Only one restraint can effectively block ANY war. It lies within the people themselves (2)

The enlightening work carried out by Lewis Mumford, Anatol Rapoport,
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding and several others may help
researchers, experts and scholars, who have recognized the
potentiality of Systems Thinking supported when necessary by
Cybernetic Interactions, to determine how to cope 'scientifically' -
therefore ethically - with the worst crisis ever faced by humankind.

Consequently I dare to believe that the Systems and Cybernetic
Community may encourage today the whole Scientific Community to
immediately offer arguments for helping millions of people to change
consciously the political climate that has been intelligently
structured --but derived from narrow minded, short-sighted and even
blind appraisals-- for organizing another World War against humanity.

elohimjl

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"... The rise of the machine and the fall of man are two parts of the
same process: never before have machines been so perfect, and never
before have men sunk so low, for the sub-human conduct that the Nazis
have exhibited in the torture and extermination of their victims
drops below any level of mere brutality: That degradation is shared
by those who passively condone this sub-human conduct, by belittling
its horror and denying its terrible significance."

Lewis Mumford, The Condition of Man, 1944

"... According to a belief widely held among scientists no less than
among humanists and men of letters, science does not, should not, and
ultimately cannot determine the ends for which it is used. This view,
entailing a sharp separation of science and values, Dr. Rapoport
regards as a tragic fallacy: the fallacy rests, as he demonstrates,
upon an imperfection sight on the part of scientists themselves into
the ethical implications of their own scientific behavior" S. I
Hayakawa

"...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) no 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."

Anatol Rapoport, Science and the Goals of Man, 1950.

"That Reason does not automatically lead to a solution of the human
problem and, by and large, has little influence in the sanguinary
course of human history,... ...has technological power increased
human happiness? Is a scientifically controlled society desirable?"

"The image of man as robot is a projection into science of the
Zeitgeist of the period... Man as a machine can be programmed; all
those machines equal like automobiles coming from the assembly line
equilibrium or comfort as ultimate value; behavior as a business
transaction with minimum expense and maximum gain-this is a perfect
expression of the philosophy of commercial society...
In the advertisers' philosophy, there is a "brain box" ... which must
be stuffed full with the advertisers's slogans to the exclusion of
others; in "pecuniary logic" reality and truth are replaced by
wishful thinking and conditioning by advertising art; and, of course,
people are manipulated as they deserve, that is, as overgrown Skinner
rats.

"...the effects of modern psycho techniques and behavioral
engineering amount to functional decerebralization. Not even the
threat of atomic annihilation can change the ways of a manipulated
humanity, which are almost as strongly ingrained as the instinctive
urge of a herd of lemmings, leading them irresistibly into
self-destruction"

"...in an emerging psychology of man or... a new science of man or
general anthropology,... an interdisciplinary enterprise including
biology, psychiatry, sociology, linguistics, the economics, the
arts,... The key words (for) a new psychology, I propose, are
symbolism and system. ...against the robot model of the primary
reactivity of the organism a new conception emerges which in
psychological language can be termed that of man as an active
personality system."

Ludwig von Bertalanffy Robots, Men and Minds, 1967

"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 no planet at all. ...he 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" "...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" [Bertalanffy]

Mark Davidson Uncommon Sense. The Life and Thought of Ludwig von
Bertalanffy, 1983

"We cannot discuss the state of the world system without recognizing
the existence of an activity that is euphemistically called "national
defense" but that more honestly we should simply call the "war
industry. " ... When we talk about national defense,...we are
thinking particularly of war as a social institution and the
organizations that specialize in this. On the whole, economics is
interested in the production of "goods"; a national defense
organization is interested in the production of "bads" - that is
negative commodities - ... The threat system is an attempt to
organize the exchange of "bads" for "goods".

The world has become a single system for the first time in human
history. This began with Columbus, I suppose, but I would say that
the world only became a single system in a certain sense in the
twentieth century. ... we see this in what I sometimes call the
"superculture" - the science based culture of airports, radios,
television, automobiles,... Once we have transistor radios we are
part of the world society. This actually means that wars of conquest
are likely to be unprofitable. ...The technical developments in
weaponry and national defense organizations have clearly destroyed
the unconditional viability of all states. The great justification of
war was that it pushed violence beyond your borders, so that you
could preserve peace at home by having war somewhere else. In a way
the United States did that in Vietnam, .... in a major war this is
not longer feasible, ...the whole concept of defense through war has
really collapsed because of the increase in the range and the
deadlines of weapons. ... What we have now is deterrence - that is,
Mutually Assured Destruction, properly called "MAD"

Kenneth E. Boulding National Defense through Stable Peace (Lectures
presented at the IIASA) 1983
Received on Thu Dec 19 02:35:43 2002