| Paper ASC 2007
Designing social Transformations: Continuing the Conversation
by Judy Lombardi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Villa Julie College, Stevenson, MD
Preface: This paper and a DVD "Herbert Brun, Designing social Transformations" were generated for the American Society for Cybernetics 2007 Annual Meeting in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, March 29 - April 1, 2007. Many of these thoughts were provoked by Laurence D. Richards "Connecting Radical Constructivism to Social Transformation and Design" (Constructivist Foundation,Vol. 2: 2-3, March 2007, pp. 129- 135.)
Note: I have mostly chosen not to use quotation marks to report what I heard others say. And when doing so, I have placed their names in parentheses at the end of each statement. There are also links throughout this text to web-based video shorts and documents. The DVD "Herbert Brun, Designing social Transformations" (Lombardi, 2007) may be purchased through the Herbert Brun Society, Urbana, Illinois. (217) 328 3228
Presentation Day 1
Larry, in your paper "Connecting Radical Constructivism to Social Transformation and Design" you wrote:
Glasersfeld (1991) identifies four roots of radical constructivism:
1. Philosophical root planted by the skeptics, that we couldn't know the world separate from our experience of it.....
2. Scientific root planted by the pragmatists, that the conduct of scientific research results in what works, not what is true in any absolute sense....
3. Cognitive root planted by constructionists, that we couldn't separate our cognitive constructions, i.e., our thoughts and our thinking, from our language....
4. Biological root planted by the evolutionists, that the processes of natural selection and adaptation drive evolutionary change, not a progressive matching of organism or species attributes with an external environment...."
I prefer Humberto Maturana's concept of "natural drift" to "natural selection." And as part of my natural drift, I want to explore with other like-minded misfits the radical roots of the social. (Call me a skeptic if you like.)
The social roots of Radical Constructivism
One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows. (Gertrude Stein)
When teaching (teaching is learning) sociology, I came to know that the meaning of the word "social" is ambiguous at best. Max Weber, a well-known sociologist, wrote about the ambiguity of the term social.
It is no accident that the term "social" turns out to have - as soon as one examines its applications - an indefinite meaning. For it generally rests on nothing but its ambiguity. It provides no specific point of view from which the significance of given elements can be analyzed. (Max Weber, 1949: 68.)
By the way, much of what we know about Max Weber's ideas is due to his spouse's efforts to conserve his writings after his death. Marianne Weber was also a well-known sociologist during her living. Like many other female sociologists she was erased from the history = violence.
See Text: Erased Women in Sociology
I have attempted to understand the different ways in which the term social is used, in sociology and daily life. For example, in one day the New York Times used the term "social" in five different ways, in just the front section of the paper (12/27/06).
So being who I am, I attempted to clarify the meanings of the term social in sociology. Note that I use quotes, capital and lower case letters differently to illustrate distinctions in meaning.
1. "social" companionship - the traditional view. An alternative view: the nucleus of any society, two observers living immersed in languaging. Hence:
2. SOCIAL - All that we generate, construct and do with and without awareness - together - including unconscious agreements.
3. Social - all that we construct, including that which generates systems of stratification that perpetuate and maintain fixed hierarchies (thus inequalities among human beings).
4. social - all that we do in mutual respect. Hence not all human relations are social relations. For love is the emotion that constitutes the social. (Humberto Maturana)
See Video: Love, Language e the social
I think definition 3 and 4 are in conflict, if not contradiction.
Conflict requires a change in the system
Contradiction requires a change of the system
(Herbert Brun)
Maybe another world is possible
When exploring the term social, an element of my confusion was that I kept hearing Herbert Brun say: "Things are what is said about them in our social worlds." I was not sure what he meant by the term social in this sentence and it seemed to conflict with what I was hearing when Humberto Maturana used the term.
See Video: Defining the social
Things are that which we do together so that they arise. (Humberto Maturana)
I remember Ernst von Glasersfeld once suggesting "compliance" rather than the term "social."
Heinz von Foerster once wrote that social cybernetics must be second-order cybernetics - a cybernetics of cybernetics if you will. So that an observer entering a system be allowed to stipulate his or her desires. Failure to do so will invite the other to determine desires for us, as well as provide an opportunity for those who do not want to take responsibility for their actions to transfer responsibility unto another.
