Ik heb rond 2010 op verzoek van IBM Labs meegewerkt aan de introductie van Watson in Nederland.
De presentatie die in deze blog wordt toegelicht heb ik gemaakt voor het Management van Parnassia, een grote organisatie in de GGZ.
De presentatie laat zien dat een simpel fractaal model dat Jung een Quaternio noemde en dat door Will McWhinney is uitgewerkt in zijn verander-aanpak Paths of Change een uitgebreid netwerk genereert dat ook nog is is terug te brengen tot slechts 1 contradictie in combinatie met “beweging” die beide modellen genereert waarbij de twee contradicties in de psychologie Agency en Xommunion worden genoemd die te vertalen zijn in Mannelijk (Agency) en Vrouwelijk )(communiën) en Yin en Yang , 0 en 1. waardoor ook oude Chinese en Indiase modellen soms voorzien van ingewikkelde mystieke taal simpel worden.
Dit is een Powerpoint-presentatie uit 2011 gemaakt om te laten zien hoe slimme hulpmiddelen zoals semantic mining, sensors en proces-management kan helpen om de processen in de gezondheidszorg te ondersteunen.
Er wordt gebruik gemaakt van Paths of Change (PoC) van Will McWhinney om het gebied in kaart te brengen.
Dit gebeurt stap voor stap waarbij er iedere keer een nieuwe (medische) functie wordt toegevoegd.
Aan het einde van de presentatie worden alle stappen samengevoegd in een Gezondheidsarchitectuur die zowel voor de lichamelijke als de geestelijke gezondheidszorg bruikbaar is.
Paths of Change past op Interpersonal Theory een psychologische theorie die de mens beschouwd als een interne en externe relatie.
Diagnose is een verband tussen waarnemen (Zintuigen (Sensors), Ervaring) en waarheid (Kennis). Op basis van de diagnose kun je acties ondernemen die allemaal passen op de algemene verbanden (de “paden”) in Paths of Change. De paden worden in het vervolg verder uitgewerkt.
Dit plaatje is bedoeld om de plek van Watson te introduceren. Watson maakt gebruik van Kennisbanken (een verzameling “waarheden”). Watson is toegespitst op de denkwijze van de specialist. De software doet een specialist na en geeft antwoorden op gestelde vragen.
Dit plaatje bevat een samenvatting van de werkwijze van Watson die door IBM DeepQA wordt genoemd. (QA staat voor Questions/Answers).
In de Diagnostiek worden de volgende aspecten van de Mens meegenomen.
Het is mogelijk om Watson (of een ander Semantisch Mining-tool) automatisch te koppelen aan een Proces-Bibliotheek waardoor er een Behandelplan kan worden gemaakt.
Aangezien er statistische methoden worden gebruikt ontbreekt vaak een menselijke verklaring van de uitkomst. Als het diagnose-hulpmiddel moet aansluiten bij een menselijke expert is dit van belang.
Het behandelplan kan worden gekoppeld aan een database met behandelaars.
en een netwerk met Ervaringsdeskundigen.
Op basis van (diepte)interviews met Ervaringsdeskundigen kan een levensloop-simulator worden gebouwd.
Een groot aantal (zo niet alle) meetinstrumenten van de arts kan worden vervangen door (draagbare) sensors, waardoor er als dat nodig is real-time kan worden gemeten.
Het plaatje geeft een globaal beeld aan van de ontwikkeling van de technologie de komende tien jaar.
De ontwikkelingen in de Medische Wetenschap kwamen in eerste instantie uit verbeterde diagnose (bijv. Rontgen etc) en verbeterde Chemische technologie (BioChemie, Farmacologie). Op dit moment is de BioPhysica aan de leiding. Die ziet de mens als een “Bio(Veld (Biofield). Chemische geneesmiddelen kunnen nu ook worden omgezet in velden.
Duidelijk mag zijn dat E/M-velden kunnen genezen maar ook ziekte kunnen veroorzaken (m.n. Immuunsysteem).
This blog was a Dutch blog put into a Powerpoint Presentation.
Anti-fragile (a term coined by Nassim Taleb) systems are resilient systems that benefit and grow from shocks and stress.
A body benefits from training (= stress) but too much training destroys the body.
Even anti-fragile systems have boundaries.
The term “Resilience” comes from Latin resiliere, “to spring back, start back, rebound, recoil, retreat”, and is often intended and defined as the ability to cope with or recover from change.
Fragile systems are destroyed by a low level of stress or a small crash.
Fragile systems have to be protected by resilient systems otherwise they break.
2 Resilience shows the boundaries to sustainability.
Resilience is defined as: “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks” (Brian Walker).
Resilience corresponds to the Aristotelian concept of entelechy“exercising activity in order to guarantee one’s identity.
It shows what type of systems are able to survive a long time of low/medium stress or a short duration of high stress.
The resilience of a system is influenced by the level of outside disorder the system has to cope with and the internal state of the system itself.
If you increase the size of a fragile system, it becomes more fragile. If you increase the size of an anti-fragile system, it becomes more anti-fragile.
For the fragile, the cumulative effect of small shocks is smaller than the single effect of an equivalent a single large shock. A fragile entity is hurt a lot more by extreme events than by a succession of intermediate ones.
Big systems are almost always anti-fragile unless they are one-sided. In this case they are an easy target for a one-sided big calamity.
Agile systems are many sided.
They are able to react and adapt to different situations all the time. They have no robust structure that connects their components. Agile Systems are fluent.
Anti-Agile systems resist change. They protect their interior with huge boundaries.
Resilience resolves the opposition between internal order (stable) and external disorder (volatile, not stable).
In the end the disorder (entropy) always wins. It wins by making every thing the same.
3 Resume
Humans are forward foragers with a bilateral circular brain.
This brain creates paradoxes by constantly uniting (zoom-in) and not-uniting (zoom-out).
Humans want to protect themselves for what could happen in the future.
Humans need social structures to become resilient. In these structures they have to balance the paradox of selflessness and not-selflessnes (selfishness).
Humans want to be a wHole and part of a wHole.
In the first part of this blog we explore human resilience. Human resilience has a lot to do with Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs.
Resilience happens when we actualize our Self (our wHole), when body, mind, spirit and soul are in balance.
Paths of Change (PoC) is the name of a theory about Change. PoC is used in this blog as a general scale-free reference model.
The Four Worldviews show themselves in four Colors (Yellow, Green, Blue and Red.
PoC is based on four Worldviews that show themselves on every scale with different names. Body, mind, spirit and soul are used on the human scale. What happens on the human scale happens on every scale. As Above so Below.
Humans have bodily mechanisms that keep them from growing boundlessly. Social structures tend to expand beyond the limit.
Nature uses positive (increase) and negative (decrease) feed-back to control growth. When too much growth is measured by the bodily sensors the not-growth system is activated.
4. Alan Fiske
The anthropologist Alan Fiske has created a model that classifies human relations. The model of Fiske is compatible with PoC.
Fiske explains his model with measurement theory and structure preserving mappings. We measure others the same way we measure objects and situations.
The most flexible structure preserving mapping, the symmetric groep (combinations), explains the most selfless human relation, Communal Sharing.
Communal Sharing is Agile. Every time when the environment changes new combinations can be made. A sharing community looks like a living system and achieves resilience by repeating the same proven functionality in a different way.
The less flexible mapping is standardization. In this case we are focused on efficiency. By reducing the complexity of our reality (analytics) we are preparing the way for the machines to take over.
Standardization and the related Market-Pricing Social Structure is anti-agile.
Hierarchic analytic structures (Authority Ranking Social Structure) have big problems with adapting. That is why they want to control everything. They become fragile (and die) when they are disconnected from the rest of the social structures.
Anti-fragility is related to Equality Matching, the social structure of the Creators. The creators are needed to make sure that the diversity of the system is not going down to the level of Collapse.
Resilience has to do with Category Theory, Combinatorics, Fractals, Symmetry-Breaking and Scaling.
5 5P-Systems
A combination of highly stable flexible structures is repeated on every Level of Scale.
Systems are a structure preserving mapping from physical space to mental space.
Systems have Potential (Components/Resources/Connections), Possibility (Mental State Space, Combinations), Plan (One Occurrence of a Possible Combination of Components), Practice (Physical World, Flow, Input, Process, Output) and Protection (Boundary).
The output of a System is the Input of another System.
Boundaries are not walls. They are semi-permeable filters. Just like the walls of a city they contain gates to let the good things in and throw the bad things (waste) out. When you destroy the boundary, the system falls apart.
Sensors are the gates in de wall of the boundary. They determine what the system is able to perceive. Sensors are selectors. They divide the outside world in two parts, the perceived world and the not-perceived world.
Cell Membranes are Filters
Systems produce cascades of events. Events are reactions of other systems to events of other systems. The resilience of a system is dependent on the resilience of its parts and the whole, the ecology, it is part of.
After a destructive event a system can be repaired or restore itself in a certain timeframe. Pushed to the extreme, a system may also transform itself into a completely different structure because the components are put into another Order.
