, or is assumed to be necessary to the proper use of land and the existence of the civilized state.

“The consideration that seems to cause hesitation is the idea that having permitted land to be treated as private property for so long, we should in abolishing it be doing a wrong to those who have been suffered to base their calculations upon its permanence; that having permitted land to be held as rightful property we should by the resumption of common rights be doing injustice to those who have purchased it with what was unquestionably their rightful property.

“Thus it is held that if we abolish private property in land, justice requires that we should fully compensate those who now possess it, as the British government, in abolishing the purchase and sale of military commissions, felt itself bound to compensate those who held commissions which they had purchased in the belief that they could sell them again; or as, in abolishing slavery in the British West Indies, the sum of 20,000,000 pounds was paid to the slaveholders.

“Herbert Spencer wrote in Social Statics, published in 1864 “Had we to deal with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short work of the matter.”

“Why not make short work of the matter anyhow? This robbery is not like theft of a horse or a sum of money that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery that goes on every day and every hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent is drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is a toll levied upon labour constantly and continuously. Every blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the steam engine, pays its tribute. It levies upon the earnings of those men who, deep underground, risk their lives, and of those who over white surges hang to reeling masts. It robs the shivering, of warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, of medicine; the anxious, of peace. It debases, and embrutes, and embitters. It crowds families of eight and ten into a single squalid room. It makes lads who might be useful men candidates for prisons and penitentiaries. It sends greed and all evil passions prowling through society as a hard winter drives the wolves to the abodes of men. It darkens faith in the human soul, and across the reflection of a just and merciful Creator draws the veil of a hard, and blind, and cruel fate.

“It is not merely a robbery in the past; it is a robbery in the present—a robbery that deprives of their birthright the infants that are now coming into the world. Why should we hesitate about making short work of such a system? Because you were robbed yesterday and the day before, and the day before that, is that any reason why you should suffer yourself to be robbed today and tomorrow? Any reason why you should conclude that the robber has acquired a vested right to rob you?

“If the land belong to the people, why continue to permit landowners to take the rent, or compensate them in any manner for the loss of rent? Consider what rent is. It does not arise spontaneously from land; it is due to nothing that the landowners have done. It represents a value created by the whole community. Let the landholders have, if you please, all that the possession of the land would give them in the absence of the rest of the community. But rent, the creation of the whole community, necessarily belongs to the whole community.

“The common law we are told is the perfection of reason, and certainly the landowners cannot complain of its decision, for it has been built up by and for landowners. Now what does the law allow to the innocent possessor when the land for which he paid his money is adjudged to belong rightfully to another? Nothing at all.
“The law simply says: “The land belongs to A, let the Sheriff put him in possession!” It gives the innocent purchaser of a wrongful title no claim, it allows him no compensation. And not only this, it takes from him all the improvements that he has in good faith made upon the land.

“You may have paid a high price for land, making every exertion to see that the title is good; you may have held it in undisturbed possession for years without thought or hint of an adverse claimant; made it fruitful by your toil or erected upon it a costly building of greater value than the land itself, or a modest home in which you hope, surrounded by the fig trees you have planted and the vines you have dressed, to pass your declining days. Yet if Quirk, Gammon and Snap can mouse out a technical flaw in your parchments or hunt up some forgotten heir who never dreamed of his rights, not merely the land, but all your improvements, may be taken away from you. And not merely that. According to the common law, when you have surrendered the land and given up your improvements, you may be called upon to account for the profits you derived from the land during the time you had it.

“Now if we were to apply to this case of The People v. The Landowners the same maxims of justice that have been formulated by landowners into law, and are applied every day in English and American courts to disputes between man and man, we should not only not think of giving the landholders any compensation for the land, but should take all the improvements and whatever else they might have as well.

“But I do not propose, and I do not suppose that anyone else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the people resume ownership of the rent of land. Let the landowners retain their improvements and personal property in secure possession.

“And in this measure of justice would be no oppression, no injury to any class. The great cause of the present unequal distribution of wealth, with the suffering, degradation and waste that it entails, would be swept away. Even landholders would share in the general gain. The gain of even the large landholders would be a real one. The gain of the small landholders would be enormous. For in welcoming justice, men welcome the handmaid of Love. Peace and Plenty follow in her train, bringing their good gifts, not to some, but to all.”

Henry George was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1839, the Earth’s human population had just passed 1,000,000,000 individuals. It is one hundred and twenty years since Henry George wrote his book Progress and Poverty. Since then the Earth’s human population has increased six times.

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action≠if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action≠we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth.

The wealth represented by the land and water, native plants and wildlife, chemical, mineral, and metal natural resources is so enormous that when it is rescued from the plunderers and returned to the Synergic Trust to benefit every human it will easily sustain the needs of all humanity.

The Synergic Trusts would make Land and Natural Resources available to individuals and organizations. The Trustegrity could be funded entirely by rent receipts from the lease and utilization of Land, and from the licensing fees and revenue shares it receives for use of Natural Resources from the Life and Earth Trusts. This leasing of land and licensing of renewable natural resources would provide the revenue base for all of the beneficial services to humanity as community and to humanity as individuals.

Basic shelter, food, education and medical care would supplied without charge to individual humanity.

Only those individuals wanting to use land and natural resources for synergic production would pay appropriate charges payable to the Earth Trustegrity in lease or rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares. Only those individuals wanting to use animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for synergic production would pay approriate charges payable to the Life Trustegrity in rental fees, licensing fees and/or revenue shares.

Only those making non-personal  use of the Earth and Life Trusts are charged fees and/or revenue shares. The rents and licensing fees charged by the Trustegrity and paid to the Synergic Trusts are not taxes, since the rentor or licensee is recieving valuable access to and use of the Earth, Natual Resources, Plants and Animals, wealth belonging to Present and Future Humanity as Community in exchange for the fees and revenue shares that they pay.

Thus the Trustegrities would abolish all taxation.

 

To be continued …

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The SafeEARTH series. See: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment, 2) Synergic Containment: Protecting Children, 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community and 5) Synergic Disarmament—Wisdom, we shouldn’t have!

Also see Reaction to Synergic Containment.

From the SynEARTH Archives. The Protecting the Future series: 1) Beyond Property 2) Wealthy Beyond our Dreams

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The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action — if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action — we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth. If majority rule democracy is obsolete and no longer the best system of human government, what other things do we believe that are equally wrong? In part one of this series, I wrote:

Truth #1—Possessions are not necessarily property.

The possession of an object does not mean that the possessor has a moral or rational claim to ownership of the object. The political, economic, and social structures of our present world are all based on our concept of ‘property’ and property rights. If we define property as those possessions that were acquired by 1) either paying a fair price in a free market to the rightful owner, or 2) that which is produced by the mind and hands of the owner. Using this definition, most of today’s possessions are plunder and not property. In today’s world plunder is common and property is rare.

Truth # 2—The majority of human wealth is a gift.

The vast majority of human wealth is a gift free for the taking, and cannot be morally or rationally claimed as property by any individual.

The land and natural resources are wealth provided to us by God and Nature. The sunshine, air, water, land, minerals, and the earth itself all come to us freely. The Earth’s land and natural resources are not products of the human mind or body. They existed long before humankind emerged on our planet. There exists no moral or rational basis for any individual to claim them as Property.

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Synergic Trusts – Moving Beyond Property 

Timothy Wilken, MD

The collective term we humans use to describe what we value is ‘wealth’. Synergic wealth is that which supports life for self and others.  Synergic Wealth comes in two forms: Synergic Trust and Property.

