Universal systems can be called a theory of everything. A theory of everything is a tall order to make for any theoretical or conceptual system. Much of the resistance of conventional scientists to systems theory must be due in large part to the difficulty of seeing how so vastly different kinds of things in the world, at entirely different levels of articulation and analysis, may be seen as being somehow related to one another. Science does not normally argue by analogy or base its theory upon analogical relationships--indeed analogical reasoning was the basis of magic and superstition from which science separated itself in due time as a more consistent and coherent form of reasoning about natural phenomena. On the surface, the comparison of different kinds of phenomenal structures in reality in terms of systems frameworks would appear as primarily a form of analogical argument. Typical examples from evolution will suffice--the analogical relationships between bats, butterflies, birds and pterosaurs, all creatures capable of flight, all with wing structures, show evidence of convergent evolution upon a common solution set. Similarly, the comparison of fish and sea mammals who, in many respects resemble one another greatly in terms of their swimming capabilities and their body shape and design, are known to come from completely different lines of descent. We know in hindsight of the plasticity of life and the capacity for very different kinds of living systems, under similar conditions, to achieve similar kinds of solutions that are a function of the morphological streamlining of physical characteristics for functional adaptation to certain environments and niches.

I coin the term universal systems as a derivative of Von Bertalanffy's use of the term General Systems. Indeed, the original use of General Systems theory was largely in an analogical model, with a prototypical template of a general system being variously applied to a wide range of potential phenomena, highlighting those facets of relationships that resembled a prototypical system and the properties we come to attribute to a "general system" including dynamic equilibrium, reversible entropy, synergy and equi-finality. I would add to this list of basic properties attributable to general systems of all kinds meta-systems contextuality, integrative functionality and developmental complexity.

The basic presupposition of universal systems that separates it from that of general systems is that of the universal homology of all systems. We shift the argument of general systems from that of analogical comparison of functional form of different kinds of systems to that of some presumed historical relationship underlie the differentiation and stratification of systems. This presumption of homology is indirect. We may state the principle of universal homology thusly: all systems are related, however indirectly to one another. All real systems have a  physical form of manifestation and obey basic physical principles governing transformation. All real systems originate from a common source.

In my effort to develop what I would refer to as a universal systems framework, I have pushed the model of the "general system" one step further than its development and analogical deployment with a "General Systems" framework.  I have done so guided by certain fundamental precepts that I take to be universally valid, and I can state these precepts in simplified form:

1. All nature is organized upon multiple levels as systems, and these levels stratify along basic descriptive dimensions of relative size, scale, longevity, count, distribution, etc.

2. The stratification of all systems appears to be regulated and organized--larger systems are composed by smaller "sub-systems" that in turn are composed of even smaller sub-systems, and systems are organized more or less on a larger scale into "super-systems.

3. All natural and real systems are related to one another--no natural or real system occurs in isolation from a larger meta-systemic context.

4. All systems are developmentally dynamic within a developmental paradigm of possible alternative state outcomes that can be used to characterize, classify and compare different kinds of systems.

5. Different kinds of systems upon given levels of articulation may interact and coalesce to constitute extended meta-systems.

6. All natural systems appear to be organized on the basis of chance or stochastic principle alone, and all order can be explained in terms of isotropic or isomorphic departures from statistically defined patterns of distribution.

Furthermore, since systems by definition are ordered arrangements or patterns that are non-random, I have applied what I refer to as a universal paradigm of systems dynamics to all systems, which is related to and derived from the paradigm of thermodynamics concerning heat and working systems. Systems are by functional definition order producing and order maintaining phenomena that occur through the non-random organization of local pattern against an ultimately random and randomizing background of possible relationships. Their sense of order can be expressed thermodynamically, gravitationally, informationally, and relationally in similar and parallel form.

The tendency of all natural and real systems, that have a physical manifestation of pattern in objective reality, is to develop in general from a comparatively simple and undifferentiated state towards a state that is marked by greater complexity, differentiation and variability of outcomes. We come to associate with extended systems development a certain level of chaos and indeterminancy of state-path trajectory.

All systems, at any level at which it is observed to articulate, may be analyzed on three levels:

1. Subsystem components and the relationships between these components.

2. The system in itself, as a whole with associated properties.

3. The system in its environmental context involving other systems.

We may define and delimit the study of any system as a particular prototype or variant example of a type of systems, a representation of a class or kind of system, and we may comprehensively study such a system in terms of its three levels of analysis. These levels of analysis are of course relative to the level of articulation upon which a particular kind of system occurs, and hence cannot be treated in an absolute manner. Something that is treated as a system in itself at one level, a prototypical "general system" may be treated as a subsystem of another super-system at another level, and as a super-system in relation to its subsystems at yet a third alternative level. The entire super-system represented by any particular system may in turn be treated as a subsystem of a much larger framework of analysis.

Though all systems are unique in their local complexity of detail, there is no system that occurs as a wholly unique instance of a particular kind of system. All classes and kinds of systems occur as population sets, mostly in a contemporaneous and successive manner. If we find a representative of a particular type of system occurring, we can presume that it is not a single instance of such a type of system, but can speculate that under similar conditions other similar kinds of systems, of the same time, will co-occur or have occurred. From this principle alone, I believe it is possible to deductively conclude that life exists not only on earth as a single instance of a planetary biosphere, but probably occurs broadly in the universe, in similar albeit differentiated fashion. An earthquake under the sea that generates a giant tsunami may occur as a unique and single event, but we can expect the recurrence of such a set of events under similar circumstances previously or in the indefinite future.

The reason that we may conclude that all systems occur as members of a class or set, and not as unique instances, may be accounted for on the basis of the universal homology of systems--all systems arise not in isolation but in a meta-systems context, and it is this context that governs the relational and transformational possibilities available to any given system. The reason for the statistical self-organization of natural systems arises from the fact that all systems are homologically interrelated to one another, and cannot occur outside of this context of interrelationship.

This begs a key question. If the universe arose in a simultaneous manner as a single system, then might there not be other representatives of the same class of event structures that we identify as "the universe." I am not going to quibble over definitional issues. Might there not occur a whole population of "universes" each similar to but different from our own? We cannot satisfactorily answer this question now one way or another, but we can at least pose it as a problem important enough to be considered hypothetically. If we look at the universe as a meta-system that encompasses and transcends all systems contained within it, or as a "meta-state" system, then it is possible to at least define a total universe as all encompassing and therefore as a single unique instance of itself. Of course I am not sure that this is the best or only possible answer to this kind of problem, as the universe appears to be everywhere of a similar physical form and all things physical have an origin, a history, and a developmental trajectory.

Systems State Transformation Analysis and Complex Calculus

With the aid of multi-lineal computational power offered by supercomputing, it becomes possible to model and represent systems more accurately and in more meaningful and realistic detail than previously. If we are to see the future of computing development, it will be in the direction of putting supercomputing (parallel processing) upon the desktop and even the laptop, and of arranging distributed effective and multi-purpose supercomputing architectures via the web.

Systems are intrinsically statistical entities. They occur as members of a population based upon shared features and similar properties. We can assume indirect homology of relationship between systems, not only of the same kind, but of related and similar classes. The organization of science is largely based upon the systematic organization and stratification of nature that enables us to label and classify systems in a realistic and representational manner. Labeling and classification extends throughout all fields of science, and the scientific organization of knowledge rests critically upon such systems of classification and nomenclature.

It follows that to label something is to slot it into a category of systems relationship regardless of its individual patterning of variability and perceived uniqueness of pattern. Labeling subsumes statistical realities and from a philosophical and epistemological standpoint presents inherent problems of qualitative grouping of quantitative realities. The object of this digression is not to get lost in the qualitative conundrums underlying the philosophy of science. Rather it is to suggest a central accounting methodology for a universal systems framework. Systems approaches can effectively by-pass and circumvent the challenges that arise from the reification of categories and labeling, and from the "misplaced" concretization of abstract ideas--we may refer to the use of functional rather than formal categories and systems of classification that are systems based and systematic in their organization.

