From the SynEARTH Archives … The following is the fourth chapter from We Can All Win!

From the SynEARTH Archives … The following is the third chapter from We Can All Win!.

The Relationship Continuum

Timothy Wilken, MD

All human choices and all human relationships can be described as falling on a continuum.

I define an adversary relationship to be any relationship wherein the participants are less happy, less effective and less productive than they would be without the relationship. An adversary choice is any choice that reduces the happiness, effectiveness, and productivity of the participants in the relationship. The sum of the whole relationship in terms of happiness, effectiveness, productivity, profitability, satisfaction, etc. is less than the sum of the parts – less than the sum of the individual’s ability to be happy, effective, productive, profitable, satisfied, etc. outside this relationship.

I define a neutral relationship to be any relationship wherein the participants are equally happy, equally effective, and equally productive as they would be without the relationship. A neutral choice is any choice that has no effect on the happiness, effectiveness, and productivity of the participants in the relationship. The sum of the whole relationship in terms of happiness, effectiveness, productivity, profitability, satisfaction, etc. is equal to the sum of parts – equal to the individuals’s ability to be happy, effective, productive, profitable, satisfied, etc. outside this relationship.

I define a synergic relationship to be any relationship wherein the participants are more happy, more effective, and more productive than they would be without the relationship. A synergic choice is any choice that increases the happiness, effectiveness, and productivity of the participants in the relationship.

The sum of the whole relationship in terms of happiness, effectiveness, productivity, profitability, satisfaction, etc. is more than the sum of the parts – more than the sum of the individual’s ability to be happy, effective, productive, profitable, satisfied, etc. outside this relationship.

Let us say that you are capable of “X” happiness, effectiveness and productivity. I am capable of “Y” happiness, effectiveness and productivity. If we choose to interact the results can be as follows:

We can have neutrality, your “X” and my “Y” are unchanged by our relationship. The sum of the whole (X +Y ) is equal to the sum of the parts (X) + (Y).

We can have adversity, your “X” and my “Y” are reduced by our relationship. The sum of the whole (X + Y ) is less than the sum of the parts (X) + (Y).

Or, we can have synergy, your “X” and my “Y” are made greater by our relationship. The sum of the whole (X + Y) is more than the sum of the parts (X) + (Y).

These are the three classes of relationship described in Edward Haskell’s Unified Science (1). Haskell further explained that the two parties to a relationship would experience one of nine possible co-actions.

A relationship can be effected in three ways. Your “X” can go up, remain unchanged, or go down. And, my “Y” can go up, remain unchanged, or go down.

Our relationship might be good for you, good for me; it might be good for you, neutral for me; it might be good for you, bad for me; it might be neutral for you, good for me; etc.; etc.. Again in our language of games, we have nine possibilities when examined particulately for gross effect.

And, if we examine the nine possibilities wholistically for net effect, we see the emergence of our three general classes of human relationships.

If we examine our three general classes of human relationships we discover some striking differences. In the adversary class, there is a net loss. We humans lose something, we are less together than we would be apart. The neutral class reveals no change. We are the same together as we would be apart. In the synergic class, there is a net gain. We humans gain something, we are more together than we would be apart. Recall our relationship boxes.

Neutrality 

Edward Haskell called the loss of adversary relationship the “conflictors’s deficit”. Let us represent that loss as ( – Z ).

Adversity

He called the gain of synergic relationship the “cooperator’s surplus”. Let us represent that gain as ( + Z ).

Synergy

Truth lies in eye of the beholder

Each participant determines for himself whether a relationship is synergic or adversary. This is determined from his point of view, and he cannot be fooled.

He is either more happy, more effective, more productive because of the relationship; or he is less happy, less effective, less productive because of the relationship, or he is unchanged by the relationship.

The truth is in the eye of the beholder. The effect can be partial. There may be relationships that are partially synergic, and/or partially neutral, and/or partially adversary.

True synergy exists when all participants are more happy, more effective, and more productive. True synergy is WIN-WIN. True synergy is +,+. True synergy maximizes the cooperator’s surplus – maximizes ( Z ).

From the SynEARTH Archives … The following is the second chapter from We Can All Win!.

As human neutrality fails, we move forward into the crisis. Our only solution is co-Operation. We must work together. Time to get back to basics. … The following is the first chapter of We Can All Win!, first published online April 15, 1999.

Understanding Life

Timothy Wilken, MD

Let us begin our journey towards understanding the human condition by examining life. Biology in 1999 uses a number of different terms to represent living entities. These terms include life forms, living organisms, and more recently living systems. These terms have subtle but important differences which I will discuss later in The Science section, but for now these terms may be considered as synonymous.

We humans are a form of life. This is a fact of reality paramount to understanding ourselves. And, yet this fact is so pervasive and constant that it rarely enters our consciousness. Our clear and distant superiority to all other forms of life have made it easy for us to neglect our biological basis.

As we have seen ourselves different and superior to all other forms of life, we have missed the point . While we differ from plants and animals, we share their aliveness – we are still forms of life – we are still living organisms –we are still living systems .

When we examine ourselves scientifically, we discover that humans are living systems, and it follows therefore that our powers and our problems will be those of life.

If we are to create a safe and comfortable future for ourselves and our children, we must understand our connection to life. Our life connection is not only relevant, it is the crucial factor in determining a safe passage through the current human crisis.

A fundamental way of understanding life is by examining needs and actions.

Needs and actions

All living organisms have needs and all living organisms act to meet those needs. The primary drive of all living organisms is to survive – to continue to live.

To accomplish survival, a living organism requires a zone of survivability. In science we call this zone of survivability the biosphere. The biosphere is that environmental zone wherein a living organism can meet its needs and act to survive.

Life on earth can be divided into three general classes – these are the plants, the animals, and we humans. These three classes of life each require a different biosphere to meet their needs.

Plants need sunlight, water, carbon dioxide from the air, and adequate minerals from the soil. Plants are able to grow and reproduce by utilizing sunlight in the process science calls photosynthesis. Photosynthesis allows plants to create organic tissue utilizing energy directly from sunlight.

Animals lack the plants’ power of photosynthesis. They cannot utilize sunlight to create organic tissue. They must ingest either plant or animal tissue which they then digest to release chemical energy and molecular nutrients. They further need water and oxygen from the air instead of carbon dioxide.

Humans share animal body and like the animals lack the power of photosynthesis. We too must ingest plant or animal tissue. And, we too need water and oxygen.

The biosphere for plants must therefore provide sunlight, carbon dioxide, water, and minerals. It must also be some shelter from environmental extremes. It must not be too hot or too cold.

The biosphere for the animals, and for our human bodies must provide food either plant or animal tissue, oxygen, and water .

And for the animals as well as we humans, there must be some shelter – a safe place and time for the process of life itself – to breathe, eat and drink, to eliminate bodily wastes, to rest, and restore the body’s energy from the stresses of living, and to procreate if the species is to continue.

The biosphere therefore must provide air, water, food, and shelter or neither animal nor human will survive. Biospheres are also specific to individual species. One particular biosphere might support one species of organism well, but not another.

Tensegrity

In synergic science, a system of continuous pull balanced against discontinuous push is called a tension integrity or tensegrity.

Needs are continuously pulling on all living organisms to be met. To meet its needs, the living organism must take action.

Fourteen to Sixteen times a minute, I take a breath. Many times a day, I drink water. And two or three times a day, I eat food. My actions are discontinuous. Discontinuous means I have some control over when I act to meet my needs. I can eat now or a few hours from now.

Life and living then is all about the continuing pull of our needs and the discontinuous push of the actions we take to meet those needs.

Life is organized as a tensegrity. The tensegrity is the most powerful organizing pattern in universe and I will discuss it more completely in The Science section.

The needs of plants and animals are primarily physiological. Our human body shares the physiological needs of the animal. But what differentiates human from animal is our more powerful brain and mind. This dramatic difference in intelligence is reflected in our more complex human needs.

Human needs

To survive for 24 hours, scientists have determined that the average human adult body requires 1.84 pounds of oxygen, 1.36 pounds of food solids, and 6.86 pounds of water.

For the majority of humans these basic needs seem pretty easily met. But few humans are satisfied with the basic needs as one very wise man once said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” We humans need a lot more, and most of what we need has nothing to do with our bodies. Humans require a rich psychological and social life. In a word, humans require meaning in their lives. Plants and animals can just survive, but humans require meaningful survival.

An internet search for “human needs” results in lots of returns. As we examine these needs, we begin to realize that the relationship between other and self is enormously important for humans.

One internet page even divides human needs into two categories based upon whether they are related to other or to self.

A second internet page references scientists Wackernagel and Rees writing in 1993, stated that “basic human needs are not only physical in nature … but also psychological, such as dignity and self-esteem, love and social connectedness, self-realization and to have control over one’s life”.

And finally, a third internet page references the psychologist Henry Murray as identifying twenty human psychogenic needs. Again all of these can be broken down further into categories related to other and self.

Plants, animals and others

Plant survival does not require any relationship with other. The plants unique ability to utilize sunlight directly to synthesize organic tissue frees them from the need for others. This fact makes plants the independent class of life – independent of other.

We humans share the animal body, to survive we must also eat. We are omnivores. We meet our basic needs and survive by eating both plants and animals. Physiologically, we humans are also a dependent class of life. But humans need more than basic needs. Sometimes we need other and sometimes other needs us. Some scientists have used the term “the social animal” in reference to these social-psychological needs of humanity. And it is these social-psychological needs that makes humans more than dependent upon each other. This means sometimes I depend on other and sometimes other depends on me. This fact makes us humans the interdependent class of life – interdependent on each other.

