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. 17

5/21/04 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.

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We continue our commitment to realignment & this has yielded considerable dividends in the overall structural simplification and stratification of the framework, leading to further streamlining. 

Local worlds available on behalf of Lewis Works include:

British Virgin Islands

Dunedin

These represent our first uphill attempts at alternative network development: we encourage you to join www.co-opworld.com for free. It is all about bridging the global-to-local gulf of the Internet.

Criticisms/Comments, then Provide Feedback

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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.

The future rushes headlong before us like a rushing roller coaster. The wind flaps the future in our faces ever faster and faster. The pace of technological change in the world is increasing, leading to a headlong on-rush of change that inundates us and that grows more complicated with each passing year. We must ask ourselves where it will all end, and how. We must ask whether there is a climax or a zenith to the development in which world civilization is undergoing, or whether or not our sense of progress will continue without limit or end into the indefinite future.

The problem seems to be that our vision of the future as well as the sense of the future itself, is growing increasingly uncertain as it grows increasingly complex as the result of its hastening acceleration of change upon all levels of articulation. Scientific progress does not, alone, render the world safer, saner or more stable as a platform for human civilization. It seems to have been a mixed blessing indeed.

Our coordinate reference points shift continuously with our attempts to keep apace with the changes that are occurring. Technical skill jobs are rendered obsolete within shorter periods of time, leading to chronic displacement of "post-qualified" workers and a chronic shortage of newly trained specialists capable of meeting increased and increasingly diverse demands. A kind of "techno-shock" sets in with advancing middle age--closure of the old bone apparatus to the shifting demands of the ever new. In such an emerging context, it is easy to get left behind in the shuffle, to fall out of the competition to keep abreast, and increasing numbers of people are being left behind.

It is not difficult to muster statistical indicators based upon the growing increases of change in the world. Human systems continue their expansion and the elaboration of complex technologies as our applied knowledge advances and becomes increasingly hyper-compartmentalized in sub-specializations. If we compare the pace of change in the last quarter of a century to the previous century, and the course of change of the previous 125 years to the previous millennium, we can see clearly that with each decade the pace of change and the complications of progress are growing at an increasing rate. We are today far more different than our ancestors a century and a half ago, than these ancestors were to their predecessors a thousand years before. 

There is a sense too that the entire global system is self-organizing and like a runaway horse with no one in the driver's seat. It is so large, so complicated, so overpowering, that it is simply beyond the capacity of any single individual or even any single group or set of groups, to manage or control in an effective way. It may even be beyond the capacity of everyone's control, and this is a frightening thought.  It seems to have pretty much a life of its own, with its own developmental trajectory and historical momentum, taking its own course of which we are more the responding participants than the "proactive" leaders and movers and shakers. There is, in fact, little each of us can do in terms of our own personal lives to affect the larger front of change that is happening all around the world. 

And it is obvious that some people are profiting from the future, and others are being excluded systematically from it, and many even being impoverished by it. Some people are getting richer, and many more people are becoming poorer and poor by the changes of the future. The future does not seem to hold a lot of promise for genuine equality in the distribution of resources or for the greater rule of law or for democracy or human freedom. Given our track records, it doesn't seem to hold much prospect for "world peace" either, making "world peace" the pat reply of a young, naive beauty contestant more than anything else.

As we seek to envision our collective future, we of course cannot make any clear predictions. The future is an unfinished system. It is largely self-organizing, and therefore is underdetermined. Much hinges therefore on chance outcomes. A huge meteorite may materialize out of the black of the night, at a moments notice, and result in catastrophe for everyone. Though the likelihood of such chance events occurring on any given day or in any given year, are not very great, the possibility still remains. More likely though are semi-deterministic outcomes that are the unintended and therefore unforeseeable consequences of our own collective actions. As more and more modern nation states acquire the bomb, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange that escalates to global holocaust followed by nuclear winter, is increasing, while the capacity to effectively control the access and use of such weapons decreases in inverse proportion.