Synergic Trust — wealth that comes to us as a gift

This includes the Life Trust — life itself, the plants and animals which are a gift from God, and Nature, and our human bodies which are a gift from God, Nature, and our Parents.

It includes the Earth Trust — the sunshine, air, water, land, minerals, the earth itself all of which come to us freely. This wealth is provided to us by God and Nature.

And, thirdly it includes the Time-binding Trust — the accumulated ‘knowing’ from the time-binding of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology. It is the Time Trust that forms the basis of all human progress.

We humans are the beneficiaries then of three major trusts — the Life Trust, the Earth Trust and the Time-binding Trust. We, humans can not and do not own these trusts. They are not derived of our lives. They are not the product of our mind or labor. We have not paid for them. There is no moral or rational basis for us to claim ownership. They are not property.

If we wish to use and control these trusts, then we must act as trustees, and then only if we act responsibly. As responsible trustees, we must preserve and protect these trusts. We must act as conservationists.

“Conservation is the sustainable use of natural resources—soils, water, plants, animals, and minerals. The natural resources of any area constitute its basic capital, and wasteful use of those resources constitutes an economic loss. From the aesthetic viewpoint, conservation also includes the maintenance of national parks, wilderness areas, historic sites, and wildlife.

“Natural resources are of two main types, renewable and nonrenewable. Renewable resources include wildlife and natural vegetation of all kinds. The soil itself can be considered a renewable resource, although severe damage is difficult to repair because of the slow rate of soil-forming processes. The natural drainage of waters from the watershed of a region can be maintained indefinitely by careful management of vegetation and soils, and the quality of water can be controlled through pollution control.

“Nonrenewable resources are those that cannot be replaced or that can be replaced only over extremely long periods of time. Such resources include the fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) and the metallic and other ores.”

The Life and Earth Trusts are perishable. They do not belong to us. We must protect them for our children, and for all future children. The Time-binding Trust is less susceptible to damage by the user. Using knowledge or technology designs does not diminish their future value, but it must also be used responsibly. We must not hurt others with any trusts that we control. In fact, we should help others to whatever the extent we are capable.

All humans are trustees. We are of course the Life Trustees of our own bodies. We should take good care of ourselves. Take care with our health and nutrition. We are also the Time-binding Trustees of all the knowledge and skills that we personally have mastered from our study of the past. We must strive not to hurt others with this knowledge and skill. We should try and help others to whatever extent we are capable.

TRUST—def—> Wealth provided as a gift — The Life Trust includes our bodies as provided by God, Nature, and our Parents in addition to all other forms of life — the plants and animals provided by God and Nature. The Earth Trust includes the Earth itself and all Natural Resources provided by God and Nature. And, the Time-binding Trust includes all the accumulated knowing and technology from the mental and physical labor of all those humans who lived and died before us. These three trusts can be referred to together as the Synergic Trusts.

In our present Adversary-Neutral Culture with its Pseudo-Independence, it is to common to boast that “I don’t owe anybody anything.” This could hardly be farther from the truth. Without our gifts from the Synergic Trust, we humans would have nothing, not even our lives. Without the gifts from the Time Trust, we would achieve nothing, each generation trapped at the subsistence level of the animal fighting and flighting to survive.

The scientific reality is that we humans owe nearly everything we are or have to God, Nature, and those humans who have lived and died before us. We are dependent on others. And sometimes others can depend on us. We humans are the Interdependent class of life.

Because Trusts are not property, control of Trust is a privilege and not a right. In synergic culture, humans may control Trusts as long as they exercise Synergic Responsibility.

Synergic Responsibility—def—>

1) Trustees must help others through their control and use of the Synergic Trusts.

2) Trustees should not hurt others through their control and use of the Synergic Trusts.

3) Trustees should preserve and protect the Synergic Trusts they use and control. They should not damage the Synergic Trusts.

Synergic Responsibilty is an obigation that is incurred by all Trustees of the Synergic Trusts. Any Trustee who violates their Synergic Responsibilities would lose their Trustee privileges.

Synergic Trusts are a gift for all humanity both the living and those waiting to be born. They must be shared equitably and in perpetuity. Synergic Trusts and the mechanisms to preserve, protect and administer them for the benefit and and weal of all humanity must be developed now. They will play a crucial role in a synergic future. This role will be explained in much detail in a later chapter. But first we must talk of that form of wealth called property.

 

The Proper Role of Property

I explained that most human wealth is a gift and cannot be owned. As such it is a mistake to call this form of wealth property. Therefore, I coined the term “Synergic Trust” to represent wealth received as a gift. However, some wealth is property.

Property — wealth that we earn with our action and/or our leverage

Action is how most humans earn their livings today. We work for salaries using either the action of our bodies, or solve problems using the actions of our minds. Our understanding of Time-binding has revealed that thinking is the most powerful form of human action. Many of us earn our livings today by thinking.

Tools allow humans to lever the power of their action. Humans are tool users and tool makers. If I am a skilled tool user I can sell my actions to serve others with my skills. If I am a skilled tool maker, I can sell the tools I make to give other leverage increase the effectiveness of their action. Thinking can produce ideas and discoveries which lead to hypotheses and theories which lead to technology designs which allows us to build technology artifacts or tools which leverages action further.

Property is synergic wealth created by human action and leverage.

Property is not received as a gift, but is that which is earned by the labor of mind or body. Property is owned by the individual acting and the individual providing the leveraging.

Now let’s examine Volitional Scientist Andrew J. Galambos’ definition of property with my annotated comments in colored font:

“Property is individual man’s life and all non-procreative derivatives of his life.

“Property is the basis of ownership because to own means to have and hold Property. From the definition of Property, it follows that man must first own his life before he can own anything else. Life itself is defined as primordial Property.

I define the human body and the spark of life itself to be part of the Life Trust. Our bodies and life itself is a gift from God, Nature, and our Parents. As the Life Trustees of our own bodies and life itself, we owe some responsibility to God, Nature, and to our Parents. This obviously has some implications for how we use or abuse our bodies.

However, I can agree that human actions and human behaviors can be considered property, and since our lives are mostly determined by our actions and our behaviors it would follow that our lives can be considered to be our property. Galambos continues:

“No one may own any man but himself. Thus, Property excludes slavery at the outset.

“The first derivatives of man’s life are his thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and ideas are defined as primary Property.

“From the definition, man owns primary Property and, through this ownership, intellectual freedom arises and inspires knowledge and production. From primary Property (ideas) stem actions.”

Galambos’ concept of primary property legitimizes the concept of intellectual property rights, and forms the rational basis for ownership of one’s actions. Galambos continues:

“Ownership of one’s own actions (clearly a Property right) is commonly called liberty. Liberty, then, as well as life itself, is a Property right. Since all so-called human rights depend upon man’s liberty, it follows that all human rights are Property rights. There can be no conflict!”

Property rights come with Property Responsibilites. I agree with Galambos that you should not injure other while exercising your property rights. But synergic responsibilty goes further in that you are encouraged to use your property to help others.

Synergic Trust privileges come with Synergic Trustee Responsibilities which are even greater than Property Resonsibilities. Here again, you should not hurt others while controlling a trust, but in addition you must help others. Helping others is a requirement of Guardian Trustee responsibility. In addition, Guardian Trustees are bound to protect and preserve the Synergic Trust. Galambos continues:

“Ideas and actions produce further, or secondary, derivatives. These include the access to and use of land.”

