LINDA <<I’m playing with this idea of political predisposed differences that we are born with that will inevitably cause us to come into groups and polarize with others unless we actually perceive them as naturally occuring phenomena. We need to accept and honor these different ways of perceiving the world and making sense out of things. We need not think we can or even should change the way others view the world. If we are to make wise decisions, we actually need to honor the differences we each bring. It has been shown that groups that accept and honor their inherent differences generally make better decisions. But to do that leaders need to create safe spaces for the the differences to come out and to see a larger vision that holds the various polarities together. Left needs right and right needs left. Without the center holding the marginalized voices together, society will break down.>>
I agree that we can’t force change on others to see THE WORLD, as we see our wrld. Education has its objective of guiding others to see their world differently – but it is immoral to indoctrinate – and each person’s creativity must be part of their wrld emergence. I feel strongly that both sides of polarized peoples have wrlds that must be changed if the polarization is to become non-conflictual, differences that remain are mutually acknowledged and accepted. Today, all our wrlds are seriously warped, and reinforced by social pressure and media silos.
I use “wrld” to label the whole subjective reality of a person represented by patterns of neural-molecular activity in the brains/bodies. Persons usually mistake their “wrld” for an external WORLD, common to all – although they will admit occasional illusion and that there is much about the WORLD they don’t now, and that some of their knowledge might be wrong. Persons never experience the whole of their “wrld” at any moment, although much of their “wrld” is unconscious context for what they do experience.
Left and Right is not due to each misunderstanding THE TRUTH. When each side talks about “big” or “little” government, neither have any real comprehension of “government” – and nowhere in public or private schooling is this learned. The average person is indoctrinated by their social setting, often manipulated by elite systems. Much of the polarization results from confusion of realities, collateral damage from the slow coup as Corporations move to control Governments. The word for “Corporations Controlling Governments”is Fascism. The tyranny of Nazi Germany was more than Fascism. Most of the supporters of Trump, Clinton, and Sanders have little accurate comprehension of what is going on. They are all being exploited. The polarization can’t be resolved by dialog on their deepest felt concerns because those concerns are symptoms of societal dysfunction and not from “evil thinking” by the other side. The singular outcome of truly successful dialog would be a convergence to authentic ANARCHISM (of the theme promoted by Kroptkin in Mutual Aide). Early in the 20th Century, Big Business was much more fearful of Anarchism than Communism (e.g., the prosecution of Sacco & Vanzetti).
An example of REALITY. In most cases, jobs weren’t outsourced. Corporations created new production systems using automation and robotics that required less skilled labor than the previous production systems. Workers (already working in the facility) in the USA wouldn’t work those jobs nor at the lower pay. A corporation that tried to keep using the old method in the USA would eventually go bankrupt – they couldn’t compete in the new global economy. To ensure that citizens continue to live well while technology improves production systems is not possible within Capitalism.
<<I believe that is what we are seeing with Trump and Brexit. As a whole society we have not made room to hear the various polarized voices that are now screaming at us to be heard. They have always been there, but their pain hasn’t been as great as it is now. In chaos theory, we know that we are at the edge of a breakthrough or breakdown when everything seems far from equilibrium, which we are seeing in our current election cycle. Whether or not we breakdown or breakthrough will largely depend on our ability to actually hear and to take into consideration the marginalized voices on both ends of the political spectrum into a larger vision for the whole. If we don’t, we will probably see more and more fragmentation and breakdowns occurring.>>
I speculate everyone is marginalizing because we all mis-conceive the nature of a CENTER or WHOLE.