This methodology rests upon the capacity to meaningfully generalize upon a class of systems based upon the statistical properties exhibited by a population and the paradigm of developmental possibilities underlying this population.  A label as a representation of a class then becomes like a programming variable in computer languages--a holder or container for whatever kind of information we wish to inject into it.

Systems are defined and identified generally in terms of the emergent properties associated with such systems, their developmental patterns and the dynamic relational patterning of the components of systems. We rely on the capacity for any particular kind of system to achieve a relatively stable state-path trajectory of some expectable form in terms of the properties associated and characteristic of this state. In other words, systems achieve stable states that have a duration, and it is primarily in terms of these states that we recognize and identify systems both in terms of their unique variation from expected statistical norms established for a class of which it is a member, and in terms of their classificatory membership.

The capacity of systems to achieve dynamic states based upon emergent, synergistic properties attributable and characteristic of such systems provides us a methodological handle by which we can manipulate and model systems statistically and conceptually. We may thus treat systems as whole entities--as single behaviorally dynamic identities, subsuming vast complexities. Our organization of real knowledge proceeds in exactly this manner, to the extent that such knowledge can be claimed to be scientific.

The developmental behavior of systems does not occur in a completely chaotic manner, but the great insight of modern science has been that there is order within even disorder, and that however chaotic, systems that are complex follow rather elegant and ordered processes. We may assume any developmental paradigm of a kind of system to be composed of a limited range of alternative transformation states. Though the process of transformation and the topographic landscape may be continuous, we may emulate a system by taking periodic slices or cross-sections through the system and then reconstructing these "slices" in the order of their transformational occurrence. This is analogous to making a film recording of an action sequence--we end up with a successive linear series of frames that record instantaneously a series of points or transition states, even though the original sequence was continuous.

Our purpose then becomes to record the developmental behavior of a system over a timed sequence or series of states, and in terms of our simulations and reconstructed models of such systems, to be able to accurately and realistically replicate these transformation states in a similar manner.

It is the intrinsic properties attributable to general systems, like dynamic equilibrium, self-organization and equi-finality, that allows us to identify, categorize and manipulate systems as wholes on the basis of their achieved developmental states.

The organization, heuristic representation and even simulation of complexity in systems is made possible through advances and recent achievements in super-computing. We can expect new hybrid parallel computing architectures that combine the capacities of digital information storage and processing with the speed and power of solid-state analogical computing systems. Essentially, a large array of non-linear calculus operations and equations can be manipulated simultaneously at a very fast rate of speed within an organized "space." We can even in such a manner systematically model multi-variable non-linear equations that would be characteristic of the kinds of non-linear dynamics and control systems we associate with natural event structures and complexities in the world.

There is one caveat to all this modeling and simulation--realistic representation is not necessarily prediction. Certainly, modeling complexity allows us greater understanding into both complexity and the simplicity of systems organization, but it does not necessarily improve our ability to predict the outcomes of complex event structures of naturally occurring systems like the weather or earthquakes, etc. To the extent that prediction begets control, and that our aim in scientific research is the achievement of greater power to control natural events, or at least the consequences of natural events, then we seem to face a fundamental barrier in our capacity to deal with underdetermined complexity in that is found upon every level of self-organization in the natural world.

Of course, we do not always or only pursue science for the sake of control in and of itself, but rather for the potential for the development of alternative systems, particularly in the form of technology, that allows us at least greater power and deliberate forms of control. Through deliberate organization, we can certain respond to natural events once they occur, however poorly we may be able to accurately predict their occurrence. We can even erase or minimize the consequences of such events given the likelihood that they will eventually occur.

It follows that we pursue a systems based comprehension of science not so much in order to influence natural events, so much as to influence the outcomes of such natural events in relation to our own adaptive responses to such events. We see the success of such adaptation through applied systems design readily, and we understand this as a measure of our achieved progress in the world against the forces of nature.

We assume that the fundamental laws and phenomena of physics that we are capable of observing here on earth and in our proximate region of space are the same and congruent to the fundamental laws and phenomena of physics that occur everywhere in the knowable universe. We do not expect any major or radical departures from these principles and phenomena, otherwise we would have to posit some fundamental division and end of the known universe, bounded by another sense of reality the principles of which we do not know. This assumption of the grand universal continuity of the physical structure of our universe, that light is everywhere light traveling at a constant speed and gravity everywhere has the same capturing and inertial effects, is part of the foundation of the cosmological principle. We have no good reason or evidence not to assume this is so.

Another way of framing this idea of the universal applicability of general physical principles is to assert that all phenomena upon a basic level are governed within the same framework of universal relativity, and we can hypothesize a single universal framework applicable to all physical phenomena--i.e., to which are relative the rules and principles of pattern governing all physical transition events. All event structures upon a fundamental level behave in a uniform way within the same universal frame of reference. 

Hypothesizing a universal structure underlying all events upon a basic level by itself is not the same as understanding very well or in a clearly systematic manner exactly what that structure is. We have, in lieu of truly universal explanation, what can be called a long train of covering law models and limited theoretical frameworks that serve as "part-whole" explanations of this structure and that lend insight into this structure. The field of physics as a whole, or any of its sub-specializations, itself is not a theory of the universal structure of physical reality or a substitute of such a hypothetical theory--Physics is a consistent and coherent knowledge based conceptual and methodological framework, articulated by a community of scholars sharing some basic values, beliefs and behaviors,  hopefully within which any such universal theory needs to be articulated, tested, and, if necessary disproved.

Some might claim that the hunt for a unified field theory is a kind of snark hunt. Others might claim that Einstein essentially solved the problem, albeit in a less that fully satisfactory manner for everyone or for the sake of parsimony in scientific explanation. Some resort to some version of Electro-Dynamical theory, and yet others to a "String" Theory based upon the colors of quarks. I have given my own version of physical unification in terms of "springs" and quintessence or quintessential energies. The main point is I think that paradigmatic unity has not been yet achieved at this level of thinking in terms either of fundamental physical systems or their larger or complete cosmological implications. Certainly physics has been in a largely unsettled state, and I believe it to be wrestling with so many competing models because it has not yet hit upon the right answers to these problems.

I have proposed, somewhat in lieu of a unified field theory that would be systematically sufficient to its name in physics, what I would call a universal field theory with the implication remaining that it is also a unified field, albeit in ways we do not yet concisely or clearly understand. We expect a set of equations from such a field theory. One problem in field theory has been that observable quantum behavior of fundamental entities does not exactly follow expectable dynamics of field equations. We end up with a kind of schizoid view of fundamental realities being on one hand part of a field and in another way behaving as if "quasi-modo" things somewhat independent of any field. We have not fully reconciled what might be called a complementary perspective upon the fundamental nature of things with a direct causal perspective upon reality, and we seem even to lack the language or logic to deal with this fundamental sense of discrepancy in a coherent and non-confusing manner.

In terms at least of a hypothetical universal field theory, I'm somewhat inclined toward the notion of a "pre-unified" field. This is especially the case given the general observation that energies like light and gravitation appear to occur simultaneously in the same space-time manifold, with at least no noticeable side-effects from their interaction, unless we make some basic presuppositions about their patterning and order based upon possible interaction. I am also inclined to the point of view that we will possibly not fully resolve this kind of dilemma unless and until we adopt more fully and more complete a systems point of view and reference to fundamental structural patterning of physical reality, and stop attempting to see events as the causal relations of particularistic entities or quanta. If theory of universal systems is correct, then we can conclude deductively that fundamental physical systems are organized in a systems-based manner. It has largely been on the basis of this that I have developed an alternative cosmology based upon the dynamic state universe, as well as an alternative framework for systems dynamics that encompasses both gravitational and thermodynamic event structures in a single paradigm.

