The Only Certainty Is Uncertainty
Filed under: uncertainty | Tags: economy, politics, reality, Richard Feynman, science
Leave a Comment Uncertainty is one of our biggest issues today. With so many changes happening in the world, and with nobody in charge appearing to know how to deal with them, the uncertainty of it all can feel overwhelming.
However, it appears that some people are oblivious to the larger issue here while pushing their own dubious agenda. Some business people and politicians – especially Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner – claim that businesses can’t operate unless we “remove the shackles of uncertainty.” Boehner says:
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration isn’t taking small business owners’ concerns seriously. Last month, the Treasury Department launched “a full-fledged effort to knock back Republican claims that overregulation is slowing down economic growth” (Politico, 10/24/11), arguing in a Treasury Department blog post that one of the “most commonly repeated misconceptions” is that “uncertainty created by proposed regulations is holding back business investment and hiring.” Yesterday’s report confirms what small business owners have already made clear: “complying with government regulations is the most important problem facing them today.”
Apparently, in these folks’ eyes small businesses are in no way affected by the uncertainties related to (among other things) energy costs, credit availability in the wake of our recent financial meltdown, consumer confidence and ability to pay for what those businesses offer, potential economic and/or political crises in other parts of the world that could affect the American economy, vulnerability to the stray extreme weather event – possibly or not caused by global warming – which could wipe out their business or at least increase their insurance on it, and the potential for chaos arising out of the political mischief playing out in Washington and caused by these politicians themselves.
Nope, according to them the primary concern these small businesses have is with government regulations. Get rid of them, and everything would be swell. (Hmmm, isn’t inadequate regulation a key part of what led to our recent financial meltdown?)
The problem for Republicans and their small business friends who claim to be paralyzed by uncertainty is that uncertainty is an integral part of modern life. Unfortunately, these folks seem to be mentally stuck in time somewhere back in the pre-20th century era of classical physics, when determinism ruled the day and the workings of a clockwork universe offered an assured certainty of how things worked. (Either that, or these folks are just using “uncertainty” as a political talking point to advance their anti-government agenda – take your pick.)
In any event, the reality is that uncertainty is a fact of life. This is true on the macro level of the world we see and experience. And it’s true on the micro level, in which quantum mechanics explores the workings of the subatomic world. If we want to successfully adapt to this uncertain world, we need to understand this fact.
So what does science have to say about uncertainty? I recently came across a couple of fascinating videos of a lecture on the subject by one of 20th century physics’ leading lights.
The first is a brief 8 minute video titled Probability and Uncertainty in quantum mechanics - the introductory part of a lecture given in 1965 by Richard Feynman at Cornell University. At one point, alluding to the strange ways of the quantum world of which he’s about to speak, Feynman offers a warning:
Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, “But how can it be like that?” because you will get “down the drain,” into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
That’s only the introduction. The video cuts out just when Feynman is about to get into the specifics. A video of the full hour-long lecture is available – which I’ll get to in a moment. First though, while Feynman was known for his ability to explain complex ideas from physics in a way that we can understand, some may still find it pretty tough going. If you’re not familiar with the double slit experiment and what it says about the dual nature of elementary particles, I’d suggest first watching this short cartoon video. I found being familiar with the concepts presented there helpful in getting through some parts of Feynman’s lecture.
Then if you’re still up for it, here’s the hour-long video of Feynman’s full Cornell lecture, titled “The Character of Physical Law.” While it’s a little more challenging to understand than the cartoon, I was interested in seeing how he presented the science behind the idea. It’s also interesting to see a lecture by one of the great minds of 20th century physics. He has a charming, alternately casual, passionate and humorous style in presenting such a profound subject.
A key point of Feynman’s lecture – and one of the major discoveries of 20th century physics regarding how the world works – is that on a basic level things are imbued with uncertainty. Before quantum mechanics, physicists and others believed everything was – while complex – inevitably deterministic and predictable. It was just a question of gathering sufficient data and you could accurately forecast what would happen. As Laplace put it in 1820:
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
Thanks to quantum mechanics, we now know this is an illusion. At the most basic level of matter, things by their very nature are uncertain. If that is true of the world at its basis, then uncertainty must be a fundamental element of the world we live in.
This fact is something we still, as human beings, are having a hard time adjusting to. Humanity has lived a long time with a confidence in certainty; it’s hard letting go of that. Some are resisting with whatever certainty they can find. But this leads to other problems. As Feynman once noted:
Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
While Feynman saw a problem with people seeking – or proclaiming – absolute certainty, he also recognized that uncertainty offered the only hope for progress and growth:
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
Perhaps, as we learn to live in a troubling and uncertain world, we can take solace in this thought.
Mitt Romney, Quantum Politician
Filed under: quanta | Tags: Mitt Romney, politics, quantum physics
Leave a Comment Today’s New York Times opinion section has a great column titled “A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney.” Drawing on the recent comparison of Romney’s campaign strategies to an Etch-A-Sketch, David Javerbaum observes:
The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.
With tongue firmly planted in cheek he suggests:
…close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.
The rest of the piece borrows various principles from quantum physics, such as complementarity, probability, uncertainty and even a variation of the many worlds theory.
Ironically, while it appears to have been written in jest it actually does seem to offer a way to understand some of the quirks of Romney and his campaign.