Nuclear holocaust is really not a scenario that keeps most of us awake at night. There are probably even more pressing concerns that we scarcely know about or pay much attention to. Top of the list seems to be the concern for rising global temperatures that are attributed to the greenhouse effect of increasing CO₂ levels in the atmosphere that are the result of widespread fossil fuel dependency. This is an issue that seems to be growing worse each passing year, and yet we are still undecided as to the eventual outcomes of this process. Rising sea levels are swamping some low-island communities in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and this trend is liable to worsen. Eventually, sea-board communities will be threatened as well. How far it will continue to rise, and whether there might be some unknown catastrophic consequence in the destabilization of the earth's atmospheric system, remains unknown as well. 

We have alternative futures to concern ourselves with, and to some unknown but significant degree, we ourselves have a measure of control in deciding the most likely outcomes of our future. We have in fact an infinite number of alternative futures to consider, without a clear sense, in all the confusion and complexity, which kinds of future are the most likely in the long run. Much about the world is within the realm of our constructive capacity to control and to change, and this capacity is increasing with our increasing technological capacity. But at the same time as we progress technologically, and as technological modernization catches up with more and more communities in the world, our social institutions and cultural orientations remain, by comparison, relatively regressive and backward, if not in many instances downright medieval. And the propensity for human violence and perversion, upon a group or an individual level, does not seem to lessen with enlightenment, but to only become worse as access to destructive technologies increases and there seems to be a widespread mass culture that centers around the celebration of such distorted behavior.

So our sense of progress in the world seems somewhat stilted and uneven, not just in the sense of the gross inequalities between the beneficiaries of progressive development and those who are consistent kept out of our future paradise, but also in terms of the kinds of institutions and things that achieve progressive development, and everything else that doesn't.  Whatever else we might be able to say about our progress, it has proven to be a mixed blessing indeed for the world as a whole.

I have hypothesized, in keeping with von Bertalanffy's general systems theory, that for the world system as a whole there is a sense of equi-finality that we are eventually approaching, a sense of an inevitable global equilibrium that we will establish for ourselves, for better or for worse, that will become pretty much what we are left with in the long run. Different nation states can start out at different points and places along the way, but the system as a whole should arrive at some global sense of order inevitable. The trouble remains that we really cannot forecast with any certainty what this equi-final global system will ultimately look like. If we look backward to counter-factual histories, we can ask ourselves what the world might be like today if Hitler and the other Axis powers had gained eventual success over Russia, Great Britain and the US in World War II. As of 1942, there was no clear sense that the war would end in the favor of the Allies. 

Part of the problem with doing this kind of forecasting is that we cannot tell what are the most important or critical factors that will in the long run most determine the outcomes for the world as a whole. It is pretty much anyone's guess whether economic factors outweigh the political actions of leaders or governments, or whether fanatical religious or other social factors may play a critical roll in the long run. This is especially the case when in fact we see so much technical and technological change occurring in the world at a quickening tempo.

There are some things that seem to weigh heavily in whatever calculus of formulations we may make. One of these things is a central baseline feature that is part of the Malthusian dilemma and what is referred to as social-environmental circumscription, especially on a global scale. The basic principle is that a society under normal and stable conditions tends to naturally increase in population growth rate until it has over-passed its carrying capacity, at which point environmental degradation sets in which tends to further limit and circumscribe resource availability, resulting in increasing death rates. Environmental degradation may often times be irreversible, resulting in permanent loss of critical habitat and associated eco-system resources that originally supported the population. We end up pretty much with an Easter Island scenario. It is possible and quite easy to imagine and even observe such a model of local areas, assuming that there is some degree of closure of the local system. But it is a different challenge to realistically observe or estimate the model on a larger regional or global scale of occurrence. The earth as a whole is a closed biospheric system, deriving its energy from the sun primarily, but otherwise containing all the essential components that drive life on earth. Within this system, any ecological subsystem must be considered as an open system that exchanges its resources and its biomass with the larger meta-biotic context of the biosphere as a whole. There are in fact very few completely closed biological ecosystems on earth that are not connected somehow with the larger biosphere or its bio-geophysical substrate.

To put this problem another way, the human species is liable in the long run to be its own worst enemy, or, more accurately, to become the mass victims of its own mass success, if we measure such success strictly on biological terms of adaptive survival and reproductive growth. Population growth rates the world over remain high in spite of widespread disease and malnutrition--in fact relatively high infant mortality rates, a principle index of the relative health of a society, almost invariably lead to increased birth rates as mother's respond by nature to their loss by new pregnancy. I would say population growth rates remain high, not in spite of disease and poverty, but because of it. They only come down as the consequence of a society achieving a relative level of affluence, on average, and the increasing sense of security that comes with such affluence. But it can be said that regardless of this case, growth rates of the human population, as a whole, remains fairly high, far above rates of replacement for death rates.

