[From Bill Powers (930930.1045 MDT)]
Hans Blom (930930) --
I don't see anything in your thoughtful, lucid post to which I
could take exception. You have put together a clear and
comprehensive view of human and social nature that says things I
have never been able to say so well, or at all. I honestly didn't
realize that you understand PCT so well.
I'd like to expand on one of your points, because it raises
questions that need some additional exploration.
"Going up a level" in personal relations thus seems to require
that I acknowledge the fact that the other may want something
that is incompatible with my own wishes. That, in turn, seems
to require the point of view that we are both SUBsystems in
some larger whole, where the goal is to establish an OVERALL
optimum, because all of the individual optima are impossible to
establish.
This point of view is what I call the "system concept" level of
perception. Instead of seeing one's own individual-centered wants
as the only consideration, one sets goals for how an entire
society might be able to work, and tries both to establish and
maintain that society and to behave in ways perceived as
consistent with it. The system concept level involves the control
of perceptions inside an individual, but these are perceptions in
which no individual, not even the person having the perception,
is seen as any more than a component of the perceived system.
What matters most is that the system work, even if the individual
has to adjust personal goals in order to make it work.
The level below system concepts, supposedly, is the principle
level. In order to perceive and maintain a perception of a
certain system, we adjust principles -- the principles we would
like to see exemplified in the behavior of everyone who is part
of the same perceived system, including oneself. Naturally, we
search for principles which, if everyone in the system adopted
them, would remain mutually compatible (Kant's Categorical
Imperative). Thus every system concept is maintained by some
moral, legal, or cultural code consisting of statements of
principle which apply to anyone who counts as a member of the
system.
Also at the same level, the system concept level, there is
another kind of system perception that requires seeking and
maintaining a certain set of principles: the Self. Many
principles madede effective primarily through the individual:
principles like honesty, self-consistency, kindness,
responsibility, invincibility, power, and independence. Different
sets of principles define different sorts of Selves. One set of
principles might be consistent with a Self that is generous and
loving, another with a Self that is hostile and self-
aggrandizing.
Because self-system concepts and societal-system concepts are at
the same level in the same mind, they can easily conflict. One
can easily envision a society in which everyone is mutually
supportive and shares a common set of peaceful beliefs and goals,
along with a Self that demands independence, self-preservation,
and a competitive advantage. Or one can envision a society in
which a strong leader provides direction for everyone else in
order to maintain internal order and prevail violently over other
societies, along with a self that is forgiving, accepting, and
humanitarian. Self-system goals are not necessarily compatible
with social-system goals: the underlying principles may easily
demand incompatible behaviors.
This situation is pregnant with possibilities for conflict, both
internal and interpersonal. Each person arrives at system
concepts individually, both of Self and of Society. Each person
has multiple system concepts: selves that suit different
circumstances, and societies of varying size and kind from the
religious congregation to the nation, from the bowling club to
the board of directors. Finding a framework within which all
these system concepts can be maintained in satisfactory form at
the same time is difficult. Nobody, I think, has ever managed to
do it well.
All that prevents total chaos is our inborn capacity to
reorganize. Conflict of any kind frustrates control, and control
is required to maintain ourselves in a viable state, as defined
by our intrinsic reference signals. When control fails because of
conflict, we begin to reorganize. And reorganization will
eventually, if we are not unlucky, arrive at a resolution of the
conflict. At the system concept level it is not likely that the
resolutions will be found in a single lifetime. Nor, I think, is
it likely that rational approaches to the highest-level conflicts
will reveal the answers. The answers will be found only through
continual interaction and continual reorganization, with the
state of the system as a whole, passed along the generations
through example and communication, gradually performing a biased
random walk toward a state of ever less conflict. The lessons we
have learned through watching the lowly bacterium E. coli should
give us hope: the bias can be very powerful. The power of the
biased random walk that gradually reduces overall error may even
be sufficient for the size of the problem.
ยทยทยท
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Best,
Bill P.