Now that’s just weird!
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100 Seconds on Why Everything Is Connected to Everything Else
Filed under: holism, interconnected, quanta | Tags: Brian Cox, entanglement, Pauli Exclusion Principle, quantum physics, spooky action at a distance
Leave a Comment Brain Pickings has an intriguing post with a video titled “Why Everything is Connected to Everything Else, Explained in 100 Seconds.” The speaker is “rockstar physicist” Brian Cox.
While the clip was intriguing, I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical at first. You can hear some pretty bizarre claims related to quantum physics; I feel some people can get carried away with the quantum mystical stuff. I wondered at first if this was one of those cases. (How seriously should we take a “rockstar physicist”?) But apparently Cox has some serious credentials.
As for what he’s talking about with the Pauli Exclusion Principle, I guess I’ll have to take his word for it. Reading about it here it sounds like the rule is “no two electrons in an atom can be identical.” I didn’t see anything saying that no two atoms in the universe could be identical. Then again, it’s all pretty technical – and I’m no physicist.
His talk reminded me a little of entanglement – which even Einstein thought was so weird that he called it “spooky action at a distance.” I don’t know if there’s a tie-in, but entanglement really does demonstrate a mysterious form of non-local connectedness.
Interesting stuff, this quantum physics…
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The “Job Creator” Myth
Filed under: emergent | Tags: bottom up, economy, job creators, Republicans, top down
Leave a Comment Quick – which came first: economies or wealthy elites?
I raised this question because some politicians have developed a passion for referring to the wealthy as “job creators” – inferring that the well-being of the economy is tied to the well-being of the wealthy elite. The House Republican Caucus has a whole section of their website devoted to “job creators.” House Speaker John Boehner claimed last fall that “job creators are on strike.“ There’s even a group of business leaders who have established something called the Job Creators Alliance.
Since the middle of 2011, it has become almost impossible to find a Republican who will say that someone is rich. As Jon Stewart noted at the time: “Republicans are no longer allowed to say that people are rich. You have to refer to them as ‘job creator.’”
The question begging to be asked in all of this is whether the wealthy are, in reality, “job creators.” Based on a look at the facts involved – including both relevant statistics and insights provided from modern science – I believe the answer to that question is NO.
In an article about Boehner’s “job creators are on strike” claim, the website Crooks and Liars offers an array of numbers that don’t support his claim. They point out:
On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, “Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record.” (The Journal’s interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The meager one million jobs created under President Bush didn’t merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton’s tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush’s job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover:
The reason Republicans claim the rich are “job creators” is that they believe in “trickle down economics.” According to Investopedia:
Proponents of this theory believe that when government helps companies, they will produce more and thereby hire more people and raise salaries. The people, in turn, will have more money to spend in the economy.
Basically, if you let those at the top of the economic pyramid have more, the benefits will “trickle down” to everyone else.
This reflects a classic mechanical, “top down” view of how things work. In such a world, those at the top of an organization – be it economic, social or political – “operate” the machinery of the organization. They make the decisions and call the shots. Those below them in the hierarchy follow their orders.
If those on top operate the machinery properly, they reap the benefits; those who follow orders are compensated as those on top see fit. If they don’t operate things properly, then (in theory) the organization replaces the operators. It’s all very controlled and orderly – especially for those in control at the top. At least that’s the way it should be according to the believers.
Unfortunately, after 30 years of trickle down economics, it’s pretty clear things don’t work that way. How could we be in our current economic mess if they did? (Anyone blaming the current mess solely on Obama and the Democrats is just not looking at the facts. See the above chart, in which job growth from Reagan forward has yet to equal that of Carter.)
So why don’t they work? It’s because they’re based on an outdated world view. Republicans and conservatives have been looking at things from the traditional paradigm of Newtonian physics, which presented us with the “mechanical universe.” According to this paradigm, the best way to understand things is mechanically: an organization can be structured according to distinct tasks, each making a discrete contribution to the larger task of generating value, with everything managed according to classic command and control principles.
This view of management, which was the basis for mass production, was very successful for industrial production in the 19th and 20th centuries. And from this perspective, it might make sense to focus on those at the top who are “operating” the machinery.
However, some have begun to recognize that the mechanical universe is an illusion. As Dr. Brad Cox noted in a 2004 presentation titled “Command and (Out of) Control – The Military Implications of Complexity Theory“:
The Newtonian paradigm was so compelling, so neat, so logical – in short, so “right” – that it saw and imposed regularities where none existed. For the sake of finding solvable problems, science simplified reality by assuming an idealized world. It connected the discontinuities and linearized the nonlinearities – in short, it simply ignored all the countless inconsistencies and surprises that make the world – and war – such a complex and interesting problem.
The evidence is unmistakable: the Newtonian paradigm no longer satisfactorily describes most of our world (if it ever did). Science is slowly coming to recognize that the world is not remotely an orderly, linear place after all.
The same thing is true in economics. As Richard Wagner noted back in 2003, in an article in Financial Advisor:
Trouble is, our money words tend to ground in old models, particularly 17th Century physics and 19th Century biology. They have yet to incorporate the integral visions of 20th Century quantum physics or ecology. The result: “machines” vs. “ecosystems.” Not wrong, but not necessarily helpful. Often harmful. Mechanistic metaphors induce linear thinking that doesn’t accurately reflect 21st Century money. And money is hard enough without dysfunctional underpinnings. Unfortunately, inappropriate metaphors contribute to misunderstandings and questionable actions.