We do not really know what the carrying capacity of the earth is. Some have put the estimate at about 7.5 billion. I'm more inclined to see it in terms of about 12 billion. Of course, this is a relative thing. The world could not afford 7.5 billion Americans, though it may be able to carry 12 billion mainland Chinese. Of course, most of the 6.5 billion souls on earth want to live like Americans, or to at least be as affluent as they think most Americans are, and hence we should err in our estimates on global carrying capacity on the side of caution. 

We can off course argue the global carrying capacity question. It all depends upon our point of view. There are likely to be a great many localized "critical events" that occur as the result of overreaching local carrying capacity and overpopulation, before the global system as a whole begins feeling the weight of human population pressure in terms of systemic, wide reaching consequences.

The point is this, progressive development brings with it rising expectations of affluence and of health and material well being, if only as a consequence of a "trickle down" effect of impoverished people in the streets starring at billboards of rich people all day long. As the global population moves towards an increasingly developed system characterized by higher average levels of consumption and affluence, the stress and strain this is liable to place upon the earth's carrying capacity is bound to increase, perhaps disproportionately to the actual per capita increase in population itself. The counterargument, which is valid but to an unknown extent, is that scientific progress raises the threshold of adaptation and carrying capacity through the introduction of technological changes to the environment. We can carry more people at higher levels of affluence as we grow and develop the technical and organizational structures that support our global system. This has been the promise of science all along. But it is proving the case that we may in fact have more to fear from our technology, and its unintended consequences upon our global environment, than from the mere consequences of overpopulation and eco-systemic saturation itself.

Not all progress has been so long-sighted enough to overcome the long-term, unforeseen consequences of its own development. There are many cases in point. Nuclear power was thought to be the energy solution of the future until the lessons of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl caught up with the world. Americans typically drive bigger and faster cars, at faster, unsafe speeds, on more crowded roads, in the face of increasing gasoline prices and regardless of issues of pollution, congestion and the problems of global warming. Penicillin was thought to be the wonder drug cure-all for every infection, until its overuse resulted in the development of Penicillin resistant strains of bacteria. DDT in the 50's was believed to be the solution to the global problem of malaria, until it was found in the fat of  fish populations in increasing concentrations.

We know that the human species, as a single species, has become the most reproductively successful form of life on earth, probably in all of natural history, in spite of our rather "K-strategy" of reproduction. A large part of the earth's natural resources are going to the processes of supporting and maintaining human biomass and its increasingly materialistic styles of living. Disregard claims of ant or other insect biomass being greater--perhaps they may be taken as a whole, but I am talking about one single species, not only with an absolute biomass, but with an effective accumulative behavioral consequence upon its environment.

So, the bottom-line about our collective future seems to be this--there is some hypothetical multi-factorial carrying capacity of the earth in relation to human population growth and adaptive behavior. We do not know exactly what this carrying capacity is, but we do know that the human population is continuing to rapidly increase regardless of efforts or counter-measures to forestall human reproduction. We cannot know the full teleological consequences of the development of our technology or associated alternative systems in relation to growing human population or in relation to altering the complex thresholds for human systems equilibrium--on one hand, improvements in agricultural production, for instance, possibly by use of genetically modified seeds, may increase the threshold of global carrying capacity for human population, regionally if not overall. 

For instance, we cannot guess all the consequences of introducing genetically modified or engineered species into the natural systems in relation to the larger global environment. On the other hand, increased food production, in and of itself, may lead simply to increased human consumption of food without increasingly equitable distribution of food, with consequences of obesity and over-consumption for some populations and starvation for others. In such a case, simply increasing agricultural productivity will not necessarily produce the worldwide long-term benefits of increasing stability and security of the larger human system and reducing the effects of socio-environmental circumscription. It is possible that increased production levels, coupled with associated patterns such as reliance on petrochemical fertilizers and industrial equipment, may actually have the reverse effect of lowering the net threshold value of global carrying capacity, by encouraging disparities in levels of consumption between populations and thus leading to imbalanced patterns of consumption overall.

