Lewis Works

This open, on-line Newsletter is published weekly, every Friday Afternoon at 4:30 PM PST. It is updated with new announcements and articles each week.

Lewis Works Newsletter*

*A Systems Framework

The E-zine of Applied General Systems Science

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

Vol. I, No. 21

6/18/04 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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Our revamping of the General Systems framework continues in spite of repeated distractions. We announce the incipient organization and inauguration of an Institute of Applied General Systems as the focal articulatory structure of Lewis Works framework that seeks to become increasingly integrated on the basis of general systems applications to real world problem sets.

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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.

Life is a matter of organization, both literally and figuratively. All of nature coheres in terms of systematic patterns. The organization of nature is built up from the organization of component subsystems. This natural organization of the world was not achieved in the blink of an eye or the span of a day--evidence reveals that the present configuration of nature was arrived at only after billions of years of development. This development was not completely random, though we hypothesize that it was ultimately founded upon random process. It was the gradual emergence of increasingly non-random pattern of order from a random background--as non-random formations appeared, they may at some stage have become stabilized and self-perpetuating, building upon themselves such that not only were non-random structures derived from non-random event patterns, but began being built on top of other non-random structures.

Understanding the organization of reality, or the nature of organization, gets at the heart of our theoretical understanding of the natural order or our explanations of it. Our theories ultimately are theories about the organization of nature. Within such theories are embedded explanations of function and the causal determination of event structures. It is the central basis for all general and theoretical concerns of our scientific worldview, no matter how tangential or specialized our interests may be.

All natural systems are in the final analysis self organizing systems. They arise as the result of a fortuitous combination of dependent events that are based upon a complex set of stochastic probabilities of occurrence. No predetermination or intention is involved in the design or function of such systems. Nor can we hypothesis the a priori existence of predeterministic structures or designs that can be used to account for the patterning of nature as we see them. Furthermore, all real systems are in fact a subset of all natural systems, though this is not how we normally or conventionally construe the real world. We are prone to seeing for instance, the alternative systems represented by the class of artificial or "man-made" inventions and designs as somehow not of a natural class, or as being artificial rather than natural, even though they are real systems. This would suggest that real systems would be a larger class than natural systems, when in fact we can see the problem in another way. Because human beings themselves are natural systems, the products of their intelligence and cultural and symbolic construction can be thought also to be extensions of natural systems. Though they are not strictly speaking in a direct way "self-organizing" as systems, they are built upon systems that are strictly speaking self-organizing, and in the larger framework, they remain bound within self-organizing realities.  If we were to discover an anomaly in the universe, a parallel dimension of the universe, or even another universe, we would be pressed to answer the question of whether this alternative universe were a part of the natural world as we know it, or whether it would belong to a separate class of system or world outside of what we consider our natural boundaries. Would our sense of reality and what it contains not be fundamentally enlarged and rendered more complex by such a discovery, such that we would have to embrace the notion of an alternative universe as a part of the larger natural system?

It may be a relatively moot point though to try to figure out whether the class of events and structures we call "real systems" is entirely isomorphic with the class of "natural systems" or whether one contains or is the subset of the other. It is also a moot point to strongly distinguish a subclass of alternative or artificial systems that are human-made as outside of the natural order or scheme of things because they are ultimately inventions.  By their invention, design, construction and operation even human-made systems become a part of a natural world, albeit as an alternative extension of human systems. They become a part of the larger scheme of things, and must then be taken into account within the larger framework of reality. While this may seem like equivocation over relatively esoteric matter, these kinds of consideration have bearing on our structures of knowledge and therefore have important implications and consequences for how we construe the world.

The material universe, the universe of matter, has been built no doubt on the stability of the proton. Without this extreme stability, it is unlikely that large formations of matter would have accreted and become organized as they have been in far-flung galaxies. But if we exam the structure and context of the proton more closely, we realize that it is as itself not so stable, but that it exists in a dynamic relationship within a nucleonic complex, that involves transition and transformation with neutrons and radioactive decay and accretion of alpha particles. Like all other structures we encounter in the physical world, it appears in fact to exist in a kind of complex equilibrium within a larger framework involving other particles and interactions.

From this example, it is apparent that derivative non-random organization can only be arrived at on the basis of underlying non-random structures that are relatively stable--the more stable such fundamental structures, the larger and more stable the derivative patterns of organization that can be obtained from them. At the same time, it is a common observation of nature that at whatever level we observe organization, patterned structures are never over-determined, and have always a degree of built-in flexibility or variation within limits about them that renders them and the derivative structures not weaker, but paradoxically stronger as a consequence.