Stop reading

Take a few moment to examine the contents of your pockets or purse. …

Can you find any item there, that you obtained without the help of someone else? Look around you. What do you see? Did you make the clothes you wear? Did you grow the food you eat or the tools you use. Look around your home or workplace. Can you find anything that you made. Do you know the names of those who did make all these things? Do you ever know upon whom you depend. Can you find anything in your environment that was obtained without the help of someone else?

I am not talking about ownership here. I will grant that you own your possessions. But would you have them if they had not been for sale.I would argue that nearly everything modern humans possess was obtained with the help of others.

As I examine my world I discover that I depend on others to grow and produce my food. I depend on others to design and build my home. I depend on others to generate my electricity.

I depend on others to supply my water. I depend on others to deliver my mail. I depend on others to educate my children. I depend on others to entertain my family. I depend on others to manufacture my automobile. I depend on others to refine the gasoline for my car. I depend on others to care for my family when we are sick. I depend on others to protect us from crime and war. I depend on others to …. I depend on others. I depend.

Human interdependence is made less visible by our present economic exchange system. I go to work and help my employer. He depends on me. At the end of the month he pays me for my help. I depend on him. I can then take some of the money from my paycheck to pay my house rent. While I depend on my landlord for the roof over my head, he depends on me to pay the rent promptly. Sometimes I depend on others and sometimes others depend on me. When we buy and sell in the economic marketplace we are really exchanging help. When I help others they owe me. When others help me I owe them. Money is just the present accounting mechanism we use to settle up.

This will come as a surprise to most readers, but humans are not and can not be independent.

We are an interdependent species. We rely on each other for nearly all our wants and needs.

Independence from other is not available to the richest man with the most affluent life style. He is as dependent on the staff of servants who wait on him as they are dependent on him for their shelter and sustenance.

Independence from other humans is only available to the poorest of hermits. This hermit must gather and prepare all his own vegetables and fruits. He must hunt, kill, skin, dress, and cook all his own meat. He must find or build his own shelter using only the materials he can gather and prepare by himself aided only by the tools that he can manufacture by himself from the materials that he can find. He must shelter himself from all storms and natural disasters, and protect himself from all enemies. Only by committing 99+ percent of his waking time to basic survival can he achieve true independence from other humans.

And, what is the cost of this independence from other humans? His lot will be to live a life of abject poverty devoid of any meaning. His search for independence forces him to forsake his very humanness and de-evolve into an animal. And, even then, he can not achieve true independence. For, his body is still dependent on plant and animal tissue for its survival.

We humans are not an independent life form. Despite the common desire of most of us to be independent, human independence is not possible in any scientific sense. Our bodies do not contain chlorophyll and we cannot get our energy directly from the Sun. Other plants and animals serve as our source of energy. We are just as dependent on others for our survival as are the animals.

We can ignore this fact of science by calling the other plants and animals – food and cooking their bodies in ways so that we are not reminded of the source of our sustenance, but we are still not independent. When we further examine our relationships with other humans, we discover that even here we are not independent.

In summary then, we can say that in the lives of plants – the independent class of life, other plays no role .

In the lives of animals – the dependent class of life, other serves primarily as a source of food.And finally in the lives of humans, the interdependent class of life, other is very important. Our bodies are as dependent on others for food as the animals, but socially, psychologically and economically, we depend on others and others depend on us. We humans are interdependent.

Actions

All living systems act to meet their needs. Let us now examine action more carefully. Science1999 reveals that:

“What is most basic in universe is not material particles but activity. The older concept of a universe made up of physical particles interacting according to fixed laws is no longer tenable. It is implicit in present findings that action rather than matter is basic.” (1)

Science as of 1999 has discovered action to be fundamental in both nonliving universe which includes light, particles, atoms, and simple molecules as well as within living universe which is life itself – the living molecules, the plants, the animals, and we humans.

• Action implies motion, movement, animation – process.
  
  
• Actions require energy to occur. No energy – no action.
  
  
• Actions have location in space. Actions always begin somewhere and end somewhere else. No location, no space – no action.
  
  
• Actions have duration. Actions always have a beginning and an ending. While some actions may occur in a very short time, they all require some time. There are no instantaneous actions in universe. No time – no action.

“Two different energy events cannot pass through the same point at the same time. When one energy event is passing through a given point and another impinges upon it, there is an interference.

“We find experimentally that two lines cannot go through the same point at the same time. One can cross over or be superimposed upon another. Both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries misassume that a plurality of lines can go through the same point at the same time. But we find experimentally that two or more lines cannot physically go through the same point at the same time.

“When a physicist bombards a group of atoms in a cloud chamber with a neutron, he gets an interference.

“When the neutron runs into a nuclear component: (1) it separates the latter into smaller components; (2) they bounce acutely apart (reflection); (3) they bounce obliquely (refraction); (4) they combine, mass attractively. The unique angles in which they separate or bounce off identify both known or unknown atomic-nucleus components.” (2)

Therefore actions can not and do not occur in isolation. If they impinge on the environment, they will effect or impact the environment. If they impinge on others, they will effect or impact on others. Therefore:

Actions can effect or impact environment and others in a negative and harmful way.

Actions can effect or impact environment and others in a neutral or negligible way.

Or, actions can effect or impact environment and others in a positive and beneficial way.Therefore actions that effect or impact on others can produce the following results, using the language of games:

• Other can lose. They are hurt by the action. They are less after the action than before.

• Other can draw. They are ignored by the action. They will be the same after the action as before.

• Other can win. They are helped by the action. They are more after the action than before.

From the point of view of an individual effected or impacted by action, I can be hurt, I can be ignored, or I can be helped by the action.

• Actions that hurt are adversary.
  

• Actions that ignore are neutral.
  

• Actions that help are synergic.

Because of the effect or impact that action always has on the environment or upon other, we discover that action is always accompanied by two other phenomena – the reaction, and the resultant.

The environment or other reacts at the beginning of the action. And the effect or impact on the environment or other occurs at the end of the action producing a resultant.

Action, reaction, and resultant are always found together.

In the following illustration (3), we see the man act by jumping from one boat to another. As he jumps, he pushes off causing a reaction in the boat he left. As he lands his impact effects a resultant on the boat he lands on.

The reaction occurs at the beginning of the action while the resultant occurs at the end.

By understanding that these three phenomena always and only coexist, we should not be surprised that since actions can be either adversary, neutral or synergic. So too, reactions and resultants can have the same three effects. Reactions can be adversary, neutral or synergic. And, resultants can also be adversary, neutral or synergic.

• adversary action usually provokes adversary reaction ending in an adversary resultant or loss, while
  

• neutral action usually provokes neutral reaction ending in a neutral resultant or draw, and
  

• synergic action usually provokes synergic reaction ending in a synergic resultant or gain.

Action implies a need for choice. The living system must choose which action or actions to take. The living system must decide when to act and where to act. Actions bring choices.

Choice

Choice is defined in the dictionary as deciding, picking, selecting. This would seem a type of pre-action, or for living organisms mental or intellectual action. The phenomena of choice begins even before the beginning of life. An Englishman, Thomas Young in 1803, focused science’s attention on the phenomenon of choice when he designed unique double slit light experiment. Some scientists interpret his experiment as demonstrating that photons make decisions.4 A photon of light seems to be making a choice as to where it will go in universe.

When a photon is released at a particular point in universe, one second later it can be anywhere within a sphere of 186,000 miles. We cannot predict where it will be at the end of that second, for its choice is random. But we see that it moves to only one place in that sphere. If we were to define choice mathematically, we would say that choice is that condition where a system moves from a point of multifaceted potentiality to a point of single actuality.

CHOICE –def–>

Multifaceted potentiality –becoming–> single actuality.

The photon, once released at some point in universe has the multifaceted potential to be anywhere within a sphere of 186,000 miles within one second. But, it only goes to one place – it selects a single actuality.

Light is the simplest of universe’s phenomena and humans appear to be the most complex. If photons choose, then they must have a form of consciousness. But, this is not the complex form of consciousness we see in humans, consciousness at the stage of light must be the simplest of consciousnesses.

Science in 1999 reveals that universe contains no ‘things ‘. All in universe is process. All in universe is flux. All in universe is change. And change means change in energy. Change in energy is change in information. Universe is full of change and universe is made up of energy and information.

We humans know that when we are confronted by change, we respond by making choices. Every event – be it birth of a child or loss of a loved one, feast or famine, poverty or prosperity, peace or war – represents change. Every idea – be it a discovery that cures cancer or a decision to commit a crime – represents change. Every situation – be it getting a new job or losing a job, marriage or divorce, childhood or old age – represents change.

We humans adapt to these changes by making choices. This is what all living systems do from the time of conception until they perish. They make choices. They make decisions.

The human brain is estimated to be capable of 10 raised to the exponential power of 800 thoughts (10 ⁸⁰⁰ ) – multifaceted potential. The human brain will have only one thought at the time of decision – single actuality. At any moment I am capable of an enormous number of behaviors but I will choose only one – multifaceted potential becoming single actuality. With the power of action comes opportunity for choice.In summary then, life can be examined from the point of needs and actions. All living systems have needs and they meet those needs through actions. Living systems meet their needs within a zone of survivability called the biosphere. Biospheres differ for different species and different classes of life.

There are three classes of life on earth – plants, animals, and we humans. The plants are the independent class of life. They have no relationship with others. The animals are the dependent class of life. They depend on others to survive. And, we humans are physiologically dependent, but psychologically and socially interdependent. Our animal bodies require we eat the plants and animals to survive. Psychologically and socially, our relationships with other humans are interdependent. Sometimes we depend on others and sometimes others depend on us.