The same kind of case can be made for almost any critical technological invention or innovation that we introduce, especially if such innovations are introduced into the larger global human system without taking into account larger scale social and organizational reverberations that might be attendant to such introductions. It is similar to the kind of issue of introducing a new alien predator species into a local ecosystem--the species may become invasive, uncontrollable, and eventually destroying the key linkages upon which the ecosystem depended.

We are becoming increasingly aware in our modern world of the fact of the basic interdependencies that the human species shares with the natural world. We are becoming increasingly aware of the natural limitations and constraints our world places upon our technological progress. We have come to realize that the changes we enact in the world for our collective benefit must be coordinate with and non-destructive to the natural systems of the biosphere and of the bio-geophysical platform of the earth itself. These considerations set constraining variables in our new formulations for an alternative future. It is increasingly  understood and accepted, for instance, that in the structure of the long run there is no viable place for a carbon-based energy economy, and that therefore the sooner we make a conversion from over-dependency upon fossil-fuels to hydrogen and other alternative forms of fuel, the better off we will all be. It is increasingly realized that the costs, consequences and unintended risks of waging modern warfare are far greater and more prohibitive than at any time in our previous history, and that the gains from winning in war are no longer clear cut nor as obvious as we once thought they were. Even the wealthiest of nation states is finding the challenge of waging modern war to be technologically expensive, indeed, an exorbitant expense on their national budget, with the gains achieved from successful war-making becoming less and less obvious with each passing year. We may say that, globally, collectively, we are coming to better and better realize the natural limitations of our growth and our capacity for development, and we are learning that it is the epitome of wisdom to work within these limitations, rather than to continue to overstep them in whatever it is we strive to do.

It follows that we must proceed with caution in our considerations and eventual construction of alternative futures. We can no longer take for granted the availability of unlimited natural resources that are ours alone in the world to plunder and squander with no sense of tomorrow. We can no longer strive to be the ultimate consumers without seeing and seeking limits to our patterns of consumption. We can no longer merely invent and devise new systems to put in motion in the world, without taking into more complete account the possible unintended consequences of our development. We can no longer promote, free of a growing sense of global social responsibility, large families with large numbers of natural offspring. We can no longer consider war and the resort to collective violence as a feasible and efficacious alternative in the resolution of our differences or in the promotion of our interests in competition with other peoples. We have choices to make in all these respects, and the choices will be made whether we wish them to be or not.

Whether we are in Shanghai, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Moscow, the problems we are likely to encounter--the congestion of cars and traffic, the pollution, the crowding, the anonymity of city life, the noise, the crime, are all likely to be very similar in profile to one another. We might be right in saying that the skylines of the world are converging together in design, in profile, and in terms of the things they hold.

The future I see is one in which more and more people the world over will be driving some kind of car, commuting to work places in urban or post-urban locations, driving back home in increasing dense and stratified suburban regions, shopping at large malls where they will find the most modern material conveniences available upon a global market, etc.

How vertical our living spaces become, through building more and more high-rises, or alternatively, tunneling deeper into the bowels of the earth, remains to be seen. Suburban sprawl of super cities will continue until their effective limits are reached. Once all the habitable zones and areas are used up, the likelihood seems to be that there will occur vertical expansion processes as the "inner" cities creep out.

Vertical our skyline will increasingly become, as the sprawl and congestion of horizontal spread reaches its feasible limits of growth. But I think we will see the rise of another phenomenon, what I will call the "interiorization" of global human culture and civilization. I believe that human beings will increasingly come to build for themselves man-made, carpentered environments that are increasingly enclosed and increasingly controlled in relation to the interactions with the larger world, and in relation to maintaining certain optimum internal conditions. I see modern malls as examples of this, where basically entire markets that would occupy entire streets, have been moved indoors by the construction of large coverings or awnings over the buildings, and providing inside safe and comfortable, if usually somewhat crowded, conditions inside for people to walk, talk and shop.

I can see an extension of this mall into a larger mini-city that is basically under a single roof--perhaps in parts a structure similar to Buckminster Fuller's expandable glass-geodesic domes. I can see internal transportation systems allowing people to conveniently commute from one place to another within such a mini-city, and even the linking up of such mini-system by commuter rail lines so that one may expand one's compass of adventure without leaving the network.

