Lewis Works

This open, on-line Newsletter is published weekly, every Friday Afternoon at 5:30 PM PST. It is updated with new announcements and articles each week.

Lewis Works Newsletter*

*Human Meta-systems

The E-zine of Applied General Systems Science

By Hugh M. Lewis, PhD, MA, general editor

Vol. I, No. 16

5/14/04 Copyright 2004 ©, Hugh M. Lewis.  Facsimiles of this page or parts of this page may be printed and distributed for non-profit research, consulting and educational purposes only, as governed by fair use policy.

On Top

True to our word, our realignment of effort continues. We have considerably simplified the applied meta-systems framework with an eye towards achieving greater productivity and building at the bottom of a top-down design. 

We are announcing the near completion of several new (and old) texts: Meta-science, Field Theory, Inter-corelational Analysis, and Systems Essays. 

We are also reworking and completing some previous texts: Advanced Systems & American Essays.

We are also announcing the planned completion date of July, 2004, for the hardbound publication of one of our texts: Robidoux Chronicles

Criticisms/Comments, then Provide Feedback

On Top

Our newsletter is published once a week at 5:30 PM, Pacific Standard Time, Fridays.

We are focusing this week and the next several weeks upon the problems and issues of Human Meta-systems and the application of systems-based approaches to human systems.

We invite your open involvement in our framework. We are creating a new membership program, open to all comers. The full details below, upon three levels: free membership, basic membership & premium membership. 

Mission Statement

Lewis Works is dedicated to realizing new human adaptive possibilities in order to create alternative long-term frameworks for human & biological systems development on earth and beyond.

The primary mission of Lewis Works is to fundamentally empower all human beings, without regard or reference to their individual or cultural differences, so that they may function in a more constructive and non-violent manner by means of their integration within an applied systems framework that enables them to contextualize and focus their independent developmental efforts toward comprehensive solutions to common problems in resource distribution, environmental adaptation, and social-structural interaction.

• 1. Lewis Works seeks alternative meta-systems based development through applied general systems with the main goals of:

• a. Achieving a mutually stable and harmonic balance between future human systems and earthbound biological systems.

• b. Providing all human beings in unbiased structural or cultural contexts the alternative systems-based frameworks for their individual & social development by means of increased opportunities, productivity, security and resource availability that they would not otherwise have in conventional frameworks.

• c. Developing the infra-structural context and means for the regular extension of human and biological systems beyond the boundaries of the earth.

• 2. Lewis Works is dedicated to achieving a better world for all people and for all life-forms through the implementation and articulation of an applied general systems framework to general and specific problem sets that occur in the adaptive organization of human behavior in a shared natural environment.

• 3. Lewis Works is non-exclusive, open, non-authoritarian, philanthropic and pacifist in orientation.

• 4. Lewis Works pursues a combination of both profit and non-profit programs and projects to the achievement of its main goals.

• 5. Lewis Works protects and promotes universal human rights and human responsibilities throughout its various programs and projects by the systematic pursuit of human development strategies.

• 6. Lewis Works is law abiding and honest in all its dealings and transactions in all contexts, and respects and honors the customs and manners of all peoples and all ethnocultural groupings.

• 7. Lewis Works protects and promotes the confidentiality and legitimate interests of its clients and customers under all circumstances and in all cases.

• 8. Lewis Works seeks to efficiently provide a comprehensive range of profit-based services and related product lines within an open, web-based forum of exchange that is global in scope, regional in character, and local in focus, and that serves as the basis for the development of a structurally open meta-systems based context in the world transcending local, regional and national identities and affiliations.

• 9. Lewis Works seeks to promote non-profit programs in alternative human development for the sake of alleviating human suffering, educating people openly and in an unbiased manner, and promoting pro-social human development.

• 10. Lewis Works seeks to create trans-national meta-cultural orientations in the world through various organizational frameworks that promote open, democratic principles of government, fair-play and the rule of just law, and through the development of anti-structural multi-media based systems that provide humanity a common symbolic context for their meta-cultural integration.

Human beings are the prisoners of their own heads. Their brains granted them "world openness"--freedom from the constraints of natural instinct and libidinal impulses--but in return it exacted a heavy price. This cost was the price of true behavioral freedom from cognitive constraint. The chains are largely invisible and transparent to ourselves--we look through the windows of our eyes, but we do not see the bars that define the outlines of our view of the world. These chains are psychological first and foremost. 