If we want to get beyond “inappropriate metaphors” that lead to “misunderstandings and questionable actions,” we need to face the facts. Trickle down economics doesn’t work, those at the top of the economic scale are not “job creators,” and making the rich richer will not make the economy stronger. But where does that leave us?
We need to get to the bottom of this – literally.
One of the basic principles of complexity theory is called emergence. According to this principle, complex systems – be they biological, military, economic, etc. – develop from the bottom up. As Dr. Cox explains in talking about military battles:
Evolution moves from the simple to the complex. Healthy complex systems evolve by chunking together healthy simpler systems. Attempts to design large, highly complex organizations from the top down rarely work, if ever. This merely confirms what successful military organizations have long recognized: success starts at the small-unit level. Build strong, adaptable squads and sections first. Train and equip them well – which includes giving them ample time to train themselves (i.e., to evolve). Give them the very best leaders. Give those leaders the freedom and responsibility to lead (i.e., let them act as independent agents). Then chunk the teams and squads together into increasingly larger units.
What this means is that if you want to improve the economy and create jobs, you need to focus on the simplest element in the economy: the individual consumer. If they feel economically secure and have sufficient funds, they will buy products, which will stimulate production, which will lead to the need for more workers. As venture capitalist Nick Hanauer blogged in his post “Raise Taxes on the Rich to Reward True Job Creators“:
…I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.
That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.
From the perspective of emergence, this is easy to understand. It’s not just “quantum sense” – it’s common sense.
Say you have some money and a passion for baking. So you decide to open a bakery. If your cakes and pastries are a hit with your customers, they will come back to buy more and tell their friends about your shop. The end result? With more and more customers you prosper – eventually to the point you need help and hire others.
But what if your customers don’t like your shop? What if they think your cakes and pastries taste bad or are over-priced? What if your shop is not convenient or they just don’t like you? It doesn’t matter how much money you have. Unless you make the right changes, your shop is never going to prosper. At the least, you won’t be hiring others to help you. More likely you’ll be firing any help you have and sooner or later you’ll go out of business.
And if you’re the richest person in town and hardly anybody else has money for cakes and pastries? The end result will be the same. Without enough customers, your shop is doomed.
The essential point here is that an economy is a complex emergent phenomena. It starts out as something small and simple; only as it grows does it become more complex.
The earliest economies really were small and simple. Unlike market economies or even barter economies, they were “gift economies,” in which people gave things to each other – often without an expectation for immediate or future compensation. As economic anthropologist David Graeber described it:
…what would really happen, and this is what anthropologists observe when neighbors do engage in something like exchange with each other, if you want your neighbor’s cow, you’d say, “wow, nice cow” and he’d say “you like it? Take it!” – and now you owe him one. Quite often people don’t even engage in exchange at all – if they were real Iroquois or other Native Americans, for example, all such things would probably be allocated by women’s councils.
As societies grew larger and more complex, their economies gradually evolved into what we now call a market economy. However, we still can find examples of gift economies in modern life. These include free software like Mozilla and websites such as Wikipedia. In a sense this also true of science itself, in which discoveries are shared with others who are then free to build on them. The main benefit received by those doing the sharing is an enhanced reputation – a kind of variation of Graeber’s “you owe him one.”
So, getting back to my original question: which came first: economies or wealthy elites? As emergence teaches us, the answer is “economies.” While more or less wealthy elites may develop in an economy over time, they are not the primary force behind that economy’s growth. Most importantly, they are not the “job creators.”
If we truly want to be effective in promoting economic growth and creating jobs, we should use what we learn from emergence. Let’s stop giving special favors to the rich and powerful, and let’s start focusing on the well-being of the real job creators – the middle class consumer.
Beyond Fortress America
Filed under: complexity, interconnected | Tags: America, defense, government, non-zero, security
Leave a Comment As we go through this year’s American election cycle, we hear politicians talk about American power in ways that don’t reflect an understanding of today’s interconnected world. The talk is about how America must be strong on its own – with no consideration of the implications of this connectedness. Consider these statements by current Republican candidates:
Mitt Romney – “As President, I will reverse the Obama-era defense cuts. I believe a strong America must–and will–lead the future. I will insist on a military so powerful that no one would ever think of challenging it.”
Newt Gingrich – “We live in a world where if we gamble wrong, and the current proposed defense budget is much too small, if we gamble wrong whether it is a major power like China or Russia, a medium sized power like North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran, and North Korea is a medium sized power by possession of nuclear weapons. Or it is a fanatic group willing to die in the process of killing us. We live in a world where there are weapons capable of ending civilization as we know it. And we need to be prepared in a very militant and aggressive way to defend America from having a catastrophic disaster of the first order.”
Rick Santorum – “I would absolutely not cut one penny out of military spending. The only thing the federal government can do that no other level of government can do is protect us. It is the first duty of the president. And we should have all the resources in place to make sure that we can defend our borders, that we can make sure that when we engage in foreign countries, we do so to succeed.”