This order is functional or not-functional. In the last situation the structure is left behind and will deteriorate because everything deteriorates on the long term.
Another Order can be caused by a new shuffle of the cards or a new principle that defines why a component has more value than others.
At the End of Time called the Big Freeze everything will be the same. That’s why there is a constant fight between diversity and equality.
Diversity moves against the flow of the Universe and is therefore always a temporary state.
6 Evolution
Extreme stress kills a system but stimulates a new evolutionary path.
‘“In fact, the most interesting aspect of evolution is that it only works because of its antifragility; it is in love with stressors, randomness, uncertainty, and disorder — while individual organisms are relatively fragile, the gene pool takes advantage of shocks to enhance its fitness”. (Nassim N. Taleb)
Nassim Taleb’s body of work on uncertainty reminds us that we should focus on the non-perishable and avoid some of the pitfalls of modernity, like our constant desire to fetishize the ‘new’.
Bicycles, kitchens and cars are all very similar to what they were thirty years ago. “Once in a while you have a breakthrough like the computer but otherwise, it pretty much stayed the same. If anything, we use technologies to produce old goods in a cheaper manner“.
Evolution is a combinatorial game that tries to improve the whole. Evolution reuses parts of the old structure and adds something new by creating new connections.
7. Dual Brain
In the beginning the chemical soup generated self-reproducing chemical factories. These factories combined into bigger factories by exchanging and combining their factory-designs (DNA-parts).
Every time when the factories fused they became more efficient, bigger, stronger, older and therefore more competitive. When the factories became more competitive they started to protect themselves against the other factories.
To protect themselves the multi-cellular systems began to sense in many directions and became better and better in predicting the future.
Humans are clusters of bacteria. In the first stage of our evolution, the Sponge, the cluster was static. In the next stage the cluster began to move in circels and developed a radial brain (a nerve net).
Humans are part of the Bilateria, organisms that forage forward. We make use of a radial connected dual brain in which one part is synthetic and the other part is analytic.
The dual brain is a paradox. It unites and not-unites.
Nerve Net vs Bilateral Brain
Humans use a combination of three bilateral brains: the brain of the reptiles, the social brain of the mammals, and the neocortex, our own calculating talking mind.
This triple brain is a good example of an evolutionary process in which old structures were reused and new parts were added.
The reptile brain of the body gathers data by its sensors and reacts (Stimulus/Response) with the motor-system.
The social brain looks for a partner (to create children), friends, family and competitors to fight/flight or to freeze with (enemies). The enemy is something the social brain shares with the reptile brain.
The neo-cortex is the computer. It is able to reason about the causal chains that are sensed by the social and body brain.
The imagination (spirit) controls the whole of the brain and the body and is situated in the thalamus. The thalamus projects the calculations of the neocortex on our internal screen.
8 Human ivilization
In our earliest societies humans lived as hunter-gatherers.
The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals.
Agricultural production leads to food surpluses and this in turn supports sedentary societies, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor.
Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which leads to larger organizations that want to control the world.
For a very long time the hierarchy was the most important control-system in use.
Currently the center of the system is moving from the top to the bottom because of the rise of communication technology (Internet).
9 Human Needs
Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs included five motivational needs divided into basic (or deficiency) needs (e.g. physiological, safety, love, and esteem) and growth needs (self-actualization).
A violation of a need motivates a human into action. When the violation is too big (a disaster) most humans get into violent action (fight), flight the disaster zone or freeze and don’t do anything. The fight/flight/freeze-respons is related to the reptile brain.
The needs can be divided into four independent categories: (1) The needs of the body, (2) The social needs, (3) The needs of the mind and (4) the needs of the spirit (growth, creativity, insight, idea, identity, whole).
The spirit is the power that stimulates us to reach the Top of the Pyramid of Maslow, to become a whole, realize our potential and find self-fulfillment. With the imagination humans get insight about the future and make plans to prevent calamities.
The mind expands to its ultimate potential by training. It needs to find patterns to control and predict its environment. This has to do with the so called “Illusion of Control”. Too much control (paranoid) generates the fear to lose control.
The body expands to its ultimate potential by physical exercise (but not too much exercise).
The spirit (or self) grows by exploring every thing and keeping the good.
The soul needs many others to praise him/her. To much praise creates the state of narcissism, the soul is in love with its self (spirit).
Human needs are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied.
Human needs are interrelated and interactive. Some needs are conflicting. Others are synergic.
An attempt to satisfy one need can inhibit or destroy others. For example, an Arms Race satisfies the need for protection, while destroying the need for subsistence, freedom or participation.
Humans feel happy when the four conflicting and synergic needs are in balance. When their needs are in balance they are able to handle small and big, positive and negative events.
10 Holmes Life Event Scale
In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe examined the medical records of over 5,000 medical patients as a way to determine whether stressful events might cause illnesses. He found that a disturbance of social needs has the highest impact in life.
11 Kubler Ross Transition Curve.
The Kubler Ross Transition Curve shows how people react when a mostly social (loss of partner) life event becomes too big to handle.
In this case the resilience of the human fails. The first step in the transition is controlled by the Fight, Flight, Freeze Respons of the Sensory-Motor System.
12 Human Set Point
Set Point Theory predicts that wellbeing tends to fluctuate around a level that generally remains uniform over time.
An event of which the pulse is bigger than the bandwidth of the fluctuation around the set-point triggers the FFF-respons of the reptile brain.
After sometimes a very long time of grieve eventually a human returns to his personal fluctuating path.
Set Point Theory shows that Life is a Cyclic Proces that always tries to restore it self. The stability of wellbeing can be ascribed to a dynamic equilibrium model, a homeostasis.
The tangible mechanisms that underpin homeostasis (resilience) are wealth (potential) and relationships (connectedness).
If individuals experience negative events, compromising their immediate wellbeing, they can utilize some of their wealth to purchase resources that can be utilized to defend these problems.
Similarly, they can utilize the support and intimacy of other people in their life, especially partners and children.
The other mechanisms are cognitive processes. For example, individuals can reconceptualize their goals to accommodate negative events.
If debilitated by age or disease, they can derive meaning from other pursuits. They can trivialize the importance of adversities.
People who respond rapidly to a threat with a surge of the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol and recover quickly cope better with stressful situations.
Resilient people are better at using the hormone dopamine to keep them positive. They have a healthily large hippocampus which as well as enabling the formation of new memories also helps regulate the release of the fight-or-flight hormone adrenalin and have a strongly active prefrontal cortex, the brain region dubbed ‘the seat of rational thinking’.
This inhibits the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes negative emotions such as fear and anger, allowing the prefrontal cortex to come up with a sensible plan to cope with a threat.
The Human Set-Point moves up when you are young & down when you are old and is highly influenced by extreme life-events.
Such an event triggers the Sensory Motor System and almost stops the other Systems (Emotions, Imagination, Rationality) until the Pulse has dampened.
13 Human Resilience
Psychological resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity.
Stress and adversity can come in the shape of family or relationship problems, health problems, or workplace and financial stressors, among others.
The primary factor in resilience is having positive relationships inside or outside one’s family.
There are several other factors which develop and sustain a person`s resilience:
(1) The ability to make realistic plans and being capable of taking the steps necessary to follow through with them.
(2) A positive self-concept and confidence in one’s strengths and abilities.
(3) Communication and problem-solving skills.
(4) The ability to manage strong impulses and feelings.
Ultimately resilience is a process of connectedness, of linking to people, to interests, and ultimately to life itself.
The seven aspects of Resilience are:
Access to material resources (Availability of financial, educational, medical and employment assistance and/or opportunities, as well as access to food, clothing and shelter).
Access to supportive relationships (Relationships with significant others, peers and adults within one’s family and community).
Development of a desirable personal identity (Desirable sense of one’s self as having a personal and collective sense of purpose, ability for self-appraisal of strengths and weaknesses, aspirations, beliefs and values, including spiritual and religious identification).
Experiences of power and control (Experiences of caring for one’s self and others, the ability to effect change in one’s social and physical environment in order to access health resources).
Adherence to cultural traditions (Adherence to, or knowledge of, one’s local and/or global cultural practices, values and beliefs).
Experiences of social justice (Experiences related to finding a meaningful role in one’s community that brings with it acceptance and social equality)
Experiences of a sense of cohesion with others (Balancing one’s personal interests with a sense of responsibility to the greater good; feeling a part of something larger than one’s self socially and spiritually).
14 Sense of Coherence
Antonovsky (1979) researched the human ability of being able to integrate extremely stressful life events in one’s own worldview.
He proposed an approach to the origins of health based on the assumption that the human environment causes strain. The stressors responsible for this may be genetic, microbiological, personal, economic, social, cultural or geo-political.
The normal state of the human organism is one of disorder and conflict rather than stability and homeostasis. Antonovsky focused on making order out of chaos, and emphasized the importance of coping resources in dealing with stress.