Access to land and other natural resources are controlled by the Earth Trust in a synergic culture. One can gain control over land and natural resources, but only with acceptance of Synergic Responsibility—you cannot hurt anyone, and you must help others to the extent possible. In addition, one must act as a good conservationist you cannot damage or pollute the land. Galambos continues:

“Other secondary derivatives include the production, utilization, enjoyment, and disposal of material, tangible goods of all kinds from ash trays to television sets, from log cabins to skyscrapers, from oxcarts to jet planes.”

Complex secondary derivatives such as television sets, skyscrapers, and jet planes contain significant amounts knowlege and technology from the Time Trust. In synergic culture all humans are free to make use the Time Trust and incorporate our inherited ‘knowing’ into their products as long as their use of the trust does not hurt anyone. For example in synergic culture, it is immoral to use the knowledge of physics to make weapons. Galambos continues:

“These are called secondary Property. They are secondary both logically and chronologically. In all instances, their existence is antedated by primary Property which led to their generation and employment.”

Alfred Korzybski makes a similar distinction to primary and secondary property with his discussion of two kinds of wealth:

“We have seen that the term wealth, rightly understood, means the fruit of the time-binding work of humanity. Wealth is of two kinds: one is material; the other is knowledge. Both kinds have use-value. The first kind perishes—the commodities composing it deteriorate and become useless. The other is permanent in character; it is imperishable; it may be lost or forgotten but it does not wear out.

“The one is limited in time; the other, unlimited in time; the former I call POTENTIAL USE-VALUE; the latter; KINETIC USE-VALUE. Analysis will justify the names. The energy of a body which is due to its position, is called potential energy. The energy of a body which is due to its motion, is called kinetic energy. Here the material use-value has value through its positon, shape and so forth; it is immobile if not used, and has not the capacity to progress. Mental use-values are not static but permanently dynamic; one thought, one discovery, is the impulse to others; they follow the law of an increasing potential function of time.”

Galambos continues:

“Further derivatives of man’s life lead to voluntary transactions involving Property transfers (sales, trades, gifts, etc.). Involuntary Property transfers are derivative not from the property owner’s life but from the life of the coercer. Therefore, Property ceases to remain Property and is converted to plunder when subjected to involuntary (coercive) transfer.

“Children—being young human beings—have Property rights of their own and cannot themselves be owned; children are not property.

Children recieve their bodies as Synergic Trusts from God, Nature, and their Parents. In synergic culture, the parents are the trustees for infants and young children, as children grow they gain more and more control over their bodies and eventually are invested with Trusteeship of their bodies and Property rights for their actions and behavior.

Reproduction is not a property right. Reproduction is a Trust Privilege. No individual has the right to reproduce if that reproduction would injure humanity as Community. This ends my comments on Galambos’ statements.

Now we can expand our definition of Property to one compatible with synergic science.

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control does not injure others, this prohibition of injury includes other individuals’ property, and the synergic trusts.

Property Rights —> Owner(s) may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

Intellectual Property —>Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs are therefore property. Synergic science recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property — Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs can be used to develop Secondary Property—technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action.

Action and Leverage

Synergic Economics accepts that wealth produced from human action and from human leverage is property. Therefore, wealth created by human action and leverage is owned by the individual(s) acting and the individual(s) leveraging.

The animal has action, but only we humans have leverage. While our human action can be applied directly to solving problems and meeting our needs, the labor of our backs does not take advantage of our Time-binding power. We humans owe our great success not to our muscular strength, but to the intelligence we can use to guide that strength, and the leverage we gain by using tools. Remember, we humans are the tool makers and tool users.

If I am a skilled tool user, I can use my skilled action to serve myself and others. If I am a skilled tool maker, I can leverage my action and the action of others to serve myself and others.

Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, hypotheses, theories, and discoveries are therefore property. Synergic Economics recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property—Ideas, hypotheses, theories, and discoveries, and technology designs can be used to develop secondary property — technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action. Therefore, synergic science recognizes property rights based on two forms of human behavior — Action and Leverage.

plunder

plunder—def—> Property or Trust acquired with force or fraud—all adversarily acquired Property or Trust. Stolen property is plunder. Exploited Trust is plunder. This includes Trust that is used or controlled in violation of the Synergic Trust Responsibility. Synergic Trust that is used without helping others is plunder. Synergic Trust that is used to hurt others is plunder. Causing damage to the Life, Earth, or Time Trusts is plunder. And, using Time Trust to hurt others is also plunder.

Any individual who steals property with force or fraud is accorded no property rights. Plunder cannot be sold, traded, rented, leased, licensed, gifted, or donated to anyone. Possession of plunder even when obtained innocently does not entitle the possessor to property rights. It should be returned to its rightful owner, if that is not possible then the rescued Property should be placed in the Custody of the appropriate Guardian Trustees.

We can now update our definition of Synergic Wealth.

Synergic Wealth —def—> Life itself and that which promotes human well being generally—that which satisfies human needs of self and other—that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. This then includes all Property and all Synergic Trust.

Synergic Wealth is then 1) Life itself including the Life Trust 2) Human Action—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property 3) Human Leverage—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property, 4) the Time-binding Trust, and 5) the Earth Trust.

plunder is not Synergic Wealth. As stolen Property or exploited Trust it has been removed from the Synergic Wealth pool to serve the criminals’ needs.

If and when stolen Property is rescued by synergic justice, then it is returned to its rightful owners, or if that is not possible it is placed in the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees. If and when exploited Trust is rescued by synergic justice, it is returned to the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees.

Mixing Property and Trust

There is often an area of overlap with Synergic Trusts and Property being mixed. For example, animals trained as security agents would be a blend of Life Trust (the animal) + Property (the training and care). Also Synergic Trusts often require property to make them valuable. As example, Earth Trust (crude oil under the ground) has no value until property (oil well technology — finding, drilling, pumping, transporting) is added.

Andrew J. Galambos, Freedom100: Capitalism—The Liberal Revolution, Free Enterprise Institute, Los Angeles, Privately Published 1961

Alfred Korzybski, The Manhood of Humanity, E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1921

 

Redefining the Future — Expanding our definitions 

Recall my earlier definitions of synergic wealth:

 SYNERGIC WEALTH —def—> Life itself and that which promotes human well being generally — that which satisfies human needs of self and other — that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. This then includes all Property and all Synergic Trust.

SYNERGIC WEALTH is then 1) LIFE itself including the LIFE TRUST 2) HUMAN ACTION—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property 3) HUMAN LEVERAGE—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property, 4) the TIME-BINDING TRUST, and 5) the EARTH TRUST.

plunder is not Synergic Wealth. As stolen Property or exploited Trust it has been removed from the Synergic Wealth pool to serve the criminals’ needs.

If and when stolen Property is rescued by synergic justice, then it is returned to its rightful owners, or if that is not possible it is placed in the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees. If and when exploited Trust is rescued by synergic justice, it is returned to the Protective custody of the appropriate Trustees.

Korzybski’s Indexing

Now that we have carefully defined Wealth, we can utilize a derivative of Korzybski’s Indexing^TT to identify what form of wealth we are talking about.

Property^P is designated with superscript P. Life Trust^LT is designated with a superscript LT. Earth Trust^ET is designated with a superscript ET. Time-binding Trust^TT is designated with a superscript TT. And plunder_p is designated with a subscript _p.

Some examples would be: my computer^P, the American eagle^LT,the Earth^ET, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity^TT, and the thief was arrested in possession of several cellular phones_p.

Synergic Trustees

Recall, I said earlier that all humans are synergic trustees.

We are Earth Trustees for the land and natural resources we granted use of for our personal needs. We must conserve and protect those Earth resources that we are entrusted with. This is an obligation to humanity as community and to the Earth Trust.