All needs of living systems are met with actions. All actions require energy and have duration and location. All actions effect or impact both environment and other. These effects or impacts can be adversary – negative and harmful, or they can be neutral – negligible, or they can be synergic – positive and beneficial.

All actions are always and only accompanied by reactions at the beginning of an action and a resultant at the ending of the action. Reactions and resultants are also either adversary, neutral, or synergic. Usually adversary actions provoke adversary reactions and end in adversary resultants. Usually, neutral actions provoke neutral reactions, and end in neutral resultants. And usually, synergic actions provoke synergic reactions and end in synergic resultants.

And finally, with action comes choice. Choice is deciding, picking or selecting an action to take. Choice is a pre-action. Choice is multipotentiality becoming single actuality. Choice made without knowledge is random. Choice made with knowledge is controlled.

Life makes controlled choices.

^{2 R. Buckminster Fuller, SYNERGETICS – Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, Volumes I & II, New York, Macmillan Publishing Co, 1975, 1979}

^{3 R. Buckminster Fuller, ibid}

^{4 Gary Zukav, Dancing Wu Li Masters, William Morrow & Co., 1979}

As of 2006 the UnCommon Sense library remains unfinished. I am currently completing my work on Understanding Human Intelligence. It seems more urgent. … From the SynEARTH Archives, Following the preamble published Wednesday, is this introduction to the UnCommon Sense Library.

Synergic Science is “real” Science

Timothy Wilken, MD 

Orville and Wilbur Wright were aeronautical scientists and they had to understand aeronautical science to invent the Aeroplane. However, one doesn’t have to be an aeronautical scientist to ride in an airplane, or for that matter even to fly one.

UnCommon Sense is based on the synergic sciences. I have devoted many years of study to the synergic sciences, but this book is not written for me. Most humans living today are not scientists and it is not necessary for them to understand science in order to benefit from it. Nor do they need to be synergic scientists in order to act synergically.

The solutions that the synergic sciences bring us must be made available to all of humanity. Since I am seeking to communicate with as large an audience as possible, this requires the use of clear and nontechnical language. The nonscientist reader of UnCommon Sense can expect to learn to understand the human condition, and his or her options for improving his or her life with synergic mechanisms.

But UnCommon Sense must also present the synergic sciences effectively to the most scientifically minded individuals within our species. It must include enough science to provide compelling proof to the most critical of readers.

It cannot ignore the scientists in the reading audience. The synergic mechanisms that can solve humanity’s problems are based on “real” science and that science like all science has a history. UnCommon Sense will therefore present the story of human synergy in six sections – The Basics, The Science, The Past, The Present, The Future, and finally SAFEpassage or how do we get from the Present to a Synergic Future.

The Basics section includes the fundamentals of synergic science necessary to understand and recognize synergic relationships and synergic actions.

The Science section is written to help deepen the reader’s understanding of synergy. Much of it is written in the voices of the synergic scientists themselves. While this section contains some advanced synergic science, it is not as hard to understand as you might imagine.

Bootstrap to knowing

I entered medical school in 1966. In my first week I would learn one of the most valuable lessons of my life.

A fellow classmate and I were in the medical library at our school. We had been reading some science papers assigned in an earlier class, when I noticed he was reading one paper, that I didn’t have listed on my assignment sheet. He seemed much more interested in that paper than in those from our assignment sheet.

My classmate would read a paragraph or two and then hurry off to the big medical dictionary across the room. He made so many trips, I surmised the reading must be very difficult.

Finally ,my curiosity got the better of me, and I also was beginning to worry that I might have missed getting the assignment to read that particular paper, so I queried him.

First he responded by saying, “No, its not part of our assignment, I’m just reading this for myself. The author is a Nobel laureate.”

He started to return to his reading, but then he paused for a moment to look me over and for some reason he decided to share his secret with me. “Its something more than that. It is a secret way to learn that my Father taught me.”

I leaned closer and he continued.

“When you read and understand the work of a world’s leading expert, you can become the world’s second leading expert.”

At first I didn’t know what to say. The thought was so foreign to me. I said nothing and returned to my study of the assigned readings. Later that evening after class, my mind kept coming back to what my classmate had said, “When you read and understand the work of a world’s leading expert, you can become the world’s second leading expert.”

Shortcut

Could it really be true? Could getting ahead be as simple as finding out who the experts were and studying their most advanced works.

To think that I could catch up to a world expert by spending a few hours in the library seemed an oversimplification, and somehow terrible at the same time. Science was supposed to be much harder than that. In the next few years, I would learn that science is much harder than that and yet discover for myself the deep truth of my classmate’s lesson.

Science was hard, and as I began using the bootstrap I discovered there was nothing easy about understanding the advanced papers of experts. I had somehow missed the implication of my fellow student’s repeated trips to the reference dictionary that morning in the library. Now I finally understood. There is a shortcut in science, but like many shortcuts, the path is a more difficult one.

You can learn fastest from the world’s experts if you are ready to invest the effort to learn the expert’s language, definitions and methods.

Since then, this lesson has served me well.

I have saved years of study by using the knowledge of the world’s leading experts to bootstrap myself to a position of better and more complete understanding. And always, with more understanding comes more control.

I have filled UnCommon Sense with the understanding and wisdom of many of the world’s leading experts.

Please make their expert knowledge your own. Please invest a few hours in learning the language and methods of the experts and bootstrap yourself to a more powerful and positive future.

The nonscientist reader may find some parts of The Science section difficult. Fortunately, it is not necessary to completely understand or master this section in order to participate in a synergic future. However, I encourage you not to skip this section as it contains some very important information. I predict that those readers who invest the time to read and think carefully will discover they can understand synergic science.

The synergic sciences are new to everyone including most of today’s scientists. Most scientists are specialists and synergic science is not their speciality The trained scientist may have the advantage of thinking scientifically, but the material is equally new to all readers, and very likely not in most scientist’s field of training. So please do your best. This science will be used throughout the rest of the book to analyze and understand our human past, the crisis that faces us in the present, the shape of a synergic future, and the synergic mechanisms that we can begin using now to move towards that future.

Eventually, I believe most humans will come to understand even the most advanced synergic sciences. While all humans are not considered to be scientists, all human beings are Time-binders. Since science is simply the most powerful form of time-binding, I would argue that all humans are to some degree scientists.

All humans notice and react to the changes in their environment, scientists just do it more intensively and carefully. Scientists discover the laws of Nature by observing changes in their environment. By studying these changes, they come to understand them. The synergic sciences are “science”.

Science

The most powerful tool of science has been the scientific method.

First, the scientist carefully studies some natural phenomena or process – observation. Then the scientist thinks very carefully about what he has observed. He contemplates, he meditates, he thinks, when he sees a pattern, when he develops an insight, then the scientist states a hypothesis – a proposed model of reality. The scientist then makes predictions based on that hypothesis and develops a procedure to test those predictions – experiment. And finally the scientist gathers the results from the experiment and compares the experimental results with the predictions – observation.

Then the scientist begins again, the scientist thinks very carefully about the results that he has observed. He contemplates, he meditates, he thinks, when he sees a clearer pattern, when he develops a better insight, then he modifies his hypothesis and the cycle is repeated. This is the process of science, the scientific method is used over and over to create evermore accurate models of reality.

When a hypothesis is found to be exceedingly accurate in predicting reality, and when no exceptions can be found to its description of a natural phenomena or process, then and only then does it gain the status of scientific theory. A scientific theory sometimes called a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.

Scientific theories are corroborated hypotheses – they are the most accurate models of reality we have.

Near truth

When a scientist uses the word theory, he is talking about something much more than an opinion – something much more than an assumption – something much more than a belief. Scientific theories are near truths.

We humans have used scientific theory to safely take us to the moon and to cure cancers. You can safely bet your life on scientific theory and you do – every time you walk onto an elevator or board an airplane.

And while scientists have the highest respect for scientific theories, they know they are not absolutes. They understand that scientific theories are models of reality and not the reality itself. In the past these models of reality were often confused with reality itself. Those scientific theories that survived continued human experience were thought to be absolute truths. They were thought to be certainties. They were given the most prestigious of names – “Laws of Nature.”

In 1999, scientists know better. Today we know that human knowledge always grows with more experience. A scientific theory believed to be true today will be improved or shown to be incomplete later. Newton’s scientific theories, published in 1687, formed the scientific basis for the Industrial Revolution and our modern world. Thought to be absolute “Laws of Nature”, they were shown to be incomplete by Einstein’s scientific theories published in 1915.

Einstein was not necessarily smarter than Newton. He was simply later. As Newton is quoted as saying, “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Einstein was 230 years later than Newton. Einstein was standing on Newton’s shoulders as he created a more accurate model of reality. Humans will always seek to know more. Humans will always seek more accurate models of reality. Humans will always seek the laws of Nature. But, today in 1999, human science is more humble.

It accepts the fact that today’s knowledge is incomplete. That human science will always know more later.

In UnCommon Sense, I will be presenting a number of new scientific theories for your consideration. These scientific theories are to my knowledge accurate, and I have found no exceptions in their description of humanity – including human evolution, human behavior, and the human condition. But I do not ask you to accept them on authority – mine or anyone else’s.

As a time-binder, your greatest power is your own intelligence – your own ability to understand. I trust you to read UnCommon Sense critically and think carefully as you evaluate these new scientific theories – these new models of reality.

You will want to ask yourself, do these models help me to better understand humanity? Do they help me to better understand myself, to better understand the individuals important in my life, and to better understand the human condition? Do these models answer my questions about my life and the world as I experience it? Will they help me to make better choices in my future.

Again, they are models of reality, they are not reality. Scientists are human, and nothing can be taken as absolutely certain. So, irregardless of how certain my words may sound. I do not pretend to have all the answers. I believe I have the best answers based on what we know now – 1999.