Stability with flexibility seems to be the order of natural systems. Pattern variation within limits is allowed at almost every point of instantiation of nature. Both the pattern variation and the constraints controlling this variation appear to be semi-determined in such a way that we are able to formulate a set of rules that reasonably explain the structural patterning of the system and that can reasonably account for its normal dynamics. In this case, "dynamics" refers to the range of possible variation of pattern that a particular system or kind of system can achieve given a set of operating constraints. Furthermore, it is apparent that dynamics are built into the entire structural patterning of nature itself such that not only is patterning of systems continuously changing, but the structural constraints and rules that govern this patterning also appear to change dynamically as well.

Analytically, we can look at controlling "limits" or limiting factors from both an external or internal point of view. External limiting factors are those controls residing in the contextual environment of a system that serve, directly or indirectly, to restrict the developmental behavior of a system, usually through what can be called minimal rate determining inputs.

If we are to reach for a more fundamental model of the organization of reality, then I believe we must get down to the basics of contrasting a random and a non-random system. We know that all natural systems have some measure of randomness built into their implicit and immanent design. We know as well that no real system can be completely non-random by design or by outcome. We know that natural systems tend toward a default state, overall, of increased randomization, or what might be called the random organization of disorder. A completely random or totally randomized state, though seen as more basic and the most likely of all possible outcomes, is also understood to be almost as unlikely, in any absolute sense, as a completely non-random state. It makes a critical difference as well whether we are referring to small and limited sets, or to very large or ultimately infinite and unlimited sets.

It is very basic and true that in all states of reality, random and non-random go hand-in-hand, and we cannot have one state without some relative measure of the other, nor can we have a reality that is completely one way or another without a sense of also being the other way at the same time. The question in my mind, especially when we speak of the origination and self-organization of natural systems without any sense of predetermination or arbitrary purpose being inferred or projected into our theoretical models, is how can non-random systems that are to some degree stable and self-maintaining, emerge spontaneously from larger encompassing more random sets of alternative possibilities.

There is little room here for a sufficient theoretical exposition of this problem. How can a non-random system become self-organizing on a random base? If we have for instance a very large number of coin-flips, each an independent event, the likelihood of getting a hundred or a thousand heads in a row would remain very remote, but not impossible in the structure of the long run. Though a hundred heads on independent trials in a row would seem a deterministic event structure, the likelihood of a random sequence of 100 heads remains small though possible. We must conclude that non-random patterns may arise as a matter of chance and happenstance even if the possibilities of such self-organization are astronomically remote. 

There appear to be conditions that arise in nature, as a matter of complex organization of happenstance, in which factors may coalesce spontaneous to create conditions in which the change events that occur are no longer independent, but become interdependent, and hence the outcomes become no longer randomly determined, but non-randomly determined. We expect the possibility for such things to occur, for instance, in supersaturated solutions. It is possible that conditions may fluctuate and occur such that the relative density of event structures or the relations that occur in event structures varies over time, and the likelihood of spontaneous self-organization of systems occurs under conditions of increasing relative density or saturation of systems.

At the same time, we must recognize in the organization of reality that many systems and structures are analytically determined by the component parts that compose systems. We do not need to fetch an explanation for spontaneous self-organization from systems constructed of other systems that have already been determined on another level of analysis. Normal science proceeds under such presuppositions of analytical conditions, and by and large postpones or defers indefinitely questions of ultimate cause or origination. In a similar way, we must understand that the normal dynamic structure of reality is somewhat feed-forward, and event structures that occur at this moment, today, in reality, are not totally independent of event structures that occurred at the moment just previous, or yesterday in reality. To a great and largely unknown extent, the structures occurring today were preceded and predetermined by structures that occurred previously, and that inherited the pattern from previous states. This deterministic dependency of temporal structure is built into the present state of reality now matter how we conceive of its origins or ultimate structure. The entire universe does not pop fresh into new existence at each new moment or spin of the temporal dial. In a sense the entire basis of our positivistic logic that underlies a conventional scientific worldview and received methodology rests on this presupposition of direct causality--that we may derive logically a consequent from a known set of antecedents, but not necessarily the other way around. Obviously, we intuitive understand that a puppy born a dog today will not suddenly turn into a cat or an opossum tomorrow. We expect that it will mature into an adult form of a dog and lead a normal dog life until it eventual gets old or otherwise dies by car, disease or by neglect.