How to explain this? Our brains, in their hyper-development of certain centers for speech and cognitive apprehension, for rationality, emotion and the ability to plan and trick, for greater manual dexterity, fine motor skills, speech and hand-eye coordination, resulted in a form of over-development and over-reliance as well as basic dependency upon symbolic forms, such that, without these cognitive-based symbolic forms, we cannot operate in the world. If we look at madness, we see people who are in solitary confinement in their own minds, so much so that they cannot effectively interact or develop rapport with anyone else in their world, or adapt effectively to the normal demands placed upon sane individuals in the world. And if we observe them in naturalistic settings, the key set of features we see shared by them is this capacity for living in a world of their own imagination, albeit one that seems to bear little relation to the real world around them.

And supposedly normal and sane individuals are really not too different from this--they also live in worlds of their own making, by and large, albeit these worlds just tend to be better coordinated and articulated with real reference points in the real world. We have  a wonderful illusion that we are really following and are actually guided by external reference points, and we fail to see that these may actually be symbolic figments of our imagination, cognitive constructs in our heads that map the external world in precise and sometimes tedious detail. The wonderful thing about our brains is that this entire mapping process is mostly preconscious and unconscious, and requires very little real thinking or deliberation on our part. It is a process that occurs automatically, like instinctual clockwork, and it thus frees our attention and our limited capacities for intentional thought and behavior to do things and take action in critical ways. We follow the maps in our own heads, and we carry the illusion that these maps are really the real world that they project onto.

The symbolic reification of reality, the psychology of misplaced concretization of our apperceptive apprehension of the world, is the illusion that mistakes our symbolic-cognitive maps of reality, for the actual experience of reality itself. It is an easy illusion to fall prey too. In fact it is our normal mode of conscious functioning. Freud was the first to point out the great extent that our conscious behavior was motivated and directed by unconscious feelings and thoughts. It would be too difficult to act and function otherwise, if we were always attempting to distinguish what was just in our heads from what actually exists "out there" in the real world.

So Homo sapiens has evolved not only as big-brained symbolic creatures, but as symbol-dependent creatures in a very fundamental way. Imagine a world in which everyone walks around "lost in internal space," wrapped up in their own heads, and talking to others only as if they were reflections or shadows of what they know and see in their own mind's eye. We can say that human beings are symbolically, psychologically solipsistic--our primary coordinate reference points are not external markers, except as much as we project and displace onto external signals--rather they are internalized symbolic-cognitive constructs that help us to organize our experiences of reality and allow us to respond effectively to reality. Our realities are psychologically relative.

This is pretty much how it is, and it leads to many kinds of difficulties characteristic of human beings. It predisposes us to certain kinds of chronic problems that seem unique to the human species. We have for instance few instinct-based inhibitions or control channels, so we have an almost wanton sexual promiscuity that can, under circumstances of symbolic transformation, turn into perversion. We are an aggressive species with few natural inhibitions to our aggression, such that we are prone to chronic violence, often even to large-scale blood-baths of violence. We can even take this aggression out upon ourselves, in strange ways, and end even in suicide, a phenomenon that is very rare if not completely absent among any other species of mammal or other animal. Why would nature bring us into the world just to have us self-destruct?

In order to protect us from ourselves, and from one another, and in order to create some facsimile of order in what would amount otherwise to a very chaotic world, human beings evolved not only a dependency upon symbols, but a dependency upon culture as well. Culture may be said to be an externalized, socially reinforced extension of our symbolic maps upon the effective environment. It provides us conventionalized reference points to guide and constrain our behavior. Of course, culture has been defined so many ways by anthropologists and non-anthropologists alike, that saying so might seem like a trivial generalization. But there is a little known definition of culture that derives from cross-cultural research and the challenges of understanding how people think and behavior differently from one another. We can call it a working research or methodological or operational definition of culture, defined in experimental terms, that allows us to form fairly specific hypothesis and then to empirically test these hypothesis under both controlled and natural conditions. 