We are of course the Life Trustees of our own bodies. We should take good care of ourselves. Take care with our health and nutrition. As parents we are the Life Trustees for our children until they are adults. We must not harm ourselves or our children. We must live in ways to help ourselves and our children. This is an obligation to humanity as community and to the Life Trust.

We are also the Time-binding Trustees of all the knowledge and skills that we personally have mastered from our study of the past. We must strive not to hurt others with this knowledge and skill. We should try and help others to whatever extent we are capable.

In synergic culture, all humans are granted access to the Time-binding Trust at birth. Every human may make full use of the knowing contained in the Time-binding Trust as long as that use does not hurt others.

Personal or educational use of the Time-binding Trust is encouraged without limit or restriction. Knowledge cannot be consumed. Using the Time-binding Trust does not in any way diminish it.

Every human who gains economically from their use of the Time-binding Trust is required to acknowledge and give credit to the innovators and creators of the knowledge they are using.

They are further encouraged to help others to the extent they are capable — helping is a basic synergic value. Who they choose to help and to what extent they help is entirely voluntary — entirely their own personal choice. And, while synergic culture encourages its members to help others, there is no coercive obligation to do so.

Furthermore, economic gain from use of the Time-binding Trust creates no economic obligation to the Time-binding Trust or anyone else.

Intellectual Property

New ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, technology designs, inventions, as well as new art, music, and writing are not a part of the Time-binding Trust. This is intellectual property. Or, what Galambos called Primary Property. All property has an owner. We cannot use property without the explicit permission of the owner. Recall our earlier definition: 

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control does not injure others, this prohibition of injury includes other individuals’ property, and the synergic trusts.

Intellectual Property —>Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, technology designs, inventions, as well as art, music, and writing are therefore property. Synergic science recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property — Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs can be used to develop Secondary Property—technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action.

Property Rights —> Owner(s) may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

In today’s world there is much interest in intellectual property. Property in ideas are protected to some extent under patent and copyright statutes. Patent & Intellectual Property Lawyers Laurence R. Hefter and Robert D. Litowitz explain: 

“In today’s world a patent is a contract between society as a whole and an individual inventor. Under the terms of this social contract, the inventor is given the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, and selling a patented invention for a fixed period of time in return for the inventor’s disclosing the details of the invention to the public. Thus, patent systems encourage the disclosure of information to the public by rewarding an inventor for his or her endeavors.

“Although the word “patent” finds its origins from documents issued by the sovereign of England in the Middle Ages for granting a privilege, today the word is linked synonymously with this exclusive right granted to inventors. The World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights provides the international standard for duration of patent exclusivity, which is 20 years from the date of filing. All World Trade Organization members will be obligated to meet this standard. Under all patent systems, once this period has expired, people are free to use the invention as they wish.

“Any invention, either a product or a process for creating a product, “provided that they are new, involve an inventive step, and are capable of industrial application.” In other words, to be patentable, an invention must be novel, useful, and nonobvious. A prerequisite to patentability is that the invention must be capable of some practical application.

“A copyright is an exclusive right to reproduce an original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, to prepare derivative works based upon the original work, and to perform or display the work in the case of musical, dramatic, choreographic, and sculptural works. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied. Rather, copyright protection is limited to an author s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium.

“Copyright protection automatically subsists in all works of authorship from the moment of creation. The World Trade Organization Agreement provides a minimum standard for duration of copyright protection. In the case of a person, the term is the life of the author plus 50 years.

“The exclusive rights granted to the copyright owner do not include the right to prevent others from making fair use of the owner s work. Such fair use may include use of the work for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching or education, and scholarship or research.

“To secure copyright protection, the work in question must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Works of authorship that fall within this definition may include:

Literary works (including computer programs);

Musical works and accompanying lyrics;

Dramatic works and dialogue;

Pantomimes and choreographic works;

Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;

Motion pictures and other audiovisual works; and

Sound recordings.

“It is important to note that the laws of many countries do not limit the type or form of work because authors are continuing to invent new ways of expressing themselves.

Property clearly plays an important role in our present Neutral political-economic system. Property will play an important role in a Synergic political economic system as well. Those those desiring to use Intellectual Property will need to come to terms with the owner of the property. I expect most owners would want their property used as widely as possible, happy to receive a use fee or Lever Royalty. The terms and amount of the royalty would be negotiated and determined by the owner and those desiring to use the Intellectual Property. Elsewhere in my paper entitled the Organizational Tensegrity, I discuss synergic mechanisms for determining and paying Lever Royalites for the use of Intellectual Property.  

 

Intellectual Property Rights

Recall as Hefter and Litowitz explained, in today’s world:

“Authors which incudes scientists, writers, artists, and musicians can copyright their works. However, copyright protection is limited to an author’s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied.”

Galambos’s definition of property provided much greater rights to both Inventors and Authors. Under Moral Capitalism the right to control one’s property was an absolute with the only limitation being that you could not hurt others with your property. This right of course extended to intellectual property since after life itself, primary property was the most important form of property.

And, Intellectual Property rights were not limited to an author’s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium. Intellectual Property rights did extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied.

Galambos recognized that independent discoveries and independent inventions did and do occur. So individuals with strong evidence of independent discovery or independent invention were fully entitled to property rights.

As a synergic scientist, I am in agreement with Galambos’ call for a greater degree of intellectual property rights, and I accept the occurrence of genuine independent discoveries and inventions, and the need for a mechanism of justice to abitrate property disputes. 

Duration of Property Rights

Again, Hefter and Litowitz decribe our present world: 

“Current international statutes degree that the inventor of a new tool can file for a patent granting exclusive right of ownership for a period of 20 years from date of filing.

“The duration of copyright protection in the case of a person is for the duration of the life of the author plus 50 years.”

In Moral Capitalism, the duration of property rights were not to be limited.

According to the precepts of Moral Capitalism, Isaac Newton as the recognized innovator of the Laws of Motion would have intellectual property rights throughout his life, and these would not terminate even upon his death. Galambos invented the concept of a “Natural Estate”, the intellectual property rights of an innovator persisted even after death. A Moral Corporation was to be charged with the authority and responsibility for managing the intellectual property rights of the deceased innovator within his “Natural Estate”.

This Moral Corporation, representing the “Natural Estate”, would license the intellectual property of the deceased innovator to present humanity for moral (non-coercive) use. In our example, Newton’s intellectual property (The Laws of Motion) would earn revenue shares as a monetary payment of gratitude.

Since the Industrial Revolution is based in large part on the secondary property derived from Isaac Newton’s primary property (the Laws of Motion), one could easily imagine that the size of Isaac Newton’s “Natural Estate” would result in the creation of an enormously wealthy and powerful Moral Corporation.

With the large amount of intellectual property in the history of humanity there would be need for many Natural Estates. The largest Natural Estates would be those of the most important innovators in human history — Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Hippocrates, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Rudolf Diesel, George Eastman, Albert Einstein, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Michael Faraday, Galileo Galilei, etc., etc., etc..

Galambos envisioned that the Natural Estate industry would become the dominant industry in a proprietary future dominated by Moral Capitalism. He saw the Natural Estate mechanism as a complete replacement for government. After all in a world where everything is property and where there is no such thing as a small interference with property, protecting property is the only rule. Moral Capitalism results in a completely proprietary world.

Unfortunately, the Natural Estate mechanism while a clever idea does not work, and in fact can not work. 