From a cosmological standpoint, there seems no reason to consider the universe as a unified system except possibly upon a fundamental level of physical event structures. The universe as a whole certainly does not appear to be gravitationally unified, even if our basic received cosmologies depend upon universal gravitational unification. We must consider the universe as a meta-state system as one that encompasses all possible states of all possible systems. We can conceivably consider the universe to be a meta-system in its fundamental structure, that transcends all other systems, even if we do not well understand its overall or fundamental patterning.

The universal field appears to me to be the substrate of all physical event structures, and to constitute what we see as the structure of space-time. In our models space-time as a thing in itself is somewhat ambivalent and ambiguous--on one hand it is something that is empty, void, a container for everything else, a vacuum and nothing more. On the other hand certain dynamic and relativistic properties and structures are attributed to space-time, as if it were something in itself more than just a void or an empty container. Just as we normally do not see the air that we breathe, and only feel its effects in terms of sounds we hear or the wind we feel, is it not possible that space-time is not something analogous and similar to air--normally invisible and noticeable only in terms of certain gravitational and inertial effects on motion? And just as a theory of air leads us to understanding the structure of the earth's atmosphere, to certain basic and important theories of gases and the properties of gas, is it not also tenable to have a theory of a substantive structure of space-time, what I refer to as "spime," that might not lead us to a basic understanding of the cosmological organization of the universe and its distribution and also of the fundamental physics of basic event structures that occur in the fabric of space-time? And like air, which we know to flow like currents in the earth's atmosphere, might not space-time also flow in a manner that is dynamic?

In seeking to elaborate this hypothetical construct of Spime (portmanteau of space-time) I've sought to on some level a fairly systematic model in part because this is seen as congruent with the development of a meaningful unified field theory. The properties we may attribute to the structure and patterning of spime appear to be unlike that of any other physical entity or event we know of or easily understand. Of course, in a basic sense we are engulfed in spime at all times and it is always around us, even flowing through us of sorts, and hence its basic patterning is very common and available in terms of its gravitational outcomes and inertial effects. Less readily understood and apparent are its quantum-field effects upon phenomena like light and energy, as well as upon subatomic particles.

Though Spime appears to flow everywhere in a dynamic manner, the structural pattern of this flow appears to be semi-rigid and to follow field-lines established by gravitating bodies. The semi-rigid field-lines of space-time appear to conform to relativistic principles of geometrodynamic universe. The flow of a free falling object of mass earthward, which is inexorable, can be alternatively expressed as the flow the structural space-time manifold containing that object of mass. The uniform acceleration of that body until it achieves terminal velocity appears to be not a function of the weight of the object or its relative size or mass, but a function of its distance from the surface of the earth and the strength of the gravitational field within which that body falls. The suggestion is that the pencil knocked off the edge of my computer table falls at a constant acceleration which is defined by the inertia change of velocity of its space-time manifold. Terminal velocity would be the speed at which that object's space-time manifold achieves relative equilibrium with the earthbound flow of space-time in its gravitational field. This flow is not defined either by a straight line as we see it, but by a geodesic trajectory. This trajectory is more evident the higher up we drop an object and the further it must fall before reaching earth. 

Furthermore, the structure of space-time and the substance of spime appears even more paradoxical given the possibility that spime may be flowing in multiple directions at the same time in the same region of Space, or at least defines a complex trajectory that is the vectorial composite of multiple directions of flow at the same time. And this is not the same thing as the occurrence of multiple trajectories of light and other forms of energy within the same region simultaneously. In other words, and to make a long story short, the fundamental structure of Spime, if indeed this can be said to exist in any substantive sense, may occur far below the level of the structure of the atom or its subatomic particles, and it may be much more complex and dynamical in patterning that we may yet understand. What we would be observing in terms of the inertial effects of motion and the field effects of light and gravitational energy would be more or less the emergent properties forthcoming from the systematic structure of spime.

The basic system of life is the cell. All life consists of the organization of cells. Being unicellular or multi-cellular is one of the most basic divisions we know of in life, and basic differences of cell structure between prokaryotes and eukaryotes reflect these differences.

We usually do not give great consideration or thought to the notion of the tremendous continuity of the evolutionary thread of life that, though it has seen the coming and going of many, many different basic forms of life, has been unbroken from the first origins of living systems until today. This means that the overall state-path trajectory of living systems on the earth is very stable as a basic system.

If we can define one of the basic functions of the cell as a system is that of self-replication or reproduction, which we in general in biology refer to as "growth" then we can understand that all forms of life are descendents of a single primogenitorial ancestor that arose some 4 billion years ago. All forms of life were the product of the variation of replication of a single line of cells that branched in time to many different lines, which in turn branched and in turn branched some more.

Of all the vastly different forms of life we find extant in the world today or extant in our fossil record, we know that all of them shared a single original ancestor, and all differences with the product of the gradual divergence through successive generations of genetic variation and adaptation to varying environmental regimes. What has been so remarkable about life has been its point plasticity and its capacity to adapt to a very broad range of environmental conditions.

Variation of cellular pattern that we link to genetic mutation and alteration, finds selective advantage/disadvantage in the process of niche diversification and adaptive radiation from one environmental context to surrounding environmental contexts. The primary factors influencing selection can be considered to be the environmental context, which is usually described in geo-physical terms. But we must take critically into account the external biotic or what we can reasonably call the meta-biotic factors that influence selective patterns and hence variation and differentiation of species. I would conjecture that from the very beginning, from the first stages of the development of living systems, these systems were critically influenced in their developmental differentiation and thus in their evolutionary speciation by interaction with other living systems, and that the interaction between differentiated living systems served as a primary mechanism driving evolutionary development.

If life was merely about adaptive modification as a consequence of geo-physical variation and adaptive radiation to geo-physical contexts, then I doubt life would have ever needed to evolve beyond a unicellular level of development. Bacteria would have simply spread out to all available geophysical niches and remained  what it is. It is the fact that life began interacting metabiotically, ecologically, with itself, and especially between divergent forms, that the real engine of evolution can be found to occur.

Meta-biotic relationships between divergent living systems or organisms may take several forms analytically speaking. Interaction may be direct or it may be indirect and contextual--different organisms may not be directly competing with one another, but indirectly competing for the same sets of resources available within an environmental context. We understand most inter-specific competition in this way--not so much in terms of direct predation of one species upon another, but in terms of overlapping eco-trophic niches and relative limiting factors available in those niches. It follows that any adaptation that confers an adaptive edge to a species compared to other competitors in terms of its capacity to acquire sufficient resources from its niche gives that species or that organism a selective advantage that will, in a larger statistical sense, bias the game in its long term favor. 

Of course, species are mostly defined by their specificity of adaptation and hence we may refer to a kind of biological relativity of species adaptation that makes evolutionary development in one epoch, in one set of niches, favorable, and under some other eco-evolutionary regime, unfavorable. What may confer an adaptive or reproductive advantage to an organism or population in one context may prove a disadvantage in any alternative context.

All species are characterized by their evolutionary development over time--by their growth as a population, by their eco-trophic niche adaptation, by their adaptive radiation into alternative environments, by their capacity for reproductive and adaptive success in any given environmental context or set of contexts. These patterns are inherently dynamic and thus all species must continuously develop in an evolutionary manner or face the prospects of extinction. There is a critical sense in which genetic adaptation and evolution of organisms always tracks and follows environmental changes and transitions. Catastrophic geo-physical events can result in the major loss of life and extinction of species that are incapable of adapting rapidly enough to changing circumstances. But even more powerful than such geo-physical event structures I believe to be the everyday game of competition between different organisms and different kinds of organisms and the consequences this form of direct and indirect competition has for the adaptation and evolution of species. If a species or any given organism must always responsively track its environment, and a large part of this environment is ecologically defined in meta-biotic terms as competitive relations with many other organisms and species, then it follows that only very stable and robust configurations can in the long run survive and many alternative forms will represent experimental failures in the larger evolutionary framework.