This definition, coming from the anthropology of knowledge and cognitive and symbolic anthropology, is really not a complex one. We can define culture as the "measure of different behavioral response patterns that are shared by a common group of people." It is a measure of the extent to which certain behavioral affinities are shared by people, these behavioral affinities being defined in different ways, but always in terms of patterned and holistic behavioral response patterns, or, in other words, as symbolic behavior. Culture can be operationally defined as the sum total system that results from the sharing of significant symbols by a social grouping of people that are organized together for some set of purposes, whether this is work, play, living, procreation, nurturance, etc. Such a definition renders the study of culture empirically available and even measurable in an objective manner, and it allows us to circumvent certain issues of randomness assumed in statistical models.

Human beings have constructed symbolic worlds so that we can share symbols with one another, and by this means render our worlds as similar and consonant to one another as possible. Restrictive cultural orientations reinforce a narrow range of sharing, and prohibits or inhibits the adoption of alternative symbolic patterns. Open cultural orientations tend to be tolerant of a wide range of symbolic-behavioral alternation. Common culture allows us an intuitive apprehension and gestalt comprehension of how other peoples think, see, feel and respond to the world, and it allows people to coordinate their views of the world so that they may respond to one another and to the larger world in appropriate ways.

Thus, not only we are symbolic and symbolically dependent creatures, but we are also therefore cultural and culturally dependent creatures. We depend upon a mechanism of sharing and transmission of common symbolic constructs by which to organize and coordinate our worldview and our response patterns to the world among a common social group. And like our symbolic dependency and its unconscious ice-berg structure, cultural behavior and sharing is also marked by the illusion of transparent reification, as well as by the fact of being primarily embedded in our unconscious awareness and response to the world. And if we are prisoners of our own heads, we become also, by virtue of our development and growing up in social groupings, prisoners of the cultural life-world that we are born or bound into life-circumstances.

And if human nature has paid a heavy price for massive symbolic-cognitive apparatus of the brain, it has also had to make other kinds of sacrifices for the sake of cultural dependency. Our prolonged period of infant dependency, and the delayed process of developmental maturation, can be considered to be very expensive evolutionary adaptations of the human species that promote cultural and thereby pro-social development and growth of the individual human being. Overall, we call it "learning" how to become more human, and how to operate successfully in the world. This learning process begins the day we were born, and continues till the day we die. It of course changes and shifts focus and emphasis as we progress to different periods of our lives.

We see this in tiny tots who have not yet socialized or been enculturated into the life-world of their effective environment and principle care-takers. They babble to invisible people, and live largely in imaginary worlds, where the objective stimuli around them are merely the vessels for their own imaginary constructions.

Of course, this being said, human development is never complete nor perfect. Neither symbolic nor cultural acquisition is ever complete or satisfactory to the tasks of day-to-day human adaptation. This is why we are daily engaged in the reevaluation of our symbolic worlds, in our dreams, in our conversational apparatus with those significant others who surround us, and in our symbolic behavior and acting out of our impulses, feelings, intentions and thoughts. This serves the purpose of keeping our symbolic edge clean and sharp, and rendering it continuously coordinate with the world around us. The mass media, particularly newspapers and television, also serves this important function of symbolic reinforcement and mediation of change in our life worlds.

We depend upon the fact and frequency of cultural sharing in terms of symbolic behavior and related attitudes, by means of the cognitive mapping of standard cultural models, as a means of achieving cultural consonance and coordination of our adaptive behavior in a larger social setting. Frequency of sharing reinforces our behavioral adaptation and its cultural consonance daily.

Symbolic and cultural sharing reinforces a common framework, a common symbolic-cognitive apparatus, that allows us to coordinate our behavior in relationship to one another, and thus to function effectively at both individual and group levels of adaptation. Of course, such sharing is never total or complete. We will be lucky if we find only a strong percentage of sharing between people. But it is commonly found that we do not need to share everything, or even most things, with others if we engage in interaction with others for limited purposes only. Large scale, stratified and complex societies can in fact hang-together quite effectively with on a modicum of sharing between different groupings of people. In fact, the measure of complexity of human social organization can be accurately and realistically determined not in terms of the degree of overall sharing, but the degree of differences in patterns of sharing among sub-groupings.

Neither is sharing an all or none kind of thing. We may share parts of things, and this in only a partial manner. Thus our shared world is fraught with uncertainties and defined by few clear-cut boundaries. Communicative efficacy in the transmission and sharing process frequently demands resorting to the lowest common denominators among the largest number of people possible--advertising and marketing executives understand this requirement and exploit it regularly in their attempts to persuade people to buy their merchandise.