The Nature of Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property is slippery, hard to keep track of. When I learn something, I often place the fact in my mind without a proprietary footnote. This is true for all humans. There is presently no way to record or print out a copy of the human mind. And, if I am reading many different authors, talking with many different people, surfing the internet, listening to the radio, watching televison, there are enormous numbers of different ideas and thoughts that I am exposed daily, let alone in a lifetime of living and thinking. Is this my original idea ? Sometimes I don’t even know for sure myself.

And, my mind was already full of all the knowing that I have learned and mastered from the past. If I think in English, then the very structure of the languange I use to order my thoughts would belong to whoever invented the English language. And since language is build overtime often one word or phrase at a time, we are probably not talking about one innovator, but maybe hundreds, or thousands, or millions. And then, there is the language of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, art and music. Most of what I know I learned from the dead. If that is property how do we sort it all out.

And, some of what I learned is from people who are still living. That is other people’s intellectual property, but at least they are still alive to represent themselves and their property rights.

Objectifying a living individual’s knowing is difficult, but doable. I can write down my ideas. I can tell my ideas to others. I can make written, digital, audio and video recordings. I can be interviewed, questioned. Asked to explain how I created the idea, and what was my train of thought.

However, all ability to objectify my knowing ends with my death.

It would create a world full of humans looking back at the past with endless struggles between “Natural Estates” arguing over who owns what. And, how do you settle these property disputes, when all the principles are dead ? 

Creating human organizations to the manage the intellectual property of the dead is fraught with enormous difficulties. Do the executors of Albert Einstein’s Natural Estate even understand his intellectual property.

Worse yet, who has the right to select those living humans to manage Natural Estates. It is first come, first served. I could announce tomorrow that I am the executor of Archimedes’ Natural Estate and that everyone who uses leverage in anyway owes Archimedes a revenue share. Imagine the revenue that could produce. And, of course I could pay myself quite well as Archimedes’ executor. Who decides ? Who arbitrates ? Certainly, Archimedes wouldn’t care.

And, why not just announce myself as the executor of the Natural Estate for the Inventor of the wheel or for the inventor of  language. Wheels are everywhere from ox carts to 767s, who wouldn’t pay royalties on the wheel. And, language there is no one who is called human that doesn’t use languge.  Everyone who talks must pay my company a royalty. 

Death and Inheritance

The dead have no needs including no need of wealth.

WEALTH —def—> That which promotes human well being — that which satisfies human needs — that which promotes both human survival and human meaning.

The dead have no actions nor do they lever others action. The dead cannot control Property or Trust, and therefore have no Property rights nor Trust privileges.

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control doesn’t hurt others.

At the time of death, all primary property of the deceased passes into the Time-binding Trust. This includes all known ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs.

When a creator of scientific knowledge dies their Primary Property passes into the Time-binding Trust. Those desiring to use Time-binding Trust like Haskell’s Periodic Coordinate System^TT, Galambos’ Automatic Remoteness Dilution^TT, or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity^TT can do so as long as their use of these Trusts with synergic responsibilty — they do not hurt anyone with the leverage gained by using the trust, and they acknowledge and give credit to the innovator of that knowledge. No revenue share is paid for use of a Time-binding Trust.

Synergic Associate Daan Joubert asks: “Suppose an innovator dies suddenly. What happens to the immediate family and the dependents that are supported from the income stream provided by the licensing of the innovator’s intellectual property.  – wife or husband, and minor children ?”

But, during the bridge period, perhaps there could be some time period when existing contracts for use of the innovator’s intellectual property would continue. How long? The life of the spouse? Until minor children reach some age of adulthood. In today’s world perhaps that should be after college. (age 21) ?

Daan Joubert asks: “And, what about the situation where the work of the innovator was in progress at the time of the innovator’s death, suppose his/her innovations were not finished. Shouldn’t it be possible to appoint a curator of the ideas with a protected period of say 10 years, to complete the work as envisioned by the innovator?”

However with that said, if the innovation has not yet been disclosed to the public, or only partially disclosed to the public, then the innovation is still  private. There is no mechanism for private (not know by the public) intellectual property to enter the Time-binding Trust until it is made public by the act of disclosure. If the innovator was working with an associate, or team of associates, they could continue, finish the innovation and then go public.

Also, it is important to note any individual(s) who continue working on the innovation, making improvements to that  innovation are creating new intellectual property of their own with intellectual property rights.

So innovations should not be stranded by the sudden death of an innovator.

If you want to use the intellectual property of a living innovator. You have to ask permission and make an agreement for that use. The living innovator has property rights.  As an owner he/she may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

Secondary property can be inherited — this includes artifacts of any kind or size — houses, buildings material possessions and physical products — technology artifacts or tools.

Land can not be owned. If you inherited a house or building you would be responsible to make the lease payments to the Earth Trust for the site upon which the house or building stand.

 

To be continued …

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The SafeEARTH series. See: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment, 2) Synergic Containment: Protecting Children, 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community and 5) Synergic Disarmament—Wisdom, we shouldn’t have!

Also see Reaction to Synergic Containment.

From the SynEARTH Archives: The Protecting the Future series: 1) Beyond Property

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Wealthy Beyond our Dreams

Timothy Wilken, MD

If we humans synergically reorganized our world, we would all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. Today in 2002, if we were to reclaim the gift of all the land and natural resources presently held on planet Earth as individual property. And if we were to further reclaim the gift of Progress from those few who control it today, and then divided these two gifts equally among the 6 billions of us living on the planet, we would discover to our surprise and amazement that every man, woman, and child is wealthy beyond their dreams.

With synergic organization, and careful utilization of the planet’s total wealth for the benefit of all humanity, the carrying capacity of the Earth could be maximized to solve all our human problems and meet our all our needs. And this is without any need to damage the Earth, or degrade our environment.

There would never be any need for humans to earn their livings again. Our livings have already been earned by all those humans who lived and died to give us the great gift of progess. Then all humans would be free to spend their time making their lives meaningful by creating more wealth to be gifted to living and future humanity.

To better understand my proposal for a synergic future, it is important to understand what I mean by wealth. 

‘Wealth’

The collective term we humans use to describe what we value is ‘wealth’.

The human species emerged in the world of space-binding. Here the rule of survival was fight or flight. The values in this world were adversarial. Adversary relationship originates on earth in the animal world. Earth supplies limited space for the animals. Space is finite. Good space is even more finite. This means it is very limited. There is only so much good water, so much good grazing land, so much good shelter, and so much good food. There is not enough to go around. The space-binders must compete for this limited amount of good space. They compete adversarialy. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing other space-binders. Humans living as space-binders follow the adversarial rule. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing their enemies. In this world survival depends on securing good space and avoiding bad space. Bad space is where the predators live — bad space is where you lose — bad space is where you die. Bad space has threatened humans for a very long time as Jared Diamond explains:

“For most of the time since the ancestors of modern humans diverged from the ancestors of the living great apes, around 7 million years ago, all humans on Earth fed themselves exclusively by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants, as the Blackfeet still did in the 19th century. It was only within the last 11,000 years that some peoples turned to what is termed food production: that is, domesticating wild animals and plants and eating the resulting livestock and crops.”

Jared Diamond makes the point, that for 99.9% of the seven-million-years that our species has existed, we have been hunter-gatherers. And, for that same period, our species has been dominated by the adversary way, and all human values have been adversarial values.

Adversarial Wealth — Physical Force

The human species emerged in the world of space-binding. Here the rule of survival was fight or flight. Their values were adversarial. Adversary relationship originates on earth in the animal world. Earth supplies limited space for the animals. Space is finite. Good space is even more finite. Thus, it is very limited. There is only so much good water, so much good grazing land, so much good shelter, and so much good potential food. There is not enough to go around. The space-binders must compete for this limited amount of good space. They compete adversarily. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing other space-binders.