But that’s now, tomorrow we will know more. Tomorrow these scientific theories will be improved and will be shown to be incomplete. But, the promise of greater knowledge and better tools tomorrow is no reason to postpone building a better world today.

The next section of the book is called The Past. Here I will add much color and flesh out the story of our synergic evolution.

Here we will learn of humanity’s struggle with adversity and neutrality, and of our discovery of synergic mechanisms and synergic relationships. Again, I quote extensively from a number of historians and scientists to explain our human story.

The Present section examines the state of our world today, and reveals a humanity in crisis. I will explain the causes of our adaptational crisis, and clearly delineate the problems that we must solve if humanity is to survive.

I will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If we humans are to continue as a viable species, we must know what is wrong with our world and what must be changed.

The Future section describes how things could be done in a synergic future. It reveals ways of solving human problems that are very different from the way we do things today. It explains how some problems that are difficult now could become easy to solve in a synergic future. It will also show how some problems that are impossible now could become solvable too. This section is very exiting and promises a positive and wonderful option for the continuation of the human story.

And finally, the SAFEpassage section is where the action is. If you are convinced by reading the earlier sections that you want a synergic future, this section of the book will tell you how you can begin changing your life and participate in the synergic revolution. This section reveals a number of powerful synergic mechanisms that can be used now to make your life safer and more meaningful.

A few ground rules and we will be ready to begin.

UnCommon Sense is written with a heightened awareness of time. Therefore, I will present these new scientific theories utilizing Alfred Korzybski’s convention of dating¹. Dating is a time-binding reference tool which allows more accurate communication.

Dating explicitly informs the reader of the temporal context in which a statement is made or when an action being described occurred. Thus America¹⁷⁷⁶ is not America¹⁹⁹⁹, just as Physics¹⁶⁸⁷ is not Physics¹⁹¹⁵ is not Physics¹⁹⁹⁹. Dating can be applied to ourselves just as well. Human beings evolve and change as they live their lives. Timothy Wilken¹⁹⁶⁶ is not the same as Timothy Wilken¹⁹⁹⁹.

UnCommon Sense relies heavily on the work of many other scientists and historians. Time-binding by definition implies that all scientific and historical works must to a large extent be corroborations. Therefore I have abandoned the practice of paraphrasing the work of others, in favor of presenting their work in their own words. This is accomplished through the liberal use of direct quotations from their original writings.

I have occasionally edited these quotations in an attempt to increase clarity, and to underscore their relevance to this work. All changes and additions to the quotations of others are very minor and have been made carefully to avoid disturbing the original content and flavor.

Where I have disagreed with a quoted author or felt the need to comment, I have used *annotations. My annotations are clearly demarcated by a colored bold *font preceded by an asterisk.

My extensive use of quotations should allow the reader a deeper understanding of the process of discovery and of time-binding. While some of these quotations are quite lengthy, your reading of them should not be considered a replacement for reading the original work. I have credited and referenced all quotations to facilitate your finding the originals for yourself.

Remember also that these quotations are themselves bound in Time. They will all be dated so the reader is aware of the time when they were written.

Because our language is evolving, you will discover many of the quotations are not gender neutral for example you will often see the word ‘Man’ used to represent the word ‘Humanity’. Our language is currently full of pronouns with implied gender that do not necessarily represent sexist beliefs or intentions of the writer. Even writing in 1999, with an awareness of gender neutrality, I have not succeeded.

Many words have changing or multiple ‘meanings’ based on context or usage. Korzybski called these words “multiordinal terms” and made use of single quotation marks² to alert the reader to this risk of miscommunication. I will also use this convention in UnCommon Sense.

And now, a word about ‘redundancy’.

Redundancy is a multiordinal term that has two very different meanings. In the one sense, redundancy means repetition of an act needlessly, or the attribute of being superfluous and unneeded. In a second sense, redundancy means repetition of messages to reduce the probability of errors in transmission, as in electronics, a system design that duplicates components to provide alternatives in case one component fails.

Now both senses of redundancy involve repetition. However, in the first sense repetition is unnecessary, while in the second sense repetition is very necessary.

Neurobiology1999 finds that information presented with the greatest duration, intensity, and repetition is best remembered by the learning mind. Redundancy is an important tool of education. This is especially true when that information contains revolutionary ideas or concepts. The synergic way is so very different from our present reality, that I have chosen to use redundancy as a mechanism to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of my communication with you. Therefore, you will find that I am redundant.

However, I hope that you will experience my redundancy in the second sense – as both necessary and valuable. I apologize for those hopefully few occasions when you find it unecessary and annoying.

And finally, I would like to acknowledge Mark Davidson’s use of the title Uncommon Sense for his book about the life and thought of synergic scientist Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

I had already chosen the name UnCommon Sense as the working title for this book when I came across Davidson’s book in 1984. But, because of his precedence, I initially abandoned the idea of using the same title. Now fifteen years later, I have come to realize that UnCommon Sense is the right name for this work.

Mark Davidson’s book is a very fine one and I recommend it highly. He had good reason to choose the title for his work, and I encourage you to take a closer look. In many ways, Davidson’s words serve as the perfect conclusion to my own introduction of this “UnCommon Sense“. Davidson writing in 1983:

“Common sense, which once assured humanity that the world is flat, now assures us that the world is the sum of its parts.

“As a result, most of us deal with our environment by taking it apart – piece by piece, problem by problem – on the assumption that our efforts ultimately will add up to success.

“The human race has gotten by with that piecemeal approach for centuries, just as it managed to get by for centuries with the pre-Copernican notion of a flat earth. But our age of innocence must now end. The unprecedented interconnectedness of civilization compels us to face the fact that the world is greater than the sum of its parts. We therefore must begin paying attention to the fate of the whole earth rather than just the sum of its nations.

“Similarly, contemporary crises compel us to consider the whole society rather than just its separate groups, and the whole person rather than just the person’s separate roles.

“On nearly every level of our life, challenges have become too complex to yield to orthodox analytic approaches that deal with interrelated problems in artificial isolation. Nationally, we are faced

by an interactive linkage of government budgets, interest rates, housing, employment, poverty, welfare, taxes, and crime. Internationally, we are confronted by an interactive linkage of population, food, natural resources, industry, technology, commerce, and conflict. And the overlap between international and national spheres is constantly enlarging.

“Everywhere, we are involved with immensely complex systems that authorities call counter-intuitive, because these systems do not necessarily behave as common sense leads us to expect. And everywhere, we are faced with a set of problems that authorities call a problematique: a veritable Rubik’s Cube in which the solution of one facet by itself can actually be a step backward from overall progress.

“We have abruptly entered a new history, an era that demands a science and philosophy of synthesis.

“We need – all of us need – a new way of thinking.

“We need a way of clearly seeing the forest for the trees, a new perspective that is variously described as holistic, ecological, gestalt, global, molar, integrative, organismic, synergistic, synergetical, synholistic, and systems.

“We need, in short, an uncommon sense of interactive relationships within and between wholes. Not just the occasional holistic insight that some of us experience in one realm or another as we muddle through life, but a total vision of the holistic landscape.”³

1 Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, The Colonial Press Inc., Clinton, Mass., 1933

2 Alfred Korzybski, ibid

3 Mark Davidson, Uncommon Sense – The Life and Thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Father of General Systems Theory, J.P. Tarcher, Inc, Los Angeles, 1983

From the SynEARTH Archives. … The following is the preamble to my small book We Can All Win!. Published online April 15, 1999 and gifted to my fellow humans.

The Future will be Different

Timothy Wilken, MD

It’s early in the 1900’s along the East Coast of America and two young brothers are traveling to their secluded laboratory in an open motor car. They have recently invented a new vehicle of transport. With them is a wealthy railroad man, one of the many potential investors to whom they’ve pitched their invention. The three men talk as they drive along.

Hoping to influence the potential investor, the taller brother predicts the impact of their newly invented vehicle on society, “Our invention, will change the way humans travel in this world. We will go faster, farther, and quicker than ever before. And, people will use our vehicle to go all over the world. Someday, you will travel to London in a just a few hours.”

“Yes,” added the younger brother, “and travel won’t be expensive either. Our invention is highly efficient, with very little mechanical friction compared to all other methods of transport.”

By the time they arrive at the laboratory, the railroad man seems friendly if not a little skeptical of their project. Within a few minutes the vehicle was ready for a demonstration. They seated the railroad man comfortably in the center of the vehicle and took up their operating positions near the front.

Soon the motor was warmed up and running hard. The vehicle vibrated considerably and was also quite noisy. There were two long spinning devices that made it frightfully windy. The potential investor began to wonder to himself. “How could this device be any real improvement over the train or the motorcar?”

Then the vehicle began to slide along the ground on what appeared to the investor to be some type of track. Suddenly, the ride improved, the sound from the track was gone.

“Oh,” thought the railroad man, “this is much nicer than I thought.” Not even his best railcars rode this smoothly. And then ,for the first time, the railroad man realized they were rising into the air. Panic replaced curiosity, and soon his screams drowned out even the sound of the motors. The younger of the inventors, noticing the investor’s distress, signaled his brother to get back on the ground right away. Later, safe on the ground, he asked his brother what had happened. The older brother replied, “I should have told him about leaving the ground.”

“You didn’t tell him the Flyer was an aeroplane?” Asked Orville in disbelief.

Wilbur replied in frustration, “So many of these investors won’t even come to the laboratory if I tell them it’s an aeroplane. So, I told him what it would do, and let him experience the “how” for himself.

I invented this story about the Wright brothers as an introduction to some recent scientific discoveries and inventions that will allow us to do something that has been thought impossible for all of human history.