These statements might make sense if you view the United States like a fortress in enemy territory. In such a case, having impregnable defenses and overwhelming firepower could be useful in defeating the enemy. (Though military history has many cases of smaller forces overwhelming larger ones.)
But today such views can come across as overly simplistic, not recognizing the much more complex world in which we now live. Countries like Russia and China are not just simply “the enemy.” If they were, why would we be doing so much business with them? Even with countries like Pakistan and Iran, things are complex; at one point or another we have worked with both countries – most notably in the current war in Afghanistan and in the Iran-Contra affair.
Of course this raises the question: what are the implications for America’s security in an interconnected world? Some relevant insights into this question can be found in a couple of TED talks.
Many people have an at least a vague knowledge of the concept of entropy, by which it is said things tend to go from order to disorder. This concept has been used by some to claim that the world as we know it is dying, and that this process is inevitable. However there is another way of viewing things, which Robert Wright addressed in one of his TED talks. He started by talking about evolution:
Because what happened in the beginning, this stuff encases itself in a cell, then cells start hanging out together in societies. Eventually they get so close, they form multicellular organisms, then you get complex multicellular organisms; they form societies.
But then at some point, one of these multicellular organisms does something completely amazing with this stuff, which is it launches a whole second kind of evolution: cultural evolution. And amazingly, that evolution sustains the trajectory that biological evolution had established toward greater complexity. By cultural evolution we mean the evolution of ideas.
What he is describing is the phenomena of complexity: open, dynamic systems have a natural tendency to grow more complex. This is true whether you’re talking about biology, economics, societies, cultures, etc.
Within this context, Wright addresses the implications of complexity for the world as we know it.
Now, I explained this growth of complexity by reference to something called “non-zero sumness.” …the key idea is the distinction between zero-sum games, in which correlations are inverse: always a winner and a loser. Non-zero-sum games in which correlations can be positive, OK. So like in tennis, usually it’s win-lose; it always adds up to zero-zero-sum. But if you’re playing doubles, the person on your side of the net, they’re in the same boat as you, so you’re playing a non-zero-sum game with them. It’s either for the better or for the worse, OK. A lot of forms of non-zero-sum behavior in the realm of economics and so on in everyday life often leads to cooperation.
The rest of his talk is devoted to the implications of this “non-zero” phenomena, which can be either good (win-win) or bad (lose-lose). The point is that as our world has become more complex and interconnected, our relationships with others around the world fall increasingly within this realm. While we often tend to view things in a zero-sum context (e.g., “the more power and wealth China has, the worse off the United States is” or “it’s perfectly OK to get rich by laying off or cutting the pay of workers”), the reality is different.
In today’s world, China’s economic well-being is inextricably linked to that of the US: if Americans don’t have money to buy Chinese goods, China will suffer. By the same token, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, the less economic and financial stability we will all have.
This theme of interconnectedness and “non-zero sumness” is also evident in a TED talk by Paddy Ashdown, a former member of the British Parliament and a long-time diplomat. In his talk he noted:
Today in our modern world, because of the Internet, because of the kinds of things people have been talking about here, everything is connected to everything. We are now interdependent. We are now interlocked, as nations, as individuals, in a way which has never been the case before, never been the case before. The interrelationship of nations, well it’s always existed. Diplomacy is about managing the interrelationship of nations. But now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico, it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down, the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia, food riots in Africa.
One implication of this is that many of our current governmental institutions have the wrong kind of structure for the world we live in:
And this tells you something very important. It tells you that, in fact, our governments, vertically constructed, constructed on the economic model of the Industrial Revolution — vertical hierarchy, specialization of tasks, command structures — have got the wrong structures completely. You in business know that the paradigm structure of our time, ladies and gentlemen, is the network. It’s your capacity to network that matters, both within your governments and externally.
This, in turn, leads to a conclusion that is very similar to Wright’s “non-zero” concept:
If it is the case, ladies and gentlemen — and it is — that we are now locked together in a way that has never been quite the same before, then it’s also the case that we share a destiny with each other. Suddenly and for the very first time, collective defense, the thing that has dominated us as the concept of securing our nations, is no longer enough. It used to be the case that if my tribe was more powerful than their tribe, I was safe; if my country was more powerful than their country, I was safe; my alliance, like NATO, was more powerful than their alliance, I was safe. It is no longer the case. The advent of the interconnectedness and of the weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
It’s not yet clear how exactly we should enhance American security in this changing world. That’s part of the price we pay for living in a period of great change.
But what is clear is that the rules have changed – that simply having the biggest and baddest military around is no longer enough. This should have become clear to everyone over ten years ago, when a bunch of fanatics in one of the most isolated countries in the world managed to stage a devastating attack on American soil.
In his talk, Ashdown noted the many security threats a country faces today, from pandemic to food safety to cyber security to immigration of possible terrorists. He observed: “It’s no longer the case that the security of a country is simply a matter for its soldiers and its ministry of defense. It’s its capacity to lock together its institutions.”
What Wright and Ashdown appear to be saying is that building bigger and better walls to protect us is no longer adequate; it’s time we focused on strengthening our networks.