He sought a construct that would characterize the shared components of a wide variety of generalized resistance resources, such as childhood living circumstances, social support, cultural stability, education and income, and that might explain how they facilitate coping with stressors and promoting health.
Consequently, he found that what these various generalized resistance resources have in common is a life orientation, which he called sense of coherence (SOC). SOC has three main components: comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness.
15 Human Resilience- Forces in Balance
Human Resilience is accomplished when the four parts of the human are in balance. The four parts are synergetic and conflicting. The best way to describe them is to see them as forces that are represented by vectors.
The vectors of the human powers point in different directions (Up, Down, Forward, Backward) just like the Forward Forager of Ken Wilber.
In a balanced situation they cancel each other out.
Resilience is possible when the Sum of the four Forces of the Human: Mind (Up, Abstraction), Body (Right, Forwards to the Future, Cause/Effect), Spirit (Left, Back to the Whole, the Source) and Soul (Down to Earth) is close to zero.
To handle a big Event there has to be enough surplus Potential (Components/Resources/Connections) available to act.
Forces in Balance
The most important Support System for humans is their social network.
Humans Need Humans is a recursive (Fractal) statement.
16 Paths of Change
Paths of Change (PoC) is a general theory about Change developed by Will McWhinney. PoC is used in this blog to compare all kinds of theories and find the best of all worlds.
PoC makes use of the concept of World Views. A World View is an independent way to look at the world.
The term View is perhaps confusing because some people don’t look at the world at all. They feel, imagine or think about the World.
There are four basic World Views that Will McWhinney named Unity (“I know there is only one Truth”), Sensory (“The World is a Network of Causal Chains”), Mythic (“I Imagine my own World”) and Social (“The World is what the Network of Others value”).
“Normal” people are able to play with two (or more) world views. Pathological People use only one Worldview.
The four World Views are described by two variables called Agency and Communion.
Agency emphasises the Self as a distinct unit; it focuses on the persons own individual Influence. Agency has two states (1) I am in Control or (2) Something (or Somebody) is Controlling me.
Path of Change & Cultural Theory
Communion is a motive for the Connection with an Other; it is a motive to participate in a larger Union. Communion has also two states (3) I am alone (4) I am connected.
Bilateral Brain
Behind the two variables lies a 1D model, the model of the Bilateral Brain, Left-Expansion/Analytic (0->) and Righ-Compression/Synthetic (0<-).
Path of Change uses a 2D-model in which the two states are combined: 0->0->, <-o<-0, 0-><-0, <-00->.
There is a Fifth Worldview that is outside the 2×2-matrix in 3D. It represents the Observer/Consciousness. In 2D is shows itself in the Cross in the middle of the matrix.
The Eye of the Observer
Path of Change is a Fractal Theory
Worldviews can be connected. Controlling (Unity) a human who wants to commune (Social) is called Politics. It is also possible to apply a worldview to another worldview. Abstracting (Unity) Human Relations becomes a Social Network.
Path of Change is an Ancient Theory
Path of Change is an ancient theory. It was known and used all over the world with different names and implementations. The worldviews were translated into visible Star Systems (Zodiac), People (“Gods” (India, Egypt,..)), Animals (Medicine Wheel), Games (Chess, Cards (TARO-T)) or Regulations (Laws (China), Religions).
A good example is China. In China Paths of Change was called the Sheng Cycle. In the Sheng Cycle the Observer was projected in the 2D-matrix by introducing a fifth view.
The Sheng Cycle was used to model the body (Acupuncture), the material context (buildings, city, ecology) (Feng Shui) and the state & society (Sun Tsu (the Art of War)).
The organs, the body, the community, the state and the universe were seen as Flow Systems of Energy (Chi) that get into trouble when the flow is disrupted.
This disruption can be caused by blockages or by an input (an event) that is too big or too small to handle. The solution to a problem is to open one channel without causing too much overflow at another point in the system. The diagnosis is done on a place in the system (the pulse) where all the systems get together.
Old Chinese Scientists have developed all kinds of correspondence-tables between worldviews and situations. This makes it possible to reuse a theory by changing the semantics.
Path of Change and Life Events
Path of Change describes the Paths along people (or organizations, or societies) change.
This change is triggered by an external or internal Event. Events are handled by the Sensory-Motor-System.
From the Sensory-Motor-System, the Event can bounce back to the Sensory-Motor-System which reacts with the Fight, Flight, Freeze Respons (FFFR, “I am Afraid”).
The event can propagate further to the Emotions (I Feel what Matters in this Situation), The Imagination (I See What has happened) or the Pattern-Recognition State of Thinking (I know what happened).
The event moves further in the Network until the pulse of the Event comes back to the Sensory-Motor System that Reacts.
Paths of Change are Feed-Back-Systems that try to adapt the human Body (Sensory-Motor), Mind (Patterns, Memory), Emotions or Identity (Imagination) to the current situation.
The possible amount of steps and Time an event travels in the Internal Network cannot be calculated. There are sixteen (4×4) possible paths of length two and many more when the path rotates (with- or against the Clock) and loops through the network. It can take many years before the body acts upon an event.
The FFFR-respons offers a very fast-reaction mechanism which uses predefined scripts when the system evaluates that the Event will be fatal.
The way Events are handled is determinated by the combination of the Worldviews of the Person (his Personality) at stake and his experience (Memory). Almost fatal events are stored in memory.
17. Resilience – Homeostasis
17 Homeostasis
A Homeostatis is a System that determinates what action(s) will compensate an Event and keep the total System in balance.
Our Mind (Unity, Neocortex) is a Homeostasis that controls the Homeostasis of Our (Social, Limbic) Emotions that controls the Homeostasis of the Sensory Reptilian Brain. This part of the brain is concerned with survival.
The thinking Mind, the social Emotions (Soul), the active Sensory-Motor System (Body) and the creative Imagination (Spirit) are coordinated by the thalamus. The thalamus could be the fourth and most ancient brain.
The System (“the whole”, Mythic) has to react to an Event in the Environment but it also has to keep its state of Homeostasis (“Balance”) on all levels.
Last but not least the system has to replace every part that is not able to play its role in the system. This process is called autopoiesis.
Cells are killed (apoptosis) when they don’t fit in the overall picture. Between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the average human adult. For an average child between the ages of 8 and 14, approximately 20 billion to 30 billion cells die a day.
The Four Worldview’s are (Fractal sub-)Systems that keep their own balance and act as sensors for the other sub-systems.
The sub-systems contain sub-sub-systems (Body, Organ, Cell, …) that all have to stay in balance (or die) and send their signals on their own level (electro-magnetic, chemical, ..) using their own communication-infrastructure to their own control center that is monitored by a higher level control center (etc. etc).
The systems are also part of super(-super-super-systems) (Family, Social Group, Organization, …Universe).
The System of Systems (of Systems, …) develops itself in the same pattern as the system itself. Mind (Unity) moves Up, Body/Matter mover Right (Causal), Social/Soul moves Down and Mythic (Imagination) moves Left (back to the Source).
If the four forces are in balance the total system expands and compresses in a Spiral Pattern. The same pattern as we see in the Ancient Cathedrals.
The nice thing is that on every level you look (or analyze, or evaluate, or sense, or see) the same structure comes back so you don’t have to create a new structure to get a better insight.
When you believe PoC is a self-referencing (“fractal”) system you can apply what you know if you are able to distinguish the right level/scale of the many scales there are. If you mix up scales the whole system looks like a big mess.
Just like the five elements in the generating (with-the-clock) Sheng Cycle (or the against-the clock destructing Wu Cycle) every Worldview is connected to the others views and compensates (is a Homeostasis for) another Worldview and vice-versa.
There are twelve connections possible between different views and four with the same view which brings the total amount of possible connection on 16 (4×4).
Mythic, the Interest of the Self compensates the Interest of the Group (Social).
Social (Emotions, Down, Earth) compensates Unity (Abstraction, Up, Sky, Mind).
Sensory (Sense & React, Forwards to the Outside) compensates Mythic (Imagination, Insight, Backwards to Inside).
The Consciousness (“the fifth worldview”) monitors the four Worldview’s and triggers a worldview that brings the system in another state that triggers a new worldview that brings the system in another state (etc etc).
Worldview’s trigger other Worldview’s directly or move to a higher state of abstraction (Mind) that is able to move to a higher abstraction until it has to move back to Earth (Soul/Social).
The system is constantly adapting its adaptions until it dies.
Adaption can only happen when the transport/communication-channels are not blocked and the system is able to remove the blockages in the channels.
18 Flow Systems
The old Chinese scientists believed that every level of our universe is a Flow System that consists of five connected parts. Disturbances in the system are resolved by opening the channels between the parts that are disconnected.
The Scientists of our time see an ecology (and a body and an organization and a city and…..) as a material transport network (an Infrastructure) which distributes energy, information and matter between big macroscopic reservoirs (f.i. Lungs/Air/UP) and small microscopic sites (f.i. Alveoli/Blood/Water/Flow) on many “rhythmic” levels.