Consideration of what we may call abstract systems of spontaneous self-organization are what we can call abstract problem sets for heuristic purposes in the main, without any real or necessary referents in our everyday experience. We can safely assume inheritance and deterministic dependency of events in our everyday lives--we must do so if we are to survive--we push the pedal, our car goes faster. We turn the wheel right, the car turns to the right. At the same time, we cannot afford to wait around for the unlikely to occur spontaneously, especially under conditions that are not conducive or precipitative to spontaneous self-organization. 

But just because the concept of spontaneous stochastic self-organization is not a common part of our everyday experience of reality does not mean that it is a thesis that is not centrally important to our fundamental understanding of the organization of reality. Science ultimately cannot explain the organization of reality in any other way except through systems-based dependency and inheritance of structures that originated under precipitating conditions through spontaneous, stochastic self-organization.

An alternative worldview or framework that is systems based, in stead of a conventional or received scientific frame of reference, refers to what can be called a complementary perspective or point of view rather than one that is based upon presuppositions of direct causality of experience. This alternative perspective is entirely a relativistic one, rather than one that can be construed deterministic, and it asks questions about the relative dependency/independence of event structures in reality, rather than about questions of cause and effect or direct logical inheritance of structure. Time in the conventional scientific worldview is largely absolute, linear and irreversible--time in the systems-based worldview is mostly cyclical and recurrent, relative to the event structures and analytical levels at which events occur.

A systems-based scientific worldview furthermore cannot presume in any form or manner any kind of original predetermination of event structure, or any kind of preexistence of non-random structure that can be used to account for all subsequent events. We assume for instance that the organization of biological life on earth was fundamentally random and blind in terms of its teleological outcomes, even if it tends to follow systems based teleological patterns. We assume that its origination was a purely stochastic process that was the result of the right concatenation of conditions that resulted in spontaneous self-organization of systems that fit the minimum structural definition of living organisms. We cannot hypothesize or presume the action of the hand of god for instance in vitalizing systems with life. Similarly, human intelligence and culture arose largely as a matter of happenstance and conditioning in our remote evolutionary history, a process of biological adaptation to overarching environmental and meta-biotic conditions. Similarly, we should expect the self-organization of fundamental physical processes and forms as well, and we should not seek to explain their creation or predetermination by some other a priori structure.

We must also conclude that when such self-organized deterministic pattern occurs, the framework within which it occurs may no longer remain strictly speaking an independent random set of events, but rules of dependency and inheritance begin playing a part in the dynamic articulation of such systems. The systems become constrained in some minimal manner, and the outcomes may become weighted in an increasingly non-random manner. At some point in the development of natural systems, deterministic rules based upon dependency begin becoming a stochastic outcome of otherwise randomized sets of events. A system is largely defined in terms of the relative interdependency of the parts that serve to exclude random variables or alternative possibilities and thus to constrain the development of the system to a particular pathway or paradigm of possibilities. The emergent properties associated with the stratification of reality and the realization of systems are the direct consequence of the interdependency of relational event structures that occur in nature. 

Once a degree of non-random constraint enters into the dynamic structure of a set of events, this can lead to a crystallization of structure and a growing imbalance of weighted factors in favor of increasing determinancy and reduction of alternative possibilities. In a completely randomized system, we must remember, all events are equally likely and equally unlikely. Likelihood is distributed as evenly as possible between all possible alternative outcomes. Such a system contains no predictive information about its patterning that would allow us to predict its patterning or dynamic articulation from one period to the next. 

An example would be a supersaturated solution of salt or sugar in water. Fully dissolved by heat or mechanical action, we expect a maximally random distribution of salt ions or sugar molecules within the aqueous solution. Such a state would be thought to be a maximally randomized distribution. Given a slight trigger effect--the suspension of an object in the solution, we can expect rapid crystallization of structures in the distribution of the molecules that goes from a random to a non-random state. This trigger effect is a "butterfly" effect in chaotic systems--introduction of a non-random constraint has the consequence of precipitating out a non-random structure in a chain reaction within an otherwise randomized distribution. Such a butterfly effect may occur, furthermore, within the solution spontaneously without the introduction of an outside deterministic trigger. In other words, by principle it may become completely self organizing. The same principle appears to hold true whether we are discussing the origin and realization of subatomic particles and forces, or whether we are talking about the origin and organization of biological life forms, or the development of large scale human social systems.