Systems of whatever kind we may refer to do not occur in a vacuum or in complete isolation. They always occur in a context, and the intrinsic and implicit rules governing the environmental relationships of their occurrence are critical to understanding the development and behavior of systems. We may refer in a sense to "systemic gestalt" as being that sense of meta-system order that is achieved by a system in relationship to its environmental context in which it instantaneously occurs.

One of the hall marks of human intelligence seems to me to be the intrinsic ability to recognize systems in terms of their systems gestalt--or figure ground pattern in a larger environmental context. Most other animals that have relatively large brains do not seem to attend to their environment upon the same level of cognitive organization or awareness of their surroundings. Most animals do not reason through the event structures that affect their lives--they respond to their environments in an immediate and automatic manner, often to more subtle and complex cues than we are capable of, but they do not seem capable of thinking through their environments to search for background relationships or hidden causes to things that happen in their lives. Thus animals do not anticipate intentionality structures in the sophisticated manner that human beings are capable of doing. They generally do not question their realities but accept things, for better or worse, pretty much at face value as they get them. We have this inveterate capacity to make inferences about relationships that occur between events and things in our environment, even when these relationships are not obvious or the events are not proximate or directly immediate to one another.

A large part of human knowledge in the pre-scientific age has been steeped in a kind of superstition based upon magical laws of mechanical or analogical association. Inferences about the environment and the larger world were being made, even if from a scientific standpoint they were not usually the correct inferences. Attribution of causality in event structures is a critical and intuitive insight that is indicative of the recognition and play of systems gestalt thinking. We are still to some degree steeped in this kind of thinking in ways we are barely cognizant about.

The ability to recognize systems in reality, as systems, on the basis of indirect relationships established between remote events, and to infer from this structural pattern, order and logical cause and consequence, seems to me to be directly tied to the symbolic organization of the human brain as a functional system of conceptualization of the world that is based upon the nomic, connative, indexical and ertistic functions of human language. The definition of a symbol is as a thing that represents or stands for something else that is not directly related to that thing.

In short, the capacity to construe the world symbolically, and to speak about the world in symbolic terms, and to relate to the world in these same terms, provides us with the concomitant capacity to "think" in terms of systems, about systems and through systems as these occur in reality. In other words, it allows us to make inferences and derive understanding about the implicit structures of reality without having direct access to these structures. I notice that my dog does not respond to a photograph of us or herself, even if the image of herself is imprinted clearly and unequivocally--I interpret this as her incapacity to see the photographic image of herself in a symbolic frame and in a symbolic manner. She undoubtedly "sees" the picture in a manner more or less similar to how I see the picture, but she does not "interpret" the picture in the same way that I would interpret it, as symbolically isomorphic and representative of her own identity in the world.

Our symbolic organization of the experience of reality is intrinsic to our experience of reality, and the anthropological claim is made that we have no choice but to see the world through the complex filters of our large, symbolic brains. We cannot see the world in a manner that does not somehow interpret that experience in a symbolic manner. We even interpret and respond to experience symbolically upon unconscious levels of cognitive and behavioral function, even if this seems unintentional or non-deliberate. Selective aphasias or diseases may critically impair this symbolic capacity for making sense, responding to and seeing the world, and in extreme forms even eliminate this capacity altogether, and this gives us insight into the organization of cognitive and other brain function.

There is even a critical and unavoidable sense in which we do not see the world but as a symbolic construction of our own cognition and imagination--that we cannot truly see the world in and of itself in the manner that we may impute to a dog or a cat. We live in worlds of our own symbolic construction, and this symbolic construction itself is a half-product of our own psychology and also of our own socio-cultural legacy and context of behavioral adaptation and articulation. This is most evident for instance in cases of Schizophrenics who appear to be responding not adaptively to cues in their environment but to cues that originate in their own heads as a productive deep organic disturbance of symbolic function.

It follows, as Piaget so aptly demonstrated, that a large part of our daily behavioral performance is geared toward the coordination and equilibriation of  "internalized cognitive maps" and external contexts and suites of cues that are ever-changing in our world. And we in all our literacy come to rely in many ways upon our daily dosage of news and other media input about the larger world to test and reevaluation our internalized frames of reference to render them coordinate to external contexts in the world.

The relativity of cultural realities, and the capacity of social groupings to organize themselves upon a cultural level, is tied to this symbolic organization of experience. Cultural integration of shared experience relies critically upon the sharing and social reinforcement of subjective attitudes and behaviors--we share culture between ourselves, and the sharing of culture is given the blanket root term of "culturation" which I would interpret sociologically as being similar to the term "structuration" of social order and organization. Cultural consonance and organization depends upon sharing and culturation, which can be interpreted as cultural transmission. Cultural transmission, unlike the genetic transmission of information, is always "horizontal" rather than vertical. It involves phenotypic relationships and patterns of behavioral response with an environment, and our capacity to learn from and adaptive alter our behavior in relation to the environment.

Cultural transmission and culturation appears to be "diagonal" to the extent that it is culturally relative and bound linguistically by means of native speaker intuition, the speech context, cultural texts and symbolic codifications, and the conservational apparatus. In other words, cultures tend to be delimited and bound by a tradition and set of conventions that govern and guide the reconstruction and reproduction of cultural forms in a trans-generational manner. We can certainly adopt a child out from its native context, to a family context of a very different culture, and we will see clearly the results of the horizontal nature of cultural transmission, even if "Cultures" defined as ethnocultural groupings around traditional and conventional symbolic complexes tend to be transmitted in diagonal form that follows lines of natural familial descent.

General Systems is a comprehensive worldview. All phenomena in reality comes organized in a manner that can be sufficiently described and explained in terms of systems relationship and patterning. This phenomena is not completely ordered, and hence is given to complexity, chaos and critical uncertainty of outcomes. Many sciences, defined separately and outside of a systems framework, have suffered for this deficiency both in terms of theoretical insight and methodological possibilities offered by such a framework.

I am wanting to argue that a General Systems framework is in fact the only comprehensive worldview available to us that is fully sufficient and appropriate to the conduct and participation of all forms of science. Of course this is not an uncontroversial point of view to adopt. More importantly, we can say that a General Systems framework is one that is by definition, implication or inherent structure non-ideological, which means that it requires no existential leaps of faith or no symbolic dogmatism for its articulation or promotion.  A general systems framework remains non-ideological because it is primarily a descriptive and empirically based framework--one that is based upon the description of the properties found inherent to nature, or derivative of the organization of nature in a direct form. In fact, it constitutes in a sense a general form of explanation for why such properties exist and come about in the first place, primarily in a manner that is un-predetermined and primarily a function of chance or stochastic occurrence.

The main effort of this meta-systems framework has been the realization of working systems based upon the application of principles of general and specialized systems. The thrust has been towards a unification of perspectives both upon a formal and a functional level, and a trend towards the integration of systems at many different levels into a single composite, meta-systemic framework.

A functional meta-system that can be comprehensive and practical at the same time must be first and foremost general purpose. The thing about a general purpose tool or tool assemblage is that it lacks any form of specialized features whatsoever. Specialization seems anathema to generalization of purpose. In short, we would say that a general purpose system is a system lacking specialized features overall, or that is "non-specialized." This is not to say that a general purpose tool cannot have specialized features. The relativity of this argument must be accepted.