The macroscopic reservoirs are filled by repeating macroscopic processes (“weather”, “breath”, “market”) that are controlled by a macroscopic time-giver, the Drum of Shiva, a Clock, our Sun or our Heart.
When a flow system (Bloodvessels, Artery) is disturbed (Arteriosclerosis) it solves its problems by creating a “bypass”. Bypasses create bypasses (create bypasses, …) until it is impossible to change the physical environment (f.i. granite). Bypasses generate a repeating (fractal) structure.
This structure looks like a hierarchy when you look Top-Down and like a Flow-System when you look with an Input (From)/Output (To)-view. In essence it brings the Many (Sensory)-to-the One (Unity).
Fractal Distribution Networks in Humans (Lungs, Air) and Nature (Rivers, Water)
Nature solves its scaling problems by evolving fractal networks. The Law of Kleiber shows that big fractal flow-structures live longer (are more resilient) and are more efficient than small structures. Cities grow because of their shared fysical infrastructures.
Big Cities are also more creative than small cities because of the amount of possible contacts between creative minds. It is clear that the Internet is taking over this function.
19 Social Networks
Human networks are an organism capable of behaviors that are of greater complexity than those of an individual human being.
Humans networks are an abstraction (Unity) of human relations. They are the most important support structure for a human to become resilient.
Humans are two-sided. Human Networks are 12-sided. They are a combination of the 4-fold-Cycle X 4-Cycle without repetition (4**2-4).
That is why there are 12 Star-Systems in the Zodiac (12 + the Sun = 13), 12 Suns of Jacob, 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Disciples of Jesus (12+the One = 13) and 12 Knights of the Round Table (12 + Arthur = 13).
Knights of the Round (= Cycle) Table
The anthropologist Alan Fiske created a 4-fold model that describes how groups of people cooperate.
The four relational models correspond perfectly with the four World-Views of PoC.
The fact that you can use PoC to classify a part of PoC (Social) proves that PoC is a fractal theory.
Social Structures are just like PoC nested combinations of the elementary relationship models:
People live together and share things. People are treated as equivalent and undifferentiated. “What’s mine is thine; what’s thine is mine”.
Fairness is important in such groups and appealing to values may be the best way to persuade. Conflict may be dealt with through mediation and others methods that seek consensus.
In equality relationships there is no authority between people nor is there the deeper responsibility towards one another as in the communal sharing model. Social relationships are long-term and monitored for balance.
Equality matched relationships generally collaborate around shared goals and help one another. Relationships are reciprocal and have equal value. People treat fairly those who treat them fairly.
Social groups are arranged with a hierarchy of power. The top of the pyramid protects the lower layers. It starts with parent and child and then progresses to schools, workplaces and other groupings.
Whilst communal sharing groups are based on trust and fair play, authority relationships are based on command and control where the inferior person has little option but to obey the superior person.
Relationships are structured by proportions. In the market pricing model, the relationship is based around a transaction, where the parties exchange substantive items, often with money being a part of the transaction. Such relationships may be shorter than others and more formal, even with an explicit or implied contract to formalize the exchange.
Alan Fiske, Structure of Social Life
17. About Resilience – How to Preserve Structure in a Social Network
Alan Fiske found out that each of the relationship models resembles one of the classic scale types from measurement theory. We measure others the same way we measure objects and situations.
Measurement starts in de Sensory-mode. Measurement captures information about a system. A system consists of objects, processes, and phenomenon. The system is measured through the attributes of the system also known as characteristics, features, or properties.
Measurement does not directly represent the system. It only addresses the attributes selected to represent it.
All measurement is carried out within a context. This context is shaped by a purpose, existing knowledge, capabilities, and resources; all of which influence the measurement process.
Measurements can be made through the human senses or made through use of a measurement instrument, which is an apparatus or construct used for measurement.
Measurement is the assignment of numerals to a system according to a set of rules. These rules are called a theory.
Our senses or the instruments that are used to measure the system also represent a theory. This theory has a sometimes unknown impact on our measurement.
A theory has to be a structure preserving mapping, a homomorphism. The structure of the system has to stay the same when the rules are applied.
If the theory does not preserve structure the theory introduces its own theory and we are not measuring the original system.
Not only the primary theory has to be a homomorphism. The complete chain of theories we use has to preserve the structure (The Uniqueness Axioma) of the original system.
If a system has to be a resilient system its transformations have to be structure-preserving.
A nominal scale distinguishes Sets. Sets contain Points. Every point is the same as the other points. Points that are the same can be connected by a line.
Sets are split by a distinction made by the filters of the senses. A distinction puts things into non-overlapping categories such as smokers versus non-smokers. There are zero smokers in the class of non-smokers and zero non-smokers in the class of smokers. You can count the amount of points in a class. The zero point of the class is the not-class.
A nominal scale classifies things into categories. The classes are equal. The process of division starts with a whole (One) and divides the whole in parts (Many) after which the parts become a new Whole. Repeated application of a distinction generates a Set of Sets.
A nominal scale defines Sets. Sets contain the same elements. When we want to preserve this structure we have to satisfy the constraint If s1 = s2 ⇔ f(s1) = f(s2) (“the Same stays the Same”). This is called the Symmetric group, the group of all permutations of the objects in the Set.
Living systems achieve resilience by repeating (redundancy) the same functionality in a different way (diversity) and on a different location (distribution). This all is an example of symmetry. Humans are bilateral symmetric. We have two eyes, legs, arms, kidneys, lungs and brain-halves.
Communal Sharing (Social) is the most resilient/symmetric group there is. Every new order (a permutation) of the objects has the same value. New combinations are created all the time and time will tell what their value will be.
If combinations are valued we as a human are creative enough to imagine a reason (“a new selection-mechanism, a distinction”) why the new combination is important.
Communal Sharing is Agile.
(2) Authority Ranking (Unity, Mind, Human Brain) is called an Ordinal Scale. This scale is used when we want to express Comparative Judgement about the observed system.
In nature, all things we observe are nominal. It is we who choose to order (i.e., count) them, in some way according to some theory we propose.
A further step is to transform these orderings into linear measures which are more useful to us. If we construct a theory with a useful “zero” location (as opposed to zero difference), then we can measure away from that zero point.
The members of a class are ordered from the One to Many by a rule that defines what greater (or less) means. It permits the measurement of degrees of difference, but not the specific amount of difference.
The step Sensory -> Social is called Evaluate. Evaluation is putting members of a Set in a favorite (like) or non-favorite (don’t like) permutation. In the Unity-mode like and don’t like are mapped to high and low (or important & not-important).
This is only possible when we are able to find a difference that we can count. Smoking can be defined by the amount of cigarettes a person smokes or the amount of nicotine he inhales.
Sometimes it is impossible to find an amount (what is the amount of “Love”?) and we have to change the distinction and the attribute we want to measure or stop measuring and accept what we observe the way it is.
The ordinal scale is part of the nominal scale. The relational structure preserved during the measurement process preserves equality and order. The set of admissible transformations are relations that satisfy the constraint If s1 < or >s2 ⇔ f(s1) < or >f(s2).
This is called the Order-Preserving Group and is the group of monotonic increasing functions. A monotonic function does not contain Ups AND Downs. It contains Ups or Downs (= not-Ups).
The step Social (Many) -> Unity ((One) is called Seeking Consensus about a Rule. Because this mapping has to be a monotonic function Social (Down (to Earth)) has to be lower than Unity (Up).
In this scale we can Count (Y) the people that smoke an amount of cigarettes (X) and can produce a bar-graph.
Autority Ranking is Fragile.
(3) Equality Matching (Mythic, Spirit, Whole) is called an Interval Scale. This scale is used when we want to measure a distance between pairs of items.
The step Unity -> Mythic is called Insight. We move from the Outside World of the Rules of Unity to the Inside World of the View on the Whole of Mythic and find Insight. In this case we balance the One of the outside with the One of the Inside. We compare our Whole with the Whole we find outside.
When we define an Interval Scale we look for the resonance of the Outside World with our own Inside World. We look for our own Image outside and can find peace and balance in looking at our child or partner, a sleeping cat, a wood in autumn, mountains or a sailing ship.
With this scale people can create balance and specify who owes what to whom but also how much they owe. It is a relationship in which people keep track of differences, with reference to an even balance.
The set of admissible transformations has to preserve equality (nominal), the equality of order (ordinal) and the equality of difference/distance and has to satisfy the constraint If s1−s2 = s3−s4 ⇔ f(s1)−f(s2)=f(s3)−f(s4).
This is called the General Linear Group (or Affine Group). Differences can only be preserved when the transformation is a linear transformation Ax + B where A is a rotation and B is translation.
When you take the difference between two points you create the concepts More/Less and Mean/Middle. More/Less can be associate with Better/Worse.
In our example of the smokers we can subtract the lowest count of cigarettes of all the other counts. In this case the lowest count becomes an arbitrary zero. We can also calculate the Mean of the amount of cigarettes smoked and define this as a Middle.
