I'll add them to my look into - if you have any specific resourcesrelated, I'm keen to see

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 11:23 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Jim,

  Are you familiar with Jordan Hall and Daniel Schmactenberger and Zak Stein? If so, I will spare you links, but if not, I can share some that you might find useful on this line of inquiry.

 

Best,
Gregg

 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of James Lyons-Weiler
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020 2:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Inquiry on naming "The Issue"

 

 

Thank you Cory, theirs (Sonnert & Commons') is a analogy-based general theoretical framework but I'm afraid in my view it falls

short (as all analogies and models do to some extent) because it attempts to apply and extend a model developed to understand

an aspect of the developing human brain, which society is not, and thus is cannot succeed in providing much more

than a descriptive framework. 

 

RIght now, I'm more along the lines of "If we are asked to hang those responsible, who are they, and what do we call them" (hanging being a 

metaphor) and "once the king is dead, who shall be king (if anyone), and how shall we live"?  And "do we want to be informed or participate?"

 

Take Greenspan's awakening, for example.  

 

How could a society structure its economy on a model of infinite growth in the first place?

A presumption that based on interest in one's own resources, one would take good care of them and shepherd them well - with no

built-in safe guard for someone to sound an alarm, and practiced routine of changed behavior that would allow a gentle

slide into a recession.  We don't have any such safeguards, and this is why in 2008 I called and wrote to Hank Paulson (Sec. 

Treasury) from my office at the University of Pittsburgh the Friday before Black Monday, pleading for him to use all

carrot and no stick, lest a lending freeze hold the bail-out money for months.  My solution was a sliding scale incentive plan:

The lower the interest rate banks offered to consumers, the larger the size of the bailout a bank could obtain, and the better

the terms of the payback (longer terms, lower interest) to the Fed. 

 

Equitably incentivized transactions at such times would appear to me to dictate such terms - not further trust in 

the survival instincts of drowning institutions.

 

Paulson ignored my pleas, instead he forced banks to accept bail-out they did not need to "legitimize" the loans.

 

The banks froze for 3 three months, and millions lost their homes.

 

The absence of creative thought in economic modeling - in spite of trillions of dollars worth of computers and software in which

simulations could be run to find good outcomes - to me an example of is symptomatic of a larger pathology; parameterizing a strategy (and its models) to an end that serves as a means to  its own ends because doing so sanctifies the authority.

 

As base as that may seem, Left and Right have no meaning if their shuffling of platforms are based on 

multivariate versions of "Split the country and take the bigger half", which they are.  They are based on projections of surrogate outcomes

(elections) not long-term health of the country, economy, etc.  I'm convinced the two parties would survive quite well side by 

side regardless of the type of economy or (nearly) government that ruled the US.

 

So who is culpable for not imagining and sharing such better ways?  Surely they have been imagined?

 

Is it the drama players themselves?

The witting and unwitting electorate?

 

Are there meta-influences who ride the ebbing political waves like an investor 

who knows how to make money when the stock market both rises and falls?

 

Or do societies flail - and fail - from the emergent properties of self-serving nature of humans, who see fit to limit

themselves to conformed mold?

 

Something else?

 

Does for-profit medicine lead to medical injuries being the 3rd leading cause of death by institutional negligence, or

personal callous disregard?  More importantly - what do we do NOW to address it?

 

Reflect for a moment on why we so thoroughly enmesh our identities with our positions, and why are we not warned (and do not warn those

we mentor) that to do so means risk of suffering an unwarranted crisis should your position change?

 

I imagine that there are many, many axes of morality - defined by their ability to render useful and not harmful process solutions, which

sit right before us, but to which we are blinded by our socialization and education:

 

-Conformity to the majority

-Appeal to (or deference) to authority

-Vague, inexact or unestimated "greater good" cost/benefit calculations 

 

I'm sure everyone can extend this list of behaviors that become "default mode" operations that may have worked

optimally in our tribal and small village past.

 

But now, we confuse "principles" with "process solutions".  Principles are subjective and experience-based, and 

often outmoded by a rapidly changing world.

 

Principles are held onto dearly, and in staying with them are left unscathed by later-life experience.

 

Process solutions are continuously optimized via intelligence and tested by objective empirical evidence.

 

"Principles" can collide and cause societal conflict.  "Process solutions" cannot collide, they can only enmesh and adjust to each

other toward some optimal solution.

 

There are many possible outcomes for tomorrow given where we stand today.  Are we forbidden or 

constrained from using the full suite of tools we have mastered to envision a peaceful, creative, caring, even loving future?

 

I don't know if you've noticed but there is a rising tide of anti-scientism in the US - and it is not anti-science by any means.

 

In part that is because those who call for objective science remain heralded (for better or worse).

 

My overt concern (not yet a fear) is a restructuring based on partial comprehension of science, sociology, psychology,

education, economics, and that we may fall short of a society that preserves liberties and freedom that permit 

evolution or even free expression in these areas.

 

My fear is that the collective academe in the US will wake up too slowly to the reality that at 16.8% of our GDP, 3,600

billion dollars are spent on (largely) for-profit healthcare; that means that 1/6 dollars are being spent on for-profit medicine, and

the cost of healthcare is expected to rise dramatically. How will we pay for the rest of what is needed to have a functioning 

society?