Scientific discoveries have the power to turn the world upside down. Prior to the first flight of the Wright’s Aeroplane, when one believed something was impossible it was common to say, “You could no more do that than you could fly.”

We are now 100 years later, and no one would say such a thing today. In those 100 years, humanity has continued to make scientific discoveries and invent evermore powerful tools. Many other things that were once thought impossible have become common place today.

The ability to make scientific discoveries and create inventions is one of the defining characteristics of being human. This ability results from the little known fact that we humans are Time-binders. (1)  Time-binders adapt to the stressors in their lives by analyzing and understanding their world. It is this unique awareness of time that grants us humans the ability to analyze and understand our world. By observing change over time, we come to understand process. And this understanding of process is the basis of knowledge. When humans act with knowledge they gain the ability to control. As our knowledge increases, the control we can exert in and on our lives increases as well.

With the growth of the human population and with the ever increasing knowledge, humans now exercise ever increasing control over their lives, and over the lives of others and the environment as well. And, whether for good or for bad humanity now dominates the planet earth.

This unique human power of dominion is made possible by the human ability called time-binding. It is through the binding of time that humans come to find themselves, in turn, bound together. Humans are bound by their mutual beliefs, bound together by their ability to store beliefs and to pass these beliefs onto their children.

Humans are bound together by their common ‘knowing’ in the form of science, art, religion, language, music, history, and myths that are passed from generation to generation. We humans are bound by a powerful inheritance. Our inherited legacy is alive. This legacy is constantly and continually growing; constantly and continually advancing. Every generation of humans refine, improve, and expand the knowing of their fathers and mothers; refine, improve, and expand the knowing of all the other humans who have ever lived.

Time-binders do this by living and thinking; by thinking and deciding. And not only is this legacy of human ‘knowing’ alive and growing, it is growing at an ever increasing rate. The rate of knowledge growth is never greater than it is right now. The scientific discoveries presented in UnCommon Sense are based on the knowledge available now in 1999. Understanding time-binding is the key to understanding ourselves and explaining time-binding will be an important focus of this book. Time-binding is one of a group of discoveries that I will designate as the “synergic sciences”.

The term synergic comes from the root word synergy. The dictionary defines synergy as the working together of two things to produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects. A simple example might be two muscles working together or two medications combined to treat a medical illness. R. Buckminster Fuller writing in 1975 explained:

The synergic sciences focuses on the whole system to understand the relationships between the parts. These relationships can be positive – synergic, they can be indifferent – neutral, or they can be negative – adversary.

Using the synergic sciences, we humans can restructure our relationships so they are positive. This means that we can be more happy, more effective, and more productive though synergic relationship.

Then we will see, as with the Wright brother’s aeroplane, that the synergic sciences will allow us to accomplish many things never before thought possible.

Like the Wright’s aeroplane, the synergic sciences can solve enormous problems for humankind. And, like the Wright’s aeroplane, the synergic sciences can bring many positive and wonderful changes to our lives, but the “how” will be very different from the way things are done today. The synergic sciences present us with a remarkably new view of humanity and of our human potential. This new view may challenge many of your current beliefs and some of your basic values. But this is good news, because without a major change in beliefs and basic values our human problems are not solvable.

Therefore, as you read, I ask only that you suspend judgement a little while. The synergic sciences are not hard to understand, but like all new knowledge they require some investment of your time. I ask only that you take this opportunity to think carefully and consider fully.

The synergic sciences allow the creation of tools that can turn the world upside down in the most positive of ways. They offer a basis for finally understanding humanity, the human condition, and ourselves. UnCommon Sense brings good news of a better way for humanity – a way in which we can all win. A way that will allow us to create a positive, safe and comfortable future for all of humanity. This is not a partial solution. The synergic sciences can be used to create a safe and positive future for all of us. They will allow us to make a world that works for all humans living today – all six billion of us. And they promise a world that could work for even more of us. If all solutions were synergic solutions, the carrying capacity of planet earth could approach 50 billion humans.

And this is without any need to damage the earth, or degrade our environment. This is the enormous promise of the synergic sciences. UnCommon Sense will explain how this can be accomplished. But to reach that safe and positive future, we will have to change the way in which we relate to each other.

Today most human relationships are either adversary or neutral. Adversary and neutral relationships by their very structure must result in conflict, loss and indifference.

The first discovery I will present is that of the synergic relationship. Synergic relationship enables human individuals to interact with each other in a new way. A way that creates positive alliances marked by strong commitment and trust. The synergic relationship offers us the choice of co-Operation as an alternative to conflict and indifference.

UnCommon Sense will reveal the methods and techniques for creating synergic relationships. Synergic relationship allows you to build strong mutually beneficial alliances with others and to effect corroborative solutions to even the most difficult of problems. This new way of relating can be applied to oneself as an individual, to our spouses–husband or wife, to our children and our extended families, and perhaps more importantly to everyone else – our local and global communities, and finally it can be applied to our relationship with the earth, and eventually even to the universe itself.

However, today we humans are not safe. Today our human world is filled with conflict, loss, and indifference. We have the potential for a positive and safe future, but that potential provides us no guarantees.

Tomorrow may be neither safe, nor positive.

UnCommon Sense points to the opportunity for us to transform ourselves, to change our relationships with each other, to choose synergy, and in so doing transcend our problems.

UnCommon Sense is written as a guide and includes the necessary knowledge and information to safely pass through this stage of human evolution.

Asked of one respected futurist in 1962, “What will the human population be in one hundred years?” He answered, “It will either be very large or it will be zero.” (3)  . . .  In the hope that it will not be zero, let us begin.

Earth, 1999, April 15
Leonardo Day

2) R. Buckminster Fuller, SYNERGETICS–Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, Volumes I & II, New York, Macmillan Publishing Co, 1975, 1979

3) Andrew J. Galambos, V50–Introduction to Volitional Science, Free Enterprise Institute, Los Angeles, 1962

UnCommon Sense—Introduction

UnCommon Sense—We Can All Win !

From the SynEARTH Archives. … This article is taken from a 2003 book, The Unconquerable World.

Most of today’s Evolution scientists are not familiar with synergy. This leaves a void in their explanation for our living world. This void left the door open for less satisfying explanations like “intelligent design”. But now some mainstream scientists are beginning to figure it out. … Reposted from the Chicago Tribune.

Another Word for Synergy

Ronald Kotulak

THE ONLY REALLY BAD ARGUMENT University of Chicago physics professor Henry Frisch can remember his parents having was purely academic. The question: If a lightning bolt struck a primitive soup of basic chemical building blocks enough times, is there a chance it could eventually make a baby?

Frisch’s father, an MIT physicist immersed in the knowledge that inanimate atoms combine to make living things said the probability was vanishingly small, but it was not zero. Given enough chances, such an event could conceivably arrange all the necessary atoms in the right order to produce an infant.

His mother, a Harvard biologist steeped in the choreography of living cells, said that was utter nonsense. Life evolved slowly from the very simplest forms to more complex ones. There isn’t an extremely small chance that lightning striking a concoction of chemicals, even an infinite number of times, could produce a baby. There was no chance.

“They were sailing along and they ran onto a rock that they couldn’t deal with,” Frisch said.

Although Frisch didn’t take either parent’s side, he now finds himself drawn into an offshoot of the lightning-bolt question: How could something as complex as intelligence and consciousness evolve from the inorganic, elementary particles of the early universe? And is intelligence limited to humans and some animals, or do plants and even inanimate objects possess it?

The scientists raising these questions are part of a fascinating new field called emergent properties, which someday may reveal how complexity in nature ultimately crosses a threshold to produce intelligence and self-awareness.

Their research goes to the heart of a pivotal question in evolution, one that has become a hot-button political issue: Why is it that things that are very large and very complicated, and have many, many pieces to them, have structure and order?

For advocates of “intelligent design,” life seems too complex to have just happened. Some supernatural force had to guide it.

But to emergent-properties scientists, it is clear that all things from the very beginning-atoms, molecules and so on, up to living organisms-do their own “thinking” without any outside help. They communicate, process information and form new unions, acquiring capacities that are unpredictable and greater than the sum of their parts.

Evolution, rather than being driven by competition among individual organisms, is propelled forward into more complicated organisms by symbiosis and cooperation among cells. Carbon atoms, for example, can be thought of as “talking” to each other, exchanging information on how to hold hands to create a diamond crystal.

It’s a concept that’s shattering a long-standing assumption-that the behavior of atoms and of all life forms, except for human, is basically preprogrammed, preordained and reflexive.

“All of life displays emergent properties,” says Utah State University plant biologist Keith Mott. “Even a lot of things that are not life display emergent properties. It means that when you get a bunch of things together they do something that’s completely different from what you would expect from all of the individual components.”

As information is concentrated, it has the capacity to move around, be shared or seemingly amplify itself by providing a model for less-organized neighboring systems, explains Cornell University physicist Paul Ginsparg. “Once atoms form we can see how they communicate to form molecules and eventually how genes communicate to orchestrate life processes. It seems to me that information processing is possibly the thread that ties together complexity and the richness of the universe.”

The concepts that underlie the field of emergent properties are rooted in the explosive development of the early universe. The Big Bang, researchers agree, left behind oceans of elementary particles with both positive and negative electrical charges. The oppositely charged particles attracted each other, forming hydrogen, the simplest atom.

Gravity drew the hydrogen atoms into denser and denser clumps until the pressure was sufficient to begin crushing them together, forming helium and releasing enough energy to ignite the fusion furnace that becomes a star. This process continued as new stars aged, creating heavier elements as smaller atoms were fused together to form bigger ones. Finally, when the stars reached the end of their lives and exploded, they blasted into space both the light and heavy elements, seeding the universe with the building blocks of life.