This principle has provided the empirical foundation for a symbolic framing methodology that underlies and forms the basis for a scientific, comparative approach to human systems research. Through its demonstration I have been able to demonstrate clear patterns of similarity and difference in behavioral response patterns between complex groupings of people at many different levels of elicitation and analysis.

Cultural systems take on traditions and become to some extent ossified structurally and symbolically as conventional frameworks that tend over time to resist structural change or transformation, though which also have proven to be quite resilient and flexible in being able to effective adapt to changes. Cultural systems have traditionally been quite conservative in orientation, as the principle function and objective of such systems was the reproductive survival and perpetuation of the group and of the cultural institutions and associated symbolism, in as complete and intact a manner as possible. Cultural convention acquires in time a sense of coercive momentum and constraint, both through direct and indirect sanctioning, that reinforces the maintenance of the system within a structural status quo and emphasizing foremost conformity and the maximum possible degree of symbolic sharing of behavior. Any changes in such a context are mostly likely to be construed as a threat to the survival and longevity of the system, and hence efforts are made to deal with such changes appropriate. Alternation of symbolic behavior is a form of change that must be controlled and strictly managed, especially in very conservative contexts. Hence alternative symbolic orientations will tend to be negatively sanctioned, and those possessing or promoting such orientations will tend to be either rehabilitated or annihilated.

One of the key factors influencing change in cultural systems and symbolic patterning of groups of people have been due to inter-cultural relations and cross-cultural contact, that largely result in alternation and frequent conflict of symbolisms and symbolic systems, with the destructive disintegration of one system, referred to as desymbolization, and its displacement by another system that is possibly in some ways inconsistent or disconsonant with the established framework of culture. 

This process is generally referred to as acculturation, and I would remark that all acculturative process is first and foremost symbolic acculturation in cause and effect, before it becomes anything else. People who are trapped historically in such transitional contexts are in a sense imprisoned to a symbolic sense of order that no longer sufficiently serves their needs, and may be considered in some fundamental sense disordered or even diseased. Such a context often proves unable to be rehabilitated. Symbol systems become dysfunctional and sometimes even counter-adaptive to the purposes of real living, and, as was remarked in the beginning for individuals suffering mental illness, so to can it become for entire social groupings of people who are symbolically dispossessed and live in a cultural world that is disconnected from the exigencies and realities of the larger world.

Acquired human behavior is environmentally rooted and the process of acquisition is largely a symbolically structured one, serving symbolic purposes and functions as well. Symbolic acquisition of behavioral response pattern serves purposes of internalization of control structures, sublimation and channeling of libidinal impulse and aggression to more constructive forms of behavior, motivating action and initiative, and providing a context for creativity, imaginative play and constructive behavior. Unlike biological control mechanisms which are largely set, automatic, and sometimes triggered by specific kinds of stimuli, the symbolic control mechanisms that  surround culturally defined and shaped behavior needs to be regularly reinforced and reemphasized in order to remain strong and powerful. It requires an external context for effective demonstration and ritual reinforcement. It requires as well regular participation, inculcation and the use of mechanisms for inter-subjective evaluation and rehabilitation. Educational institutions are some of the forms of socio-cultural institutions that have been developed specifically serving these sets of needs in human beings.

I refer to the phenomenon of symbolic transformation as the somewhat revolutionary cultural consequences that the acquisition of symbolic behavior has had for human beings, both upon individual and  group levels of articulation. Symbolic transformation refers in a gross sense to the sense of displacement of symbolic reference and attachment to forms that may be disconnected or otherwise dissimilar to the original causes or referents to which they are attached through a process referred to as symbolic transference. As an example of the consequences of symbolic transformation, we may refer to the capacity to set entire nations of people to make war and to risk their lives in the process, based upon what are entirely ideological symbolisms that are not directly tied to the problems of survival of the organism or reproductive success of the individual as a biological entity. 

In other words, symbolic behavior affects the capacity in human beings to acquire alternative, variable forms of human behavior, in consistent ways, that are not the immediate result of biological factors of determination or biological control mechanisms, and which serve either directly or indirectly any sense of biological interest of the organism, either in terms of response to immediate circumstances or adaptive behavior to local or general conditions. Human beings can be in fact quite readily induced into consistent forms of behavior that actually may hurt individual or group capacity for survival, or run deliberately against the grain of their biological well being as a organism in the world.