 

Most importantly I think is what process solutions can be envisioned to reform an unsustainable model based on infinite growth?

 

And what other sectors are pathological at this time, and what process solutions might exist to help them improve as well?

 

I don't think we can expect all of the answers here, but surely some answers must exist.

 

JLW

 

 

 

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 12:13 AM Cory David Barker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

On Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 7:38 PM James Lyons-Weiler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

With your permission, may I inquire on opinions and discussion of root causes of the sociological developments in societies of the current suite of what are easily - and not so easily recognized as societal dysfunctions.  My intended scope is US-centric, but need not be. I'll initiate by listing a few issues.  Which ones are causal? Which one are symptomatic?

 

*Profit interesting bending Science (esp. medicine and psychiatry)

*Financial perverse incentives distorting Science

*Lack of meaningful ROI of research translating to effective solutions

*"Left vs. Right focus" masking top-down control (cf. middle-out or bottom-up) solutions

 

Please add to/extend as you like.

 

We need not agree, of course, but I am keen to see perspectives and learn of voices willing to try to name the issue and offer a definition.

 

It need not be an "ism", but I suspect it is on the scale of "Imperialism, Nazism, Communism".

 

Lately I've been enamored with the phrase "Process Solution"; ie.,

the identification of an ever-improving process that makes the identification and adoption of a viable and helpful (valuable) solution more likely - so if you have process solutions in mind and if they help w/finding a name due to the present absence of that solution, I'd be eager to learn of them.

 

James Lyons-Weiler, PhD

 

 

On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 5:56 PM Chance McDermott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I support Gregg in this! 

 

=Chance

 

On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 10:39 AM Cole Butler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Well said, Gregg. 

 

I’ve not been following this Pinker controversy (nor am I acquainted with his work), but your points regarding contextualization of the broader socio-political landscape of the US (and West, more broadly) and the idealogical protection of egos so as to avoid offense both speak to me. Within the smaller circles of my work, I’ve lately seen the science and greater mission of our work threatened to be crumbled under the fear of offending some big personalities. This is quite worrisome from my position, as others seem to be apt to deferring these feelings toward me. I hope that, within the academy and more broadly, we can work to be able to speak freely [even when it threatens offending others (I’m not speaking here in the context of race)] in the name of the ultimate ideal of helping others through high-quality work. 

 

Best,

 

Cole 

 

On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 8:28 AM Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Good, courageous work, Gregg.

 

M.

 

Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
Academic Director, Compass Program

Professor, Department of Psychology
Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
978.837.3503 (office)
978.979.8745 (cell)

 

Political Conversations Study: www.CreatingCommonGround.org

Blog: Values Matter

Coaching and Author Website: www.michaelmascolo.com


"Things move, persons act." -- Kenneth Burke

"If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well." -- Donald Hebb

 

On Jul 19, 2020, at 8:18 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

Hi TOK Folks,

I thought I would share this post I made this morning on the metamodern forum I am on:

 

Hi All,

I think when discussing these issues, such as the petition against Pinker, the Harper letter, and so forth, it is crucial to distinguish the setting/community/cultural context folks have in mind. For example, there is the United States as a whole. That might be one contextual setting. When folks look at the US as a whole, then you see Donald Trump as the President and you see the history of slavery and Jim Crow and the remarkable inequities, and much like @handrews argues, the general complaints about word usage or political positions seem small potatoes.

However, when we flip the context to inside the academia or leftist media centers or other left-leaning ideological contexts, the issue is VERY different. I can tell you, I live in the academy, in the social sciences (professional psychology) and the climate here is very different. We are MUCH closer to thought/language police than people seem to realize. Virtue signaling is everywhere, as is an almost Orwellian use of language regarding justice and morality (i.e., more often than not in such contexts, IMO, those who are doing the moralizing and shaming are not operating from a “higher ground”). Not only that, I believe much of it is ideologically misguided. Academics bending over backwards to eliminate anything that could be subjectively perceived by a person educated in postmodern critical race theory as being offensive is not where real change is to be had, IMO. Rather, as I saw firsthand in working on the inner city streets of Philadelphia from 1999-2003, there are deep class/race/structural issues that need to be tackled head on.

If one is situated in the academy, one should object strongly to the letter against Pinker. It justifies language police, which is a problem inside hyper-progressive systems and much of the academy has been (is are being) captured by this troubling ideology (see the footnote on pg 122 of this article I wrote back in 2005). The bottom line is that we are living in massively polarized socio-ideological
ecologies and because context is everything there are rarely general positions (i.e., Pinker letter was “bad” versus “an important signal”) that are defensible without specifying the context to apply to argument. Inside the context of academy, the Pinker letter is horrendous and the signatories should be embarrassed for their actions. In the larger context of a society that has elected Trump, it can be seen as a small issue that maybe oversteps but makes an important point on principle.

My hope is that those who operate from a metamodern sensibility would have the general capacity to see that the extreme polarization in the US (which is probably infecting the West) is a function of inadequate cultural codes being defined against one another in problematic ways. We need to disentangle those conflicts, eliminate weak positions, and work to seek and create common ground based on a clear, rich sophisticated sense-making and deep value codes that can stretch across the socio-ecological levels of (in)dividual, dyadic, family, small group, community, state, nation, transnational and global.

Best,
Gregg

 

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