Humans living as space-binders follow the adversarial rule. The compete by fighting and flighting. The compete by attacking and killing their enemies. Physical force is what adversarial humans value most. The force to physically control other humans. Adversarial wealth is fighting men, weapons, horses, fortresses, that which gives me the adversarial advantage. Adversarial humanity uses force and coercion to protect life, to promote human well being and satisfy human needs.

The adversary world is a game of with losers and winners. This is a world of fighting and flighting — of pain and dying. To win in this game someone must lose. Winning is always at the cost of another.

All humans living in the adversarial world are struggling to avoid losing — struggling to avoid being hurt.

CONFLICT —def—> The struggle to avoid loss — the struggle to avoid being hurt.

Here humans must fight and flee to stay alive, and they do. Always ready at a moments notice to go tooth and nail to avoid losing — to avoid death. Losers/winners is the harshest of games. Winning is always at the cost of another’s life. The loser tends to resist with all of his might occasionally prevailing by killing or wounding his attacker. So both parties can lose, turning the game — losers/winners into losers/losers. If we analyze adversary relationships, we discover that individuals are less after the relationship. 1+1<2. In the adversarial world where the loser forfeits his life 1+1=1. Or in the end game of losers/losers, both adversaries may die in battle, then 1+1=0.

The adversarial value system is much intact in our present world. Much of today’s wealth is weapons. Nearly all of today’s nations maintain large armies, navies, and airforces. The number of weapons in private hands is equally enormous. Adversary wealth is physical force.

With the emergence of Neutrality which became institutionalized in 1776, came a new option for humanity. And with this option came a new set of values — neutral values. 

Neutral Wealth — Money

Neutral relationships originated in the plant world.

Sunlight provides unlimited energy for the plants. Each individual plant needs only the sun, and adequate water and minerals to survive. Plant survival does not require any relationship with other. This fact makes plants the independent class of life — independent of other.

Humans living in the world of Institutional Neutrality view themselves as independent of others. They should not deliberately hurt another human, but they are also are never required to help another human. Their success or failure depends solely on their own efforts and talents. Individuals have no relationship with each other. Individuals have no awareness of each other, they ignore each other. To survive in the neutral world, you must be self-sufficient. If we analyze neutral relationships, we discover that individuals are unchanged by their relationship. They are neither less or more after the relationship. They are the same. 1+1=2.

Choices which do not hurt or help are neutral. Actions which do not hurt or help are neutral. Relationships which do not hurt or help are neutral. The mechanism of relationship is conducted through a free and fair market with the honest exchange of merchandise of good value at a fair price.

FAIR TRADE —def—> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair — to insure that the price is not too high or too low — to insure that neither party loses.

Institutional Neutrality is about fairness. The market place is a fair and safe place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold at a fair price. All citizens are quaranteed freedom from loss.

The medium of exchange in the neutral world is money. Money is used as symbolic representation of all real wealth. For all intensive purposes in the Neutral world money and real wealth are the same.

Money is what neutral humans most value. The money to purchase help. Neutral wealth is any negotiable security — cash, stocks, bonds, Certi?ates of Deposit, that which can be exchanged in the fair market. Neutral humanity uses money to buy life protection, to buy human well being and satisfy human needs.

Today, humanity has the option for synergic relationship. If we choose synergy we will adopt a new set of values — synergic values. 

Synergic Wealth — Mutual Life Support

In a synergic culture wealth is defined very differently. Synergic wealth is that which supports life for self and others. It is mutually life affirming. This by definition excludes adversary wealth — physical force that hurts other human beings, and neutral wealth — money that ignores other human beings.

Synergic humans recognize that interdependence is the human condition. They recognize that all humans need help unless they wish to live at the level of animal subsistence.

They know that adversarial humans make people help them. This is help obtained with coercion — force or fraud. Those providing the help are losing. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can. Because the helper is hurt, adversary help produces the lowest quality help.

They know that neutral humans purchase help through the open market place. This is help purchased from others. This is the way most of us living in the free world get help today. We hire it or we buy it in the market place. When I go to McDonald’s, I pay them five dollars to help feed me. The focus in the market place is on a fair price. Because the helper is ignored, neutral help is of average quality.

They understand that synergic humans attract help by helping others. This is help attracted by helping others — when another individual understands that by helping you, they will also be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your success. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Show them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is of highest quality.

Co-OPERATION — def — > Operating together to insure that both parties win and that neither party loses. The negotiation to insure that both parties are helped and neither party is hurt.

Synergic relationships are mutually helpful. Both parties in the relationship experience a gain. In Synergic relationships, one individual plus another individual is more after their relationship than before: 1+1>>2. Synergic relationships are marked by low conflict with high effectiveness and enormous productivity.

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The wealth available to humanity in a synergic future is mutual life support. Synergic wealth resulting from Synergic Organization and Synergic Government can produce a high quality of life for all humanity.

While Adversary-Neutral Organization and Adversary-Neutral Government can only offer a decent quality of life to a fraction of the 6 billion humans currently living on the Earth. And that achievement is possible only with the exploitation and squandering of Nature’s great gift of the fossil fuels.

Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are are called fossil fuels because they are all made from decayed plants and animals that have been preserved in the earth’s crust by pressure, bacterial processes and heat. It takes millions of years for these organisms to chemically change into fossil fuels.

With the exhaustion of the fossil fuels, our current Adversary — Neutral Organizations and Governments can only offer humanity an Earth with a carrying capacity for ~100 million humans. That means a lot of people will die.

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action — if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action — we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth.

 

A Synergic Future  Begins with Synergic Values

Thousands of years ago the synergic way was discovered intuitively by Jesus of Nazareth. He gave us the rules in his sermon on the mount:

“Love our enemies, do good to them that hate us, bless them that curse us, and pray for them that despitefully use us, I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgement. Go be reconciled with thy brother.”

Jesus of Nazareth may have been the first human to embrace synergy. His words seem to capture the very essence of synergic morality. Synergic morality is more than not hurting other, it requires helping other. Jesus was the first human to state the fundamental law of synergic relationship. It is known as the Golden Rule:

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law.”

What would you have others do to you? The best one word answer I can find for this question is help. “Help others as you would have them help you.”

Synergic morality requires helping. Andrew J. Galambos in his lectures describing “Moral Capitalism” often quoted the negative version of the Golden Rule: “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.”

What would you not have others do to you? Here the best one word answer is hurt. “Do not hurt others as you would have them not hurt you.”

This is where Galambos’ “Moral Capitalism” is incomplete. The negative version of the Golden Rule is just and right, but Synergic Morality requires more of us than simple not hurting. It requires more of us than simply ignoring others. It requires us to help others—to help each other. Jesus of Nazareth understood this on the deepest of levels. He did not call for simply a prohibition against hurting others. He called on us to help each other. Synergic Morality is more than the absence of hurting.  It is the presence of helping.

Recall Universe is now understood to be process. Reality is a happening. Many things are going on all at once. Living systems—the plants, animals, and we humans all live within the EVENT paradigm. Fuller defined an event to be a triad of related phenomena— action, reaction, resultant.

The dynamics of all human behavior can be understood using these three concepts. Fuller discovered for every action there is a reaction, and a precessional resultant.

I can decide on an action. I can then implement my action. The environment including all life forms react to my action, the vector sum of the two produce a resultant. I act, the rest of the world reacts, and when it all settles down the change made by the interaction is the resultant.