A prototypical hammer is not a claw hammer, though a nail driving/pulling hammer is perhaps what we in our own carpentered world have come to think of as a conventional "hammer" and it is probably the kind of general purpose hammer most households in the US will have. The prototypical hammer was probably in its original form a blunt round stone hafted to a wooden handle, and evolved in time into what we would call today a wooden mallet. There are many special purpose hammers--sledge hammers, ball-pen hammers, framers hammers, shingle hammers, carver's mallets, rubber mallets, plastic head mallets. These hammers all can do certain types of functions better than they can do other functions and are designed with these specific functions in mind.

The kind of general purpose meta-system framework that I have come to elaborate and found to be most effective in different areas of application consists of the elaboration of a basic development cycle that goes from the original conception, plan or design of a project, its preparatory phase, its prototyping, and subsequent development cycles, which can be extended or foreshortened, and then the evaluation phase which leads back to alteration of the original design and the reconfiguration of the object of the design. This fits within a theoretical framework of general applied systems that I've found to have broad use in natural and real systems of all kind.

We may distinguish on one hand between primary and secondary systems, and on the other hand between basic and derivative systems. We end up with the following kind of framework:

I have found this to be a reasonable model for development of taxonomies of physical and biological systems as well as human systems for instance, and to be congruent with systems-based explanation for the development of extended systems and meta-systems from basic systems. Of course, as is strongly suggested, classification of systems as basic or derivative or as primary or secondary is not always clearly unequivocal and may often involve intermediate forms.

Though there is evidently some degree of relativity in the interpretation of what is basic or derivative or primary or secondary at any given level, we usually do not deal with true primary systems in applied frameworks--primary systems I refer to are for instance the system of the atom or of subatomic structures for physical reality, and, in biology, the cell and the organic molecules that compose a cellular structure. Most applied frameworks that we are concerned with invariably involve secondary type of systems, that range somewhere between basic and derivative or extended forms. Of course, this is not to say that primary systems often do not have critical importance in our secondary applications--for instance the atomic bomb is a clear case of a basic secondary system that is founded upon a keen understanding and manipulation of relationships upon a very basic and primary level of integration, with profound consequences.

It must be understood that systems or systems explanations or methodologies may be comprehensive but they are not therefore complete or sufficient to the understanding or adaptation of reality. Systems at best are but skeletons of reality, waiting to be fleshed out and made meaningful. Systems theory may become in time a theory of everything, but as theory they are not everything, not even every kind of theory. We may refer therefore to a systems based view of the world as a "skeleton worldview" that looks at the basic core structure of how things hang together largely stripped of clothes, skin and the nitty-gritty bloody guts that make life what it is.

*A lot of editing of our publications has been going on, with the aim of extending the readership rate and breadth, and also of interlinking pages, format, and copyright protection. Publication finally of manuscripts in the form of adobe acrobat .pdf files is now in the offing, as well as shorter e-books that are based upon digital page author with transition and formatting effects.

*Our main efforts of late have been two-fold and mutually complementary: 1. parse the framework with the aim of streamlining it; 2. focus the framework functionally upon key project frameworks that will best represent and serve the needs and developmental prospects of the framework in the structure of the long run. As a consequence we have been cutting back many elements and components of an overextended framework, and at the same time we have been attempting to reorganized and reevaluate the remaining components in a more strategically focal manner.

*We have added a new section to this newsletter below, entitled "Auto-Notes" which gives me a framework for self-expression not allowed otherwise.

*We have been working to functionally streamline the overall framework and now the framework organization is entirely consonant with a daily and weekly schedule.

*We have discontinued a couple of active service domains, and will no longer be offering these services in the same manner as before, though we are endeavoring to replace these with superior quality services. Hugh-links has been completely discontinued though it was a successful site attracting growing traffic. It was subject to severe hacking attacks upon the open source scripts in the system that led to bouncing spam from its e-mail programs. This resulted in the domain name becoming blacklisted on some sites, and it was decided to completely discontinue use of this domain name, and to reconfigure the services that were offered under it.

*We have initiated a new project which is a manuscript entitled Universal Systems. Writing this manuscript is an intensive undertaking but it is proving very productive in ramping up the entire problem of general systems theory and methodology to an entirely new level of articulation and consideration, treating a series of what I believe to be critical problems in the articulation of a systems paradigm.

*We have added new sections to our Earthbook to render it more complete as a central forum and this link has been designated as the top level of our entire meta-systems framework. The result has been pushing everything else down by one level. We have effectively articulated fifth level planning frameworks and have resolved earlier dilemmas in this regard. We are shifting rapidly into a more hands-on framework of daily operation and weekly planning.

*We have made both Newsletters bimonthly, each being published on an alternating basis every other week, on Wednesday, by 5:00 PM.

It is recognized that the primary obstacle to alternative development, indeed to all forms of development, is the resistance of human populations to change that stems from prejudicial commitments to maintaining the status quo, primarily because it is unequal in the distribution of power and thus more favorable to some than to others. It is evident that any systems-based perspective in alternative development is bound to meet and have to move a whole human mountain of prejudice.

Human prejudice can be thought of therefore as a framework of symbolic justification for discriminatory behavior, a form of rationalization of behavior, under conditions in which such behavior is defined by unequal relationships of power in the world. We may predict that patterns of prejudice will follow and reinforce the distribution of power in the world, and will serve somewhat as a self-fulfilling prophecy in the unequal realization of power in the world. Prejudice should therefore serve as a primary form of cultural resistance to developmental innovation and change in the world that would serve to empower relatively powerless groups, especially if this empowerment is seen as coming at the expense of the power or potential power of other groups.

All groups of people have an investment in their ethnocultural identity and integrity, and seek to maintain this identity through time and through the generations. Ethnocentrism is the primary form of human prejudice and comes from a selective preference for one's own ethnocultural orientations, values, response patterns, over that of alternative forms or orientations. Ethnocultural displacement takes symbolic expression, and results in what has been called "desymbolization" or the symbolic disintegration of reality. Ethnocultural orientation appears to be normally conservative, and rapid change through forms of culturation can tend to have a destabilizing effect upon ethnocultural systems, resulting in various forms of reaction at various levels of adaptive organization of the individual or group.

During the Roman era, slavery was a common institution and slaves were nothing but cattle or chattel, to be owned, used, bartered, traded, and exploited as a resource. Slaves of this period did not possess a normal human identity. The idea of a fundamental human identity or equality of identity, of basic rights, was not a normal part of the Roman's view of the world. Freedom and power by slaves was forfeit by capture in war or through raiding. Slavery as an institution that still exists in the world is perhaps the starkest and most vile forms of differentials of power and the attitudes that surround and are used to justify the institution of slavery are perhaps the clearest examples of prejudice.

It was only with the emancipation of serfs and slaves in the breakdown of the Latifundian system inherited from the Romans in about the 10th Century AD that slavery became thought of as something inherently evil and in violation of basic principles of justice and equality of humankind. The notion of the equality of all people is attributable mainly to a Christian legacy and worldview that had given all people spiritual identity and equality. Christianity in its original form was indeed a religion of slaves, by slaves, and for slaves, and a grand part of Christian millenarianism, of the coming of Christ and a perfect age marked by many anti-structural reversals of order, universal peace, equality and harmony, is bound in a symbolic worldview tied to the institution of slavery.

Though slavery today as an institution is now internationally outlawed, it is still commonly practiced in some variant form in many regions of the earth, and it is clear as well that though the institution of slavery may no longer exist in legal form, many practices that amount to involuntary servitude and similar consequences of violence and exploitation that we find inherent to slavery, still occur pervasively in the world, even in many otherwise open and democratic contexts.

The only explanation I can offer for this wide spread pervasiveness of the structures based upon maintaining inequality of power in the world is that human beings are socially preoccupied, largely in a neurotic manner, with power, especially in its social and symbolic-behavioral manifestations. Such empowerment is typically achieved at the expense of other people.