Knots and Threads, Fabricating social Transformations
Everything is in a present and I am here now as a consequence of having been there then. Hence it's only fitting that I remember... Things are what is said about them and people are responsible for what they say, and do.
See Video: Responsibility
Designing social Activism and Radical Constructivism
Social transformations require social relations on many and meta levels, one way of looking, social activism: micro, macro and maximo points of views:
Micro views - every interaction is an opportunity for social activism. I claim that when reflecting, observing one's observing, and performing, social actions are more likely to arise.
We are all actors acting all the time. (Erving Goffman)
AND when we act with intent, performers. (Judy Lombardi)
Every speaker is an activist when s/he speaks. (Herbert Brun)
See Video: S/he who speaks is an activist
Dialoguing
Cybernetic dialoguing, exploring the circularity of how we know...when we know... what we know in relations with machines, other animals or observers.
How does I distinguish the structures, functions and dynamics of these differing dynamic systems I brings forth?
Living systems
We live a cultural present that does not easily offer a psychic space in which we can meet to participate in conversations that are open for reflection in a way in which we can hear each other and not fall into the trap of self-listening. (Humberto Maturana)
Two possible paths for Listening:
1. Listening for agreement, which is fatal.
See Video: Agreement is fatal
2. Listening for understanding, thus asking, in what situations would this explanation make sense?
Example: Charles Smith walks into the room, listens for a few moments and then declares: So, first-order cybernetics is about fixed hierarchies and second-order cybernetics about floating hierarchies.
I do not dismiss his remarks BUT ask myself: In what world could that statement make sense? And I decide this is a distinction I like.
Generating social transformations when living in the biology of love entails reflecting, observing one's observing and purposeful acting = paying attention to and creating a new honest languaging.
See Video: An honest language
In regard to listening for understanding, I don't know if it is possible not to self-listen. However, I do know it is possible to reflect and or observe my observing when self-listening, opening a space for the social in moments of asynchronicity.
Asynchronicity see Larry's paper and explore!
Macro views - when observing a nation or state or groups of nation states, I focuses on Social structures, be they cultural elements, Social institutions or Social systems of stratification. All generate, perpetuate and maintain inequality between and among living systems.
I desire to design a different set of social structures:
"We cannot dissociate ourselves from our society without, advertently or not, dissociating ourselves from its victims.
Nor can we associate with our society without, advertently or not, associating with its rulers. All we can do is avoid being either its rulers or its victims.
As, however, not being its rulers means being its victims, and not being its victims means being its rulers [bummer] all we can do, is not, and will never be enough, until its members, all of us, [yikes] will be neither rulers nor victims.
This requires a different structure of our society. We must understand and make known to all our contemporaries who do not understand yet, that it is our society which requires a different structure, and that this different structure will define our society then, as the present structure defines our society now. It will always be our society, now composed by rulers and victims, then composed of neither rulers nor victims." (Brun #66, my words and where I want them.) Note: Two words in brackets added by Lombardi.
Dear Herbert, I prefer structures to structure in this context. Since you once told me to pluralize all that I could.
We need alternative structures to those which generate either rulers or victims. Yet to say what those structures might be is to be too communicative. (See Herbert Burn for details regarding the consequences of communication.) So instead I ask: What might those structures NOT be? (See Larry Richard's paper for details on constraint theory and negative reasoning.)
From hierarchies to networks -- floating hierarchies -- a bridge
Beauty is a power failure. (Herbert Brun)
When hierarchies float, beauty is a power shift. (Judy Lombardi)
I want a new society in which I won't be a ruler or ruled. This requires a new understanding, awareness of the consequences of our languaging, such as our use of the terms social and power.
See Video: Words, Ethics and the social
Maximo views - involve our languaging with earth and its, our ecosystems, including people and environments for humanness we humans need.
Human Needs, Wants and Desires
Needs - if not met I won't need them anymore because I will be dead.
Wants - even though I want it, I will survive without it. Whatever it is.
Desires - awareness of the distinctions between needs, wants and designing.
Maximo continued
Being social with planet requires a shift in our paradigm view of the world.
