The Reason Closed
Social Systems Don't Work
Responding to the need for
balance in society doesn't work using closed-system thought patterns,
because the current systems:
Maintenance of a toxic
order: First, if the system equilibrium is already toxic, it
gets reinforced. Bad "norms" are simply perpetuated, since closed
systems "run on automatic". They don't have the power of discernment.
They don't evaluate systems in light of personal needs, human evolution
or planetary health. Their one mandate is to "preserve the established
order", even if that "order" is toxic for the people and planet.
Put systems above
people: Achieving "social order" through closed-system methods put
systems above people - system needs over personal needs. Systems come
first. That's the message we hear in social systems, namely, preserving
systems is more important than nurturing people. Closed systems say to
people, "You are part of us, therefore we own you. Who you are is
incidental. You must perform the roles we assign you in the ways we
require. We won't allow you to deviate. If you changed, we'd have to
change, and that we won't allow. Our 'social order' would collapse".
Putting the rigid structure of social systems first costs all of us.
People get "chewed up" by systems. The idea of "sacrificing ourselves
for the greater good" may be a laudable idea if the greater is good.
But, what if it isn't?
Control is Abuse:
Closed social systems don't work because they keep order through control
- force, punishment, and other power-over methods of enforcement. But,
can social harmony be forced? Is top-down control the way to achieve
"social order"? Threats and intimidation cannot be the fabric of healthy
social systems. They do too much violence to our inner lives, costing us
our freedom. How healthy can our social system be if the people are
psychological wreaks? When we are deprived of out essential powers as
free, creative beings, our social systems reflect our emptiness. When do
we get in return for "submission"? Not security. Being one-down in a
control hierarchy isn't a secure place. When people get deprived of
freedom and security while at the same time they are bound by control
systems, they behave like caged animals. Intelligent beings don't do
well in cages.
The Nature of Reality isn't
closed: Another reason closed social systems don't bring social
order is that reality itself isn't a closed system. The old scientific
belief systems such as closed-entropy energy systems, also used to
reinforce closed-system social control patterns, are rapidly becoming
transparently false as scientific research has shown over the last few
decades. No matter how much closed systems try to control variables and
shut out change, reality won't be shut out. We can't make our social
units into "islands of no-change", because the greater reality (the
context on which our systems depend) is dynamic.
Paradigm
Cloaking Devices - Paradigm Protective Dynamics
The best way to make our
paradigm "armor" invulnerable is to make it invisible. What can't be
detected by the population can't be shot down. When invisible, our
paradigms avoid the risk of attack. We hide our paradigm's filtering
processes under acceptable cloaking devices - and many such covers will
do the trick.
Staying Within A
Group
One way to make paradigm
filters invisible is to surround ourselves with people who share our
set. We align ourselves with groups who take the same paradigm for
granted. Surrounded by people whose filters are familiar, ours blend in.
Paradigm filters stay invisible, and we ask "What filters?" and "What
paradigm?" Everyone shares the same agenda of keeping the paradigm
filters unchanged. When paradigm issues do manage to surface, it's to
reinforce how "successful" and "right" the group's paradigm is. The
official lines get repeated and the catchphrases echoed. Those who
question the paradigm and don't speak its "language" are out.
It is because of this that
cliques permeate paradigm-rigid societies, with each group accusing the
other of being "cultish". Paradigm dynamics, or dogmatics of each group
resemble what goes on in mainline churches, corporations, schools,
universities, governments, labor unions and non-profit organizations.
The strategy of keeping filters invisible under the cover of a
group-shared paradigm turns out not to be considered aberrational
behavior, but the "required norm".
When Groups Support Growth -
There are groups that support growth and evolution, and group-shared
paradigms can be useful if they are exploring these areas involving full
potential. Working with people of like mind takes us forward by leaps
and bounds. As we work with others in this way, developments emerge
greater than any one person could produce. Whether group involvement
supports "filter evolution" or "filter fixedness", therefore, is a
matter of paradigm development.
Compartmentalization of
Paradigm Filters
Mechanism: Another way
to keep paradigms invisible is to split our lives into compartments and
to design paradigm filters for each "box". When we are convinced to
split our perceptive world into separate pieces, we protect the paradigm
filters we use for each piece. In a fixed area, certain paradigm filters
don't apply, and we don't mix them with filters we use for a different
box. That way, we never have to ask how it all adds up; it just doesn't,
and no one expects it to add up.