I find in conventional air travel especially another demonstration of this concept of interiorization--people leave their cars, often in large covered parking structures, to walk a short distance to terminal check-in counters, and then taking the long concourses, either by foot, by conveyor belt, or by electrical mini-car, to the main terminal lobbies where they wait to board their passenger aircraft by walking down long accordion ramps that stretch to the door of the craft. The passenger will make a 5 or 15 hour flight, and most likely end up in another International or large airport, to deboard the plane in a manner very similar to their boarding, walking down a completely enclosed ramp, into the terminal lobby, down long concourses to the outside waiting and baggage claim areas, where they will soon be picked up by hosts or taxis or buses waiting outside. I can see a similar process developing for local and regional air-traffic with increasing decentralization of air-transport and increasing utilization of air-transport for local and areal trips. 

I think the interiorization of humankind can be understood in a relative way in terms of the average number of hours people will spend in interior and controlled environments, whether this is in a vehicle, usually a car, or this is in an office or other work setting, or at home in front of the television, cleaning or sleeping, at school in a classroom or library, or shopping at a store or eating out in a restaurant. Even fast food places that allow cars to order and then pick up their express meals provide a means for people not having to leave the comfort and safety of their own vehicles.

We may see interiorization in personal terms of the clothes we where and feel comfortable with. I do not think that modern humans are more over-dressed or shrouded with material than were people of ancient times or in the middle ages. Of course, with environmental control systems, efficient heating and air-conditioning systems, people do not need to bundle themselves up in the winter-time like they used to have to do to stay half-way comfortable. That is the point--people are not "over dressing" for any occasion, for the greater percentage of the time of their day that they can spend comfortably in controlled, interiorized settings, the more their clothing can be made in a manner streamlined for multiple settings with an emphasis upon fit and comfort and an optimization of mobility.

We may look at interiorization in terms of the fitness regimes people maintain. Many health clubs provide completely indoor facilities, even tracks for running, where climate, temperature and weather can be controlled in safe surroundings. Football stadiums, basketball, swimming are all increasingly done in completely enclosed environments. 

In entertainment and in the communications media, as well as in transportation, I see increasing degrees of such interiorization being exemplified. The worldwide web and the computer, almost invariable set up indoor settings for privacy and protection of the equipment, invites people to spend prolonged periods of time in-doors in front of the monitor or television screen. And if they get tired of being on the computer in their room or their apartment, they can always drive down to their local "web cafe" and sit in another setting surfing the Internet and chatting long distance with people they've never met face-to-face before.

There is a price that I believe that is being paid for increasing interiorization of modern human systems. I would attribute a large part of modern neurosis simply to the fact of long term confine in unnatural contexts--all cave and no sunshine makes Mike Neanderthal a dull boy. I would even attribute the increase in prevalence of a number of psychopathologies to the same fundamental consequences of interiorization. There are as well other health related issues of too much confinement--it leads to poor diet, over-consumption, lack of exercise, heart problems, high blood pressure, as well as possibly a host of other syndromes.

I think human beings have an inherent and natural need to experience nature and the great outdoors, albeit in a safe and non-threatening manner, and without having to drive miles in the cars to do so. This has been rooted in our evolutionary past, and though we spent some time in caves weaving our cultural worlds, we also had to periodically leave the safety of our dwelling places to find food, mates and new knowledge from the larger natural world. Recently on jury duty, on the 11th floor of a 15 floor building, we would be allowed 1.5 hours, mandatory, every day, and it became the prerogative of most of the jurors to take strolls in the sun outdoors and visit on foot the local sites in the downtown area. This was a very refreshing anti-dote for rather intensive episodes with the evidence in relative dark and totally windowless interiors.

Thus, as the average rates and levels of interiorization increases as a function of the development of modern human civilization, there must arise at the same time an increasing and proportionate need for human beings to "exteriorize" their periodic involvements in the world, with other people, but especially in relation to nature and the outdoors, and without the problems of crowding, stress and congestion that comes to accompany many outdoor places that are beset with too many people in too small an area. While our interiorized contexts increase in our lives, in a somewhat propinquitous manner, it seems that the availability, access and relative quality of our exteriorized contexts are being systematically reduced, and the costs of accessing high-grade contexts can become prohibitive. 