Of course, the fallacy of symbolic reification, that serves somewhat as a symbolic mediation device that serves to naturalize and make seem normal and inherent what is otherwise and in a fundamental sense arbitrary and artificial, and that serves frequently as a system of defensive rationalization maintaining the integrity of life-experience, can often take the form of biological naturalization of behaviors or acquired patterns of behavior, that can therefore be acted upon as if natural or instinctual and construed that way.

Money is a great symbolic device--it stands for many things--wealth, power, freedom, well-being. Making money, often by whatever means, is received commonly as a principle objective of human behavior, whether it proves to be by hook or by crook. Though the value orientation towards making money is regarded largely as a "materialistic" value system, the concept and function of money in the world, in state societies with large scale market economies, is almost entirely symbolic.  This is not to claim that money cannot buy things that are necessary, or that it cannot lead to survivorship and affluence. But it is to say that money may be used for the purchase of things needed for survival, like food or water, etc., but it is more often than not used for a much wider range of purposes, most of which have little or nothing directly to do with human survival. We can frequently trade in kind for food, and we can even hunt or gather our own food, as our ancestors once commonly did, or grow our food and cultivate it by our own efforts. But money can allow us to buy food, clothing, etc., eliminating the necessity of acquiring or making it for ourselves.

Thus we can see that it has been by means of a basic and common symbolic form, a device like money, that we have effected a basic transformation of human social organization from that of a cultural pattern rooted in hunting and gathering, to that of one that is rooted on the market exchange of commodities, ownership of property and capital, and the organization and appropriation of productive labor. This has been a symbolic transformation that has been accompanied by a transformation of our social organization and of the way we adapt in our material world. 

If we make the claim that money is a tool, an object of material possession, then we can say that a tool is a symbol, and a symbol is a tool as well. The fact that the earliest stone tools used by Hominids were generalized to a range of functions, and were deliberately shaped and adapted to special functions, came thereby to acquire cognitive and symbolic significance for the tool maker/tool user, and this does not thereby render insignificant the symbolic value of tools or the functional value of symbols as tools, or the requirement for an enlarged cerebral-cranial capacity to learn to use and adapt tools more effectively, as symbolisms and as tools. 

It may be argued as well, especially by cultural or historical materialists, that the economy and material means of production and social organization changed before the need for money arose as a common, standard medium of exchange was introduced. This may well be true, but certainly the rise of situations that demanded such a standard medium, particularly in state societies, also created the context for the symbolic importance and function of money, and the pattern of organization and adaptation itself became possible as a result of this symbolic transformation in the use of money as a standard medium of exchange.

The symbolic transformation of humankind from a species of animal bound by the constraints of nature, to an individual and a social entity that is capable of arbitrary, intentional and independent behavior, in the process becoming thereby bound to the constraints of symbolic behavior and culture instead, has been both a boon and a bane to human kind. It has permitted an unprecedented level of evolutionary success, the rise of sophisticated civilizations based upon scientific knowledge, the cultivation of the arts, refinement of values and sensibilities. It has permitted the realization of alternative realities through the development of human constructive and creative capacities that are the outcomes of they symbolic adaptation and acquisition. But at the same time, it has been a mixed blessing, as it has assured us of well of almost equally destructive and violent capacities, capacities for individual and social deviancy and perversion of behavior, for cheating and manipulation and exploitation of both people and nature.

By means of symbolic transformation, we are capable of behavior in ways far out of proportion to our natural biological limitations, needs or capacities. By such means as well we are capable of modifying our behavior quite flexibly, and are capable thereby of learning new forms of symbolism and acquiring new kinds of adaptive behaviors. 

If we observe wolves, for instance, we can observe one troop of wolves, and pretty much describe the entire behavioral repertory of all members of that wolf species. We can generalize from a single pack of wolves to all packs of the same kind of wolf. We can do the same for almost all species of animal, except perhaps for a few species of primates for whom rudimentary cultural patterns of acquisition and transmission has been documented, and possibly as well for some pods or family groups of cetaceans, who may also have acquired learned, proto-cultural patterns of behavior. 