Social Result: Lack of
Consistency. We don't ask whether the values we use at work are the
values we'd like our children to live at home. If we adhere to one
religion or belief, we don't want to hear about the views of another. By
putting walls between our filters, we protect our overall filter
arrangement. We avoid filter comparisons which would inevitably bring
our paradigm out into the open and subject it to revision. Some of the
greatest leaps in knowledge and art - cultural paradigms - occurred when
two or more societies interacted. Control paradigm isolation of
societies prevents these leaps. Box-category thinking, valuable as it is
for producing specialized knowledge, prevents this type of exchange. It
forbids us even to attempt to integrate our filters with wider contexts
- a process which paradigm evolution demands. "There's no overall
paradigm", we tell ourselves, which means our cultural paradigm stays
"offstage", invisible.
Openness and Objectivity
Issues
Another way to keep paradigm
filters hidden is to "appear to be filter-free", as if "we have no
paradigm, no filters, and no covers for them either. For decades,
scientists and social engineers hid filters behind claims of
objectivity, pretending to be "unbiased observers". Claiming to be
"open" and "skeptical", while rigidly adhering to paradigm dynamics, are
other ways of hiding paradigms we're not keen to question. Sometimes,
claiming to be "open" is used as a strategy to make us appear
paradigm-free, which guarantees that neither we nor anyone else has a
chance to look at our filters. By appearing to be "big-minded", we keep
our paradigm close to the chest and off limits.
Use of Covers to Block
Paradigm Awareness
If we are to evolve, we need
to know what paradigm we're using, so we can change it. Defensive covers
block this awareness. How far are people willing to go to protect their
paradigm? History shows that people will kill to protect what they
"believe" to be the case. Changing paradigms, ways of thinking and
perceiving the universe based on new information, can be scary for some
people. No wonder the strategies for keeping paradigms in place are more
developed than strategies for changing them.
Use of
Social Taboos to Block Paradigm Awareness
One of the most potent
paradigm cloaking devices individuals and societies have is the taboo. A
taboo prevents the questions we dare not raise, the things we dare not
do, and the ways we dare not think. When members of a society obey
taboos, they pretend that aspects of their lives do not exist. Problems
are not problems, and obvious sources of trouble remain off-limits for
discussion, and people are manipulated into not speaking of them. People
let the social system throw walls of silence around them, so the system
is not threatened by hearing the truth about what we're experiencing.
Most current social systems on the planet are maintained in a status quo
state in this way.
Taboos About Sex
- The actual function of the taboo on sexual matters in Western
countries, which paradoxically exists at the same time as the
maintenance of a strong focus on sexual matters, is to supplement and
increase the focus on sexual matters in society. The same principles
holds for gender-specific taboos, which also have the function of
suppressing different factors relating to wholeness of being and
expression. Many of these taboos have the function of introducing the
socially complicating factors of "guilt" and "shame", and are also
included in some religious paradigms.
Taboos About Feelings
- There is also another taboo which exists that makes feelings
off-limits in some social system. People are programming "to be in
control" of emotions. Even the words "emotion" and "emotional" are cast
in negative connotations, and are often used to discredit a persons
viewpoint. In fact, the process of socially programming the
factoring-out of emotions is highly convenient for control paradigm
systems, because if we cut ourselves off from how we feel under a
situation of domination, we tend to "tolerate" it more readily, and we
are programmed to disregard the pain when we witness control-system
abuse to others. Control system abuse is seen on television 24 hours a
day and termed "entertainment", which goes to show how deeply some
paradigm elements are buried. Another phenomenon that arises is that the
control paradigm feeds people with rationalizations, judgments and the
ultimate ultimatum: "Things must be done this way or chaos will follow".
Science Taboos - Many of the social
control taboos in our society have in fact been inherited from science -
what's "real" and what is not, what we can "talk about intelligently"
and what is considered "superstitious" or "pseudo-science". In general,
the rule is this - "if you can measure something, manipulate it, predict
its function and then replicate it (control the outcome of experiments
on it) - "it's scientific and real; if not, it's imagination or
illusion." People are programmed to accept this approach to science
because it reinforces the idea of control over the environment.