Our anthropocentric ways have generated violence against the planet. A language, more specifically languaging, that is eco-centric is required. Indigenous peoples around the world know this.
One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows. (Gertrude Stein)
Indigenous people know how to live with the lands.
Thinking is acting - locally, nationally and globally.
Presentation Day 2
Experience my passions -- if you will (not beliefs) about the ways I think about the way things are now. Now when.
See Video: SDSystems
We talked yesterday about the roots of radical constructivism and my desire for exploring possible radical roots of the social - all lower case.
We talked about a variety of definitions for the term social, its ambiguity and whether some of these definitions might be in conflict or contradiction with one another when embracing radical constructivism.
We talked about the distinctions between needs, wants and designing our desires.
We talked about abstracting and possible micro, macro and maximo distinctions regarding the SOCIAL, Social and the -- social -- all that we do in mutual respect. Hence not all human relations are social relations..... Our living in wars, in strife, in hierarchical relations of domination and authority requires a particular kind of emotioning, other than the social, that must have emerged in some moment of our living. (Humberto Maturana)
We talked about how from a maximo view, being social requires a shift in our paradigm world view. And then there is Radical Constructivism.
How can I talk about truth or facts without Objectivity? For I do think it is important that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I know I have presented lots of ideas. So we could view this as a beginning for on-going conversations -- to be continued another time. Yes, I desire to retard the decay of our relationships.
See Video: Entropy and the Retardation of Decay
Generating the social: Two (of many possible) World views:
Traditional: Knowledge and Objectivity
Progressive: knowing and radical constructivism
One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows. (Gertrude Stein)
Traditional Objective External World view
From a traditional, scientific worldview, Knowledge, independent of an observer, is possible and in fact a goal of science = positivism. This suggest that given enough cause and effect relations about an external world, I can Know Absolute Truths = Knowledge. Traditional science is thought to generate bodies of Knowledge which are nested in the assumption of Objectivity. With Objectivity comes the notions of predictability and control.
I remember a paper about the notion of control by Humberto Maturana.
An Objective world view fits perfectly with an anthropocentric world view. This rationalizes man's violence against the earth and all the creatures on it, by separating himself out of the formula of when is living. Thus placing himself and his beliefs above the earth and its -- our eco-systems. In doing so he opens a space in his heritage (Heritage is culture. Culture is conservation.) for illegitimatizing other living systems -- in coexistence with himself. In doing so, he generates and conserves power relations of domination and submission.
See Video: What is Violence
From a macro view, a history of conserving Objectivity and domination generates what is violence, as distinguished from when is violence.
See Video: Violence is a message
Violence is a message. What is the message of violence? From the viewpoint of Richard's constraint theory and negative reasoning, what are the structures, functions and dynamics that generate violence?
Social Action, a Radical Constructivist view (maybe)
From a constraint
theory and negative reasoning point of view, what is inequality? What
are the structures, functions and dynamics that generate
inequalities?
See Text: Systems of Stratification
When is equality?
Being a Progressive is being about social change that is geared toward generating equality. Radical Constructivism orients my definition for when is a progressive?
Generating Triadic Relations
Once, when visiting Heinz Von Foerster on Rattlesnake Hill in California, he gave me an article he had written in the 1970s entitled "The Cybernetics of Cybernetics." In this article he writes about the importance of designing triadic relations when describing social systems.
"This interrelationship can be compared, perhaps, with the interrelationship between the chicken, and the egg, and the rooster. You cannot say who was first and you cannot say who was last. You need all three in order to have all three." (Heinz von Foerster, Cybernetics of Cybernetics)
One possible Triadic Relation for Designing social Transformations
I want US to explore the idea of a triadic relation for provoking social transformations when nesting these concepts: 1) floating hierarchies; 2) violence as a message; and 3) peace is a need.
See Video: Herbert Brun, Designing social Transformations DVD (43 minutes)
My Desire
Larry Richards paper, this paper and the DVD entitled "Herbert Brun, Designing social Transformations" are all required reading and viewing for our next meeting - soon.
One possible model for generating floating hierarchies in a language space is a modified consensus model.
Models are not true or false. They are more or less useful. (Stafford Beer)
Peace, is a need.
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April 15, 2007
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