CENTERS = are imagined as places from which all of relevance can be connected. What if such doesn’t exist, except in artificial constructions designed to have centers. Elsewhere I have written about a human cognitive limitation, often called Miller’s 7+/-2 Law. More precisely, humans can hold only 3 independent variables in their working mind at a time. This has led to all fundamental theories having 3 fundamental assumptions or principles. With the assistance of language humans can work with more than three variables, but when we conceptualize, we are limited to three. Complex reality may have hundreds of independent variables. Humans have developed sciences in those domain where systems can be approximated with three or less variables. The exemplar is classical thermodynamics with T, P, and V : (PV/T)=constant. THREE is probably the standard because space is 3 dimensional. Creatures who can’t function in 3-space probably don’t exist. That gravity and 3D space leads to galaxies and solar systems, makes a CENTER be a useful metaphor. For large, complex systems, there are no centers.
WHOLE is a concept applied when there is nothing else. We can define “wholes”, but the conceptualization is always within a context – that is additional to the “whole”, making it not WHOLE. The conceptual scheme, Part & Whole, is not simple. The Question/Answer and Problem/Solution paradigms are related to Part/Whole and is the source of human difficulty when we encounter situations with high MSC (Magnitude/Scope/Complexity).
Humans seem to bounce from one Lock-In to another Lock-In. Each momentary reality is locked-into a resonance of mind/brain and immediate environment. Each Lock-In is limited in variables attended to; the limitation coming from both inner and outer.
I interpret Trump and Brexit as evidence of very significant DUMBING DOWN of populations, making them easy subjects for mass reality manipulation. These “dumbed down” populations are far more scary to me than those who attempt to manipulate them.
Liberals and progressives talk about The People as if they are competent, but suppressed. Free them from their suppression and they will “do the right things”. This mistakes POTENTIAL from READY COMPETENCIES. I believe the potentials of humankind are vaster than imagined. I believe that the current distribution of ready competencies among the people is far, far from adequate. The innate competencies revealed in Rebecca Solnit’s heartwarming A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, applies to local situations where the social dominates. Most humans are grossly unequipped to comprehend and act (over time) on societal issues.
<<It is time, that something different happen: that we actually listen and respond to what is: climate change, social injustice of income inequality, etc. Rather than pushing these problems under the rug, because they are too hard and polarizing to deal with, we need to be with them and look for the larger endemic problems, the assumption sets that are difficult to surface, the core or root causes that need to be resolved for something new to happen or break through. But, it takes time and patience, which is why we look away and want simple answers as though one person, such as Trump, can fix it all for us.>>
I fully agree, that all persons are in need of change – of many types. Persons can change within dialog sessions. But, the kind of changes we need demand followup and coordination between complex webs and other patterns of many different sessions, in addition to dialog sessions. It is the tactical and strategic patterns of activity and organization – for all human activist actions that are grossly under represented in contemporary POSITIVE CHANGE activity. I agree with Douglas Rushkoff in Present Shock, that “presentism” is today epidemic, probably a reaction to the MSC of Future Shock, if persons even lets themselves explore their future.
<<If we don’t have the patience, we will just keep on projecting onto each other and keep the killing and fragmenting going. So, I am starting a county-wide Forum here in southern Arizona. It is a small thing, but it is a place to start. I will be introducing Bohm Dialogue into a monthly conversational and speaker group. More to come.>>
<< I’m playing with this idea of political predisposed differences that we are born with that will inevitably cause us to come into groups and polarize with others unless we actually perceive them as naturally occurring phenomena. We need to accept and honor these different ways of perceiving the world and making sense out of things. We need not think we can or even should change the way others view the world. If we are to make wise decisions, we actually need to honor the differences we each bring.>>
<<Allow me to add one thought from a priest friend of mine: not only do we have different ways of perceiving the world, but we need one another’s different worldviews to make larger sense of things. I was recently immersed in a contentious debate about the role of rules in a national organization. I am by nature a boundary-pusher-“rules are designed to serve humans, not the other way round”-and it’s easy for me to dismiss the “rules are rules” people entirely. I continually have to remind myself that these folks too have a point, and rules really do have value, and I can’t live without rules as easily as I think I can. I need their insistence on rules, and (I would submit) they need their occasional intransigence pushed by people like me. We can’t do it without each other.>>
Complementarity, not Oppositional.