Unfortunately, this strategy reduces the idea of "knowledge" down to a
matter of "control". We are led to believe that "knowing something"
means being able to "control" it -- which is the control-paradigm
epistemology. We are led to grant science this "authority" and we are
programmed not to question it, even if it stands in the face of
mountains of observed (but not reproducible, and therefore "anecdotal")
evidence.
Science Taboos - The Wider
Impact
Defining knowledge in terms
of control raises questions. What kind of "control" does science give
us? Control paradigm science inevitably disregards wider contexts,
because wider contexts aren't easily "controlled". To "gain control",
scientists "eliminate variables" and "constrict the field". In fact,
scientists learn early in their programmed training to think in narrowly
focused ways and to disregard broader contexts, thus, the most
defensible Ph.D. thesis is the most specialized one. A result of this
process is that using narrowed control thought processes, we find
ourselves faced with wider-context problems. For example, we are stuck
with nuclear waste with a half-life of 500,000 years and clouds of acid
rain that kill forests. If the same money went into researching new
evolutionary technologies, as the impression was given to the public in
the early 1970's that it "would be", we wouldn't have the problems we
have today. But, a public programmed to think along the same lines has
simply ignored this simple idea.
Science Taboos - Ethics and
Values
A very important point to make
is that the taboos that insulate control-science from its impact on
society also hide its values. The directions that science and technology
take involve decisions based on values - control values. Nonetheless,
taboos place science above ethics. In other words, control-science
taboos hide its decision-making process and the values that guide them.
These values and decisions affect the course of science. The fact that
some scientific research gets screened out while other research receives
both funding and publication is attributed to "the natural course of
scientific development", as if there is no paradigm-based filtering
going on. In fact, "there's a whole lot of filtering going on". Various
"experts" dominate each field of "inquiry" and also dominate the
direction and "limits" of research. They give their "positions" at
"conferences", where "reputations" may be "made" or "broken", and they
edit the journals. Even more telling is the funding of research by
industry. There is an unspoken but real incentive to present projects
that support the agenda of work being done in various industries.
Combinations of industrial, academic, and political interests influence,
and even control, what should otherwise be open scientific research, in
many cases research that could potentially save lives. The cancer and
AIDS industries are good examples.
Life in a
Paradigm Controlled by External Reward Systems
In a paradigm of externals,
externals call the shots. Instead of allowing us to be guided from the
inside out (a formula for anarchy, the control paradigm claims), the
paradigm controls our behavior through rewards and punishments. We come
to think and act like Pavlov's dog, salivating over the next bonus, a
bigger kennel to call home, a fancier collar to sport, or a top dog
position. The paradigm isn't about developing our talents, abilities, or
potential; it's about making us controllable by giving or withholding
external rewards.
To achieve this control, the
paradigm grades each "thing" in a hierarchy of externals. The inner life
means nothing compared to the outward characteristics indicated by our
species, race, gender, age, status, group affiliation, and income. If
dogs possessed the wealth of Bill Gates, for instance, they wouldn't
suffer in medical experiments, just as people who have money don't work
in sweatshops or sell their children into slavery.
That's the problem with
externals: they're fine until they become the means for enslavement,
which unfortunately they do almost immediately. When a paradigm puts
external values first, consciousness dimensions are dismissed out of
hand. Small wonder that the potentials of our minds and hearts-and all
the values that go with them, e.g., meaning, compassion, justice, or
wisdom-go undeveloped. A control paradigm has neither use nor place for
them.
Closed Social
External Control-Based Paradigms Don't Like Discussing
This
Naming paradigms and their power
for good or ill isn't a new insight; it's as old as philosophy. It is,
however, an overlooked insight in an age that can't seem to shake a
materialistic, control-obsessed paradigm-and for good reason. Reflecting
on paradigms is the stuff of change, and changing paradigms is the most
fundamental and powerful change we can make.
To a paradigm of control,
that's not welcome. The sum total of our experience contingent on
something as invisible and changeable as a philosophy? Change by
paradigm shifts, which anyone can make? Powers of perception and
creativity that defy rigid material boundaries? Humans as beings of
immense powers and abilities? Once you let these cats out of the bag,
there's no telling what mindsets and institutions might be made
obsolete.