Beyond intrinsic issues relating to the functional organization and development of operational priorities in the framework, the critical obstacle to "stepping out" at the sixth level of articulatory development of this framework has been seeking to understand and deal with the kinds of prejudices and biases that inform our world and that "prestructure" our world in biased and discriminatory manners. I am the first to admit that if I have been a failure in my life, and labeled a failure in life, it is due in no small measure to the incapacity to deal effectively with the larger problem of prejudice.

This last half month has been largely about getting my proverbial "act" together in a manner and at a level that I've not previously achieved, in terms that are clearly identifiable as systems based and systems related. A large part of this issue has been in attempting to shift gears from that of being "obsessively" preoccupied with functional meta-system frameworks to that of becoming more "compulsively" involved with working routines and developmental projects involving working systems.

I have come to value the meta-system framework I have developed greatly. I see the long terms costs and outcomes, and the trajectory overall, and in spite of all the limitations and shortcomings, it has begun to succeed. I have made many mistakes in this regard, some that have been considerable, and, in hind-sight, considerably short-sighted, but at least I've tried to learn from the errors of my ways.

The most valuable aspects of the meta-system framework to me have been: 1. the sense of constructive context it has provided me, especially in lieu of any other more rewarding framework; 2. the independence of the framework and the independence it promises and provides; 3. the sense of personal and professional empowerment it has provided to me, especially in lieu of any other constructive opportunities for such empowerment; 4. the ability to contextualize a broad range of problem sets and considerations within a single, comprehensively integrated framework; 5. the ability and potential of constructive extension of such a framework in a large number of alternative directions.

1. Lack of constructive context in life is destructive. Our Great Society most often coercively manipulates people by systematically depriving people of sufficient contexts by which they can achieve fulfillment in their lives. By doing so, it can systematically avoid, especially in a legalistic society, what would amount to as legal ramifications and consequences. This kind of manipulation took frightening new dimensions during Reagan's first term of office. Twenty-five years later, we see a second generation of manipulators following in their predecessors footsteps and with an entrenched sense of "Legacy" working in their favor. Being able to create an effective context for oneself, one that works in a functional manner, is the first step toward unhooking oneself from the manipulation that goes on in the world.

2. It has become increasingly important to me to define my own identity, professionally and personally, in an independent manner, and to define the identity of this meta-system framework in a similarly independent way. Independent frameworks are important in a world that seems be growing increasingly "one dimensional" in spite of contradictory rhetoric about "diversity."

3. I guess, in terms of my own meta-system framework, I get to be kind of the emperor of my realm. I do not need to be emperor so much as to not carry the illusion of wearing the emperor's new clothes. I guess, in other words, I have zero tolerance for hypocrisy and self-righteous arrogance that I see in so many other people these days. This is not to say that I do not have my moments, my many moments, of all kinds. That's it, after all, I'm all too human and all too imperfect for a world that pretends to be something other than, or more than, human. If I am writing and thinking alternative cosmologies today, without a strong physics background but with a strong sense of science, perhaps it was because I was always kind of meant to think and act this way. My first interest in cosmology developed as a kid reading alternative constructs by George Gamow and Fred Hoyle--even back then I kind of though Hoyle's account seemed more reasonable. Of course, back then, I read a lot of different things, Poe, Shakespeare, Herodotus, Caesar, Isaac Asimov, Tolkien, Ayn Rand, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Einstein, Buckminster Fuller, etc. I read a lot back then--perhaps instead I should have been going to High School Football games and dances instead. Anthropology I guess came somewhat naturally and logically to me, when almost any other discipline or field seemed stifling and rigid. My venture in Anthropology I do not regret, and I still consider myself an Anthropologist, albeit a disenfranchised and dispossessed kind. In America, I was never given a chance out the starting gate--when others were being let into the Academic mansions of Anthropology through the back door. And it had nothing to do with how good I was or could have been. What little funding I had for whatever fieldwork I carried out, came mostly either from personal funds or from overseas Granting agencies. The US sources were never there for me, and I learned early on simply not to count on them. I still call myself an anthropologist, and still conduct a range of research on a regular basis, in spite of the fact that I have been "constructed" out of social existence by "correct" Anthropologists. I certainly did not become the kind of Anthropologist I might have been under other circumstances. It was not that anthropology died--though the cross-cultural part of it certainly became Reaganistic road-kill. It just got corrected into a sordid kind of Academic banality that seemed no longer to serve my own intellectual interests or involvements. The sense of discrepancy between the kind of anthropology I was interested in, and what led me to the halls of anthropology in the first place, and how I found anthropology to really be articulated in those halls, only increased over the years and never diminished, to the point that I feel now no connection to what happens in such academic contexts. Now, I see, like Francis Bacon, all knowledge to be my province. So I am the first to admit that my framework is a means of empowerment for myself. We all need and seek empowerment somehow--hopefully we do so in a constructive manner and not in a violent or destructive way.

4. Development of a meta-systems framework has demonstrated considerable dividends over time. I have from the beginning sought to define this framework in a general and generalist sense, which has meant in part the necessity of having to resist its specialization or cases in which specific problem sets take precedence over the general problem of the development of the framework as a whole. This has most often proven to be an expensive proposition, as in a world that is based compulsively upon specific product development, there is so far little or next to no demand for alternative general frameworks. But this development never precluded the possibility or reality of specialized adaptations or specific product development that would be associated more with its business end of things. It only precluded exclusive or preset focus upon limited alternatives.

5. I still see the development of the meta-system framework, not only as the best and perhaps only hope for my own "half-way" social salvation, but possibly, in a larger and more grandiose sense, for the salvation of many people and even of entire systems of people. Of course, I've been brought repeated to the realization that if the meta-system framework does nothing more than empower myself in my own idiosyncratic terms in the world, and allows me to achieve my own sense of independence in the world in a constructive manner, than it will have accomplished its basic goals.

It has been known and realized repeatedly from the beginning that human prejudice and the structures of discrimination that this leads to and reinforces, would be the main stumbling block and obstacle to the realization of an alternative meta-systems framework. I think this is even more true than it once was, simply because the amount of prejudice seems to increase in inverse proportion to the relative closure of the overall system, and simply put, the system appears to be growing more and more closed, almost by the day. Of course, human prejudice is the primary obstacle to all human development undertakings in the world. Many people are in fact implicitly antagonistic to alternative frameworks of development, either because they have a vital vested interest in maintaining the status quo, or they suffer some neurotic form of symbolic dependency on predefined structures of knowledge and find any change or alteration threatening to their insecure view of the world.

It seems, in my small mind, that human systems can ill afford in the structure of the long run to remain long conservative and resistant to the development of alternative frameworks and operating systems. The tempo and pace of systems change in the world is not only accelerating, it is accelerating exponentially with each passing decade.

I no longer have any doubt in the efficacy or validity of this framework. I do not adopt the framework religiously or ideologically--indeed I see it's articulation as an anti-dote to religion and closed symbolic ideology. I have developed aspects of the framework somewhat paradigmatically, as I feel that such paradigmatic definition is important to its articulation and extension in the larger social world. But even the paradigmatic aspects have been defined in a somewhat open-ended manner.

It has taken me a long time to develop what I consider to be an accurate and realistic understanding of American culture and social patterning, though I am an American and have been both a victim as well as a player in its daily unfolding. I see the American social context in an increasingly exploitative and alienating manner. I see it as culturally destructive of human resources and potentials, and basically frustrating for the individual who is a member of it. I therefore do not consider contemporary American culture to be very "healthy" from the standpoint of providing effective or necessarily realistic frameworks of human adaptation and development. In this context, from a social standpoint, I think that development of a realistic and effective alternative systems paradigm is virtually impossible. The only saving grace about being in the US and being American is the freedom and potential resources available for such development to be initiated, but I think that is really about all there is to it. This is what everyone else seems to be doing here anyway.