These particles interact, pushing and pulling each other, constantly throwing bits of information back and forth-their way of “talking.” Electrons whiz around protons and the atoms they form are forever chatting with nearby atoms, joining into molecules, whose chemical reactions created the precursors of bacteria, plants and other organisms.

Finding out how all that happens, how life emerges from the interplay of inanimate matter, is the goal of a new $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Its ambitious aim is to duplicate the steps by which electrons, protons and all the other atoms and molecules form sets of chemical reactions that set the stage for life itself.

Among those whose work is funded by the grant are three University of Illinois scientists: physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, who studies snowflake formation in his pursuit of biological complexity; microbiologist Carl Woese, who has unveiled new phases of evolution; and chemist Zaida Luthey-Schulten, an expert in determining the molecular pathways needed for early metabolic activity.

They are, essentially, trying to create life in a test tube.

“All of these particles are inanimate,” says Goldenfeld of the early universe, “but their dynamics are such that they form self-reproducing chemical reactions that feed on each other and the environment. There’s a gradual buildup of complexity as one stage creates elements that are then used to form the next stage.

“Although people have understood that process in a general way, we’re trying to understand it in a very specific way.”

For Woese, the opportunity to try his hand at creating life is a dream come true. A deep thinker who likes to cut through science’s Gordian knots, he bears the academic scars from repeatedly upsetting biology’s apple cart, and in the process bringing evolution into sharper focus.

In 1977, his brilliant analysis of the genetic composition of cells revealed a third form of life, after bacteria and plants and animals: the archea. They joined bacteria, whose genes are free floating in cells, and plants and animals, whose genes are packaged in a nucleus. Archea’s genes are arranged in a way that lies somewhere between the system used by bacteria and animals.

Classical biologists were miffed at Woese’s third life form, believing, as did Darwin, that the “tree of life” had only two main branches. Archea, they insisted, are not a separate branch but members of the bacteria family. How could an unknown upstart whose background was biophysics overturn a tenet of biology that had stood for nearly 150 years? One Nobel Laureate warned a colleague of Woese’s to stop working with him if he wanted to salvage his own career.

As technology improved and it became easier to trace the evolutionary history of life in genes, Woese’s finding was finally accepted a decade later, and his three-branch tree of life is standard in biology texts.

Woese next went after a big stumbling block in classical evolution. Darwin’s doctrine postulated that all living things eventually could be traced back to a single founding cell. But the odds against that happening are astronomically large. It would require all the building blocks of life to come together in one place at the same time to form the first founding parent.

Instead, Woese announced in 2002 that life did not start just once, as had long been taught, but possibly millions of times. It was relatively simple for raw chemicals, he said, to do what they do best-communicate and form bonds-and build the first primitive genes. These early organisms readily swapped genes among themselves, evolving more efficient survival skills in the exchange. Most of the early life forms consolidated or died off as three strains became dominant, he said, founding the three domains of life.

This time, recognition of his work was swift. In 2003 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences embraced the “Woesian revolution” by awarding him the $500,000 Crafoord Prize, which is given for scientific research not covered by the Nobel Prize.

His elevated stature hasn’t changed Woese’s work habits. He still sits in an old swivel chair, puts his feet up on a cluttered desk and with a computer keyboard on his lap lets his mind travel back in time more than 3.5 billion years to try to envision how life on Earth first started. The microbial world, he believes, holds the key to the genetic history of human evolution.

Biologists have long thought that the life of a cell depends on a two-step process: a source of energy and the molecules that take that energy and use it to perform their life-giving functions. But Woese thinks there is a crucial third step-organization. Things have a preferred way of getting together and that sets the course for evolution.

“Organization is not an arbitrary random ordering of things,” he says. “Organization is something that evolves from within. It is the nature of the universe to organize with the passage of time.”

And the laws of physics regulate that organization, he says. “Physics has changed. Physics is now talking far more about organization of our complex dynamic systems.”

Woese made a discovery years ago that is now recognized as the possible missing link between physics and biology. He showed that long before amino acids became the building blocks of proteins, they had a special property, preferring either to associate with water molecules or be repelled by them, kind of like the 0’s and 1’s of computer code.

By communicating their preference, Woese and his colleagues believe, amino acids may have set about organizing how nucleic acids, the chemicals of genes, pair up with individual amino acids to knit them together into proteins. This dependence between amino acids and nucleic acids ultimately evolved into the universal genetic code of all living things.

“Evolution is the fundamental base of biology,” he insists. “It’s not that biology gives rise to just this incidental tinkering around called evolution. It is that evolution gives rise to biology.”

Goldenfeld calls Woese’s insight the turning point on the road to life. “This property that Carl measured is, in biology, like a relic of the Big Bang. It seems to be something that relates to very early properties of living matter, of the amino acids themselves before they became deeply involved in the molecules of life.”

Evolution comes in two forms, Woese says. The first is the kind that he and his colleagues talk about, the natural inclination of the universe to organize into more complex structures, from atoms to living organisms. If the universe started over again, according to this line of thinking, it would have some interesting differences, but it would still end up very similar to the one we have now, complete with single-celled organisms, plants and animals.

THE SECOND IS the kind of evolution Darwin described from his observations of the variations in species caused by environmental pressures. So now we have Woesian evolution driven by the free exchange of genes among the first primitive cells, followed by the random mutation of genes that Darwinian evolution showed bestows better survival skills on organisms.

Norman Pace, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says that the condemnation that Woese’s ideas initially aroused evoked the ostracism Copernicus faced when he challenged existing dogma that the sun revolves around the Earth.

“It wasn’t patently obvious to people in Copernicus’ time that the Earth traveled around the sun, and in Woese’s case they weren’t prepared to think about the microbiological and deep evolutionary stuff he came up with,” Pace says. “Woese has done more for biology than anyone since Darwin. What Darwin provided was mechanism, natural selection. What Woese gave us was evolution’s map-here’s what happened.”

The U. of C.’s James Shapiro, a pioneer of emergent properties, faced similar skepticism when he first published his insights about cellular communication 17 years ago to an incredulous scientific community. In studying the behavior of bacteria he found that, although they consist of single cells, they do not behave like loners. They act together, just like an animal or any other multicellular organism.

His colleagues found this hard to swallow. “It wasn’t well-received,” he recalls. “I later learned that the people who study higher organisms didn’t want bacteria to be able to do things higher organisms could do.”

But now it’s widely accepted that bacterial colonies of many parts can act as whole organisms. How they communicate and cooperate in large numbers has become the basis for studying how bacteria maintain the Earth as a livable planet. Because they make up the vast majority of living organisms, bacteria and archea drive biology’s energy cycle, and they balance the atmosphere’s oxygen and carbon dioxide content, among other things.

The communication among bacteria is similar to how our cells talk to each other. Human cells chat on a much more sophisticated level, doing such things as warding off cancer and repairing cellular damage. The chatter begins at conception when a fertilized egg starts dividing and daughter cells busily inform their neighbors whether they are headed off to become a brain, liver or toenail, so that they all don’t try to do the same thing.

“What’s going on in biology, and is really very major, is we’re understanding how really spectacular cells are at figuring things out, processing information, analyzing complicated situations and making good decisions about them,” Shapiro says. “The research agenda, at least for the beginning of the 21st Century, is focusing on cells and organisms as very sophisticated and powerful processors of information.”

Others have shown how various organisms have evolved different ways to exchang this information. Ants, for example, communicate by chemical “words” called pheromones, as Harvard’s E. O. Wilson discovered, leading him to develop the scientific discipline called sociobiology.

“The interesting point to be made is that different organisms and different cells use different modalities to communicate,” Wilson says. “Humans are in a very small select group that use AV, audiovisual communication. Ants belong to the vast majority of organisms that use chemical pheromones, smells and tastes as their signal.”

Organisms evolve these signals when it becomes advantageous to form groups that improve survival. “The group is better than the individual organism in competition for food, space and breeding,” notes Wilson.

When Wilson expanded his theory to say that humans have social instincts that have a genetic basis, an irate scientist dumped a pitcher of ice water on his head at a meeting in 1978. The water-pourer objected on grounds that the brain was a blank slate and that whatever people do is learned. Since then science has come to terms with the joint roles that genes and learning play in behavior.

A key issue raised by the study of emergent properties is the nature of intelligence and consciousness, and whether bacteria or even diamonds can be said to think. Some scientists say this kind of communication is, indeed, a basic form of thinking. Others vehemently disagree. Intelligence, defined as the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, is something only humans and maybe some animals possess, they argue.

“When two atoms start forming a crystal lattice, that is information transfer,” says Hans Bohner, a University of Illinois professor of plant biology. “Some people would say a crystal has some intelligence, a salt crystal or a diamond, because the atoms are organized in a certain way. But I do not call that intelligence. It is intrinsic in the quality of the atoms.”

While many scientists may be hesitant to give a diamond the benefit of thought, they are not so sure anymore about non-human organisms such as plants.

Plants process information and act on it, so they have a form of intelligence, says plant scientist Anthony Trewavas of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, who has spent 40 years studying plant communication. They have self-recognition in the sense that they know the difference between another plant’s roots and theirs. And they move and change shape, ever so slowly, to optimize exposure to the sun, water and nutrients.

“Part of the problem when I talk about plant intelligence is that people say, ‘Oh, rubbish. They don’t have a brain.’ OK, they don’t have a brain, but you don’t need a brain for intelligence,” he says. “What you actually need is an operating network of cells. If that network has a way of controlling the flow of information and manipulating it, in other words problem-solving, it is therefore regarded as intelligent.”

Plants, for instance, can predict future shade from neighboring plants by sensing their infrared emissions, and undertaking maneuvers to move out of the way or to change their leaf structure so as to optimize the area for collecting sunlight.

