Preface

Human Systems

Theory, Methodology and Application

I have been involved in human systems theory, both deliberately and unbeknownst, for the past 30 years, and all my formal education has been in one aspect or another of human systems, both theoretical and methodological, as well as in applied forms, especially in areas concerning human development. Formal training in anthropology oriented me, one way or another, toward intellectual development in human systems. I suppose I should be an "expert" on the subject (which I think I am, even if few others think so) and even though the bulk of my writing over the past 30 years has been about one aspect of another of human systems, I have not yet produced a coherent, comprehensive, consistent or relatively concise statement about human systems, whether in terms of theory, methodology or applied matters. 

This work seeks to address and at least partially correct this deficiency of my ill-begotten career. I have the advantage now not only of hard won experience, but of 20-20 hindsight. I can look and see human systems for what they are, unadorned, undistracted by other, largely trivial or otherwise irrelevant considerations. And yet, there remain many unasked and yet to be answered questions about human systems. 

Humankind is unique in the universe, even if evidence of alien intelligence is eventually discovered. We can be sure that there will be important similarities as well as differences between ourselves, our way of seeing the world, our cultures and our civilization, and those "others" who have perchance developed comparable patterns of intelligent behavior. And even if we are not absolutely unique in the universe, odds are great that we are relatively rare, perhaps really, really rare, in the larger field of the vast cosmos. And it is at least this rarity value that should put a fairly high premium on the subject of human systems and the need to understand them, serve them and possibly promote their safe development into the indefinite future.

Human systems are not just multi-faceted and multidimensional. They are holothetic, to dredge up a term I applied some twenty-five years before. They are polythetic and polythematic. We have the unusual dilemma of not just talking about interrelated perspectives--of human language, culture, cognition, behavior, society, ecology, history, psychology, but we have the possibility of talking about each perspective in a holistic manner, as if it were the comprehensive, unifying perspective, rather than just one of of several alternative perspectives.

Human systems certainly also stratify upon multiple levels and this stratification is not simple, but part of a complex process of differentiation of response, identity, role and relation upon several different levels of articulation and information.

Human systems are upon one hand natural systems, the outcome of biological evolution, and upon the other hand they are artificial and alternative systems, forming the basis for entirely new kinds of systems that did not exist before human contrivance and invention. The dilemma of perspective has been that we must study human systems as both natural and cultural systems, not in a dichotomized manner, but in a synthetic and holistic way that takes both biological and cultural traits and determinations fully into account.

Sustainability has become something of a buzz word in our increasingly eco-conscious worldview, which includes both a growing self-realization of our own earthbound condition and of the earth's relatively lonely position among the vast space sea of star systems. Sustainability really takes on critical significance when we consider fundamental lessons of systems ecology, of the inevitability of a population's circumscription in its adaptive environment, and the resulting loss of equilibrium and degradation of environmental resources. The earth's clock has been ticking away, and our population growth and developmental trends have not necessarily been in favor of the long term survival of the human species, even with the advent of many new and exciting forms of scientific technology.

This personal and professional involvement in human systems on my behalf, as a "doctor" of anthropology,  has never been easy and never, ever rewarding in a financial sense. "Doctor" in reference to myself is mostly heard "tongue in cheek" and never without a wry smirk. It seems to have invited only the prejudice and consequent discrimination of many kinds of people who have little understanding of human systems, and less concern except in as much as they themselves may find advantage within them. As now, if the government or some other rich and powerful agency were to throw millions of dollars into the quasi-militarized role of a cross-cultural anthropologist, people would come out of the woodwork claiming newfound expertise in the field based upon a few introductory courses, even when a decade ago not even most professional grade anthropologists would touch the thorny subject of comparative cultural research. I take some consolation in realizing that like summer patriots, sunshine anthropologists will dry up and go away when the cloudy weather and rains return.

Though the chapters interrelate upon multiple levels, there is no necessary order to these chapters. They stand alone, or as a odd collection, but not as a higher order framework. And this perhaps is what remains to be accomplished in the development of a human systems perspective--a larger theoretical and meta-systemic unification that would amount perhaps to a newfound sense of paradigmatic unification of the human sciences. Natural and general systems approaches certainly promise this much, if not more.

In piecing this larger e-manuscript together from my previous collected writings, I have relied heavily and necessarily upon my Systems Essays written between 2004-5 during one of our many lower points, though they have proven highly productive as a collected body of writing on Systems things and perspectives. These cover the many gaps that have occurred in our life and in my writings since that time, albeit insufficiently. There remain many gaps, which I try to cement together by quick writing, but this is insufficient of the intensive involvement necessary to produce a significant set of statements about human systems theory in a unified and coherent manner.

Human Systems

by Hugh M. Lewis