I have known from the start as well that the meta-system framework as I am developing this has not been meant as anything other than a global framework, meant to be defined largely in international contexts and settings. Our openness and willingness to consider alternative possible life-styles and worlds to fit those life-styles, however "liberal" and therefore something "small and dirty" this may be to many people, is what I think marks us out and defines us in the world, apart from the rest of nature and from the rest of a careless humanity, as human beings.

Scientific worldview and Systems based perspectives are largely to be seen as being inimical and separate from one another. I would claim that conventional science and systems-based frameworks constitute entirely different paradigms, or even "meta-paradigms" for seeing, describing and relating to reality. I think they are not intrinsically incompatible, unless we make them so, and they are at least dialectically, if not methodologically, overlapping, and I would say, with some adjustments, complementary. But they are not isomorphic to one another, and they are not contained within one another, one way or the other.

I have been involved to some extent in both worlds now. I have come to prefer the systems-based framework over that of the conventional sciences, not because it is less well received, and I always seem to side with the underdog in history, but I see it as more fundamentally comprehensive, open, and potentially effective as a paradigm for action and research, than what a conventional scientific paradigm has been. Science has achieved on many fronts spectacular success, and much about human nature and the natural world seems to demand the level of specialization and problem focus that has been the hallmark and forte' of conventional scientific methodologies. I do not by any means seek to denigrate this success. I only wish to suggest that this success is not without its limitations and has not come without rather severe and perhaps unnecessary costs. I guess, dialectically speaking at least, I'm a curious fellow, as I seem to be able to live comfortably with a foot in each world, and feel little sense of discrepancy about it.

Perhaps the most instructive and successful example of what happens when a systems based perspective runs up against a paradigmatic framework of "normal science" occurred with Louis Binford and the rise of systems-based "New Archaeology" during the 1960's in response to what amounted to a sterile and non-productive culture historical methodology in North American archaeology. The tradition of culture history had developed around very well defined principles that were considered part and parcel of archaeological scientific method. Bound within this tradition, one could not escape the reification of typologies of artifacts and the inference of "cultures" and "peoples" attached to these artifacts. The truly revolutionary development in scientific archaeology was really the invention of carbon dating techniques in the 1950's, which resulted not only in a Nobel prize, but in the ability to absolutely date many artifacts and sites, with a fair degree of certainty and accuracy, for which no non-relative dates previously existed. This set the stage, I believe, for the introduction of systems-based methods to archaeological research, which in turn revolutionized archaeology as a science, both in theoretical development as well as in methodological approaches to sites and artifact distributions.  Like ecology, the pre-historical problem and patterning of archaeology and human cultural artifacts buried in the ground seems to lend itself well to systems based perspectives. 

Conventional science as it is taught and practiced tends to preclude the adoption of a Systems based perspective. Systems based perspectives find little development in Conventional sciences except in some areas like ecology, computing, systems engineering, etc. The preferred approach of the conventional sciences is a model I would claim to be based upon "direct causality" or "historical causality." An event happens, causing another event to happen. I think a premium in science is placed upon this kind of explanation, and upon gaining the kind of empirical evidence that supports this kind of explanation. On the surface it makes sense.

The scientific method in general deals with specific systems as finite structures and in specific empirical terms. The theories it derives or develops in relation to these systems tend to be specific to the kinds of systems being dealt with. We tend in science to deal with a particular system of a particular kind, and we tend to deal with such a system in primarily an analytical manner. In contrast to this, I would assert that in Systems explanation for event structures, a model of indirect and complex causality is invoked, or alternatively a form of "complementariness" of structural interactions or relationships. An event is a part of a system, or the result of the behavior of the system, and can be explained in terms of the interactions between the parts of the system, on one hand, and the interaction between the system and its parts and the larger environment in which it is situated, on the other hand.

If we were to contrast styles of genius and thinking between "science" and systems based perspectives, then I would be inclined to look at someone like Albert Einstein as the epitome of a scientist, and the kind of universal genius like Leonardo Da Vinci as an example of a person who thought and acted, if not explicitly, then implicitly in terms of systems frameworks. We seem these days to have a vested interest in trying to educationally clone and reproduce little Einsteins, and anyone who can promise to do so with a new teaching methodology is sure to land a huge US government grant, but we do not seem to be very interest in the kind or cultivation of the kind of talent or genius embodied in someone like Leonardo Da Vinci. Not only did Da Vinci stand at the edge of the Age of Science, with one foot in the previous age of medieval scholasticism, but, simply put, he was so brilliant in so many ways, and perhaps so practical, that he would make an extremely difficult act to follow.

The basis for alternative development is human development, and the basis for human development is independent empowerment of individuals and groups in a non-violent and non-exploitative manner. Empowerment presents something of a dilemma, because it is empowerment within received and pre-established systems that forms the basis of prejudice and reasons for resistance to alternative development in the first place, and it is the tendency for frameworks of unequal empowerment to develop by which one person or group achieves empowerment by means of the domination and exploitation of another individual or group.

Symbolically and behaviorally, human beings are primarily motivated by power and the prospects of empowerment. The symbolic transformation of humankind that was the hallmark of human cultural evolution has been based upon the achievement of power. Some would argue that this is rooted in our evolutionary situation, that, like other higher primates, our social organization depends upon an alpha male to maintain a pecking order and a reproductive regime. This may or may not be the case. It is clear that definitions of social race that center on body type and physical characteristics form the basis for both social-sexual attraction as well as for success. What is equally clear is the symbolic transference of the sense of empowerment to alternative forms and definitions of success-such as money, prestige, conspicuous consumption, etc. Achievement of power takes many different forms in social life, and is largely defined by cultural norms and practices. Of course, human nature being broadly variable and prone to discrepancies, we can always expect deviant and divergent forms of idiosyncratic empowerment to occur among people.

If we wish to understand what people are doing, and why, we must ask the question, in terms of the individual or group, what is the sense of their empowerment that is involved, either psychologically or ethno-culturally, and what is their means of achieving this empowerment. 

It follows that if the principle means of resistance to the initiation and implementation of alternative development programs are the biases that come built into pre-established developed frameworks that define the structure of power relations in the world, then the means to achieve success in efforts at implementing systematic change is to offer alternative forms of empowerment to individuals and groups, that are non-exploitative but attractive, and to offer a larger meta-systemic context in which this alternative form of empowerment not only makes sense, but becomes attractive for people.

I offer no pat formulas for overcoming the dilemmas of human empowerment, except to suggest there are two approaches possible. One is the means of prevarication, and the other is the means of honesty, transparency and openness. It is to be expected that most forms of exploitative empowerment in the world is proceeded by the prelude of prevarication. It is far easier to use people to their disadvantage if they are tricked and mislead as to the nature of the relationship. We have recent evidence of misinformation of the American public to foist national policies based upon asymmetrical empowerment in the world.

There are of course ethical and meta-ethical considerations at work in whichever means of empowerment we seek to achieve it. It may seem a simpler and more straight-forward matter to accomplish empowerment through the manipulation of information, but this inevitably results in a form of empowerment that is unjust because it depends upon the exploitation and taking advantage of others. It is a more difficult challenge to develop systems, and contexts for systems, that encourage and systematically promote forms of empowerment that are based upon human information and education, and the forms of human development that derive not from the manipulation of people, but from their independence capacity-building and realization. In a sense, we have a meta-ethical obligation to do the latter form of empowerment, and to attempt to at least avoid if not completely counter-act the former form of manipulative and exploitative empowerment.

In defining independent, non-exploitative empowerment, definitions of "exploitation" become important. I would refer to it as non-reciprocally or imbalanced forms of exchange in which one individual receives far more than given, and the other receives far less than given. Exploitation is a form of victimization, and I would claim, violence, in as much as we can define violence as the systematic violation of human rights. Current political realities of the world determine that we cannot safely, expediently or providently apply a universal paradigm to all people in all contexts without accounting for differences of nationality and ethnocultural background, differences of class and status. But understanding the larger framework for empowerment provides us with a common understanding and a charter for universal human rights and responsibilities, and provides a common framework toward which we can work as a desirable set of goals.

