Societal systems locally attached, regionally committed and globally engaged

At present, at the dawn of the so-called 3rd millennium, most humans
are scarcely aware of the worst crisis ever faced by humankind due to
the prevalent decision making that aims at making sustainable the
assumed achievements of the Western Civilization, whose trends are
already frankly unsustainable. In this year 2002, after the happening
of the regrettable "11 September 2001" it has been extensively argued
by some powerful decision makers that this civilization must be
defended by means of war supported by very modern weapons created
through superb technological innovations and continuous scientific
work.

Very few enlightened humans have frankly and explicitly recognized
that so far, in a large measure, this civilization has first of all
intended to assure the submission of masses of people - with the
support of various particular kinds of religious interpretations of
the terrestrial reality - learning to be human resources, therefore
loyal, obedient, disciplined,... being, each one willing to be
serviceable during his/her whole life, in accordance with civilized
regulations produced by their owners: the members of the highly
civilized society.

These two questions merit a deep and extended reflection, because
nowadays, the vast majority of societal systems constituted
everywhere and maintained in operation (necessarily in accordance
with various cultural peculiarities that people have been well
induced to accept) are today unavoidably confronted to an enormous
diversity of larger social, economic, political and cultural problems
generated as side effects by intelligent actions that have been
structured and fulfilled by clever humans in order to maintain the
civilizing trends. Such a contradiction between the rational
potentiality of human performances and the illogical, nonsensical
and/or foolish results that are indirectly producing the actions
performed must therefore be attributed to the preponderant decision
making, which is determined through narrow minded and shortsighted
criteria conceived in practice for making sustainable what the same
criteria contributed to make unsustainable

One of the main contributions made by Ludwig von Bertalanffy is the
conceptual model of the living organism as an open system, which
means that it may be seen as an entity continuously interacting with
its environment, in order to maintain their living features in
operation. Based on this concept it becomes evidently possible for
every human being to be increasingly aware about the convenience of
continuously learning to maintain his/her surroundings (environment)
as proper as possible in order to reduce the risks of being seriously
disturbed his/her performance due to unsuitable biological
conditions, inappropriate social circumstances and/or erroneous
pseudo-cultural values. Therefore it can be claimed that every human
may systematically increase the chances of his/her physiological,
psychological and intellectual survival learning to maintain his/her
environment comme il faut.

As most human beings are living with other human beings in societal
surroundings it can be argued that all humans must indeed maintain
their surroundings in proper conditions as needed for a continuous
betterment of human life. Consequently the terrestrial environments,
where the human communities and societies are located, can and
should as well be maintained as open systems in order to increase the
survival chances of the human species, presumably involved in the
manifestation of civilizing processes.

It could be assumed that each one of the 76 texts selected for being
published by SAGE as "Systems Thinking" was structured de facto under
the influence of the biased assumption of every author who considered
that its content was relatively enough for helping to maintain the
functionality of our magnificent civilization.

These texts necessarily arose from ideas that were conceived in
diverse circumstances by a mind who no doubt intended, inevitably
according to his/her personal possibilities,concerns, motivations,
commitments,... to deal with one or another or even several of the
social and/or economic incongruities - mainly those generated by
narrow minded or shortsighted ideologies - that during the last five
decades have been causing the emergence of many more and larger
problems.

Evidently the kind of Systems Thinking and Cybernetic Interrelations
that are employed for tackling these problems appear as valuable
methodological achievements. Therefore usually these contributions
can be exclusively applied in the domain of idealized or simplified
circumstances. Meanwhile many local, regional and global problems
continuously grow and many of them are in fact reaching a crisis
point.

It may sound dramatic but nowadays societal, cultural, economic and
political affairs all over the world continuously deteriorate despite
Systems and Cybernetics. Fortunately it is not yet an irreversible
tragic moment because both are still very young intellectual
concerns, which are simply requiring to be developed for coping with
the problems that faces humankind at present being composed by more
than 6,000 million people

However such a development makes necessary first of all the proper
implementation of the Bertalanffian Systems Thinking through Top �
Down approaches which are indispensable in order to comprehend
holistically the human affairs and concerns. This proposal made by
Bertalanffy is considered a very difficult task (impossible for those
System Thinkers who simply reject the Top ==> Down approach arguing
that this holistic alternative is an oxymoron, as they claim that
they know that there is no Top.

Knowing that such objection arises basically due to the way the
systems movement has evolved, it seems convenient to guide the
development of SYSTEMS THINKING supported by ideas expressed by
Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Anatol Rapoport several decades ago:

"Bertalanffy advocated that we dare to broaden our loyalty from
nation to globe. He urged that we become patriots of the planet,
endeavoring to think and act primarily as members of humanity.
Without necessarily diluting our own individual and cultural
identity, he said, we must begin protecting the individual and
cultural identity of others. He urged that we begin pledging our
allegiance to humanity and to the earth on which we stand, one planet
indivisible or not planet at all.(*)

"Confronted with a variety of competing ideologies and value-systems,
the scientist. in order to be consistent with himself, cannot remain
neutral. As Dr. Anatol Rapoport says, "different men want to go in
different directions, and some of these directions are incompatible
with the direction inherent in science itself " Therefore, "the
scientist must subscribe to certain values (and discard others) not
because he is a 'good citizen' or a product of a [particular] culture
or a member of a [particular] church, but because he is a scientist"
(#)

The development of CYBERNETICS from now onward should be basically
oriented by the need of humans requiring societal systems locally
attached, regionally committed and globally engaged
in order to be humanely functional

(*) Uncommon Sense. The Life & Thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
Father of General Systems Theory. Mark Davidson, 1983

(#) Foreword written by S. I. Hayakawa for SCIENCE and the GOALS of
MAN, A Study of Semantic Orientation. Anatol Rapoport, 1950

http://www.bertalanffy.org

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