Obsolete is precisely what
established institutions of power and control don't want to be. They
learned from the fate of carriage and buggy whip manufacturers when cars
came along. Established interests now make sure that questioning the
neanderthal paradigm of burning things for energy triggers
"War-of-the-Worlds" panic about destabilizing the world economy. Even
the call for improved public transit systems borders on
subversive.
Stiff challenges face a paradigm shift on the simple
level of out-there technology, frozen at a stage that Captain Picard
sometimes finds among the more primitive human civilizations he
encounters. What challenges might we face if we embark on a far deeper
level of questioning-on redrawing the paradigms that sort out who we are
and why we're here?
Plenty. If the cultural
paradigm's purpose is not to honor human potential but rather to make it
an obedient servant to existing social structures, then nothing could be
more threatening to the established order than a paradigm shift
regarding our self-conceptions. We fit into society as it is now only as
long as we don't remember that we're more and here for more.
Examples of Control
Paradigm Lack of Interest in Developing Human Potential
The agenda for traditional
psychoanalytic therapy, for instance, isn't to develop human potential;
it's to keep people functional in established social structures, however
miserable their lives may be and however abusive or wrong-headed the
social structures. "Well-adjusted" becomes a synonym for mental
health.
But if someone is
well-adjusted to being an SS officer in Nazi concentration camps, is
that person mentally healthy? In Fire In The Soul,
psychoneuroimmunologist Joan Borysenko writes of this narrow aim of
therapy: "Sigmund Freud...believed that when a person was cured of
neurosis the best outcome that could be expected was return 'to an
ordinary state of unhappiness.'" (New York: Warner, 1993, p.
54)
Psychotherapy's official job
is mopping up the mess that social systems make of our lives by
convincing us that the mess is our fault, our failing, our screwiness.
If we don't conform, adjust, fit in, and measure up, something must be
wrong with us. And psychotherapy has its truth: we may well be frozen in
grief or shock and not functioning at our best, but don't the social
systems that shape us deserve equal scrutiny, equal critical
analysis?
Thankfully many therapists
reject this paradigm and venture forth with their clients on the
forbidden territory of meaning and human potential as well as of
critiquing social structures, but it's no easy task persuading insurance
companies to come along. Control institutions pay insurance companies to
pay health professionals to keep people in their place, serving the
established order.
The Agenda for School
Systems in a Control Paradigm
Nor are school systems
committed to developing the more that we are. Schools are an arm of
social structures, whether religious, governmental, or economic.
According to the paradigm-defined needs of those structures, tapping
human potential doesn't create enough Dilberts to ensure the "efficient"
running of corporate, governmental, religious, and educational
hierarchies.
In this century, business
interests have dictated the structure of schools. Henry Ford quickly
noticed that creative genius and intuitive knowing aren't useful on
factory lines. So he pioneered the "modern" school system that
inculcates values and skills appropriate for 20th century work life:
being punctual, obeying orders, enduring hours, weeks, and years of
boring, repetitive tasks, not talking while working, not resting,
keeping to the schedule at all costs. Our minds become casualties of
industrialization.
Our souls end up casualties
as well. Trusting our own judgment, thinking for ourselves, adhering to
our values, and having confidence in our innate worth don't make us good
foot soldiers for my-way-or-the-highway bosses. Only people with low
self-esteem are sufficiently insecure to tolerate abusive work
environments. Insofar as we believe we don't deserve better, we adjust,
becoming the kind of person that's required to "do the job."
Obligingly, school systems
produce people with precisely the low self-esteem that's needed for
worker "flexibility." Fears of being wrong, of not making the grade are
fears confirmed for 90 percent of the population. That's the percentage
who are required not to get A's by the bell curve system, guaranteeing
that 90 percent of everyone coming out of school believe that they're
incapable of excellence. Schools mirror back to students the mass
message that "you're just not good enough, but if you do what you're
told without question, you may get better and be rewarded." That's a
handy message to have installed in the psyches of 90 percent of the
population-handy for perpetuating corporate, religious, governmental,
and professional tyrannies, that is.