Self-organizing systems also have a tendency over time to become increasingly determined and increasingly complex in the interdependencies of their state dynamics, until they reach what can be called a supercritical state that may be said to be effectively over-determined--at this point trend in the system can be expected to reverse itself such that increasing disorder, rather than increasing order, becomes the trend. Such highly determined systems may be stable for a relatively long period of time, but forces of randomization gradually erode such a system in the long run, and the likelihood of increasingly random events begins to grow and outweigh non-random events.

I believe this is true of all natural and real systems, and may be observed in all phenomena no matter what form they take, and really no matter what the anticipatory structures that occur. There is a pendulum effect in the organization of systems that swings between total randomness on one extreme and total determination on the other--systems of whatever kind oscillate periodically between these extremes, no matter what the rate or the variation of rates that may occur. This is tied, I believe, centrally to the idea that all natural systems have a life-cycle or finite state-path trajectory. We see this in the birth, life and eventual death of a single organism, or in the emergence, adaptation and extinction of a species. Systems coalesce and crystallization, seemingly from no where, to play their parts, only eventually to return to the random soup from which they arose in the first place, not as whole systems, but in parts and pieces. It is true that the chance emergence of biological life forms occurred some 3.5 to 4 billion years ago on planet earth, and we do not see the emergence of new life today, but the continuation of the same forms of life that emerged originally on earth. In such a case, the structures we observe to hold true are a perpetuation of structures that were predetermined. We can predict though the eventual extermination of all life on earth, though we cannot predict when or exactly how this will occur. The life forms we do observe on earth though do embody, at the level of the organism and at the level of the species, the same principles of a natural life-cycle or trajectory of development. We can predict the emergence of life-forms in other solar systems in the universe in ways very similar to how they occurred here previously. Life might have taken hold, or at least could have taken hold, for instance, on Mars, if the right combination of factors were conducive to its occurrence. There may well have been such a window for the spontaneous origination of life on Mars at some point in its earlier natural history, but for whatever equally likely reasons life either never happened or was never able to take hold firmly in a continuous way.

Finite systems coalesce and become organized for only a finite period of time, and then eventually "die" as systems. This is as true for a crystal formation in water as it is for a star in space or for an organism on earth. Black holes for instance are thought to be relatively stable and permanent structures, as are protons. I do not know if this knowledge is a function of our ignorance about physical reality or in fact true. These kinds of structures appear to violate our just stated principles about finite systems. Indeed, very stable and long term systems do appear to occur in the natural world. There are many species for instance like the cock roach and the shark that appear very stable in their adaptation and that appear not to have evolved in any structural or fundamental way for millions of years. But we have not been around long enough to know or witness the whole story, so we really cannot tell if in the structure of the really long run black holes somehow disappear or change their form as basic astronomical systems, or whether in fact some of the great forces they vacuum into their gravitational maws are not somehow given back up to the larger thermodynamic reservoir of deep space. I believe they do eventually extinguish as systems, somehow--they must do so if we are to accept basic postulates of natural self-organization. And as energy systems in a thermodynamic world they must somehow yield their energy to a larger system, even if how this occurs remains at this time a mystery to our science. This leads to some very basic presuppositions about the universe. For instance:

1. All things are in the most fundamental sense made of a basic form of energy, or alternate forms of energy, that cannot be made or destroyed.

2. Things in reality, like energy of which they are formed, cannot be made or destroyed, only transformed from one state into some other state or set of states.

3. All things change and all things are subject therefore to state transformations.

4. If something exists in some finite state of reality, then that thing had some beginning as a system that arose from some alternate state of reality, and will have an end, a such, resulting from its transformation into some other state of reality.

5. All things are bound within a larger context of reality that constrains the transformational pathways in critical non-random ways.

Things like protons and black holes do not lead me to doubt the efficacy of such fundamental statements about natural systems, or the model of spontaneous self-organization of reality, but such structures only lead me to believe that very stable systems that do occur in reality reveal something very basic and important about the deterministic structure of that reality. Exactly what this things are remain to be understood with any reasonable degree of certainty. I suspect that the more basic and stable a structure of reality is, the more likely that structure will become a central feature of the organization of reality, or will be representative of a set of principles that is basic and central to our understanding of the organization of reality. I somehow in fact see a proton like a tiny tiny small black hole, with these unusual gravitational effects, and a black hole like a huge proton or at least a mass of protons nucleated all together without any electrons occurring between them. There is of course more to the larger picture than this, but exactly what this larger picture really is cannot yet be said, at least not at this time.