Equality Matching is Anti-Fragile.
(4) Market Pricing (Sensory, Action, Reptile Brain) resembles a Ratio Scale.
A ratio scale preserves the equality of equality, order, difference and ratio. Most measurement in the physical sciences and engineering is done on ratio scales. Mass, length, time, plane angle, energy and electric charge are examples.
A Ratio Scale relates a measurement to a standardized unit (of time (Sec), distance (Meters), weight (Kg), …). This unit is a physical object.
The set of admissible transformations has to satisfy the constraint If s1/s2 = s3/s4 ⇔ f(s1)/f(s2) = f(s3)/f(s4). This is called the Linear Group.
The only transformation that satisfies this constraint is the functions f(x) = Ax. This scale supports Multiplication (and its opposite Division).
In this scale we are able to relate a Part to the Whole.
The amount of people who smoke an amount of cigarettes can be divided by the total amount of smokers. This produces a percentage (and a chance).
Market Pricing is Anti-Agile.
21 Scales and Social Networks
The scales are Equal and Ordered in a Hierarchy in which the Nominal Scale (Social) has the highest symmetry (“All Points are Equal”) and therefore has the highest potential and is the most resilient. The Ratio Scale is the most restricted and less flexibel.
The Hierarchy follows the Path Sensory/Measure (Anti-Agile) ->Evaluate-> Social (Equality, Agile) -> Consensus -> Unity (Ordering, Fragile) -> Insight-> Mythic (Difference, Anti-Fragile) -> Invent-> Sensory (Proportion). We call this the Path of Measurement.
The Path of Measurement is the same path our Bilateral Brain is moving through.
During Evolution the Triple Brain developed itself according to the same pattern: (1) Reptile Brain (Sensory) , Measure, Survival Brain, Body, Ratio Scale, (2) Limbic Brain (Social), Soul, Social Brain, Nominal Scale (3) Neo Cortex (Unity), Mind, Thinking Brain, Ordinal Scale (4) Whole (Mythic), Thalamus, Spirit, Interval Scale -> Sensory.
If this correlation is true Market Pricing is the Social Structure of the Reptiles, Communal Sharing of the Mammals, Authority Ranking of the Humans and Equality Matching the social Structure of the Creators.
Currently we are highly focused on Market Pricing which is the structure with the lowest flexibility/resilience (Anti-Agile).
Because of our focus on numbers, measurement and standardization we are creating reptile structures that are highly vulnerable to external events.
22 Cybernetics Viable Systems
The word “government” comes from the Greek “kybernan” which means “to steer a ship”. The word “kyberman” is used to name the science of “cybernetics”.
A system is a black-box, an Input/Output-relation. Systems become (Value)Chains/Networks when we connect the output to the input of another system.
Stafford Beer developed a cybernetic model of the Human called the Stafford Beer Viable System Model (VSM). VSM can be used to model an organization.
Viability means the survival or preservation of identity in a changing environment. A viable system is a resilient system. The Identity is the Whole (Mythic/Imagination) of a System.
For a system to remain viable, it has to maintain its existence within a changing environment. Systems are not perfect and may experience internal defects and deficiencies. Change can happen slowly or suddenly.
Therefore the internal parts of the system must provide both a mutually supportive internal environment and achieve the desired external effects.
The system has to detect and react to threads (survive), be and keep in balance (homeostatis), be maintained, keep up with its environment (innovation, evolution) and be tolerant to damage (redundant).
VSM uses four nested systems to “steer a ship”: (1) the Boundary of the Whole (Mythic) (2) the Environment of the Ship (Social) which contains (3) the ship itself (Object/Body/Action/Operation/Sensory) which contains (4) the Steering System, the Meta-System (Brain/Unity).
The model can be applied to itself by looking again at four “parts” related to Mythic (Whole, Identity), Unity (Models, Research), Materials (Sensory) and Resources (Social).
The Brain/Body as a Viable System
23 Panarchy
According to the theory (the Model) of Panarchy the Resilience of an Ecology is related to the Potential (Communion) and the Connectedness of a System (Agency). Potential shows what is possible in an ecology. Connectedness shows the control an ecology has over its own future.
In the Exploitation/Conservation phase of the Cycle the ecology becomes more efficient (producing more Potential) and Connected.
The amount of possible paths (the Redundancy) is reduced and the system becomes highly efficient and vulnerable (Fragile) to outside changes.
A stable, resilient system can cope with shocks and disturbances and keep its identity.
In an unstable system, a small disturbance can push the ball over a threshold.
Environmental and social changes can make a system less resilient.
At the state of maximum production and maximum connection (conservation) the system is spending all its potential at self-reproduction. At a certain moment the system collapses (release).
The Adaptive Cycle is the same cycle our Bilateral Brain and the previous mention Path of Measurement of Alan Fiske is moving through.
It moves on many levels with a different cycle time. The levels are connected in two ways. A big calamity can destroy a lot of lower level ecologies or a small calamity (a wildfire) can start a major calamity (revolt).
A system to moves to lower level of Periodicity remembers its previous Cycle to start again.
A Cycle moves up when it revolts. Revolt connects Creativity to Order (called Design in Path of Change) and fuses the diversity of the Cycles to a higher level.
Creativity (fusing the opposites) is the source of Anti-Fragility. In the end it all comes down to Spirit.
24 Conclusion
Panarchy Theory is by far the most interesting theory about resilience. It shows that resilience is the result of a cyclic proces. Resilience is low when the components of the system have a high level of connectedness. There is only one way to reach the goal.
When a system is highly efficient it is also highly vulnerable.
Redundant systems are able to resist a calamity if and only if one of the possible paths of the system is not affected.
Robust, Resilient, Agile
If we don’t know what will happen we need an unknown path to save us. This path is part of an unknown phase space that we are able to calculate if we know more about predictability in general. This issue is covered by Combinatorics a part of mathematics.
Nature has generated a highly redundant system in which it is possible that one of the lines of evolution is able to resist a worldwide calamity.
If we want to destroy resilience we have to destroy the diversity of life-forms on earth.
A few years ago (2003) somebody asked me to address the Dutch IT Architecture Congress. The subject was the Human Measure. To understand the Human Measure you have understand the relationship between the Human Being and The Human Measure System, The Emotions.
At that time I was already highly influenced by Will McWhinney so I used his model of the Four Worldviews to describe the Human. Later I discovered a Fifth Worldview (Consciousness) that was hidden in his teachings.
The consciousness is the monitor of the Whole of the Human Being. It reflects about the behavior of the parts and takes action when the Whole is not in Balance (Stressed).
According to Will McWhinney the Human can be described by The Emotions (Values), The Imagination (Ideas), The Senses (Desire, Facts) and the Expectation (Control, Rules).
The Four parts can be combined in six (or twelve = 4x3x2) Games. A Game is a strategy to solve the Conflict between the Four Independent Parts.
To me it is very clear that IT is focused on the combination Expectation/Senses. This combination is called the Analytical Game. It solves the Conflict between Facts and Rules. Will showed that this game was the dominating game in Western Culture.
In the Analytical Game the Emotions, the Consciousness and the Imagination are not important. In the Analytical Game you want to find the Absolute Truth, The Rules of the Game, by Analyzing the Facts sensed by the Eyes.
When you want to understand the Emotions you have to look at “emotional” Psychology. When you start to study “emotional” psychology the “box of Pandora” of Psychology opens up. Psychology is not a science like Mathematics or Physics. Everybody has his own theory about Emotions and everybody is defending his own “territory”. Psychology is simply a scientific mess.
One of the most helpful scientists (a friend of Will) was Rodney Cotterill. Cotteril analyzed the evolution of the Sensory-Motor System of every Organism on Earth. The Sensory-Motor System is an Interaction between the Emotions, the Motor, and the Senses.
The bacteria is drifting around, explores an inhomogeneous environment that contains all kinds of chemical structures. Some of these structures are destructive, some of them are neutral and some of them are attractive (food). When the bacteria finds (senses) food his rotator (the flagellum) moves the bacteria in a circular motion. The circular motion of the bacteria is preserved for a short time and this preservation could be called memory
The emotions are aimed at the survival of the human being. They Explore environments to find something that helps them to survive and Avoid destructive environments. When Humans have found an Attractive environment they Stay there and Store the data about the environment in their Memory. Humans are Moving Memories (E-motion means movement!).
According to Rodney Cotterill the Emotions are the basic structure, the infrastructure, of an organism. All the other structures are specializations of one of the parts (the Sensors, the Calculator (Imagination, Expectation)) of the Emotional Infrastructure.
IT is highly focused on Sensors and Calculators (the Senses and the Expectation). IT has no idea what to do with the Emotions, the E-Value-ator, the basic Measurement System of the Human Being. The main objective of the Evaluator is to find Food and to stay Alive.
