PHILOSOPHY
Implementing the transition to a sustainable future urgently requires a level of collaboration without precedent in history. The prerequisite is widespread prior agreement on the goal, for as Confucius said, when people share a common goal their natural tendency is to co-operate to realise it.
"The [industrial] world begins by making splits, then drawing boundaries, then solidifying
these boundaries. Then we fool ourselves into believing what we have made ourselves
see. Solidifying boundaries is very comfortable, because it allows us to deny our experience...
We miss the whole system."
– Gregory Bateson
• Steps to an Ecology of Mind
"We can't even think of solutions without correctly recognising the problems, and it is
now commonplace to pose our problems incorrectly. We tend to focus on what's seen,
rather than on our way of seeing... Instead of focusing on how we produce and consume,
we must focus on how we perceive and on how we communicate."
– Gene Youngblood • Expanded Cinema
"In order to develop a sustainable civilisation, we must first imagine it – concretely – at the global, regional and local level."
– Michael O'Callaghan
Global Vision's strategic, whole systems, self-organising, trans-disciplinary approach to this challenge is designed to bridge the information gap which often prevents individuals and organisations from being able to take advantage of collaborative opportunities to implement solutions that work.
We see the institutions through which human societies manage their collective concerns as the nervous system of the global body politic. We view the global crisis as a rapid cultural learning opportunity. We are especially interested in the pattern that connects the world sitation to one's own way of seeing it. We think individual common sense is the greatest untapped resource on the planet.
See related papers below for more information:
Sustainability: Positioning the concept as a global goal
download (23 pages, 484kb PDF)
NGO Position Paper for the International Conference on Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability, organised by UNESCO and the Government of Greece at
Thessaloniki, 8 - 12 December 1997. By Michael O'Callaghan, Global Vision Corporation. Published in "Environment & Society : Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability", proceedings of the Thessaloniki International Conference organised by UNESCO and the Government of Greece, University of Athens, 1998, ISBN 960-86312-0-3.
Re-published in "Sustainable Development: Education, The Force of Change", Transdisciplinary Project "Educating for a Sustainable Future", (EPD) UNESCO, 1999, Paris, ISBN 92-9143-039-0.
Global Strategy: Promoting the concept of sustainability as a global goal
download (19 pages, 400kb PDF)
NGO Position Paper for the Second Session of the
United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)
May 16 - 28, 1994. Updated November 14, 2000.
By Michael O'Callaghan, Global Vision Corporation.
A conversation with the psychiatrist Dr. John Weir Perry
download (19 pages, 1MB PDF)
From "When the Dream Becomes Real: The inner Apocalypse in mythology, madness and the future", 1922.
By Michael O'Callaghan, Global Vision Corporation.
The Patern that Connects
How do you feel about the future? Global problems such as climate change, the population explosion, overconsumption, resource depletion, tropical deforestation, desertification, the ozone hole, weapons proliferation, the debt problem, globalisation, unemployment, growing inequity, regional economic and political turbulence, and the possibility of terminal resource wars – amount to an impending crisis of planetary proportions. They threaten us all, and yet we have all contributed to their creation. Viewed in the context of evolution and of history, it seems that Humankind is approaching the moment of truth when its rapidly growing population will either destroy the eco-social system on which its survival depends, or learn how to adapt in a sustainable way to the realities of our planetary biosphere.
The second branch of Cybernetics deals with the more complex control processes through which self-organising biological and social systems regulate themselves, maintain homeostasis (stability), and adapt to the changing environment on which their survival depends.
In Bateson's view,
"There is latent in Cybernetics the means of achieving a new and perhaps more human outlook, a means of changing our philosophy of control, and a means of seeing our own follies in wider perspective". [4]
Observing that the Earth's biosphere (including Humankind) is a self-organising system, Bateson remarked that "no part of (such a) cybernetic system can have unilateral control over the whole or any other part." This cybernetic law holds true not just for human attempts to control nature, but also for individuals, social groups, organisations, corporations and governments which – for whatever reason – would like to change the behaviour of others. As Bateson said:
"The myth of power, is of course, a very powerful myth; and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it... But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to all sorts of disaster... If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also come to see the world in terms of God versus man; élite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at the world can endure...