Keep the Change
Filed under: energy/flow, interconnected, uncertainty | Tags: change, conservatives, future, Newt Gingrich, presidential primaries, Republicans, Tea Party
Leave a Comment “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
“So how’s that hopey, changey thing workin’ out for ya?” – Sarah Palin
It’s hard to believe that only four years ago the winning campaign for the American Presidency offered hope and the slogan “change you can believe in.” These days there is a sizable group whose attitude appears to be “keep the change to yourself – we want things the way they were.”
The Republican primary campaign currently seems to be most focused on who can best express the anger and resentment felt by the party faithful. After the South Carolina primary, the winner appears to be Newt Gingrich. As Howard Schweber observed in the Huffington Post:
…only Newt has captured the key emotive element that drives the Republican core this year: resentment. The hard right core of the Republican Party is filled with resentment, and they have found just the man to let us all know about it.
This raises questions. Why are these people so angry? What do they resent?
For much of the 2000′s, Republicans controlled the White House, Congress and (arguably) the Supreme Court. During that time they did all they could to give free reign to large corporations and the wealthy through tax cuts and deregulation. They worked to shift the balance of power firmly in favor of corporate management over the rights of workers, both in terms of work safety regulations and in terms of union power. They worked to discredit legitimate concerns about environmental degradation and climate change. They even distorted political debate to the point that even being called a liberal is a bad thing.
And yet the Republican base is still angry and resentful, saying things like “it’s time to take our country back.” From whom, exactly?
All this anger and resentment can be puzzling – if not infuriating – to those who disagree with conservative Republican ideas. And some of the results of Republican primaries can seem crazy for those out of that loop. I mean really, Newt Gingrich is the champion of family values and is a Washington outsider? Really???
But beneath all of the current drama, it’s important to realize that such behavior may be both natural and logical – once you look at the big picture.
The root of the problem is that our world has changed in fundamental ways. For the first time in human history, technology has brought all humans into close and immediate contact. It has also disrupted traditional channels of power and information.
This change has altered societies around the world in myriad ways. But such change has not been welcomed by many – especially those whose identity and values were firmly rooted in the previously established cultures. This reflects a basic but rarely considered fact: change happens differently for a culture than it does for the society of which that culture is a part.
Ideally, cultures by their nature offer enduring, lasting values. In this way they satisfy the human need for meaning and stability. In the chaos and confusion of life, we need to have a dependable framework that gives meaning to what is happening around us.
By the same token, healthy societies are continually changing. This is a reflection of changes in demographics, as well as the growth of knowledge and awareness that are a part of a dynamic society. In this way, societies satisfy the human need for freedom and creativity.
However, there is a basic conflict inherent in this dichotomy: cultural values cannot long endure unchanged within an evolving and changing society. Just as pressures build over time along fault lines until there’s an earthquake, over time pressures build up between culture and society until conflict erupts.
That is where we are now. The world has changed profoundly over the past 40+ years. We humans are much more interconnected, empowered and diverse than we used to be. This change has opened up vast arrays of opportunity for many people – especially those who were marginalized by the prevailing culture’s institutions and power structures. But it has also shaken to the foundations those institutions and structures. And such change is hard for some people to handle.
David E. Stannard discussed this issue in his book The Puritan Way of Death – A Study in Religion, Culture and Social Change. He observed:
Whereas certain individuals and certain cultures find adapting to change relatively easy, many others, for various reasons, do not. Their resistance, which may seem revolutionary because it tends so often to focus on overthrowing the new social orthodoxy, is in fact no more than an effort to forestall or at least postpone dealing with the changes taking place around them.
William O. Beeman, a professor of Anthropology at Brown University and author of “Fighting the Good Fight: Fundamentalism and Religious Revival,” also notes this varying response to change and talks about the responses of those who resist change:
In essence, all such movements are a natural consequence of human processes of cultural change. In every society on earth change proceeds at an uneven pace. Some society members embrace change with relish. Others find it oppressive and troubling. When people feel that change is being imposed on them, some will find it necessary to resist–sometimes violently. The dynamics of revitalization thus are tied to inter-group dynamics. When a group in society perceives itself as having its power and authority usurped in the course of social change, the group comes to blame both internal and external causes for its fall from power.
As far as internal issues are concerned, Beeman notes that decline is often associated with individual failings. “They accuse members of society of becoming weak and irresolute to the point where they let others oppress them.” Regarding external issues, Beeman says “…the group objectifies an Other, and identifies it as an oppressor. Usually the movement advocates resistance — sometimes violent — to that oppressor.”
Beeman also talks about the historical perspective of these movements:
All of these movements invariably create a dual myth. This myth links a supposed Golden Age in the past with a Utopian future. The past Golden Age is seen as a time when the members of the movement or those they identify with were strong, vital, and in control of the world. The Utopian future presages a time when movement members will return to that sense of group strength and wholeness.
This may sound a bit familiar to those who follow the news. Take Islamic extremism. Back in September 2001, David Plotz posted an article in Slate titled “What Does bin Laden Want?”
These extreme “Islamists,” as Bin Laden biographer Yossef Bodansky dubs them, hope to re-establish the Caliphate, the golden age of Muslim domination that followed the death of Muhammad. They regard the Taliban’s Afghanistan as a model for such Islamic rule.