The Human Imagination has created many “abstractions” of Food and Secure Environments. They are all stored in the Memory as Symbols and Metaphors but it is not difficult to define what Humans don’t like. They don’t like the same thing IT-experts don’t like. IT-experts want to be Valued. They don’t want to be Dominated. They demand the freedom to Express their Creativity. They don’t want to play a role in a Play that was Designed by somebody else.
IT-experts love to play the Analytical Game. In this Game the Humans, called the Users play the role of the Object, the reusable Module, that has to do its Job. In the Analytic Game Users don’t have Emotions and Imagination. They have to Eat the Food that grew out of The Seeds of the Imagination of the Architect.
What is the Human Measure?
The basic measure of the Human Being is related to everything that gives him or her a feeling, an Emotion, of Security. The Human Value-System, the Emotions, is always looking for Shelter, Protection and Love. Humans Beings need other Human Beings to tell and show them that they are Value-able.
If the Human Being has an Expectation this Expectation has to be realized in the near Future.
When the Emotions of the Human Being are Dominated it wants to move away from his environment because a dominating environment could be Destructive. When something or somebody is Dominating a Human Being he/she feels worthless.
If the Imagination of the Human Being experiences No Change, (Highly Repeating Actions) it wants to Explore a new Environment.
If the Senses experience Too Much Change the Human Being becomes Confused. When you are Confused your Expectation fails and the Human starts to drift around just like the bacteria.
If the Human Being is not Conscious (Aware, Focused) it is unable to Reflect. If the Human Being is not Aware he is unable to Balance the Emotions, the Imagination, The Expectation and the Senses. If there is no balance the Body becomes Stressed. A Stressed Body slowly kills the Immune System. An Unbalanced Immune System is the Cause of many Diseases.
What is IT Doing?
IT is still creating Dominating, Always Changing, Insecure and Confusing Software.
IT is not automating the repeating activities Humans don’t like. IT is producing highly disconnected software-systems.
IT is not helping the Humans to makes senses of the complexity of the Outside World. IT is increasing the Complexity of the Environment.
IT is not supporting the Human to explore its environment. IT is shielding the outside environment and is creating an artificial outside environment. Many people believe the Imaginary World is the Real World. The most destructive artificial worlds are the Destructive Computer Games. They give the Player the Believe that Killing People is no problem at all. The destructive Games are the Games of the Military. They kill people by looking at simulators and pushing buttons.
IT is Playing the Same Game using Different Terminology all the time. If you understand the transformation of the terminology the Game is Boring. If you don’t understand the terminology the Game is Confusing. If you Mix the Terminology the Game is too Complex to Play. Almost nobody knows the Rules so many People make mistakes, believe they win the Game but in reality lose the Game.
What to do?
Perhaps somebody is able to Invent a New Game.
I have an Idea.
Why don’t we create a Game that Creates Games? According to the Theory of Will this Game is called the Game of Culture. It solves the conflict between The Imagination (The Creator) and the Emotions (The Mover). When the Mover is Inspired by the Creator the Sensory/Motor-System starts to Act with Spirit (Imagination) and Soul (Emotions). In terms of Emotional Psychology: The Human becomes Highly Moti-vated!
If we look at the theory of Will we now can see that the Analytical Game is the Complement of the Game of Culture.
If we Unite the two Games, the Games of the West and the Games of the East, we are able to connect all the parts of the Human Being in a Cycle, the Cycle of Human Innovation.
The Industrial Revolution started with the mechanization of the textile-industry (1740-1790) in England.
A new collaboration concept the Mill, later translated in the Factory, is invented. The Industrial Revolution is preceded by the Renaissance.
The Renaissance is a Creative Phase.
The Industrial Revolution is a Social phase. A Social phase changes the way people cooperate.
Small scale cooperation structures were destroyed and replaced by large-scale cooperation structures.
The Industrial Revolution not only changed the way people cooperated in labour. It also changed the way Cities and Countries cooperated.
At the end of this phase (the Second World War) Europe and the World (UN, China, and India) started to Unite. Cooperation on the Level of the World became possible but was finally not realized.
The French Revolution (1789) breaks the power of the Aristocracy. The Bourgeois (the merchants, the entrepreneurs, the middle class) use the Mill to produce cheap standardized products on a large scale. They became the new Rulers of Society.
The mill and later the factory not only destroyed the Aristocracy.
It also destroyed the Small Scale Collaboration Structure of the Guilds. The Guilds, operating on the level of the City, took care of almost everything at that time.
They operated hospitals, educational facilities and insurance. When the mills turned into factories many people lost their job. The big cities were populated with very poor and hungry people.
Nobody took care of the sick and the old. They became the Prolitariat, the Under-Class. The existence of the Prolitariat produced a huge tension in society.
This tension was resolved when many pressure groups or movements (Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, and Communists) finally agreed upon new large scale institutions.
The State, Parliament, Democracy, Voting, and The Union came into existence.
The Social Welfare State was constructed. Government took care of almost everybody.
The first Cotton Mill was opened in 1742. In 1762 Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny. It was operated by hand.
With the invention of the steam-machine (1769, Watt) manual labour was not needed anymore.
In 1785 the first mill was opened that used a steam-machine (the power loom).
The Steam Machine became a Major Paradigm. It highly influenced Physics (ThermoDynamics, Entropy) and Psychology (Freud).
In 1781 Kant wrote his book Kritik der reinen vernunft. He excluded the Imagination (illusions) and the Emotions (love, care, values, quantity) out of reasoning and introduced the concept of mechanized thinking (Logic). Kant excluded Art (Imagination) and Religion (the Emotions) and invented Science.
Mechanized (Scientific) Thinking was used to Optimize the Mill. Slowly it grew into a (big) factory. At the end of the Industrial Revolution Logical reasoning produced its most briljant artefact, the All Purpose Computer. The Computer became a major Paradigm.
Between 1790 and 1840 the world was covered with Railroads. They facilitated the spread of the Industrial Revolution.
Cities flourished and died according to the distance to a railroad station (A node). Many infrastructures were created in this period (Telephone, Sewers, Water, Gas, and Electricity). Later the concept of the railroad was implemented in Traffic (Highway) and Computers (networks, hubs, servers). The Railroad Network became a major Paradigm.
Mechanic thinking resulted in Standardization. Between 1890 and 1940 Mass-production, Mass-consumption and Mass-media dominated society.
The first step was set by Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor with the production of the T-Ford. The theories of Taylor are until now (most of the time not recognized) used in many forms to optimize work-processes.
The end of optimization is reached when everything is turned into a Utility. A Utility is a Network that operates without Human Beings and transports Objects.
When we look at the Industrial Revolution from a higher perspective we can see the elements of the Cycle at work.
A phase of Creativity is followed by a Social Phase. It is the phase of Power Conflicts (Competition) and the construction of new Movements, new Groups and finally of new Institutions (The State, The Corporation).
The Hierarchy was the major control paradigm of this period. Everybody wanted to move to “the Top”. The Race to the Top was also visible in architecture. The SkyScraper with the Management at the Top became the Symbol of Power.
The Industrial Revolution gave the Masses, the Slaves of the Middle Ages a better place. They changed from a Slave into a Consumer.
The Slave was dominated by his Owner. A Consumer is dominated by his Senses. On the Macro-level we see a move from the world-view of Control/Social (Master/Slave) to a Sensory/Social-pattern.
Will Mc Whinny called the Game of Sensory/Social The Game of the Market. The Industrial Revolution produced the Game of the Market.
At the end of this period the Masses controlled the Market. We are now in a demand oriented economy. This created a big problem for the mass-producers.
They controlled the masses and are desperatly trying to keep their position by Manipulation of the Media.
What is Going to Happen?
On the level of the Kondratiev-cycle (Period 50 years) a phase of Creativity and the Individual was started in 1950.
This phase ended around 2000.
The move to the Individual challenged the structures of Mass-Production. People wanted to be treated as a Unique Human Being.
Industry found a solution to this need. They invented Mass Customization and User Involvement and went on with the Game of the Market.
This phase is now followed by a Social Phase (Start 2000). The Customer (the new Ruler) is organizing itself in Smart Customer Networks.
The Very Long Cycle (Precession, Period 25.000 years) and the Cycle of Culture (Periodicity 1250 year) is also changing its focus.
On the level of Culture we are moving to the Centre. We are converging on a new and unknown level, Earth. During the Social Phase of the Industrial Revolution huge collaboration structures were formed (EG, UN, NATO, China, India, …). These structures are challenged by the Individual in the Next Phase. The solution of this conflict is a network of small local structures that is part of a large global network (“Think Global, Act Local”).
The precession cycle is moving from the Dark Phase into the Light. This is the most interesting and unknown development. Current Human history has never experienced a shift from the Kali Yuga to the Golden Age. The Golden Age is a period of intense spiritual development, a movement to a New Level of Conscioussness.
It shows itself in a move to religion and mysticism but also in a new awareness about what is really happening in the world. This new awareness is frightening to most of the people. They cannot understand the major changes that are visible. The predictable future is gone. Everything is on the move and the movement is excellerating culminating in Point Omega, the Big Leap into Nothingness.
