Learning to ruminate the history of civilization (2)

Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy was born 19 September 1901 (one hundred years ago)

http://www.bertalanffy.org

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General Systems Weltanschauung, which is still a new way of thinking,
though it was suggested by L. von Bertalanffy since the 1960, is needed
because the trends of the prevailing civilization are making necessary to
see clearly the forest instead of looking only at one tree or another. It
seems certainly foolish to focus on individual trees when there is a threat
to the forest. However, it is also foolish to focus exclusively on the
forest when there are environmental problems generated by polluting
industries. But it remains foolish to improve only factories in order to
reduce pollution when the unemployment is growing due to economic policies
that intend only to reduced the foreign debt. Nowadays it has become absurd
to believe that it is possible to invent systems methodologies for allowing
6,000 million people to improve their way of life, without trying to
understand what are the causes of the serious biological, social and
terrestrial crisis that is affecting the homsphere, the biosphere and the
ecosphere.

L. von Bertalanffy when calling for a universal declaration of
interdependence, more than three decades ago, advocated a new global
morality: "an ethos which does not center on individual good and individual
value alone, but on the adaptation of mankind as a global system, to its
new environment." The need for this new morality, he said, was imperative:
"We are dealing with emergent realities; no longer with isolated groups of
men, but with a systematically interdependent global community. It is this
level of [reality] which we must keep before our eyes if we are able to
inspire large-scale action designed to assure our collective and hence our
individual survival".(*)

The healthy, then moral evolvement of human relations, being necessary for
pushing ahead frankly and effectively the development of any particular
community, makes necessary to create, maintain and improve the kind of
cultural values that may help and lead people, children comprised, to
develop individually and collectively their gregarious and cooperative
features inherent in human nature which combined with sense of
responsibility and free decision would support altogether the manifestation
of humanitarian societies aware of the role of human beings on the planet
Earth.

General Systems Weltanschauung is an ideological medium that may act as a
kind of catalytic agent, when searching how to organize an approach towards
a holistic intention, through trustworthy worldviews:

1. for supporting researchers, scholars and experts - when they are
involved in decision making - in their learning to perform as responsible
scientists, therefore conscious enough of the need of maintaining Unity
through diversity of cultures

2. for allowing them to be sufficiently aware of humankind's needs and
also of terrestrial, biological and social possibilities and restrictions

3. for helping them to conceive the systems of ideas needed for
building reliable circumstances required for identifying one or another way
forward that may succour the 'civilized' humanity to determine rationally
and emotionally its planetary role

The problems that faces humankind at the dawn of the 3rd milllennium,
include pollution by means of pesticides, chemicals, sewage and garbage;
deforestation causing the extinction of many species; climate changes due
to green house effects; depletion of non-renewable mineral reserves &
energy reserves. Also the detrimental export of capital from less developed
nations to industrialized ones; export of inflation & recession and unfair
trade that increase wastage & underemployment of human potentiality.

These problems are causing lately the emergence of social situations
'infected' with xenophobia, racism, religious & ethnical intolerance, which
may generate terrorism in general and in particular the suicidal one, and
also are the causes of the growing criminality and the increasing number of
armed conflicts among tribes, ethnical groups, religious factions,...
However urgently necessary to deal with these social problems, in the
panorama generated by GSW they appear only as symptoms of the worst crisis
ever faced by humankind, being it generated by the dynamics of the whole
civilization, which:

* has become the source of serious troubles in the homosphere, due to an
increasing number of inhuman actions that impide - biologically,
psychologically and intellectually - a decent survival of billions of
people;

* has evolved as the main cause that reduces the diversity in the
biosphere, due to an utilitarian and excessive exploitation of natural
resources for the sake of making monetary profits through all kinds of
unilateral business;

* has created the 'fabric' that engenders more and more waste which
increases the pollution of water, air, soils,... around the whole planet
and causes irreversible changes to the terrestrial atmosphere.

The whole question is very serious because it is happening as a culmination
of intelligent actions, cleverly conceived, skilfully implemented and
consciously maintained and improved by rather few human beings -the so
called decision makers inside the constituted elites.

Besides, being considered the crisis as an illness of humankind, it
aggravates because very often its symptoms are unfairly amplified and
exploited in order to deviate the attention of people towards a miraculous
'panacea' or a magical 'elixir' that presumably should eliminate the evils
of society or kill the infected humans that have become incurable. Such a
kind of procedures have been extensively used in every society because
those humans who succeed in distracting the attention of people usually get
not only a magnificent material recompense but also the access to the
entrance inside the elites' domain, if and only if they remain loyal to the
rules unexplicitly established. Consequently most of those humans who might
be motivated and be interested in searching the causes of the societal
illness and finding ways to cope with it, pretty soon get involved in
something else, mainly because most people must fight continuously for
surviving.