Adversary action tends to provoke adversary reaction ending in an adversary resultant. Neutral action tends to provoke neutral reaction ending in a neutral resultant. And synergic action tends to provoke synergic reaction and end in a synergic resultant. This is the Law of Karma. Synergic Morality rests then on the premise—that when we help others, we can hope to find ourselves helped in return.

Humans who would organize themselves synergically, must commit to synergic values. If they wish to gain the power of synergic interdependence they must understand synergic mechanism, accept synergic responsibility, and embrace synergic morality. Synergic individuals do not hurt others, and to extent that they are capable, they help others.

The Life Force

Life forms the basis then for all synergic values. All forms of life are animated by the life force. The life force is not well understood, but it seeks to survive and to extend itself into universe. The life force is known to be three and one half billion years old on this planet. It is like a special flame, sort of a living fire, we pass it to our children in the act of reproduction. But, we do not know how to rekindle the flame should it go out. The life force itself is the very basis of living action.

(Life Force) x (Time) = Living Action.

No life force. No living action. Therefore, the the sanctity of life itself must be the highest synergic value. Therefore, Synergic Wealth is defined as life itself and that which promotes human well being generally—that which satisfies the human needs of self and other—that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. Now recalling that an event is made up of three parts—action, reaction, and resultant. We are ready to further define our synergic value system. 

IMPORTANCE—def—> The amount of Wealth effected by an event compared to the total amount of Wealth.

WEALTH (effected)
WEALTH (total)

RISK—def—> What is the amount Wealth that could be lost during an event—action, reaction & resultant.

OPPORTUNITY—def—> What is the amount of Wealth that could be gained during an event—action, reaction & resultant.

ALLOWED ACTION—def—> Any action is allowed which does not injure or hurt another human individual.

SYNERGIC ACTION—def—> Any allowed action which helps others.

DYMAXION ACTION—def—> The least action that triggers an event that produces the greatest gain in Wealth.

 

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action — if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action — we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth.

 

SYNOCRACY 

How will we make decisions in a synergic future? In today’s world 2002, it is assumed without question that majority rule democracy is the best way to organize humanity. To even offer a criticism of majority rule democracy is to invite an immediate and often emotional charged attack on oneself. We are quickly asked to choose between majority rule democracy or the dictatorships of communism/fascism. We are quickly reminded that if we don’t like it here in a majority ruled democracy, we are free to leave.

Majority rule democracy is clearly a major advance over the adversary systems of dictatorships—the rule by one, or oliarchies—the rule by the few.

Majority rule democracy in its purest form was found in the Ancient Greek city-states and Early Roman Republic, these were direct democracies in which all citizens could speak and vote in assemblies. This was possible because of the small size of the city-states almost never more than 10,000 citizens. However, even these Ancient democracys did not presuppose equality of all individuals; the majority of the populace, notably slaves and women, had no political rights at all. So even here the majority really did not rule.

In modern representative democracies we find the majority rule mechanism used to select our representatives, to make decisions within committees and to make decisions within the legislative bodies, however careful analysis reveals we really have rule by the few.

In the United States, we elect one president, 100 Senators and 435 Congressman. This is one President for ~271 million Americans. There are two Senators for each state. Senatorial representation would vary from one Senator for ~16 million Californians down to one Senator for ~350,000 Delawarians. The members of the first House of Representatives were elected on the basis of 1 representative for every 30,000 inhabitants, but at least 1 for each state. At present the size of the House is fixed at 435 members, elected on the basis of 1 representative for about 500,000 inhabitants. Our representatives do not even know us. If any Congressman met with 10 of his constituents every day for 365 days a year, it would take over 137 years for him just to meet all of them. And Congressmen are only elected for two year terms. If our Congressman don’t even know us how can they represent us?

Both houses facilitate business by the committee system, and each has a fixed number of permanent committees, called standing committees, the chief function of which is considering and preparing legislation.

As the United States grew in population and in influence in world affairs, the volume and complexity of the matters arising inCongress also increased. Due consideration to all matters submitted to the Congress could not be given in open debate on the floor of the Senate and House. As a result, the standing committees of the Congress became the arbiters of the fate of practically all legislation. There are 22 standing committees in the House and 16 standing committees in the Senate. Even though majority rule is used to make decisions in these committees once the decision is made the results are imposed on ~271,000,000 Americans.

Recently, the American people have attempted to exert their will by making use of ballot initiatives. Almost always if these initiatives are not popular with the Few that Rule, they are quickly dismantled. In November of 1996, the majority of Californians voted for Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action, Proposition 215, which legalized medical use of marijuana, and Proposition 187, which denied legal benefits to illegal immigrants. By January of 1997, all three were hung up in the courts or in a jurisdictional squabble with the federal government. None was close to being enforced. By May of 1998, Proposition 215, the Marijuanna for Medical Use Initiative which passed by a 56% majority throughout the state and by an 80% majority in San Francisco has all but been dismantled by the Few who Rule. They had succeeded in closing the majority of the medical marijuanna clinics which had opened throughout the state, and were pressing criminal charges against many of those involved in the clinics. Obviously, the majority does not rule in California. This fact is not lost on the electorate.More more citizens have realized that voting in our representative democracy does not make any difference. For despite the fact that our American Goverment is more and more intrusive in our lives, we are less and less interested in pretending that our voting makes any real difference.

Voter turnout has been declining steadily since 1960. And as reported in the Wall Street Journal for November 9, 2000:

“Overall voter turnout for this week’s election barely budged despite nearly $1 billion of campaign television advertisements and the closest presidential contest in decades.

“About 50.7% of the nation’s 200 million eligible voters cast ballots this week, marginally greater than the rock-bottom level seen in 1996, but significantly lower than the 1992 level, said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Four years ago, only 49% of those qualified to vote actually did so, the lowest turnout since 1924. By contrast, some 55% of the electorate went to the polls in 1992’s close race between Bill Clinton and President George H.W. Bush.”

Seeking Synergic Government

However, even if we had direct democracies using majority rule, it would not be a synergic form of govenment. In fact, if we use the criteria of prohibition of loss, majority rule democracy is not even a neutral form of government. In majority rule democracy, the minority often loses. As Andrew J. Galambos writes:

“The word Democracy comes from the Greek words which mean “rule of the people.” However, the practice of Democracy can be no better than the understanding of the concept of “rule of the people.” Over the past 2,000 years, most people have come to accept without question or reservation the idea that Democracy means the ability of the people to choose their mode of social organization by means of majority vote.

“The political concept of Democracy arose as a consequence of counting yeas and nays on particular issues and than selecting the men who would decide how issues were to be resolved. Whichever man could muster the choice of more persons than his opposition could muster became the dominant person for the society. This was and is nothing more than an application of the old dictum, might makes right.

“This concept of Democracy (which prevails to this day) relies upon the ability of the winning political leaders to count upon the support of more people than their losing opponents. However, this concept does nothing to ensure the protection of the property, hence, the freedom of those who may disagree. Furthermore, those who may be in the majority with respect to a given issue or political candidate will eventually find themselves in the minority with respect to other issues or candidates. In the long run, therefore, everyone loses. This concept of Democracy eventually breaks down and leads to a destruction of freedom.”

Rule by the Majority

In today’s “FREE” world all political decisions are made using majority rule democracy. The the group deciding may be small—a committee faced with solving some particular problem, or large—the entire voting electorate of a nation choosing a President. Regardless of the size of the group deciding, decision is made when one faction within the group achieves a simple majority. That faction wins the minority faction loses. Majority rule consensus requires only a simple majority to force the minority—the losing voters to accept the position of the majority—the winning voters. There is no need to gain the agreement of all of the members.There is no need to prevent the minority from losing.