I would suggest that as a general antidote to the neurosis and increasing psychopathology of becoming modern human beings, that we need to reinvent and reconfigure for ourselves our relationship with nature in the outdoors, and to develop alternative anti-structural contexts that permit and promote healthy forms of exteriorized play and activity. Bringing exterior and interior, or externalized and internalized frameworks, into balance and into effective harmony must be the goal of any regime toward improving adaptive behavior and psychological well-being.

Yesterday's Hold on Humanity

By far we ourselves, the human species, are the greatest obstacle impeding alternative development and positive, constructive changes in the world. We are, in the long run, our own worst enemies, and we might even say that resistance to change is somehow rooted in our common human nature. This resistance occurs upon all levels of our identity and relation, collectively, inter-subjectively in face-to-face interactions, consciously and even unconsciously. I would want to equate such resistance to change to having very strong attachments to appetites and aversions, either acquired in early childhood and subsequently reinforced and embedded in our characteriological predispositions. Others might call it cognitive inertia, or others yet refer to genetic predispositions of personality or other complex inherited traits that affect how we think, feel and relate to the world. 

Of course, all of this, whatever it really is, is socially and culturally reinforced in many different ways, almost on a daily basis. The point is, we live in social worlds that are largely coercive upon our lives, our choices and our preferences. We have really no choice but to conform, at least to some minimal extent, if we are to achieve some sense of success, security and satisfaction from our lives, and with such conformity comes a built in cost.  And so we are to some unknown degree constrained by our contexts to maintain a certain behavioral constancy and conformity to implicit value orientations without necessarily exhibiting a great deal of real choice in the matter. Freedom may really be the grand illusion of our brave new world. 

Human resistance to change in general, and especially certain forms of change that may prove in fact beneficial, comes from many sources and seems to have many reasons. In other words, such resistance seems complex and multi-factorial, and therefore to be lack  in any simple or straightforward kinds of solutions. Inaugurating or promoting positive life-style changes in some contexts for instance, can prove relatively self-destructive or even suicidal in the end if it is done in a context of near complete social resistance to such change.

If I had to equate a central set of factors to account for this kind of phenomenon, more than any other, I would probably attribute it mostly to established inertia, or momentum of development, of conventional symbolic systems, with all their behavioral consequences and psychological associations and attitudes. There are in other words both cultural and subjective psychological and behavioral consequences of this kind of developmental inertia of conventional systems that are in a sense self-reinforcing and are sanctioned by both direct and indirect forms of constraints that operate upon multiple levels of articulation. Many of the structural constraints that are embedded in ritual and other formalisms, serve to reinforce an implicit symbolic universe that expressed in terms of our values, or pattern of reinforcement of behavior, in terms of our interests, our taboos, etc.

Other aspects of this resistance, such as prejudice and ethnocentrism, in-group/out-group consciousness, etc., all stem from and refer back to this central underlying symbolic framework, and derive ultimately their force from the substantive basis of this framework in everyday life.

Symbol systems and the cultural patterns that they attach to are known to be quite susceptible to acculturative influence, and under adverse conditions, to be subject to strong external influences of alternative symbolic realities, which may be most implicit to the patterning of alternative systems rather than being spelled out in any concrete form. Symbolic alternation is a form of symbolic transformation, and is the primary cause for most determinative social change in the world.

It follows therefore that the place to start in altering the received profile of the future skyline is in terms of our own symbolic coordinate-reference points, in terms of a reevaluation of the relationships that this implies both in our lives and in the wider world. But it also follows that building an alternative symbolic framework that is suitable for a systems-based future will not come overnight, or even in a fortnight. Providing people with alternatives, especially in a real behavioral way, with all the resources and opportunities as well as risks and costs that come with alternatives, is a way of challenging the status quo of the received predominant system, and a way of relativizing this system such that it at least lacks the reified sense of being the only way we can proceed in building the world, such that we can then make room for a multitude of alternative ways of reshaping our vision of the world and then the world itself.

Our meta-systems framework is being articulated and improved upon multiple levels, and I am happy about the direction and gain that has been gotten from our shift of focus. 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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