Long Term Phases always dominate short term phases. The effect of this will be tremendous and almost unpredictable. An unpredictable future is a Future without a Perspective.
Some people expect a dramatic negative change. They are waiting for the Apocalyps. Some people expect the Return of Paradise and a jump to a higher consciousness.
I really don’t know what will happen.
If you read my blogs I am constantly trying to find the solution of this very complex conjunction of cycles. I keep you informed.
Humans are the most advanced toolmakers in nature. The main reason is that they are the less specialized organisms. They need tools to survive. People are also the most complex organisms in nature. This complexity makes it possible to invent new possibilities and to work with specialized tools and animals (horse, cow, hammer, car, computer).
All the time people have tried to make a better living by inventing new tools. If the basic needs were met (food, housing, health, safety), people got the time to get their emotional system into balance (love, self-esteem) and satisfy their imagination (play, explore, self-actualization).
At this moment, the amount of leisure-time to enjoy family life, relax, play and explore is going down. The number of people with heavy levels of stress is growing. The pressure on the emotions is increased by the current state of technology. The tools have overlapping functionality, take too much of the attention, do not communicate with each other and dominate the human being.
Tools have to be integrated completely in the cognitive system of the human being. If a tool takes over a part of the sensory-motor system (glasses, hammer, car) the imagination has to learn a new way to create the outside world. In the end, after practicing, people become united with their hammer or their car. They are not aware that they are carrying their glasses. If people have to practice too long or the tool is constantly intervening in their workflow the emotions get involved. They get frustrated and angry.
Tools were first invented to support basic human activities like talking, moving, looking, hearing, remembering and learning.
In a later stage of development, the use of the tools generated a new space of exploration. In this space, new tools emerged.
The invention of symbols started the exploration of Mental Space. Program Languages, Telecommunication and especially the Internet has opened up a new space to explore, called Cyberspace.
Advisor or Master
Advisors and masters involve the emotions. An advisor helps to make a choice or to set priorities. A master (e.g. a physician, teacher, manager) makes a choice for a person. The Cyberspace version of the master and the advisor is the Expert System. It uses advanced ways of pattern-recognition (e.g. Neural Networks).
Simulator
Simulators stimulate the imagination. Theaters and movies are examples of passive simulators. Games are actively involving many people. The Cyberspace version of the active simulator is the Collaborative Computer Game. The passive form can be seen in the Movie and the Television-program.
Memory
A memory archives the results of an internal or external dialogue. In the beginning, human communication was only verbal. Important issues to remember were incorporated in stories that were told from one generation to the other. When people specialized their activities, they needed a method (bookkeeping) to keep track of all the transfers. People invented symbols and the external memory to do this. The writing-symbols made it possible to share and exchange memories (letters, books) without talking. Writing enabled the movement of memories. The library was invented to store the external memories and protect them from fading away. Cyberspace is filled with the versions of static and moving memory called the Electronic Message (Email, Transaction) and the Database.
Mover
Movers were the first tools used in human society. A mover is an extension of the muscles. The first generation was invented to help the human move in physical space. Examples are hammers, cows, horses, steam-machines, cars, bicycles and robots. The next generation supported the movement of symbols (e.g. moving numbers) in mental space. The Difference Engine of Charles Babbage was invented to automate the calculation of mathematical tables. The most advance version of the mover, the telecommunication network, enables the movement of external memory’s in cyberspace.
Sensor
Sensors transform and filter data. Glasses and hearing aids were invented to support people when they get old. Humans looked at the stars and invented the telescope. In a later stage very advanced sensors were developed (Radio-telescope, MRI). They use complex statistical calculations to filter and transform the sampled data into pictures or sounds.
Comparator
Human survival and learning is based on comparing data and acting on the result. A comparator acts on an exception. To compare data a measurement instrument is needed and a agreement about the object of measure.
Human beings started to measure time and space a long time ago. It was needed to navigate and to predict the movement of the stars. In the first phase, the human body was used as a measure-instrument of space and the cycle of the sun and the moon as a measurement for time. The big problem with this approach was that every person and every place on earth came up with a different measurement and a different time.
When the human networks started to connect, standardization on a global level became necessary. The process of standardization of time and space took many ages. It needed numerous inventions in technology to support the process. The measure-instruments changed from mechanical devices (the clock) to software-devices.
Servant (Operating System)
A servant coordinates the activities of sensors, comparators and memories. Servants take over repetitive patterns. Humans find these activities boring (not imaginative). A servant has to act invisible (a black box).
When the use of a servant is prohibited, humans get frustrated. It has to be there all the time and do its job inconspicuous. With the help of the comparator and the sensor, the servant has to detect events and take appropriate action (coordinated movements, action patterns).
The big problem at this moment is the visibility and the interference of the servant in the human activity. People have to fill in the same form all the time. Processes stop in the middle of a company. The customer has to handover the data to the other processes.
Humans do not like to be emotional involved in boring activities. Therefore, the needs (their wishes) have to be defined in a very simple way. It must be possible to imagine the behavior of the complete system without knowing how the system is operating.
A good example of a perfect servant is the central heating system. People define their needs (a temperature) and everything works. The temperature is a control variable that represents the performance of the total heating system. People are able to imagine the effect of adjusting the thermostat (a comparator) on the environment they live in. They do not need to know how the servant works. His behavior is hidden. The central heating system is a black box, loosely coupled with another invisible servant-system, the utility-system (gas, electricity).
The servant and its associates were in the first era of IT locked into the physical space of the general-purpose computer controlled by its general purpose operating System. The servants had to stay close together because of the speed of communication. The speed and the capacity of the telecommunication network is going up fast. This makes it possible to distribute, specialize and connect Servants (now called Appliances).
People have to cooperate to survive. Children need their parents to nurture and teach them. Parents need the help of their children when they are old. The basic principle behind cooperation is long-term reciprocity. People give something voluntary and sometimes for free to others or help the other trusting they get something of the same value back in the future.
To survive people have to have a long-term perspective. They have to sustain their environment and the supporting infrastructures to make sure that there are enough people and tools to help them when they are old.
The need to survive created the basic level concept of cooperation (the tribe). The tribe transformed into higher and more complex levels of cooperation (town, guild, state, corporation) when human society evolved.
To coordinate the complex structures the mental concept of the many leveled hierarchy was formed. This concept fails when the environment of the organizational structure becomes turbulent.
Hierarchies adapt too slowly to their environment. At this moment, hierarchies are falling apart in cooperating self-sustaining specialized network. The networks are gaining control over many activities that are now taking place at the level of the big corporation and the state.
A specialized network produces activities and products that are consumed by other specialized networks. To realize the output people have to play complementary roles.
When we can distinguish six basic roles:
Craftsmen (Senses, Patterns)
A craftsman has acquired experience by practicing. Craftsmen do not like too much change. Change requires new practicing and keeps him from producing. A craftsman loves to make what he sees. He learns by copying. Examples are carpenters, painters, musicians, technicians and programmers. The craftsmen are the producers in the network. In many cases, programmable machines can replace their activities. Craftsmen use specialized tools. If their processes are standardized a process-model can be used to coordinated their activities.
Entrepreneur (Senses, Emotions)
An entrepreneur feels what preferences people have. Examples are retailers and brokers. Entrepreneurs sell the products the network is producing and buy products the network needs. They also are the people that negotiate contracts and make connections to other specialized networks. Entrepreneurs use technologies like relationship-management-tools and procurement-systems.
Politicians (Emotions, Patterns)
A politician structures collective emotions by creating consensus. He feels the opinions of the collective, has the gift to influence opinions, and gets people into collaborative action. A politician looks after the social cohesion in the network. He uses opinion polls and media.
Creators (Imagination, Patterns)
A creator visualizes the whole of a structure. A creator can balance variety (his imagination) and predictability (the patterns). Examples are composers, architects and designers. A creator designs the machines and the products the network is producing.
Motivator (Emotions, Imagination)
A motivator visualizes what makes people move forward. Motivators develop concepts. Many of them operate in the media (actors, writers, poets and movie-directors). Motivators cannot live without variety. Other examples are coaches and psychiatrist. A motivator looks after the long-term perspective of the network by creating and implementing a shared vision.
Inventors (Senses, Imagination)
An inventor makes sense of his imagination. Inventors generate ideas and create prototypes (R&D). They use brainstorming tools and analyze trends.
The roles are not evenly distributed in the network. The majority of the people play the role of the producer, the craftsman.
In the current situation, the basic roles are concentrated in specialized corporations (e.g. media, retail, production-plants) or staff-department of big corporations. Many high talented people are already leaving the big corporations and take part of specialized networks. The amount of one-person-companies is increasing.
People can cooperate with persons that share with them one of their basic cognitive components. An entrepreneur can convince a craftsman what products people he has to sell. They are both practical people (the senses). A creator (e.g. an architect) can show a craftsman what to make. They share a focus on structure (patterns).