It is primarily and especially in human beings that we cannot easily generalize or explain behavior from one group to the next, or even from one individual to another, and the problem of comparison and comparative analysis of behavior becomes especially complex and problematic. And this is primarily because almost all of human behavior has been symbolically transformed and culturally acquired and transmitted. If we hypothesize anywhere from 7,000 to more than 30,000 distinct languages that once occurred within the past millennium, we can specify at least that many if not more distinctive cultural systems that were associated with each of those languages, and this does not include the dialectical patterns of variation found within and between traditional culture areas, or the sub-cultural groupings, marked by distinctive style patterns and behavioral sets unique to particular groupings in particular periods and places. 

We cannot expect so much variation of pattern among human groupings to be accounted for on the basis of genetic variation alone, as the human species simply is not that genetically variable. We are all basically of a single common species with but minor sub-species and iso-clinal variations. We are no where near the genetic variation encompassed by the household dog, Canis familiaris, that has been the result of cultural selection and breeding regimes for many centuries, and that has led to at least 150 unique types of distinct canine breed, each with their distinct patterns of appearance and associated dog behaviors.

What we can say, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that human cultural patterning and behavior, often quite conservative in form and structure, is quite variable and permits of a wide range of alternative possibilities that lead to possibly an infinite number of possible cultural configurations. No two cultural patterns in the history of humanity have been alike, though there have been many cases of parallel or analogous development of aspects and traits of culture, and frequent cases of homologous development due to shared heritage or as the product of acculturative transmission. 

The fact that cultural acquisition and transmission is non-genetic, occurs as the result of learning and environmental relation, entails that cultural traits and patterns can be transmitted widely and very quickly, and cultures can change rather dramatically over short periods of time.

It becomes the case therefore, clearly, that there is a wide range of variation of pattern of response behavior associated with different cultural backgrounds and trajectories, and that we can speak of symbolic differentials of such behavior as characteristic of all human beings and as reflecting in a rather particularistic and relative manner the cultural and sub-cultural differences occurring between groups of people, as well as the psychological differences between individuals. 

The basis of my dissertation thesis was that such differentials were probably less random and idiosyncratically variable, and more systematic and indicative of multi-level sharing between different groupings, than might otherwise be thought to occur if we are looking at surface patterns alone. It was hypothesized that structural isomorphisms and consistencies of pattern, often not directly available to immediate observation, would emerge and become available through comprehensive and detailed analysis and logical deduction. I believe this is pretty much what we uncovered, in spite of the challenges of conducting such research, such as issues of statistical significance & random sampling, issues of interpretation, biased response, distinguishing between psychologically idiosyncratic and culturally nomothetic responses, etc.

Understanding such differentials in a systematic way, and being able to correlate these differentials strongly to basic groupings, provided not only an empirical handle for measuring cultural pattern, defined in terms of symbolic behavior, as well as a means for systematically comparing different patterns of cultural and symbolic behavior, but it provided as well a vehicle for investigating the structure of human symbolic behavior and cognition, patterns of deviance from normal symbolic function, and finally it offered what proved subsequently to be a very productive set of tools for both rehabilitating and facilitating the acquisition and adjustment of symbolic behavior.

If we are to get at a true sense of the organization of diversity in human reality, then we must do so in an ordered and systematic way that allows us to make sense of so much complexity. We must find the structural reasons and variables for such diversity and for its capacity for adaptive organization, and then we must learn to apply these reasons in our schemes for constructing a better world that can not only handle and tolerate such differences, but promote such pattern variation in a way that it can be truly productive and adaptive for all humanity.

There is every justification for wanting to do so. The reasons, though complex, resolve to a simple set of central issues that have always affected humankind in the most dramatic and tragic of ways. If these kinds of symbolic cultural differentials underlie the kind of parallax frequently occurring between people, psychologically and behaviorally, and between groups of people socially and culturally, that lead, among other things, to destructive aggression and perpetration of acts of violence against people or the coercive use of the threat of violence in order to exploit people, then understanding these differentials in a precise, measurable and systematic manner may provide us the means for designing symbolic-cultural systems that effectively mediate human adaptation and serve to prevent or at least inhibit the occurrence and prevalence of human violence and exploitation in the world. If we wish to create a more secure and peaceful world, provide an effective framework for the mediation of differences and the resolution of conflict leading to war and violence, then we must consider the scope and possibilities afforded by such an approach to human cultural adaptation.