Elsewhere, while we haven’t heard much about it in the United States, Israel is having problems with members of its ultra-Orthodox Haredi population. Among other things, this group has been pressuring other members of Israeli society regarding the segregation of women from men. In writing about this issue in Jewish Ideas Daily, Yehudah Mirsky refers to “…an imagined Haredi idyll in the shtetl that never was. “
Meanwhile, back here in the USA we have Newt Gingrich expounding on an “historic America.” This prompted one of his acolytes at the American Spectator – former Reagan aid Peter Ferrara – to invoke a “Golden Age” and to “objectify an Other” in claiming:
Gingrich is the only candidate remotely capable of carrying the flag for the true, original, historic America in this fundamental, existential battle for national survival. He so rightly identified the public mood in his South Carolina speech, saying, “The American people feel that they have elites who have been trying for a half-century to force us to quit being American and become some kind of other system.” He further identified the pending danger, “If Barack Obama can get re-elected after this disaster, just think how radical he would be in a second term.”
Obviously, there are many differences between Islamic extremists and conservative Republicans. But one thing they appear to share is a certain myopia about the source of today’s social change. This change isn’t the result of an invasion by infidels or a conspiracy by shadowy elites. Instead it’s a product of modern technology, with its concomitant interlinking of humanity. As Walter Truett Anderson observed in his book “Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be”:
The collapse of belief we have been witnessing throughout the twentieth century comes with globalism. The postmodern condition is not an artistic movement or a cultural fad or an intellectual theory — although it produces all of those and is in some ways defined by them. It is what inevitably happens as people everywhere begin to see that there are many beliefs, many kinds of belief, many ways of believing. Postmodernism is globalism; it is the half-discovered shape of the one unity that transcends all our differences.
There is an absurdity inherent in much of the resistance we see to modernity and its attendant social change: the resisters are frequently using the tools of modern technology to advocate resistance to its effects on society.
If resisters truly object to how the world has changed, they should live their lives in accordance with their supposed Golden Age – whether it’s the 12th century or the 1920s. They should at least have the integrity of groups like the Amish and do without televisions, telephones, computers, the internet and the like.
But as soon as they begin using modern technology they are co-opted by it. There is no logically consistent way you can protest modernity with a videotaped message, or claim to be an anti-government individualist while using communications technology that was developed by the government and that was created to link people together.
It is this inherent conflict between past values and present facts that inevitably dooms the aspirations of those who resist the social changes we are confronting today. As Stannard says regarding those resisting social change:
…such movements rarely enjoy long-range success. They result from an opposition of the needs of the emerging social structure with those of the existing group culture…and when such incongruity is not resolved by effective integration of the two competing elements, it has historically been the almost inevitable fate of the traditional culture to give way to the needs of the ongoing social structure.
Today’s changing world is unsettling to most of us; an unfortunate fact of life is that when you’re in the middle of an era of great change you’re unlikely to have much confidence in how things will turn out. We humans are not comfortable with such uncertainty.
In times like these, perhaps we can seek counsel and solace in the wise words of others who were confronted with similar times in the past. Consider, for example, the words of Thomas Carlyle:
Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.
Signs of the Times – 1/19/12
Filed under: dual nature, emergent, signs of the times | Tags: bottom up, failing institutions, government, individualism
Leave a Comment I often come across items that I believe reflect the changes I’m describing on this blog. To me they are “signs of the times.” Here are a couple.
“The Rise of the New Groupthink”
The New York Times recently ran an article about a paradox in the way we work today. For many organizations, there is an emphasis on the idea of collaboration. As author Susan Cain notes:
Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
However, she notes that there is a problem with this approach:
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
Later in the article she says:
…I’m not suggesting that we abolish teamwork. Indeed, recent studies suggest that influential academic work is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individuals. (Although teams whose members collaborate remotely, from separate universities, appear to be the most influential of all.) The problems we face in science, economics and many other fields are more complex than ever before, and we’ll need to stand on one another’s shoulders if we can possibly hope to solve them.
But even if the problems are different, human nature remains the same. And most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy.
To me this is an example of a basic principle of the Quantum Age: contrary to the popular myth that we must choose between individualism and collectivism, we are inherently both individualistic and collective by nature. We often have a hard time grasping this because it’s impossible to see both qualities simultaneously. You can see a group or you can see a person in that group; you can’t see both at the same time. But just as subatomic particles have an intrinsic dual particle/wave nature, we humans have a dual individual/collective nature. We will only resolve many of our current problems when we recognize this fact and proceed accordingly, disposing of the prevalent mythology regarding individualism versus collectivism.
Country in Crisis: Looking to America’s Mayors to Rise to the Challenge
Arianna Huffington recently wrote an article regarding how America’s mayors are working to develop solutions to problems that seem to be stumping the politicians in Washington. As she notes:
We’re now in the midst of a battle to see who will sit atop the pyramid in official Washington. This battle will dominate the media in the year ahead, but what the last year showed is that the more important story is what’s happening outside Washington. It was a year in which Time declared “The Protester” its Person of the Year and “Occupy” was named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. It was a year of solutions and energy and activism from the bottom up. And given that top-down thinking not only brought us a Depression-level crisis, but also shows no signs of getting us out of it, it’s bottom-up innovation that will be more relevant.
The rest of her article offers examples of such bottom-up innovation.
