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[Tom Baines]
Dan Miller (940510):
>>Do these people trade notes, manuscripts, library cards?<
Jaques Elul and Thomas Kuhn would probably say they either do that or
trade dreams.
OK. No one has a good clue as to how a socioeconomic system maintains
stability. Ted Gurr, M. Skopol, and some others have offered pretty
high level "models" of what that kind of stability looks like, and how
to recognize that it has been destroyed, but there doesn't seem to be
much help if you want to know how relative stability is reached in the
first place. Stephen Walt does a pretty good job of outlining why
alliances form, and Terrel Arnold has insight into why people support
terroristic rebellion. A number of writers (Seabury, Codevilla, DuPuy,
Van Crevald) have gone beyond the dated premises of Clausewitz (even
as "modernized by Harry Summers) with some sound discussion of what
must happen to restore balance when instability turns into conflict.
Nobody seems to have a better way of defining and evaluating social
instability, however, which would seem to be the necessary starting
place for better answers.
So what exactly does PCT tell us about how two or more organisms move
toward relative stability in relation to one another? What does
Powers' premise that social systems really don't exist - that "Society
is [merely] a perception" - really mean in terms of dealing with the
needful behavior that leads to riots and war. Does the oriental view
of socioeconomic activity as an analog of war inform us in any way?
The "reorganization" discussions all work on reorganization of the
INDIVIDUAL'S core references. The only discussion in depth that I've
seen about how that gets dealt with by pairs, triads, groups, etc. is
that between Martin Taylor & Bill P. about layered protocols.
This is a great time for PCT to offer some new insights into how to
analyze public policies with regard to social instability. Some one
of you can win a Nobel prize if PCT can give us a better handle on
this issue of how to even define social instability in more productive
ways.