Meta-culture & Symbolic Mediation

If we can offer a scientific anthropological definition of culture as the shared symbolic behavior mediating human adaptation in a social setting and common natural environment, then  we can offer a form of culture that may effectively mediate human adaptive behavior leading to war and destructive consequences, We would then have a means for controlling and managing the unfortunate chaos of human systems.

If we can offer empirical evidence for culture in terms of the systematic differentials of cultural sharing in terms of behavioral response, then we can use our knowledge in a way to design an applied form of cultural-symbolic behavior that transcends psycho-cultural differentials and that may effectively mediate these differentials enough to effectively inhibit the more negative consequences that such differences commonly lead to.

If one of the most important functions of cultural-symbolic adaptation is the mediation and resolution of conflict arising as the result of differences and lack of sharing between people, and if this same form of adaptation permits people the possibility for change, for alternation, for finding alternative possibilities for behavior and adaptation, then it seems reasonable to conclude that we can use our understanding of these functions in a way that improves them and as a means for transcending the inter-personal and cross-cultural differences that arise as as a consequence.

I have proposed the concept of meta-culture as a cultural symbolic based human "meta-system" that serves to effectively transcend cultural boundaries and cultural symbolic differentials. I refer to this as a form of deliberate, planned "trans-culturation" and can be considered to be a form of pan-human civilization that is capable of being shared by all groups of people in the same way. 

It is because culture is by symbolic design ultimately arbitrary that we have in the final analysis a choice about how to mold it and make it our own. Because humankind is united by a common genetic heritage, we have the possibility of sharing in a cultural orientation that is sufficient and acceptable for all people, and especially, for all kinds of people.

Meta-culture is therefore simply a meta-systems framework for human culture in all its variation and possibility. It provides, in the best of possible worlds, a means for the transcendence of the ethnocentricities attached to particular cultural orientations, and a means to provide a system for the systematic mediation of cultural differentials as well as a provisioning of alternative possibilities for human and cultural development.

The characteristic feature of modernization based upon the progressive development of scientific technology is that it is creating a streamlined skyline of the future such that there has been a common convergence of typical forms and functions that is shared widely by those peoples who come into possession of such technology. Automobiles are a wonderful example of such trans-cultural phenomena. The design of cars for instance are becoming broadly streamlined to a common form that is tending to be replicated by many different countries. Technology in general is a form of pan-human civilization that comes to be shared, eventually, by all people in a similar way. 

In a technical sense of technology representing alternative applied systems that are culturally constructed, we may say that, depending on how such technology becomes deployed and utilized and the effects it comes to have upon human systems and their development, by definition all technology is at least potentially meta-cultural in adaptive deployment and application. This is not to say that technology is not frequently used for purposes that are contrary to the purposes of meta-cultural mediation, or that some kinds of technology are not better predisposed by design to serve meta-cultural purposes more than other forms of technology. It is difficult to understand for instance how an armaments industry that mass produces land-mines, cluster bombs, machine guns, assault rifles, and a number of other killing devices, can serve or promote the better interests of meta-cultural adaptation. 

I see in the concept of meta-culture the possibility of forging a cross-cultural framework that permits the understanding and systematic mediation of conflict arising from differentials of symbolic culture and behavioral adaptation by different groups of people. Perhaps it is wishful thinking to suggest that such a framework can ever be instituted to such an extent that it would effectively eliminate all violence, but we can feasibly reduce the prevalence and frequency of such violence in a significant way by means of implementation of such frameworks.

The symbolic mediation of experience comes to a critical strategic focus on the capacity to resolve potentially conflicting symbolic differentials between people at whatever level of articulation we are referring to. Thus, we may be talking about the conflict arising between two individuals who share a household, or between two neighbors who share a common fence. Or we may be talking about to social groupings of society who share conflicting interests or values and who may be competing for overlapping resources or territory. Or we may be referring to nation states, or alliances of nations, who may lock horns and come to blows over conflicts arising as the result of pursuing inimical national policies, etc.