These examples demonstrate the power of emergence, the principle that living, self-organizing systems develop from the bottom up, within the context of their environment. As I’ve written here and here, many heads of institutions believe things are best run from the top down; that is a major reason why many of those institutions are in trouble. The solution will not be to accord more power and wealth to the heads of those institutions. The solution will be to recognize the power of emergence, and to learn how to rebuild our institutions in a way that harnesses that power.
All Together Now
Filed under: interconnected, uncertainty | Tags: conservative, decoherence, Democrats, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, opposites, progressive, Republicans, Tea Party
Leave a Comment We’re all in this together.
That’s not a popular thought these days.
These days we prefer to think of how we’re different: conservative, progressive, young, old, white, black, Republican, Democrat, Tea Partier, Occupier, Christian, Moslem, Jew, vegan, meat eater, Yankee fan, Red Sox fan, soccer mom, NASCAR dad, beer drinker, wine swiller, etc., etc.
We’re eager to proclaim our differences whenever we can – on the radio, TV, the web, email, and Facebook. For support, we gather together with those who share our values. After all, there’s strength in numbers. We feel embattled and oppressed by those who are different than us. To buck up our spirits for the fight we must fight against our enemies we tell ourselves:
We’re all in this together.
Against THEM.
You’ve got to watch out for THEM. You can’t trust THEM. THEY want to destroy the country. THEY want to destroy our way of life. You can’t believe the crap THEY pour out on the radio, TV, the web, email, and Facebook. THEY are wrong. THEY are liars. THEY don’t know what THEY are talking about. Or maybe THEY know exactly what THEY are doing, spreading lies, half-truths and propaganda to have THEIR way against US.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell what their tactics are. But one thing is clear: THEY are responsible for what’s wrong with today’s world.
WE had better watch out, WE had better be on our guard against THEM. WE had better use all the tools WE have available these days to fight back against THEM: radio, TV, the web, email, Facebook. WE have to be strong and stand together as one against THEM. And remember:
We’re all in this together.
In the fight against THEM.
WE are ready for this fight. THEY deserve whatever WE can do to them: THEY have it coming. The world would be a wonderful place, WE would have peace and happiness, if it wasn’t for THEM. Because THEY fight US, WE must fight THEM. WE have no choice. The world is a jungle because of THEM.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine a better world, a world free of fear and hatred and conflict. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that THEY have enough power to ruin the world for US. Is that really possible? Can THEY really do that all on their own?
Or do they need US to help THEM create this jungle world? Is this a Fight to the Death? Or is it a Dance? We react to what they do; they react to our reaction; we react to their reaction; they react to our reaction; we react to their reaction… And so forth.
This raises a question: if their actions are in response to our actions, to what degree are we responsible for their actions? Conversely, to what degree do their actions determine our reactions? Do THEY have some influence over OUR actions?
This raises another question: what would THEY do if WE didn’t react? What if we just did our thing, followed our beliefs, went on our way, and ignored THEM? Would the Dance end, the music stop?
What would THEY do if WE weren’t there?
What would WE do if THEY weren’t there?
And what would the world be like if the music stopped and the Dance ended?
Another question: to what degree are WE defined by our opposition to THEM? To what degree are THEY defined by their opposition to US? Who would WE be without THEM? Who would THEY be without US?
In quantum physics, all things exist in a state of potentiality until they encounter something that forces them to be defined as THIS rather than THAT. Physicists have a term for this: decoherence.
Maybe that’s what is happening here: our beliefs exist in a state of potentiality until we encounter the beliefs of others. Confronted by those beliefs, we are forced to choose: do we agree or disagree? It is only in encountering the beliefs of others that we come to know more clearly what we believe.
Just as we can only know light when we’ve encountered darkness, we can only know who we are when we encounter others who are not us. We are inextricably linked to our opposite, as black is to white.
If that’s the case, then there’s only one possible conclusion:
We’re all in this together.
Where Are The “Deciders”?
Filed under: emergent, interconnected | Tags: change, deciders, failing institutions, leaders, leadership, Penn State, Thomas Friedman
Leave a Comment In yesterday’s New York Times Thomas Friedman asked “Who’s The Decider?” He observes:
No leaders want to take hard decisions anymore, except when forced to. Everyone — even China’s leaders — seems more afraid of their own people than ever. One wonders whether the Internet, blogging, Twitter, texting and micro-blogging, as in China’s case, has made participatory democracy and autocracy so participatory, and leaders so finely attuned to every nuance of public opinion, that they find it hard to make any big decision that requires sacrifice. They have too many voices in their heads other than their own.
Friedman apparently believes that today’s leaders’ reluctance to make hard decisions is due to their “fear of their own people” – that they’re listening more to the opinions of others than to their own inner voices. The implication is that if these folks just mustered the courage to take a stand then everything would be better. He concludes:
Yes, it’s true that in the hyperconnected world, in the age of Facebook and Twitter, the people are more empowered and a lot more innovation and ideas will come from the bottom up, not just the top down. That’s a good thing — in theory. But at the end of the day — whether you are a president, senator, mayor or on the steering committee of your local Occupy Wall Street — someone needs to meld those ideas into a vision of how to move forward, sculpt them into policies that can make a difference in peoples’ lives and then build a majority to deliver on them. Those are called leaders. Leaders shape polls. They don’t just read polls. And, today, across the globe and across all political systems, leaders are in dangerously short supply.