Majority rule democracy of which the committee is the most common example is filled with political intrigue and back room deals to obtain majority concensus and defeat the minority. This often results in the dark art of politics which makes strange bedfellows. Even when the majority wins they are not assured of the cooperation of the minority. Often the minority may only support the elected plan half-heartedly, or even seek to sabotage the plan they didn’t vote for since they feel they are losing anyway.

Compared to dictatorship—the rule by one, or olioarchy—the rule by a few, majority rule democracy—the rule by most is clearly a much fairer way. It should come as no surprise then that majority rule democracy is so attractive to Institutional Neutrality since fairness is one of Neutrality’s highest values.

While it should now be clear to the reader that Neutral political-economic systems are better for humanity then Adversary political-economic systems. Representative democracy’s Rule by the Few is also better for humanity then a dictatorship’s rule of by one. But the advantages that Neutrality and majority ruled Representative democracy have over Adversary dictatorships does not mean there is nothing better for Humanity

Unanimous Rule Democracy

Synergic consensus is a much more powerful mechanism of decision making than the majority rule of present day democracy.

Synergic consensus occurs when a group of humans sitting in heterarchy negotiate to reach a decision in which they all win and in which no one loses. In a synergic heterarchy, all members sit on the same level as “equals”. No one has more authority than anyone else. Every one has equal responsibility and equal authority within the heterarchy. The assignment for the heterarchy is to find a plan of action so that all members win. It is the collective responsibility of the entire heterarchy to find this “best” solution. Anyone can propose a plan to accomplish the needs of the group. All problems related to accomplishing the needs would be discussed at length within the heterarchy.

The proposed action for solving a problem is examined by all members of the heterarchy. Anyone can suggest a modification, or even an alternative action to solve the problem. All members of the heterarchy serve as information sources for each other. The heterarchy continues in discussion until a plan of action is found that will work for everyone. When all are in agreement and only then can the plan be implemented. The plan insures that all members of the synergic heterarchy win. All members are required to veto any plan where they or anyone else would lose. But all vetoes are immediately followed by renegotiation to modify the plan so the loss can be eliminated.

Synergic Equality

All members of a synergic heterarchy are equal. They share equal responsibility for the actions chosen by the group. They share equal authority in the process of choosing those actions. When individuals work together in synergic relationship to a accomplish a common goal. They are considered as a single system.

When individuals work together in synergic relationship, new abilities, skills, talents, etc., emerge as a part of that relationship, that are not there when the individuals work separately. The individuals working in synergic group are more efficient, more productive, more creative, and more intelligent, than they are when working separately. The result of their synergy is that they create “more” together than they could create apart. This wealth that produced by “working together” was called the CoOperator’s surplus by synergic scientist Edward Haskell.

When individuals work together in synergic relationship, they equally contribute to the synergic emergents, and will share equally in the Co-Operators’ surplus. Haskell’s “Co-Operators Surplus” is property and it is owned equally by all who synergized within the synergic group to create it.

What happens in a synergic group when finding a win is impossible?

Synergic science realizes and accepts there will be times and situations where loss is unavoidable. When this occurs synergic mechanism dictates that the group accept reality and focus on minimizing the loss, and then share the loss equally. In synergy, we are one. In synergy are equal. In synergy we strive to win together. But if we are forced to lose, then we will lose together—this means we will share equally in the loss.

1) In synergy, I am ONE with my associates.

2) In synergy, I am MORE with my asscociates than by myself.

3) In synergy, I am EQUAL to all my associates.

4) In synergy when we WIN, I will win MORE with my associates than by myself and I will share equally in the GAINS.

5) In synergy, when we LOSE, I will lose LESS with my associates than by myself and I will share equally in the LOSSES.

6) In synergy, we will win together or lose together, but we are TOGETHER.

 

Is Unanimous Rule Democracy Feasible?

Synergic consensus is unanimous consensus. I can hear the objections now. “That’s impossible, you will never get everyone in the group to agree.” “Decisions will never get made.” “It is hard enough to get a majority to agree.”

A Japanese business heterarchy is slower at making decisions than a single manager in an American business hierarcy. It takes longer for a group of individuals to discuss, negotiate, and come to agreement than it takes for a single American manager to decide all by himself. If the speed of making decisions is the only criteria for choosing a mechanism of decision making then the dictatorship—the rule by one is the clear standout.

However, humanity has moved beyond dictatorships for reasons of fairness and justice. Majority rule democracy is not a rapid decision making process. Individuals within a group deciding—whether the group is a small committee or a large nation choosing a President—are seeking to gain the majority of support. This takes time—sometimes a lot of time. Our national elections often take place over an entire year. The focus is on lining up votes—working deals—in a word—politics. This process is anything but rapid. If all decisions in American businesses were made by majority rule, decision making would probably be even slower than in Japanese companies using heterarchical consensus.

Synergic consensus is not availability to humanity today. We do not yet know how fast it will be at making decisions. But, I predict that unanimous rule democracy will prove faster than majority rule democracy. Synergic consensus elimates conflict. Recall conflict is the stuggle to avoid loss. Conflict is at the very heart of majority rule democracy. The focus of synergic consensus is very different. The entire group knows from the outset that they cannot lose. They are focused on choosing a plan of action that serves the needs of all the members in the group—to choose a plan of action that causes no one to lose.  The synergic veto is not invoked capriciously. The only basis for synergic veto is to prevent someone from losing. This is a mechanism to eliminate loss—to choose the very best plan of action for everyone. This may well speed up the process of decison making. In any event regardless of the speed of decision, implimentation will be rapid. There is no conflict. This is a major advantage over majority rule democracy.

Life Utilizes Synergic Consensus

Today, mind and brain scientists have made enormous progress in understanding how the human brain works. There has been many surprises in these recent advances. But the biggest shocker is that the brain doesn’t decide what to do. Decision making is not controlled centrally in the brain. The mind-brain appears to act as a coordination and consensus system for meeting all the needs of the cells, tissues, and organs of the body. The brain doesn’t decide to eat. The cells of the body decide to eat, the brain coordinates their activity and carries out the consensus will.

Our human brain stores the gathered information from the body’s sensing of its environment, the brain presents opportunities for action reflective of both the sensing of environment and the needs and goals of the 40,000,000,000 cells it serves. The brain is not the leader of the body, it is the follower of the body. It is a system that matches needs of the body with its sensing of opportunities to meet these needs by action within the environment. The brain is a ‘synergic government’ that truly serves its constituents—the cells, tissues, and organs that make up the human body. The body is governed by a unanimous rule democracy that has survived millions of years.

The apparent ‘I’ is not real. It is really a ‘we’. We humans have mistaken the self-organization of synergic consensus for the directed organization of an ego decider.

If the human body can using unanimous rule democracy and synergic consensus can organize and coordinate the actions of 40,000,000,000 cells so totally that we identify the whole organism as a single idividual, then we humans should be able to use these same mechanisms to organize our species and solve our human problems. 

Barbara Hubbard originally coined the term Synocracy to refer to a not yet defined future system of “rule by the people” in a co-Operative society.

Andrew J. Galambos, Thrust for Freedom #7 —What is True Democracy?, Free Enterprise Institute, 1963

Well if majority rule democracy is obsolete and no longer the best system of human government, what other things do we believe that are equally wrong?

 

To be continued …

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The SafeEARTH series. See: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment, 2) Synergic Containment: Protecting Children, 3) Synergic Containment: Science & Rationale, 4) Synergic Containment: Protecting Community and 5) Synergic Disarmament—Wisdom, we shouldn’t have!

Also see Reaction to Synergic Containment