Human beings have an inherent need for behavioral and symbolic anti-structure, and this need is a consequence of their transformational symbolic realities and the dual requirement to both adapt their symbolic systems to their ever-changing life worlds as well as to elaborate in an exploratory manner the alternative possibilities and search-solution spaces that are inherent to the constructive process and function of human symbolization. Dreams and dreaming can be considered "anti-structural" states, but it is evident that many mammals at least dream, and that dreams are a normal function of the brain during states of sleep. We do not normally ascribe to many animals an inherent need for anti-structural states that we associate for instance with human day-dreaming, imaginary play activities, myth, story-telling, etc. These are of course the consequence of the demand of complex symbolic apparatus of the human brain that is associated with advanced evolution of the neo-cortex and especially the frontal lobes of the cerebrum. We can see though that the requirement for symbolic anti-structure probably has its roots in the requirement of the brain for periodic dream-state activity, and we can thus define dream-state activity as proto-anti-structural behavior associated especially with the advanced brain of mammals. The fact that human beings dream in a symbolic manner, at least that they can remember enough to retell, suggests that even dream processes of the human brain have undergone higher-order symbolic transformation.

We must in this way try to understand the structure of the brain as integrated not only between centers, but also between stratified layers and regions of the brain, and that the brain always functions as a semi-integrated system such that we cannot isolate independent centers or loci that function in exclusion or in a completely isolated manner. The binding problem of the human mind is solved when we view the functional organization of the brain as an extremely complex system of neural circuitry, with differential latent activation states, giving rise to emergent properties of conscious awareness, memory association, imagination, reason, and so forth. A signal stimulus can trigger an entire cascade of highly organized neural activity, and this cascade can carry on in a train or cycle of complex activations that can be self-sustaining. In fact it seems that the active state of the brain, even in sleep, is the default and normal mode of its existence, even if it doesn't seem as if it is active. That neural networks can maintain a complex latent activation state, and achieve such states repeatedly over time, suggests, among other things, that memory content is stored in differential loads carried through networks between axonal synapses.

Anti-structure defined in a social sense refers primarily to the ritual organization of space and time in a manner to induce state alternation of identity and setting. In the classical view of anti-structure it is associated generally with "rites of passage," often marking transitions, and characterized by distinctive patterns such as liminality and communitas, the former being a state of inherent psycho-social ambiguity and uncertainty of status, and the second being a temporary social state in which normal social differences and boundaries are suspended or eliminated. It has been primarily during periods of travel abroad, as an ex-patriot or anthropologist sojourning in cross-cultural contexts, that I have experienced the greatest degree of such anti-structure, not with native populations but with other travelers or ex-pat sojourners who share a common sense of suspension of normal frames of reference and a temporary state of transition and disconnection from their own cultural orientation. I think movie houses and corner bars are other places to observe forms of anti-structure being articulated on a regular basis, as well as modern malls, especially upon weekends, amusement or theme parks, etc. Tourism seems to be a growing phenomenon, worldwide, in spite of the increasing threats of global terrorism and growing political and social insecurity in different corners of the world.

Anti-structure overall is one of the most culturally marked and controlled aspects of human reality. We may in fact most characterize different cultural orientations largely by the facets of anti-structure that such systems demonstrate, and even though on a basic structural level there are many universal human features associated with anti-structural realities. It is vitally important for societies to control and regulate anti-structure, for the failure to do so can be disruptive and result in catastrophic effects for the normal functioning of a system. This is evident in countries like the US where there is a general failure for instance to appropriately regulate or ritually sanction drug-induced state alternation of behavior, coupled with relative social freedom from coercion and open economic systems, such that there are entire segments of the working and non-working underclass that are essentially dysfunctional due to chronic and epidemic drug abuse.

I think the requirement for effective and healthy anti-structure is only increasing with rising expectations of affluence and achievement in world society. With increased choices in a modern setting and the challenges of so much choice, the need for the kind of symbolic mediation that anti-structural systems provides can only be greater than before, because such mediation effects our transition and general equilibrium as we switch between different frameworks and structures in a complex world.