Now consider the world-wide efforts and movements for peace, sustainability, health, human rights, gender equality, social justice, etc., from this perspective. Insofar as our approach is limited to attempts to control the symptoms of our global dis-ease, all we are really doing is trying to do modify the behaviour of those whom we may perceive to be responsible for the various problems we want to solve. This pre-Cybernetic way of thinking reinforces the perceptual splitting of Humankind into complementary antagonistic groups: the economic globalisers versus fair traders, environmentalists versus polluters, peace makers versus war mongers, human rights activists versus fascists, progressives versus conservatives, political party A versus political party B, religious fundamentalists versus their enemies, terrorists of the left versus terrorists of the right ,"us" against "the system," and vice-versa! Enormous amounts of energy, money and time intended to make things better are wasted by both sides in a mutual cancelling-out process of complementary antagonism, guaranteeing that the overall situation will continue to worsen, while time runs out.
"To want control is the pathology! Not that the person can get control, because of course you never do... Man is only a part of larger systems, and the part can never control the whole...
So what to do if you want to change the world? Start with a systemic perspective:
"The problem of how to transmit our ecological reasoning to those whom we wish to influence in what seems to us to be an ecologically good direction is (thus) itself an ecological problem". [6]
Carl Jung made the same observation in psychological terms:
"To know where the other person makes a mistake is of little value. It only becomes interesting when you know where you make the mistake, for then you can do something about it. What we can improve in others is of doubtful utility as a rule, if, indeed, it has any effect at all." [7]
The US government's so-called "war on terror" is perhaps the most outstanding example of a total lack of Cybernetic wisdom. Rather than examine and change its brutal foreign policy which, as Noam Chomsky so exhaustively documented, has repeatedly attempted to control other nations ‚ and nourished the resentment and Islamic fundamentalism which apparently resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center – the US-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are certain to produce precisely the opposite of the results intended, increasing the support for terrorism whilst simulataneously degrading the democratic principles of the USA itself and of the United Nations system so painstakingly built up for the sake of peace.
"There is something called learning at a rather small level of organisation.
Endnotes:
1.
Bateson, Gregory. Steps To An Ecology Of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Ballantine Books / Random House, New York, 1972. Republished with a foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson, University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN-10: 0226039056. ISBN-13: 978-0226039053.
2. Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences). E.P. Dutton, New York, 1979. Bantam, 1980. ISBN-10: 0553137247. ISBN-13: 978-0553137248.
3. Bateson, Gregory and Mary Catherine. Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. Bantam, 1988. ISBN-10: 0553345818. ISBN-13: 978-0553345810.
4. Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind (see note 1 above).
5. Bateson, Gregory. Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization, in Steps To An Ecology Of Mind (ee note 1 above).
6. Jung, Carl. Man And His Symbols. Dell, 1968. ISBN-10: 0440351839. ISBN-13: 978-0440351832.
7. Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 6th. century B.C.E.; translated from the Mandarin by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Wildwood House, London, 1972. Republished by Vintage, 1997. ISBN-10: 0679776192. ISBN-13: 978-0679776192.
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Introduction to the participatory planning manual for Global Vision, our proposed feature film conceived as a collective self-portrait of Humankind and the biosphere.
By Michael O'Callaghan, Global Vision Corporation, New York, 1982.
Because the crisis is global, is in everyoneís self-interest to solve it. And if certain groups behave as if they have a vested interest in seeking gain at the expense of the world, they need our help and compassion for they are surely suffering from a dark illusion. The development of a sustainable society would benefit us all. But most people – especially the 50% of the world population that now lives in cities – find it hard to imagine what a sustainable society would be like. And with good reason, since ecological sustainability has never been part of their history, their mythology, or their experience. Indeed, the ecological, economic and social benefits of a sustainable society almost defy description.
So far, the first steps along the path to sustainability have taken the form of issue-specific movements for the environment, sustainable development, appropriate technology, renewable resources, preventive medicine, humanistic psychology, human rights, womenís issues, fair trade, peace, and so on. Like allopathic medicine, however, this type of response is analogous to an attempt to control the symptoms of a disease, while the symptoms continue to worsen. Whatís needed is a cure. Without a systematic shift towards a more systemic healing approach, these movements offer little hope of reversing the accelerating long-term trend towards eco-social chaos. For despite the local and global efforts currently underway, we are now losing more topsoil, destroying more rainforest, causing the extinction of more species, creating more climate change, increasing the rich-poor gap, sinking deeper into debt, creating more resentment, fostering more fundamentalism and terrorism, losing more civil liberties, squandering far too much money on out-dated military approaches to security, and coming ever closer to the brink of self-annihilation.