This question merits to be examined historically because very often, here
and there, it is commented that past events are facts that cannot longer be
modified; therefore most people are persuaded to ignore the causality of
everything that have already happened, without realizing that many of them
are already or will be employed for creating and building 'societal'
circumstances that are similar to those that caused the collapse of other
civilizations.

The question requires also to be grasped psychologically. It seems valid to
assert that most humans during their early childhood are prone to be
aggresive against other children because evidently every child is
interested in identifying how to develop his/her peculiar personality. In
normal circumstances most children do not require too much time to notice
the need and convenience of cooperation which emerges from our intrinsic
gregariousness.

At the dawn of our conventional 3rd millennium, many humans during their
whole life perform aggresively as children though using all kind of tricks
and weapons in order to succed. The societal conditions that the civilizing
processes have engendered have become stimuli that encourage them to fight
harder and harder, whatever the means, in order to reach a powerful
position. Such a fight is supported by cultural assumptions about the need
and convenience of using:

* the common people as human resources: slaves, serfs, lackeys, servants,
workers, employees,... for improving the 'civilized' facilities that are
required by the 'nice' and 'beautiful' people - those who have always money
to buy everything, anything and nothing in order to really enjoy the
'civilized' way of life.

* some selected members of the masses of people for being trained as
soldiers needed for creating and maintaining an army that may fight
successfully against other armies.

It is not sufficiently clear but it can be assumed that the prevailing
societal conditions during the last 6 or 8 millenia have impeded the
maturation of behaviour of those humans who have chosen to play an active
role competing in order to reach a a powerful position. Meanwhile the
masses of people usually had not other option than to play passive roles,
trying no more than surviving till the next day in accordance with
measures, laws and societal arrangements imposed by those who managed to
locate themselves in powerful positions, after defeating other competitors.

Until today in practically every civilized society it is usual to argue
that conflicts among people are caused exclusively by dogmatic views of
idealized interpretations of what should be the role on the Earth of a
particular assemblage or bunch or clique of people. The history of the
whole civilizing adventure has been usually presented as being the outcome
of events generated by views and interpretations that had been formulated
by masterminds, those who were clever enough to induce some humans to
defend traditional 'values', racial features, the land of a kingdom, a
Church or a Mosque or a Synagogue,...

Most events, during the whole trajectory of the so called Civilization,
have been carried out by the common people, the masses who have been
induced or obliged to FIGHT AGAINST their ENEMIES. But the adversaries were
always groups or factions who had been induced by their leaders (also
masterminds) to fight against their adversaries.

In fact, most leaders of such a kind were and still are basically
interested in conducting or obliging a certain number of people to expand
his/her empire, to conquer new territories, to colonize the servants
conquered,... in order to organize properly the exploitation of everything
in order to generate monetary profits and other kinds of opportunities for
the sake of business. In this 21st century these actions are quite
effectively organized by mass media, because the 'NEWS' about the
consequences of criminal actions (comprised the terrorist ones) easily
evoke everlasting emotions of:

* pity for the common people who suffer and died injustly in spite of
the increasing number of economic advances and technological innovations
that characterize the civilization trends, which are the outcome of
intelligent thinking implemented through skilfull actions for the sake of
progress inside the human world (homosphere).

* fear that such a kind of advances and innovations may be
effectively used as evil tools in order to make feasible all kinds of
fanatical ideologies (political, religious, ethnical, racial,...) knowing
that they are motivated by dogmatic views of idealized interpretations of
the role of humans on the Earth and are encouraged by legal and illegal
arms dealers who are making a lot of monetary profits.

Von Bertalanffy voiced his insight that our civilization can only collapse
if nothing is changed in our conceptual apparatus. He believed that "the
overall fate of the world depends on the adoption by humanity of a new set
of values, based on a general systems WELTANSCHAUUNG (worldview)" ...."We
are seeking another basic outlook: the world as organization. This
[outlook] would profoundly change the categories of our thinking and
influence our practical attitudes. We must envision the biosphere as a
whole ... with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive
interdependencies. [We need] a global system of mutually symbiotic
societies, mapping new conditions into a flexible institutional structure
and dealing with change through constructive reorganization." (*)

 (*) "Uncommon Sense The Life and thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
Father of General Systems Theory" Mark Davidson.(1983)
Received on Wed Sep 19 12:23:04 2001