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We, the so called human beings, very often seem to be quite easily
fascinated by the assumed power that presumably convey the use of
words that some of our more enlightened congeners have invented when
each one of them considered indispensable to transfer INFORMATION to
somebody else or to COMMUNICATE his or her IDEAS to other humans.
Words are the main symbols invented by humans for transferring
information to other brains and gradually creating the communication
network needed among people for determining how to deal jointly with
one or another of those questions that we always managed to identify
as our common concerns. However that fascination causes many people
to use words without recognizing their content or signification.
Since those early days, when our ancestors started to make tools
purposefully using flakes, chips, sticks and pieces obtained after
breaking wood and stone, humans have also been increasingly
captivated and even irresistibly bewitched = hypnotized by the
insertion of new technological devices and novel methodological
recipes and procedures that have been invented for making easier the
accomplishment of difficult, boring and tedious tasks required for
carrying out all kinds of human affairs. Such a kind of fascination,
which during the last century until today has become rather
irresistible in some enlightened minds, at present is causing the
substitution of masses of human workers by automats, automates and
automatons.
I dare to argue that these two human features have been UNILATERALLY
determining the trajectory of the Systems Community during the last
five decades, since the Society for General Systems Research could
emerged at the end of 1954. Meanwhile some of the main contributions
made by Ludwig von Bertalanffy have been simply disregarded because
the public and private entities that have been providing funds for
the creation of new systems and also for improving the functionality
of those in operation are neither interested in really coping with
the social and the cultural difficulties that obstruct the evolvement
of the poor masses: the so called human resources who refuse to live
miserably while compulsively admiring the magnificent features of
civilization and being obliged to learn how to esteem the splendors
of the highly civilized way of life.
During the second half of the twentieth century the (Human) World:
the so called Homosphere has changed a lot - less for better and a
lot more for worse in the common people's view - causing:
1. inconvenient disruptions of social, cultural and political
features of an increasing number of communities and nations;
2. the ecological, biological, ethological and ethical
deterioration of terrestrial circumstances without being recognized
that the resources and possibilities of Earth are limited; while
being ignored that there is not any other planet available for human
life.
Such a dangerous perspective made Bertalanffy to write "I heartily
agree that the main objection against current philosophy is its . . .
reliance on so-called common sense . . . Society [has] become so
complex that traditional ways and means are not sufficient anymore.
Approaches of a holistic or systems nature have to be introduced."
A holistic approach is the only way of searching consistently how to
comprehend the whole nature or character of a particular person.
Until today most people are not allowed to develop his or her
personality because they are considered simply human resources or
soldiers who are taught to behave uniformly as they are considered
living objects which must be homogenized in accordance with the rules
determined and updated by the highly civilized individuals = the
personalities who have been educated for enjoying all the civilized
facilities.
But it has become impossible to ignore that "Each waking day is a
stage dominated for good or ill, in comedy, farce or tragedy, by a
'dramatis persona', the 'self'. And so it will be until the curtain
drops. This self is a unity. The continuity of its presence in time,
sometimes hardly broken by sleep, its inalienable 'interiority' in
(sensual) space, its consistency of view-point, the privacy of its
experience, combine to give it status as a unique existence . . . It
regards itself as one, others treat it as one. It is addressed as
one, by a name to which it answers. The Law and the State schedule it
as one. It and they identify it with a body which is considered by it
and them to belong to it integrally. In short, unchallenged and
unargued conviction assumes it to be one: The logic of grammar
endorses this by a pronoun in the singular: All its diversity is
merged into oneness." [Sherrington, 1951]
Bertalanffy claimed that it was necessary a "new image of man (and
also of woman)" because only humans capable of knowing their personal
possibilities and limitations will be able to play consciously their
individual roles learning every one to contribute to determine what
might be the destiny of our species.
Therefore it becomes necessary to create the proper circumstances
everywhere for allowing every human to generate his or her ideas
about the surrounding reality in accordance with the possibilities
that every one might develop when perceiving and interpreting what
may concern every one. He or she must learn on his own to search the
right words whose content may assure the proper communication.
At the same time it is also necessary to identify the kind of
technological and methodological innovations that are needed for
allowing 6,000 million humans to develop conveniently and
consistently their physical, manual and intellectual possibilities in
order to stop immediately the production of devices and recipes that
so far are increasingly introduced in order to condemn humans to be
no more than employed slaves, workers or soldiers or unemployed
people though necessarily all of them ought to be good buyers and
consumers of anything, everything and even nothing.
-- elohimjlReceived on Tue Nov 12 20:57:17 2002
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