The development of a pan-human meta-cultural orientation already depends upon the realization of certain basic features. For instance, such a meta-cultural system must be cross-cultural, multi-cultural and trans-cultural in function and reference. It must provide a coherent symbolic-ideological frame of reference that is sufficient to the needs and interests of a broad range of human beings. It must be global in scope and locally relevant in action. It must be regionally appropriate, and it must eventually articulate through communications media that has a global reach and a local sense of relevance. So far, the Internet and the possible e-culture arising from the development of the World Wide Web have offered the best means for such development, but this alone is not enough or sufficient to provide the necessary foundation for the cultivation of a meta-cultural system. Satellite communications and the ability to broadcast globally provides new opportunities for mass communications media utilizing television, telephone and possibly radio.

There have been many challenges to the problem of development of a meta-cultural orientation. Foremost has been the sense of resistance, prejudice and symbolic-structural pattern of discrimination that prevents the formation of a reasonable, institutionalized orientation, and that undercuts any consistently organized efforts in this regard. But the challenge has also stemmed from a need to design and promote an alternative symbolic value orientation, largely without many precedents or antecedents, and one that ultimately proves very arbitrary in its construction and design. There are good meta-ethical premises for instance, for including a doctrine of universal human rights in our formulations, though we might want to amend and expand this doctrine somewhat, as well as a doctrine in relation to a form of pacifism and non-violent resistance to acts of aggression. We would want to include as well what I would term an "earthbound" orientation that involves a doctrine of "natural rights" and a respect for nature in its myriad forms and in its grandiose and sublime wholeness. We can at least trace the outlines of such an orientation, if not all the implications and details.

We of course cannot force other people to see the world as we see it, or to think as we might like them to. We cannot even really attempt to persuade them in any strong or significant sense, but we can at least provide them in a non-threatening and productive manner alternative modalities by which to comprehend, think about and hopefully respond to a larger sense of the world and their place within it.

We have rethought our meta-systems framework and have achieved a newer, better integrated mode of operation. We are achieving increasing levels of feedback response to our Internet efforts, and these responses are gradually improving in terms of their quality and seriousness and significance.

Our Consolidation efforts continue on different levels. We finished the consolidation phase a month ahead  though there are many loose ends remaining to be taken care of. We have announced out promotional development campaign for the next two months which should include a coordinated and targeted marketing & advertising campaign, though we will avoid e-mail or telephone solicitations or marketing strategies.

During this phase, we hope to announce the opening of our new store-fronts, and further development of our entire framework. We are publishing our own business leverage (business cards, letter-heads, post-cards, etc) and will be setting up new contact details.

Products/Services

Lewis Works strives to offer a genuinely comprehensive range of services and products for the global e-consumer in an informed, non-aggressive manner. It has taken us time to develop our resources into an integrated framework that will provide largely automated self-service to our members and other customers, bolstered by one-on-one account management and attention to personal details. But persistence & a great deal of patience is finally beginning to pay-off in terms of the emergence of a real web-system with an active presence on the Internet.

We act both as a reseller for other providers, and we also are increasing the product range that we actually own or buy ourselves wholesale and then resell. We also provide a range of peripheral options through associate/affiliate accounts.

We will soon be adding a comprehensive product service catalog link here.

We will be offering an increasing array of type of service and product we can make available to our clientele within the consolidation period. This services will include:

• Systems-based Consulting & Troubleshooting
• Systems-based Computing and Web-Design Development
• Systems-based Meta-scientific research & development services
• Systems-based Digital Publication and Production Services
• Systems-based Development Services in a range of areas, including Non-profit, Consolidated Business Services, Education & Human Development, Organization, Production & Engineering

What areas are currently Non-Profit in Lewis Works?

We have several non-profit domains organized, though these have not yet been developed for content:

Human Coop: promoting development of non-exploitative, grass-roots based, cooperative development & resource exchange network frameworks.

Aid Systems: organizing and deploying critical resource management & rehabilitation teams

Human Development Systems: promoting programs for alternative human development.

Lewis Library: promoting conventional & electronic literacy worldwide, developing an open, distributed-integrated common reference resource & comprehensive knowledge compendium resources.

Human Synergetics: promoting health in holistic, alternative lifestyles

We also recommend our current Link Palette for related links & portals, though most of these are as yet unfinished.

For external topic-organized links, we recommend Hugh's Hot Links

For popular, top-search links, we recommend Haut Lynx

Query us for advertising on our Advertising Pages that are shown throughout our web-system on more than a eleven hundred distinct URLs.

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