Once considered fringe science, plant intelligence is being taken more seriously. Last May, an international group of scientists met in Florence, Italy, for the first Plant Neurobiology Meeting. A second one is scheduled for next spring in China.

Trewavas believes that brains evolved in animals, and not plants, because of the predator-prey relationship in animals.

Plants have no need for quick mobility because they depend on the sun, soil and water for sustenance. But the first predatory organisms had to get smart to capture prey, and the prey needed to get smarter to escape. This resulted in a race to develop specialized cells to process information rapidly.

“You get this positive feedback system in which as predators become faster, prey has to become faster or it doesn’t survive,” Trewavas says. “You evolve even more nervous tissue to do it so you get up to organisms that now move extremely fast, at the speed we are familiar with . . . Eventually the brains continued to evolve until you end up with this complex structure with large numbers of emergent properties coming out that you cannot predict from the behavior of a few simple neurons-consciousness, for example, speech and things like that.”

Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, says consciousness may, in fact, result when lots of information is shared at once. At the age of 16 in Italy, he decided that understanding consciousness was the greatest puzzle in science and he wanted to solve it. Now he believes the key may be understanding why consciousness fades when we fall asleep.

Consciousness, his theory holds, emerges when a system integrates information, such as when the different parts of the brain talk to each other. As sleep sets in, those parts stop talking among themselves, thereby dissolving the state of consciousness that emerged from that communication network.

Scientists used to think that consciousness vanishes during non-dreaming sleep because the brain rests and stops working. Researchers showed that was wrong when they discovered that during slumber the brain is still electrically and chemically as active as during wakefulness.

Consciousness fades away not because the brain takes a nap, Tononi speculated, but because its different parts stop communicating. To test his prediction, he and his colleagues performed an ingenious experiment: When they electrically stimulated an area of the awake brain, that part quickly sent out conference calls to many other parts. But in the sleeping, non-dreaming brain, stimulation produced no conference calls. The area of the brain that was dialed up by the small jolt of electricity sat on the message.

“It fit exactly the key prediction of the information-integration theory,” Tononi says. “The effect was very clear-cut.”

Even though self-awareness, or consciousness, is the least understood property of matter, humans prize it for giving us the ability to quickly adapt to changing situations and thus a tremendous evolutionary advantage.

But all life forms solve problems, and Tononi says we may be small-minded in asserting that other organisms, or for that matter inanimate things, do not experience a degree of consciousness.

“If you say that consciousness is a system’s ability to integrate information, then anything that’s made up of interacting parts will have a little amount of consciousness,” he says. “Does a crystal have consciousness? At one level I have to say yes, but at another level I’d say it is so low that it’s basically nothing. Animals will have it for sure, apes, monkeys, cats and dogs.”

Even single-cell organisms might be said to have consciousness. The bacterium E coli, for example, can tell when its DNA has been damaged and turns on repair systems. It holds up cell division until all the DNA is mended so that daughter cells will be healthy. It can then “sense” when the repair is complete.

“Do you call that self-awareness? I don’t know,” Shapiro ponders. “You can get into a long debate about that. But until we understand emergent properties like that more thoroughly than we do, it’s difficult for us to deal with some of these large philosophical issues.

“There’s a lot of surprises coming up in biology and it’s precisely this focus on information processing that is going to bring those surprises to us.”

- – -

BIG BANG TO BIG BRAIN

Examples of how matter organized itself to evolve:

BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO

13.7 BILLION YEARS AGO

Seconds after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons organize themselves into the nuclei of simple elements like hydrogen. Thirty thousand years later, electrons begin orbiting the nuclei, creating atoms.

13.5 BILLION YEARS AGO

Pockets of gas become extremely dense, forming numerous stars, which organize themselves into the first galaxies.

5 BILLION YEARS AGO

The sun forms inside the Milky Way galaxy, creating Earth and the other planets, which arrange themselves into the solar system.

4 BILLION YEARS AGO

Atoms of hydrogen and oxygen on Earth bond together, forming water molecules. Water assists in the production of other types of molecules.

3.9 BILLION YEARS AGO

An oily skin, or membrane, forms around groups of other molecules, creating the first single-cell organisms, known as bacteria. Cells learn how to grow and divide and soon appear all over the Earth.

1 BILLION YEARS AGO

Cells called algae begin living together, becoming the first plants. This union allows each cell to perform a specific job. To make sure jobs aren’t repeated, the cells develop hormones to communicate with one another.

MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO

700 MILLION YEARS AGO

More complex multicelled organisms evolve, including jellyfish, which develop muscles and nerves that allow cells to communicate more efficiently.

570 MILLION YEARS AGO

Jellyfish evolve into flatworms, which have organs, such as a stomach and brain, and a symmetrical structure that becomes the blueprint for all higher life forms.

500 MILLION YEARS AGO

The first vertebrates, some of which were ancestors of the modern-day lamprey, develop in water.

470 MILLION YEARS AGO

In the form of ancient mosses, the first life forms leave water to live on land.

100 MILLION YEARS AGO

First mammals appear.

First apes appear 80 million years later.

100,000 YEARS AGO

Homo sapiens evolve with the largest brain in relation to body size.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Write the author: rkotulak@tribune.com.

Humanity is currently organized non-cooperatively. Our failure to work together is resulting in our failure to survive. See this morning’s article on CommUnity of Minds by James Howard Kunstler. System scientist Chris Lucas suggests we do have an alternative to this failure if we change our attitude. From the SynEARTH Archives.

Connecting Synergistically

Chris Lucas

Men and Women are different, not in the obvious bits but in a deeper way, in our approach to life. The difference in question relates to our relationships, how we view being separate and being together, our approach to connectivity. Whilst this difference may have a biological (hormonal) basis, and be reinforced culturally, that aspect is of little importance. All such differences are statistical, with much overlap between the sexes. Neither approach is right or wrong in itself, they matter only in their effects on our overall fitness, whether we consider that as an individual, as a group or in terms of local or global societies. What matters is what these different approaches tell us about the way we view our world, and how this in turn affects our future behaviour.

When people meet we can take two basic attitudes. In the first, competition, which is typified by male behaviour (fighting over mates in its biological origin perhaps), we regard the other as threatening, as an interaction that potentially reduces our fitness as an individual. In the second, cooperation, typified by female behaviour (caring for offspring as a biological drive perhaps), the other is regarded as needy, interactions potentially increase our overall fitness as a group. In modern complexity thought these two approaches to fitness interrelate and we explore this relationship here. Despite their origins as survival methodologies from our evolutionary past, these gender biases are still with us today, affecting our current social behaviour and shaping the constitutions that we create.

A Difference between the Sexes

Over the last 2500 years we have been living in a patriarchal world, all our institutions and cultural behaviours have been instigated by men, controlled by men and validated by men. Only recently, with the rise of feminism, has serious attention been directed at women and their actual (rather than assumed) behaviours. In her book ‘In a Different Voice’, Carol Gilligan outlines research showing that the two sexes have rather different approaches to life. Calling these the ‘rights’ and ‘care’ approaches, she explains these as methodologies that respectively regulate conflict, and which seek to establish cooperation. The approaches are so different that questions presupposing ‘rights’ answers are apparently badly answered by ‘carers’ (leading to the prejudice of women being thought ‘illogical’), The ‘care’ approach is instead trying to diffuse any conflict, by seeking an alternative solution to the dualistic yes/no answers being forced by the ‘rights’ approach.

The evolutionary value of these two alternative approaches are seen in the behaviour of our primate relatives, whose lifestyles still reflect the evolutionary conditions under which such behaviours originated. The dominance hierarchy of the alpha male’s ‘mating rights’, and the resultant subordinate actions by lesser males, are echoed within the human social scene, with our constant emphasis upon ‘bosses’ and levels of control over the ‘lesser’ members of our social groups. In contrast, the maternal infant care role within the primate world echoes the power sharing mode seen in human friendship associations, a mode that must be seen to be at the heart of society itself.

External and Internal Perspectives

The ‘rights’ view of life is what Hampshire called a ‘judge’ perspective. Here, in common with much philosophy and science, each situation is viewed from the outside in what is regarded as an objective way. This viewpoint forces simplifications since an observer necessarily cannot know the full history or values of the protagonists. Such abstractions allow for easy apparent solutions, but accept without question the either/or nature of protagonist conflict situations. The ‘care’ approach, on the other hand, relates more to what is called an ‘agent‘ perspective, where we are invited to place ourselves into the situations faced by the protagonists and asked how we would respond, which brings into play the full range of our personal historical and emotional values.

This situated form of evaluation is, from a complexity perspective, far more appropriate in real life situations, since it leaves the solution set open and allows the agent to access the full range of possible alternatives, without canalizing choice to just two isolated and opposing options. The requirement to balance multiple values or dimensions in any real situation encourages compromise, but more importantly it also allows synergistic effects to be taken into account, those new possibilities or solutions that result from the interaction process itself. This allows us to deal with novelty and not just those situations phrased in terms of existing or predetermined academic answers.

The Idea of Synergy

Within the complexity field we spend much time talking about state space and the total possibilities open to the system. Here alternative answers come into their own, and in this sense complexity studies is more a female oriented approach to choice than a male one. Synergy is the study of how interactions within systems affect their joint fitness, and this depends largely upon the forms of interaction employed. In the ancient philosophy of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, and also in its close relative Taoism, we find the observation that as well as the view of ‘me’ and that of ‘you’ we can also have the views of ‘both me and you’ and of ‘neither me nor you’. In other words, when we view combinations or interactions we must take into account all the possible combinations, and not just those obvious or familiar to us.