That all sounds great, and in a way kind of easy. “C’mon folks, just suck it up and decide!”
The only problem with Friedman’s argument is that it totally ignores another angle on today’s leaders: they actually are making lots of decisions – frequently with disastrous results. These decisions have resulted in the omnipresent stench of institutional failure that has permeated our world today – something I’ve already written about here and here. As Jeff Jarvis wrote recently:
We don’t trust institutions anymore. Name a bank or financial institution you can trust today. That industry was built entirely on trust — we entrusted our money to their cloud — and they failed us. Government? The other day, I heard a cabinet member from a prior administration call Washington “paralyzed and poisonous” — and he’s an insider. Media? Pew released a study last week saying that three-quarters of Americans don’t believe journalists get their facts straight (which is their only job). Education? Built for a prior, institutional era. Religion? Various of its outlets are abusing children or espousing bigotry or encouraging violence. The #OccupyWallStreet troops are demonizing practically all of corporate America and with it, capitalism. What institutions are left? I can’t name one.
While the leaders of these failing institutions may be concerned about what the common folk think, it’s not a matter of waiting to see what people want and then doing it. After all, most Americans want the rich to pay more taxes. So why are so many politicians resisting raising taxes on the rich?
Rather than tailoring their behaviors to accomplish what “their people” want, today’s leaders all too often focus on their own agendas and try to shield their decisions and objectives from the prying eyes of the public. When I first wrote about this, I mentioned the problems confronting institutions like Toyota and the Catholic Church. But we regularly get news of new cases of institutional cover-up of embarrassing and inexcusable behaviors. Right now the focus is on Penn State. Does anyone doubt we will soon learn of others?
Unlike Mr. Friedman, I don’t think today’s problems are stymied by leaders’ fear of making decisions. Rather, I think the problem today is that our world has changed profoundly; as a result, the rules for how things work have changed. However, most of our leaders are products of an earlier time, with different rules.
While we live in an interconnected world, our leaders are largely products of a culture rooted in individualism. As a result, while they may be aware of what the public thinks and wants, many of these leaders value their own interests and beliefs over the greater good. Meanwhile, those who are focused on the greater good are still stymied by the fact that they don’t know what the new rules are.
So what are we to do? We might start by recognizing that while we live in a brave new world, it’s not the first time humans have been confronted with profound change. Much of what we’re seeing today – some desperately clinging to the past while others flounder around looking for different options – is probably standard fare in such situations. Change is hard, and it takes time.
At first, nobody has the answers. But as time goes on and people become more familiar with their changed world, they begin asking the right questions and finding answers in sometimes unexpected places. They learn to adapt to change, and show others the way.
Some of those who most benefited from the way things were before would be the most resistant to change; this would include many leaders who find themselves confronted with today’s strange new world. In such a world, they would have the most to lose. But sooner or later they will be confronted with a choice: adapt or fail. That choice will be pressed upon them by others who have little to lose and much to gain under the new rules.
Contrary to what Friedman might think, leaders willing to confront today’s world are not in short supply. We just don’t know who many of them are right now; the world is still being run in many cases by members of the old guard. But they’re out there.
The growing impatience expressed with today’s leaders could be a sign that we will soon have a changing of the guard. Time will tell.
Bottom-up in Rio
Filed under: emergent, quanta | Tags: Brazil, change, empowerment, poverty, Rio, technology
Leave a Comment With events like the Arab Spring and OccupyWallStreet, it has almost become a cliche to talk about the empowering potential of technology. Such events have emerged largely thanks to our interconnected technology – most notably things like Facebook and Twitter.
The PBS NewsHour recently offered a segment about technology’s potential in Rio de Janeiro. There social entrepreneur Rodrigo Baggio has created the Center for the Democratization of Information Technology (CDI), which is focused on developing computer literacy and infrastructure in the slums of Rio. As Baggio says (through a translator):
Technology and technological inclusion allows for an impact that’s greater than just learning how to use a computer and being able to have access to the Internet. The big impact is that it empowers low-income communities because it teaches them to utilize technology to understand their reality in a better way and identify the challenges that they face.
He then discusses an example:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Baggio’s favorite example is this video posted on YouTube by a group of young people.
RODRIGO BAGGIO (through translator): These kids went out with cell phones and digital cameras and they were interviewing community members and taking pictures in order to better understand their reality, the challenges that they face in the community. They chose an example of a photo of rats. One of the kids had taken a photo of rats.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: They traced the rat problem to garbage not properly disposed of or collected. Then they spread word through handmade and computer-generated fliers. They sent this video to the mayor, posted it on YouTube, and Baggio says all the publicity got a response from city hall that resulted in better trash services.
RODRIGO BAGGIO (through translator): I mean, this is a story, you know, 10 kids from a class that used technology, use the Internet to discover a problem, and find a solution for it and change their reality as a result.
This is a great example of the empowering potential of today’s technology; it shows how a social action can emerge using only computers, cell phones, the internet…and a little creativity.
There are those who view power as a top-down phenomena; they argue that the way to improve things is to cater to the rich and powerful and then count on the benefits to “trickle down.” As this case illustrates, those familiar with the power of technology and social media are likely to respond that such views are increasingly out of date in today’s world.