We have largely received the notion of anti-structure as something that is unnecessary, superficial, something expendable and non-central to how we live our lives. We have been programmed and disciplined to put the requirement for anti-structure in the background of our lives, for the sake of maximization or optimization of our productivity in social systems. A source of this may be deeply rooted in a basic survival instinct that we have inherited from very remote times, and that we carry over into our social constructions of reality. We plan to base the organization of our systems on the grounds not the most likely outcomes, but on the grounds of the possibility of the worst case scenarios that may realistically develop. If we have to deal with the basic question of survival, the problem of play and anti-structure can seem mighty trivial by comparison. But we live now in a world in which most of humanity has in fact been taken off the knife edge of the problem of physical survival. Maintenance and equilibrium within and of the system becomes more critical to our survival than anything else, and as the system develops in its complexities and overall carrying capacity the room for the possibility of anti-structural play becomes more apparent and more necessary to the question of our survival, albeit in an indirect manner in relation to the system overall.

Social Dynamics

Social change is the greatest challenge to development of a collective systems based framework in the world. The pursuit of self-interest, in a field of open scramble competition, results invariably in social structures that serve to interfere with progressive development and that consistently undercut the basis of reliable social relations built upon personal and social integrity. Global stratification in an unconstrained capitalist based system, reinforced by ossified structures of social authoritarianism, is resulting in a two tiered polarization of social classes that is increasingly defined within an international context. These structures serve to promote the interests of a very small minority of people and most often at the expense of a great number of people. In such a general context, many programs of change that would fall within a larger systems-based model become consistently frustrated and subverted to the promotion of private, versus collective, interest.

Any systems based program that has a hope of getting off the ground and achieving any reasonable measure of success must be able to overcome the hurdles presented by this enormous set of challenges. Ultimately, there are only two pathways that can be pursued towards such eventual success. The first is through centralized collective organization upon an international scale that promotes a systems-based framework within an international, and "supranational context." The second is through a decentralized, global grass-roots movement and organization of people, across ethno-national boundaries and other forms of ethnocultural cleavages, for the purpose of building a better world in a collective sense. Ultimately, both sets of measures must be realized together if complete success of such systems is to be realized on a worldwide scale.

Any proposal for change, especially deep and long lasting change, is bound to be met with resistance from some quarters of the population. People have an inherent ambivalence to change--all people need some amount of change in their lives, but too much change, too rapidly and too unpredictably, is upsetting and debilitating for people. At the same time, many people have an investment in the status quo of previous structures, because they stand to profit most from such structures, however asymmetrical and unfair or destructive in the long run they may really be. The capacity for humans to rationalize whatever serves most and best their own sets of interests, regardless of the larger range of consequences of their actions, is almost unlimited and under extreme circumstances can reach absurd proportions.

The case of changing over from a fossil fuel economy to a hydrogen-based one is a case in point. It is widely recognized and acknowledged that global warming is an increasing problem with unknown risks in the long run. It is known that fossil-fuel reserves are limited, and those that are being tapped are in the monopolistic control of a very small proportion of humanity. Around this industry, there are entire national economies built on automobiles, trucks, aircraft, agriculture all dependent upon the abundant supply of high grade fossil fuel. Resistance to the suggestion that a fossil fuel economy in the long run is not only obsolete, but extinct, would be met with extreme resistance in a country like the contemporary US not only by those who control and profit most from the sale of refined oil, but from the automobile industry that has for the previous decade been promoting the sale of large, powerful fuel-hungry vehicles, and from a very large and substantial cross-section of the public who have been manipulated by advertising and by an unconstrained social ethos to the habit of having large luxury vehicles without an eye to economy or ecology. In such a context in fact, the suggestion of a wide-scale hydrogen fuel economy would be met with extreme resistance from almost every quarter of the society, and the minority advocating such a change would be alienated from the mainstream of the current framework of the society as a basic threat to their way of life.

Basic changes, especially deep changes with far-reaching consequences, seem more likely and easier to achieve in less developed circumstances, under conditions of underdevelopment, than in more developed or over-developed contexts. This would point the initiative to such systems-based changes being easier to attain in the world in underdeveloped peripheral contexts than in those core areas in which a conventional orientation has already been embedded. At the same time, because we are talking about deep structural changes that are systemic in nature, we expect everywhere a similar kind of fundamental resistance to such change that stems from the orientation of the established world system. There is no context or social setting in the larger framework of the world where such kinds of changes will be received whole-heartedly, unreservedly, without raising a protest and a fierce sense of resistance from a significant quarter or cross-section of the population.