Relating this to our two forms of interactions, the male ‘rights’ approach seeks to keep ‘me’ and ‘you’ separate and to mediate a sort of mutual non-interference pact between us – a uneasy truce (as seen in the politics of Rawls and Dworkin). The female ‘care’ mode addresses the ‘both me and you’ viewpoint, and seeks to benefit both as a result – a compromise, more concerned with emotions, intuition and trust (e.g. in the work of Noddings and Baier). But what about the ‘neither me nor you’ viewpoint, what do we make of this ? Here we step up a level, we transcend the limitations of individual viewpoints and enter a new plane, a social viewpoint. In complexity terms this is a form of emergence and leads to new system properties coming into being, properties or opportunities that do not exist in terms of individual viewpoints.

One plus One equals Infinity

Emergent properties extend the options available to us, they are forms of innovation that take us beyond those possibilities that we previously knew. Two people by working together can achieve what each alone cannot – this may be in something as simple as erecting a tent for example. Once this novel structure comes into existence then further innovations become possible. More people working together can achieve a cathedral, in other fields we obtain computers or ships. Each combinatorial creation can then join with the others to create additional novelty (a floating, computer navigated, hotel for example). In this way our human societies expand in complexity without limit. Synergistic possibilities are thus infinite, life is an open ended adventure.

As well as these material synergies we can also recognise more mental or spiritual ones, for example the religious and political philosophies that play such a large part in our human lives. Each time we innovate in this way we expand our viewpoint to create new values, extra levels of individual or social needs that can then affect our lives in positive or negative ways, often in forms that escape our immediate notice. Emergence, by definition, requires that we transcend our current world, that we accept a new level of reality that goes beyond what we could previously envisage. Our awareness thus grows and we potentially extend beyond our origins, adopting along the way more appropriate modes of thought.

Society as Synergy in Action

Transcending the viewpoint of the individual and recognising these higher level properties is not an easy thing to do, any more than our organs can recognise that they are parts of a person or a molecule that it is part of a cell. Nethertheless, just as a person has abilities beyond those of cells and organs, so our social organisations have lives of their own, properties that do not depend upon specific individuals (whilst being dependent upon some individuals participating in the various roles). This is a form of autopoiesis, a self-sustaining property that retains identity despite part changes, in just the same way as a body retains identity despite replacing all its cells over time.

This form of synergy is characterised by the phenomenon of downward causation, whereby the properties of the higher level act to constrain or stabilise the part behaviours. In society, our laws, customs and institutions create a framework that prevents chaos or disorder but also enables the specialist behaviours (division of labour) and individual efficiencies (extended choice) that distinguishes today’s higher standard of living and potentially better quality of life from more primitive tribal collectives. This aspect of communal novelty can prove to be both good or bad, and sadly our historical experience has rather emphasised the negative aspects, nethertheless this need not be the case.

Autonomy as Illusion

The two inherent aspects, of restrictions (needed to maintain the social infrastructure) and freedoms (our apparent individuality), are often treated separately, as opposing viewpoints, rather than as complementary features of a complex system. Most of our political thought adopts a dualist position, emphasising on the one hand control (law and order – the static traditionalist society) and on the other hand autonomy (personal liberty – the competitive liberal society emphasis). Once we recognise however that freedoms can exist only within a social framework (desert island living forgoes such social benefits), we bring into play the concept of responsibilities. The self as an autonomous entity has no existence outside the society that sustains it. All our claims to individualism (e.g. as artist, lawyer or web billionaire) depend extensively on other people, we rely on them to maintain the social infrastructure that permits us to enjoy ‘rights’ and thus we must also accept responsibility to them in return for these privileges. The modern view that we can have ‘rights’ in isolation is thus seen as absurd – why should other people support us as parasites ? Rights exist only in so far as we accept our collective responsibilities for the synergistic whole which enables them.

Many of the jobs, recreations and infrastructures that make up modern society are meaningless in individual terms, they only gain their validity as social functions, in terms of collective responsibility and benefits. Examples include football games, politics, computers, bureaucrats, banking, churches and television. All of these (individual behaviours or choices) are producible or usable only within a collective structure, as part of a system of multiple interconnections that gives the freedoms that allow each individual to specialise in tasks that bypass those survival strategies that would be essential if societies didn’t exist. Perhaps 90% or more of our lifestyle today relates to such non-primal needs. That we are able to concentrate so much on the higher social and abstract aspects of life reflects the benefits obtained by social synergy, in contrast to the selfishness often shown today by the individual members.

The Selfish Approach

Problem resolution within a view of autonomous individuality often resorts to power plays, the use of threats. If this does not work then little is left other than acts of aggression. This form of violence is usually resisted. Even if it is not it must lead to damage to the victim, and if resisted (our natural biological impulse) leads to damage to the aggressor also (either material, financial or physical). The escalation of such conflicts is almost inevitable, as the residue of resentment, grudges and injustice will linger over many generations. Breakdown of the social infrastructure (local or national) is a common result of these scenarios, in other words both parties lose in the long term.

The position established by such power plays has led historically to the dominance based social hierarchies with which we are familiar. These are based upon a static form of society, whether dependent upon left or right wing dictatorships, whether secular or religious in form. Given humanity’s propensity for curiosity and novelty, these sorts of systems can only be kept in place by repression of any dissidents, thus most of the government effort is directed to stabilising their control and not on bettering the conditions for their citizens. It is in this form of society that revolutions come into their own, since there is no other avenue for resolving major disputes or disagreements within the status quo. It is an irresponsible form of social organisation that leads to massive fitness losses in overall terms.

Higher Level Webs

Responsibility means accountability, obligation, duty and trust. It presupposes a care ethic, a way of regarding society as a beneficial establishment both for ourselves and others. We thus have a mutual interest in maintaining the synergy that it creates. These emergent properties are a result of our interactions as members of society and if we allow these to change then society can develop accordingly. The fear often supporting static or traditional societies is that this change will dissolve what is valued about the current society and replace it by unwanted novelty that will impinge negatively upon our quality of life. Yet, in any grouping, allowing all to contribute enhances greatly the intelligence and knowledge available. Having one ‘boss’ directing say twelve ‘workers’ means that only a twelfth of his mind can be devoted to controlling each of them, whereas giving the workers self-autonomy enlists thirteen mind-powers on a now mutually-agreed task – a step jump in efficiency exceeding by far so called ‘productivity’ improvements !

The only reason not to support this mode is if the boss wishes to exploit the workers, achieving a result not in their interests, and we must be honest in saying that this is almost invariably the case within our societies, any dissention quickly resulting in suppression by company or state – a fitness minimising strategy for the majority. But the size of the ‘pots’ that such bosses are hoarding is itself being vastly reduced by their behaviour – a self-defeating stupidity in synergic terms ! Mutually supporting, rather than competitive, forms of interaction however can also enhance rather than detract from the maintenance of our values. This is the case, since by caring about the whole we can avoid forms of growth that fail to maintain what is good about our world. The equality of worth or values amongst participants assumed by the ‘care’ approach establishes a network of links amongst all the members of society. This multidirectional web leads to a form of dynamic society that naturally can evolve in a positive way, if it is free to do so.

Social Self-Help

In many ways the emphasis we gain from complexity studies, where better options result from agent autonomy than those obtained by external design, leads us towards a political stance that may be termed anarchistic. Despite authoritarian misinformation, this refers to a system without leaders or dominance (whether these be communist or capitalist, governmental or company), in other words a self-organizing form of social order, rather than the ‘lawless disorder’ implied by the word’s vulgar usage. The efficiency advantages resulting from the ability to explore all of state space, and not just those avenues allowed by vested interests, makes this form of dynamic democracy superior in all ways to the more exploitative and unsustainable static forms common throughout the world today (in both their right and left wing versions).

These considerations tie in with similar concerns within the ecological, feminist and human rights movements, and these all support forms of organization that do not enshrine a single value (e.g. money or power) as superior to all others. Within a more balanced multidimensional value system we see clearly that maximising individual values or ‘rights’ (in isolation) forces such negative impacts and divisions on the rest that the very existence of society and even of our planet is threatened. Whether a form of stateless libertarian socialism would result in solutions to the failures and self-contradictions of domination capitalism is of course open to debate, but ethical decisions here will depend on a better understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of multivalued self-organizing systems. This aspect has so far been neglected as a research direction, where dynamic equilibria are usually studied with respect to over-simplified or one-dimensional fitness criteria.

Conclusion

Recognising the biases inherent within our current social organizations does require some education and openness, an approach allowing the free availability of critical information that is increasingly being prevented today by monopolistic media interests. Working together, rather than in opposition, can only increase the positive benefits to society as a whole. This synergistic fact is obvious after a little thought. Behaviours that tend to stifle or prevent people using their talents cannot enhance our overall lives, at best they can trade-off some values against others, usually leading to social divisions and a need then to resort to force to maintain the status-quo. A stressed ‘master/slave’ society cannot be regarded as a optimised one, thus it behoves independent scientists to look for and demonstrate better ways of political organization.

The self-organizing ideas on which complexity science is based support (in principle) many similar (historical or current) forms of genuinely free social organization. If we understand that society itself requires cooperation to survive, then this empowers us to look more closely at cooperative effects in both human and ecological fields. This ‘compositional evolution’ alternative (to the conflict based studies so dominant in the current life sciences), can be expected to show in stark relief the massive advantages of cooperation over conflict as a way of organizing our planet. To obtain these advantages however, this awareness needs to be globally disseminated, in such a way that the people of this planet understand that there are valid alternatives to the socially and environmentally crippling ‘control freak’ mentality evident within all our governments (in blatent opposition to their professed democracy), and the divisive company elites that they increasingly represent.

Reposted from CALResCo.