Until we recognise the part each one of us is playing in this problem, it may only now be a matter of years until the crisis becomes irreversible. If that happens, the historic opportunity for an ecologically sustainable, democratic form of civilisation may be lost forever. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu said: "The only way to prevent a disaster is to deal with it before it happens".
This conceptual framework for the participatory planning of the Global Vision Project presents a clearly-stated, scientific way of looking at the global crisis which very strongly suggests that the transition to a sustainable form of civilisation could come about much more rapidly – and less expensively – than most people now believe to be the case.
A whole systems approach
The language of this conceptual framework is that of General Systems Theory, and Cybernetics. Before we get into the first chapter of the Manual, a few words about these subject are therefore in order here.
General Systems Theory is a body of scientific knowledge which makes use of a common vocabulary to discuss matters that were previously described in the specialised vocabularies of separate disciplines such as ecology, economics and so on, because as Buckminster joked, "God does not have separate departments of physics, chemistry and biology" to describe the Universe.
The word Cybernetics comes from the Greek for helmsman – one who steers a ship. Cybernetics is defined as the science of communication and control. It maps the pathways of information by which systems may either be regulated from outside, or regulate themselves from within. The science thus has two main branches: the first one deals with the control of machines, and led to the development of things like anti-aircraft guns, spacecraft navigation systems, and computers. This branch does not concern us here.
This field was developed by a small number of thinkers including the great anthropologist and biological philosopher Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980), shown in the photo to the left. He played a major role in the early formulation of Cybernetics, and helped introduce Systems Theory and Communications Theory into the work of social and natural scientists.
He was the author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology [1], Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences) [2], and Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. [3].
The whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable during the Pre-Cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way." [5]
But the global problems we face are not really separate from each other, nor from the whole of Humankind which needs to resolve them before it is too late. As of 2008, that's over 6 (heading for 10 or 12) billion people, each one of whom is part of the whole interconnected biosphere-humankind-culture-technology which constitutes the "system" in question, including you and me and all of our conscious and unconscious assumptions, expectations, and beliefs.
As Bateson said:
Cybernetics today is still rarely taught in universities, and wrongly presumed even by the educated public to be some rarefied pursuit of interest only to esoteric epistemologists. In China however, in the 6th century BCE, the poet and philosopher Lao Tsu recognised the self-organising principle immanent in nature, which he called the Tao, meaning Nature's way or path of least resistance. Eloquently described in his masterful work, the Tao Te Ching, this essentially cybernetic idea became the General Systems Theory of ancient Chinese culture. [7] Through the mythopoeic vision of the Tao's self-organising function, cybernetic principles were put into practice – in government, medicine, agriculture and religion – and influenced the culture of that country for thousands of years thereafter. Another taoist insight from China comes to us through the ideogram for "crisis", which as is well known, is a combination of the symbols for "danger" and "opportunity".
Bateson's philosophy proposes a way of describing the global crisis – and the manner in which it came about – in a way that reveals opportunities for non-adversarial actions which could prove more effective in healing the underlying source of the problem than the many efforts at controlling the symptoms currently underway.
This optimistic-sounding premise is based on a simple model of the self-organising pattern-recognition process immanent in every living system, including the unconscious part of those human beings whose behaviour other groups want to change, which I have developed as part of the plannnng manual for a feature film conceived as a Collective Self Portrait of Humankind and the Biosphere, which I hope to make a few years from now. This model permits a Cybernetic description of societal evolution which leads to a realisation which may seem naÔve until one understands the reason for it: namely, that individual common sense is now the largest untapped resource on the planet! The real naïveté, however, is to imagine that our existing adversarial modes of political action are going to be able to solve our crisis for us. Rather than attempting to control the symptoms of the world problematique in a piecemeal and adversarial way, it will be far more effective, less costly, and more fun to empower people to see for themselves what they can do to make a difference, or – as Gandhi put it – to be the change you want to see in the world.
The challenge is to be more mindful of the hidden effects of our own perceptions, words, and actions as they travel around the global synergetic geometry of communication circuits within the larger system of which we are all a part. Bateson expressed the hope that by becoming more conscious of such connectivity, new information can emerge, and the larger system will, in fact, change subtly.
As Bateson said:
At a much higher gestalt level, learning is called evolution".