I am inclined increasingly to apply the principle of non-exploitative empowerment not only to all other people in the world, but to all forms of life as well, within reasonable limits. Our own empowerment should not depend upon or come by means of the exploitation of others in the world, nor of natural resources upon which we depend. Perhaps in an evolutionary sense it is unreasonable to assert a paradigm of complete non-exploitation of resources, because this would include the air we breath or the forms of life we eat in order to stay alive. But we can adopt a relative paradigm by which we can categorize different forms of life and determine their resourcefulness for humans on the basis of their necessity, their relative availability and abundance (or their relative scarcity). We cannot justify the extermination of a form of life merely because they are of indifferent value to us--we cannot afford to exterminate any species upon which we may directly or indirectly come to depend. Putting the genetic codes of species in banks is not a way to save a species if that species is destroyed in terms of its ecosystem that it evolved into. The greatest loss of biodiversity as a result of human cultural development has not come through direct predation or even competition, but through the loss of vital habitat and the destruction of ecosystems upon which forms of life depended and adapted for their development.

It follows that provisioning the people with the means and frameworks by which to independently achieve their own empowerment in the world, by symbolic means that are socially sanctioned in a positive and productive way in a global framework, is the best means we have of realizing a human revolution of empowerment. This would include opportunities for educational and productive work achievement, for mobility, for material well being, health, etc. Any meta-systems framework that can accomplish this lofty but non unrealistic set of goals in a broad-based manner is a framework worthy of undertaking.

This second week of our third edition has been slow. Mainly, I have kicked off a new manuscript entitled Universal Systems and so far it has proven quite productive. Universal Systems essentially takes up the Systems argument where the theory of General Systems left off, elaborating the main points and key problem areas of such a framework. It essentially involves an entire new level of elaboration of systems based thinking and theory.

This has been in line with shifting emphasis away from web-system development to more hands on/real time development of the five main subdivisions. One of the keys in doing this has been redefining a main working set of priorities in this regard, with the idea that the main priorities will shift as time and emphasis changes things. Our lives are ultimately defined by the priorities we can consistently keep and hold on to. I think it has also been a case of reevaluating basic things in life with the idea of shifting values reflected by habits, interests, a sense of space and time, organization, etc.

Prioritizing systems development is an important first-step in implementation, of course. Developing a system that facilitates the prioritization and shifting of priorities in a reliable manner is important as well. Of course, my life priorities and my own individual preferences intersect with this in terms of the daily choices and larger decisions I make, but there are larger consequences in a corporate sense of how things develop or may possibly develop. But the trick in my life has been to work smarter, not harder. I've worked hard all my life, and given my background, have very little to show for it. Can we work smarter in this world without deception, without manipulation, without taking advantage of others? Any system of priorities must ultimately include what I call life and strategic priorities, and it comes with the recognition that upon some basic level, everyone wants basically the same kinds of things--air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, and people to talk to. 

Another way of looking at this problem is to reframe it. Priorities are developed because we must choose between multiple alternatives, and when means are limited for the realization of choices. To choose one alternative over another is to select that alternative as preferable and more desirable. We do not always know before hand the consequences of our choices, but we must make decisions based upon the best information and rational calculus we can, in the best of possible worlds at least. Given always limited means to achieving a range of alternative ends, what is the best calculus to use means in the most efficient way to achieve the greatest ends. It must be remembered in the complexities of life that ends are sometimes difficult to clearly identify, and may be open ended and essentially infinite in their range of choices, and may often be unrealistic or basically unachievable. It is always a question then as to what the next best decisions can be that will result in the achievement, in the shortest possible route, of the desired aims, whatever these may be. The problem of relating limited means to not unlimited ends is constant and chronic and complex. It lacks clear formulation or resolution, and itself is dynamic, changing with shifting goals, new means and new possibilities. Goals are usually unclear, and the methodologies for achieving them even less certain. Everything we do, or even think to do, involves trade-offs whether we realize it or not.

Consensus is emerging that Spam is destroying the Internet, undermining freedom of the Internet and retarding e-commerce. Spam seems like a cancer of human systems. One cell can do a great amount of damage, and I think it is the case that the bulk of Spam is really representative of the efforts of a relatively small proportion of people on the Internet. Dealing with this issue has affected how we organize and present ourselves to the world. We have a definite "NO SPAM" policy. We operate and manage things in a manner to reduce and minimize the Spam load, and that as much as possible circumvents dealing with Spam. No marketing framework is worthwhile if it only increases the net Spam load on the Internet, no matter what the legal disclaimers or loop-holes may be.

The great aspect of the Internet is its potential for development and integration, which will or should eventually translate into human systems. Anyone can start a site, a blog, anyone can publish an opinion, move a product, write an e-mail. This is the great thing as it will be or at least can be the basis for a richer and more equal world. We should therefore bear in mind that a few rotten apples don't spoil the whole basket.

The First Anniversary of Lewis Works Newsletter

Lewis Works Newsletter is now one year young, give or take a couple of weeks. It has been a year since I started this Newsletter. Looking back, it seems like just last week that I got it going, though a lot has transpired between then and now. The Newsletter has grown and developed in sophistication, and this development reflects the progress that has been made in the Lewis Works framework overall, in spite of the many kinds of problems that have been confronted over the last twelve months. There have been two breaks between newsletter editions--the first occurring in mid-summer and precipitated by some unexpected events that required my being out of the home most of the time. This second break occurred over the last two months, involving year end rethinking and revamping of things, and has seen coincidentally some major problems with hacking attacks and spam abuse as well as significant renovation to our framework. I take the increased amount of Internet abuse to be a negative form of attention and a sign of the increasing "strange" success of my web-system, albeit in a somewhat twisted virtual world. The challenge really is to try to straighten this world out a bit, a least within the purview of my own web system. In hindsight, I would say that the year 2004 was one in which a lot of lessons were learned, some better and most for poorer, but all learning is for the better if we come away from the lesson with understanding. I would not want to have to do these lessons over again--I make a point of learning by my mistakes and not repeating them. I look forward to a better year all the way around. There have been many false starts and many stops this past year--not an inconsiderable amount of wasted effort (many would think everything I'm doing is a waste of time and money). I keep in mind that a far bigger waste is a failed military effort in Iraq, and then my problems become peanuts by comparison. I look forward to a year more productive than the last.

I have met many of my goals that I set for myself this past year, though not always in the way I would have anticipated at first. I have managed to carry my framework to a level that it is ready to "step out" and fly or fall on its own, so to speak. I had the opportunity over Christmas time to take my daughter to see the "Body Worlds" exhibit in Los Angeles. This exhibit features the plastinated parts and organs of human bodies in various forms of display. Perhaps the most impressive to me, beside the muscular skinned polo player on top of the muscular skinned horse, were the plastinated specimens of human brains that lined a small glass cabinet. Looking at the small size of the human brain, hardly larger than a soft-ball and in weight just a few pounds of tissue, I made a comment to my wife to the effect "behold the most complex system in the universe that we know of." One or two bystanders made a second glance my way and then back at the cabinet. Of course, the brain by itself, alone in the cabinet, doesn't amount to much in spite of its intricacies of cellular structure. Considering that it is the living brain, bound within the human body, the seat of human consciousness, dreams, the soul, love, rationality, creativity, and the coordinator of such sophisticated feats as typing and writing and playing musical instruments, that it is the seat of this wonderful system of logic and reason, of art and feeling, and so much more, we cannot but be amazed by what has been accomplished in four billion years of blind evolution on earth, and what we have accomplished in four million years of our own largely blind evolution.

Development in the future no longer needs to proceed in a blind manner--we have the vision of our brains to see and make our own futures after our own designs.