It is to be realistically wondered whether such changes can really be achieved on any significant level without first a period of destructive loss of the previous order of things. It would probably not be necessary, from a systems standpoint, to deliberately instigate revolutionary conflict to bring about destructive consequences or to promote constructive development. There is a principle that the normal system will probably eventually reach a super-complex climax state that will lead to large-scale destructive episodes, if not to the complete global context, at least to some of the most central and significant areas and loci of control of the established framework.

The challenges that lie in front of humanity in the 21st Century are those of a growing disparity between the very rich and the very poor--the number of the latter is growing at a much faster rate than the number of the former. But the real and relative wealth controlled by fewer and fewer people is also growing exponentially, as well as what might be called the world's "gross product." These seems like a trend that will probably continue well into the middle of the next century, but at the same time, we must recognize the rising interest and needs of an increasing mass of poor people who have been largely disenfranchised and dispossessed within the context of the world system. I do not think all these people will go silently and obediently into the night without a ripple of protest or complaint about their consigned fates or the conditions of their anonymous lives. These are the key challenges that we must try to confront and resolve in some reasonable manner.

A Systems-Based Way of Life

We must seriously entertain the notion of the general adoption of a way of life, a worldview, and a general value orientation, derivative from and defined by a general systems based frame of reference. What would such a way of life look like? What values would be most important to such a framework? What would be the consequences of the general adoption of such an orientation?

The closest example I have found that might illustrate such an orientation, minus the extreme anti-scientific advocacy, is in Bill Mollison's construction and framework of "Permaculture" or permanent agriculture, that takes a holistic systems-based approach to redefining the human relationship with the natural world in a manner that is at once more efficient, decentralized, and more aesthetically and ethically satisfactory. Of course, such an approach has not yet addressed in a reasonable or realistic manner the redesign of tenement slums or flats in third world countries, or the challenge of educating and empowering large groups of impoverished people with the tools and means for real adaptation and change.

One would be hard pressed therefore to formulate a ready-made or canned recipe for a "systems based way of life." It would be important that a systems framework is open and tolerant of a wide range of alternation and alternative points of view and diversity of values. I see it therefore as being basically non-didactic and non-prescriptive in form--available for people to peruse, adopt or reject, but not coercive or compulsive or even repressive in any manner. Thus, I see no set of negative commandments connected to such a value system.

There might be possible some positive and constructive facets of such a general orientation that can be actively promoted in the world, though it is unlikely that very many people will ever develop or achieve a "post-conventional" moral point of view or pattern of adaptation in the world. We are therefore talking about the requirement of shifting what might be called received, conventional wisdom and morality, away from traditional or standards points of view, and moving these frameworks more toward a systems-based orientation. 

General openness and acceptance of a relativistic worldview seems part and parcel of a systems-based orientation. This in turn requires a capacity to deal with chronic uncertainty and complexity, and this is a capacity not shared equally by all people. In any given population, or in the world population as a whole, there are always people who are prone to adopting extreme points of view, and who need such extreme orientations, in order to cope with even the minimal prerequisites of daily living. And in my mind, the only thing worse than extreme intolerance, is the intolerance of such extreme orientations. The question in my mind is whether the system as a whole, or the received and standard conventional morality of a society, embraces or encourages such extreme orientations, or functions to discourage such orientations from developing. It seems to me that under healthy and constructive circumstances, such proclivity towards extremes would be reduced and more people satisfied with a middle-ground orientation.

The other aspect of this is the relative transparency of cultural values and received points of view, and the tendency to naturalize and reify orientations that are psychologically or culturally specific and unique, but not shared by very many people in the larger context of reality. From this arises ideological complexes and entire systems of rationalization and symbolic legitimization of otherwise rather narrow and intolerant. There is a sense that there is no need within a systems based framework for any received ideological system as primary or a basic statement of values that should be expressed except perhaps for the values of non-violence, creativity and balance. There is no need to stand on convention or to promulgate any single closed ideological orientation if we recognize that human cultural systems are "man-made" and that we have a wide range of alternative systems from which to choose. This is not to say that precedent and tradition cannot be respected, but only that the world of the future is not the world of the past.

The aim neither is the development of a cult or a cult-like movement. It is merely the recognition, perhaps for the first time in human history, that for once we really do have options even if many people are committed to a world still without basic freedoms to choose. Under such a circumstance, with the ready availability of global communications, there is no longer a need to think exclusively or restrictively in terms of anachronistic structures. The systems we develop, at all levels, and in all ways, are ours to do so as we choose, for better or for worse. Systems themselves have no intrinsic moral value. It is only in terms of their destructive or constructive consequences that we must measure systems, as well as in terms of their efficiency and efficacy in achieving the goals that they are designed for.