All this modern schooling
goes against what we know about the human mind and how we learn-and have
known for decades. Studies in learning show that we learn best when
we're most relaxed, yet schools maximize stress through fear of failure.
Studies show that children learn most easily through cooperative
learning, yet schools impose a competitive model. Studies also indicate
that students' beliefs about their own learning abilities affect their
performance-if they believe they're good learners, they learn easily; if
not, learning the simplest things becomes difficult-yet schools
systematically undermine students' confidence.
In these and many other ways,
school systems perform virtual lobotomies on our psyches, producing
graduates who've long since lost their joy in learning, who believe they
must be right all the time and "know it all" or be condemned to outer
darkness, and who experience post-traumatic stress symptoms at the
thought of having to learn new things on the job.
On
Cultural Non-Commitment to Potential
Alice Miller, a champion of
the potential we all possess from birth, pulls no punches in her
books-For Your Own Good in particular analyzes the social,
cultural agenda of shutting down our potential. As she explains, the
traditional rules of child-rearing passed down from generation to
generation have nothing to do with developing our potential, either
emotionally, intuitively, psychologically, or intellectually. Their one
agenda is control: control the child as soon as possible by any means,
whether it's by punishment, humiliation, intimidation, beatings,
grading, whatever it takes to break the child's will and
autonomy.
The justification for this
agenda is that children raised any other way won't fit into society when
they grow up. According to this cultural paradigm-expressed in the rules
of child-rearing-learning to forget who we are and to become what others
want and expect us to be is the most important survival skill. Our
potential as human beings is irrelevant, a side issue, compared to our
ability to conform.
Of course we're supposed to believe that social
systems have our best interests at heart and that obeying them is indeed
"for our own good." If we conform properly, our potential will develop
accordingly. But is this so? As we've seen, schools and therapy-two
systems that you'd think would be committed to developing human
potential-have no such commitment. In what system or area of the culture
might such a commitment exist?
Governments are fully
occupied with who has power over whom, who has the biggest budget, where
money can be found, who wins which election or vote, etc. Developing the
human potential of its citizenry is not a priority. If anything, it's
not on the agenda at all. The insider's view that "the masses are asses"
is music to ambitious politicians' ears, who then believe it's their
manifest destiny to expand their personal power and become benevolent
dictators. Dumb masses are easy to manipulate with slogans and
half-truths. For their purposes, the less human potential the
better.
As much as we value spiritual
teachings, we can't say that religious organizations have much
commitment to developing human potential either, though granted there
are exceptions. Adhering to fixed doctrines, building congregations,
raising money, meddling in the personal affairs of members, running down
sectarian competitors, and using fear and guilt to exact obedience and
tithing keep them busy enough.
Businesses and corporations
certainly don't concern themselves with human potential, even though
they sometimes pay lip service to it in the hopes of making employees
more "productive." The bottom line is the bottom line, and if human
potential comes up at all, it's considered a frill or luxury-"warm fuzzy
stuff" that doesn't count in the "real world" of business except to
mollify disgruntled workers or help them adjust to higher levels of
stress.
Scanning the culture, we
frankly can't find any system that's consistently committed to exploring
human potential. If anything, our social systems regard human potential
as an impediment, an annoying feature of human beings that gums up the
systems' otherwise efficient workings. If people would just learn their
roles and stick to them, everything would work so much
better.
If we didn't know the
paradigm behind these systems, we may find this lack of interest in
human potential odd. Developing human potential seems crucial to keeping
human civilizations vital and evolving, up to speed with the challenges
that continually arise. Technology per se can't save us, since we're not
using the alternative technology we already have to remedy social and
environmental ills. What we lack is the the wisdom and foresight, the
honesty, the sense of meaning, justice, integrity, and the good to
manage human affairs well. These aren't technology issues but paradigm
ones. Wisdom and foresight are precisely the potentials that a paradigm
geared to domination and control factors out of
us.
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Analytical
Chronology of Fluoridation: Politics versus
Science 
Ancient
Wisdom and Modern Physics: The Ultimate Inside Report on the World
Technocracy 
A Few Points To Keep in Mind At This
Point: 
Walking the Truth vs.
Sleepwalking 