What we are referring to ultimately is the development of a global society with a global frame of reference that transcends conventional or traditional moral and cultural systems and orientations, while at the same time tolerating alternative received points of view and orientations.

Acceptance of a meta-ethical paradigm of universal natural rights and responsibilities seems to me to be central to such a framework. Providing the context within which such a paradigm can be realistically articulated and sanctioned in a larger sense requires the collective corporate organization of many different people who share a similar framework.

Applied Systems Convergence & Global Equi-finality

Streamlining represents the tendency for the development of an applied system to reach a stable equilibrium characterized by the optimization of functional design and articulation of parts in relation to the whole. Different systems can begin under very different starting conditions, and reach very similar equi-final states in response to similar kinds of conditions. It is for this reason that so many convergent and analogous structures recur in the adaptation of different biological systems to similar kinds of conditions, as for example the achievement of flight by bats, birds and ancient pterosaurs. Streamlining can be said to represent an optimum solution state in a complex search-solution space that is characterized by the design of a system. Such convergent evolution based upon functional streamlining confers to the evolution of species a kind of teleological quality that some interpret as a sign of progressive or intentional design. In fact such teleology is a natural function of complex systems exploring through continuous variation a complex search-solution space and eventually arriving at the most optimum design for a given set of functions, whether this is flying, swimming, talking or walking.

I propose that applied human systems will eventually be reaching a state of optimal design development that I would prefer to call global equi-finality. Such global equi-finality will be characterized by the streamlining of the design development of different systems accompanied by the increasing degree of integration of different system into a larger meta-systemic framework. Automobiles, and to a lesser extent, modern transport aircraft, represent fitting examples of the concept of applied systems streamlining and convergence. The system of transportation, supply and service that supports the automobile and automobile traffic has grown increasingly sophisticated and complex. At this time, such an orientation like permaculture seems to be not well received on a broad scale, but appears to be only well received by a small but diverse and interesting network of individuals and organizations.

As different nations develop and modernization moves different kinds of people forward towards a more affluent life-style, it becomes increasingly obvious that the number of similarities and commonalities between different groups of people, less the cultural and symbolic baggage, are far greater than the number of differences and variations of pattern that serve to distinguish people and set them apart from one another. Human nature is relatively similar, in spite of cultural and psychological differentials and patterns of variation, such that most normal people want and expect the same kinds of things from life. Thus, a system designed in a manner that can fulfill these needs for as many people as possible, is the kind of system that is the most desirable, compared to one for instance that serves primarily to restrict or hurt people's interests, or that carries forward a few individuals to levels of extreme and absurd affluence, at the potential expense of so many more who are frustrated in their dreams and expectations of achievement.

Neither too should affluence alone become the primary goal or set of values to be achieved through development. Relative affluence can only be measured as a material index, one of several alternatives, and is tied ultimately to a sense of well-being, if not happiness, security, satisfaction and success in the realization rather than the frustration of one's goals. The goals of development of a system is the creation of a system with a relative large carrying capacity that can serve its population in a sufficient and satisfactory manner for the long term, without destructive breakdown of the ecological and environmental relationships (including social) that tends to occur in the long run with saturated systems. 

There may be many different ways to design alternative systems to achieve such a set of goals, infinite in number and possibility in fact, but it appears that any such system, to be successful in the long run for as many people as possible, must necessarily lead more or less to the same general place. The key question of course becomes ultimately one of control and power in such a system, and the distribution of power to a field of players in a fair and equitable manner. The tendency in human nature is to try to maximize and monopolize power and control, even and especially at the expense of others. This was largely based upon a premise of a world of limited good. It was a world in which one person's success is almost automatically construed as another's failure. It is possible, for instance, to design a system that is based, if not on unlimited good in an absolute sense, at least unlimited good in a more restrictive and relative way. Of course, differentials of power and control over resources will always exist, and as long as they do so there will always be a sense of corruption and unfairness built into the system.  Conflict of interest and the need for conflict resolution and requirement for apparatus to effect such resolution in a fair and non-destructive manner will always remain, and in some ways is greater now perhaps than it has ever before been. But the means to finally build a kind of system that would allow us to do so seems to be finally at hand, minus the kind of symbolic knowledge needed to put such a system on the ground.

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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