When complementary roles are working in a cooperative environment, they join their forces in an open dialogue. This dialogue has many stages ranging from brainstorming (inventors take the lead) to realizing material structures (craftsman work together with creators).
Politicians, entrepreneurs and motivators can only perform if they are able to observe and express emotions (visual expressions, gestures). To ensure a successful cooperation they have to meet. New technologies like video-conferencing make it possible to cooperate anytime, any-place and anywhere.
To collaborate people have to communicate face to face. In a competition patents (legal actions) and secrecy (rules and walls) shield ideas to prevent the competitor to take the lead. In cooperation, ideas are shared to sustain the network.
The most used model in communication is the sender/receiver-model. People send and receive content (e.g. email, documents, pictures, plans, designs) Specialized networks need advanced content-management systems to support this model of communication.
The sender/receiver-model supposes that the brain converts ideas directly into words and that another person can easily draw out the meaning of the ideas from the words. It assumes little effort to understand or interpret what is being conveyed.
The sender/receiver-model only works if there is a high level of common conceptual understanding (a shared model) between all the people involved in the communication process.
In reality, this is mostly not the case especially when experts (inventors, craftsman and creators) are communicating with laymen (entrepreneurs, motivators and politicians).
The dialogue between an expert and a layman is often a monologue. The expert confuses the layman with all his knowledge and the layman is not capable of asking the right questions. In the end, the layman stops asking questions and accepts the situation.
The sender/receiver-model reduces a specialized network to a production-process. The model lowers the social cohesion (politicians), reduces the external cooperation (entrepreneurs) and removes the long-term perspective of the network (motivators).
People have to invest time to understand (ask unsophisticated questions) and explain their ideas (inventions) in many ways. It also takes time to generate trust. Ideas of others have to be tried out (in the imagination or in the real world) to understand them.
People have to have the opportunity to fail and learn from their mistakes. Sometimes they generate personal inventions that can be given back to the others to create reciprocity.
Eventually ideas create new personal patterns that can be shown and praised by others. Collaboration does not take place instantly but evolves in a cycle where the pleasure of finding things out is the motivator.
When people are pessimistic and afraid the other becomes the enemy. They shield themselves from the outside world by creating fixed boundaries (walls).
To make sure that they get something in return they use a threat (e.g. physical force, the legal system). Before they start, they have to spend time to prevent a possible conflict (making contracts, detailed specifications). When people trust each other, they cannot wait to start.
The fear of losing something (possessions, status, existence) changes a collaborative relationship into a battle.
In a competition, the focus is on winning and selfishness. Fear has a negative impact on the senses (tunnel view), the emotions (stress) and the imagination (creativity block).
In a competition, priority is given to stay in front and to prohibited possible actions of the enemies. To win one has to predict and control by defining strict rules and make sure that people obey the rules. Internal and external competition finally kills a cooperative relationship.
To prevent the move from cooperation to competition people have to sustain a free and open communicate-process.
Model of Collaborative Learning. Paths of Change, a Model of the Praxis by Will McWhinney. The model is based on independent World-Views. The colors of the Worldviews are reused in this blog: Red (Sensory), (Blue (Unitary), Yellow (Mythic), Green (Social).
Written 1985.
In the approach of Taylor and Ford, the employees and customers are treated as programmable machines. The focus was on a perfect coordination of the senses, the muscles and the production system (the assembly line). The emotions and the imagination were neglected.
In mass customization, the emotions are involved. In customer innovation, the imagination is imperative. In a demand oriented system all the parts of the human cognitive system have to play a role in a coherent and balanced way.
The human body acts on its environment with messages and action-patterns. The incoming and outgoing messages are observed by the senses and transformed to an internal format. The internal communication system sends the messages to the appropriate place in the body. The emotions are always looking for danger. They want to control the priority of the actions to make it possible for the body to react immediately. The imagination creates an image of the outside world and helps the body to generate scenario’s to improve its action-patterns.
The senses are the connection to the physical outside world. They shield the human being from the enormous amount of signals that are trying to enter the body. They filter incoming data and transform the data in a standard internal format. When the senses detect an event, it is evaluated by the emotions. If the event is not important, nothing happens. It the event is unusual it becomes aware in the conscious. Events that are highly repeating are not noticed after some time. An internal program (an action-pattern) automates the handling of the event.
The muscles act in physical space. They acquire an enormous amount of reaction-patterns by repeated practicing. Humans learn from their failures. When the senses detect an event, many appropriate patterns are located and enabled.
When the patterns enter mental space, they change into models. Complicated patterns are compressed into models. Humans use all kinds of compression techniques to make the world compact and therefore more understandable. Static models (e.g. an organization contains employees) compress the world in wholes (nouns) and parts (attributes). They create identities. Dynamic models (the employee sells a product) compress causal chains (event, actor, result). They make it possible to reason.
Models behave the same way as sensors do in physical space. They shield the mental space of the human being from the enormous amount of ideas that the imagination is producing.
The emotions act on hostile and friendly forces. They shield the body from physical injuries (avoiding pain) and take care of the self re-production process of the body (looking for food and a sexual partner).
The emotional system determines the amount of resources that is allocated to the evaluation and the search for adequate action patterns. If an event is dangerous, all resources in the body are used. The body reacts without thinking and uses a biological inherited and fast pattern (fight, flight, freeze, the primary emotions). If there is enough time to react, the emotional system evaluates its preferences and enables the preferred actions-patterns.
If the preferences are related to a long-term perspective, they enter mental space and the human has a choice to make. In the evaluation of long-term preferences, the other plays an important role. People want to take care of the other (family, friends, children), are afraid to get in to a conflict (dominance, status) and want to be praised by the other for what they are accomplishing.
Humans imagine (by creating pictures connected with feelings) what events they like to happen (a wish). When they are pessimistic, they imagine what events they do not want to happen (a fear). The imagination is the innovative part of the human mental space that generates all kinds of new connections (ideas). The imagination is also the most free to play with new ideas. People can simulate and practice in their imagination without getting into trouble. The imagination produces the idea of the identity.
The imagination uses visual metaphors to create an understandable world. On the lowest level the metaphors are connect to the action patterns. The image of a cup is connected to picking up the cup, holding the cup and moving the cup. New structures are blended with old familiar structures.
Many metaphors make use of the human understanding of technology. Freud based his theory of the unconsciousness on his understanding of the steam-machine (“I am steamed up with emotions”). Many theories of the mind are based on the metaphor of the computer. People always relate new phenomena to something they already understand. They sometimes do this (in the eyes of others) in very strange ways. A skilful teacher knows this and tries to find the bridge (the right metaphor, a story) between his world and the world of the student.
In the human body, all the sub-systems (e.g. the services, the organs) are connected by shared communication-channels. There are fast (the nervous system) and slow reacting shared channels (the endocrine system). All the sub-systems use specific messenger-molecules to communicate their actions and act on incoming messengers. Messengers materialize with every thought we create and with every emotion we feel. When a messenger enters the boundary of a sub-system, (e.g. a cell) it triggers messengers that are specific for that sub-system.
The action patterns make the muscles move according to a movements-plan that is stored in memory. The movement-plans of the muscles enable people to walk, to work (using tools) and to talk. In this last case, people communicate their intentions. The human communication contains a complicated mix of signals that are related to the emotions (e.g. visual expressions, gestures), the patterns (assertions) and the imagination (visual images, ideas).
People resist change. The patterns they have acquired control their behavior and determine their potential. People do not want to change their patterns dramatically. They want to acquire new patterns (by doing) without noticing the change. Only a major event (a critical moment), mostly with negative impact, can have a radical effect. If this event happens it takes a very long time to recover and get into harmony again. When people have to adjust their patterns too often, they experience stress and on the long run get sick.
If people cannot adjust their patterns, they have to involve the other parts of the cognitive system. When they involve the emotions, they have to set priorities and make a choice. People do not like making choices. They are incapable of evaluating all the possibilities. They can also make use of the senses and look at the real opportunities in the outside world. People are almost incapable of doing this because their imagination produces the images it wants to see. If the imagination really faces the facts, the identity is attacked. It feels powerless and unable to control his path of destiny. The last possibility a human has is to adjust the imagination. He has to realize that the possibilities he imagined were just illusions.
If everything stays the same, people get bored. They hope that an event will occur that relates to their wishes. People are the most satisfied if their environment produces just enough change (a challenge) they can cope with. They want a balance between the will (what they want, the imagination, variation) and their capabilities (what they are able to do, predictability, the patterns, their skills).
In a perfect demand oriented economy, a supplier has to provide a challenge to the customer. To provide this challenge the supplier has to understand the wishes and the fears (the imagination) of the customer, his behavior (the patterns) and the balance between the two parts. If the customer is out of balance the supplier has to help the customer to acquire new patterns (learning), help him to make a choice (advice) or show him the real opportunities (scenario’s) taking care of the customers identity.
It is very difficult for a supplier to get accurate information. Most people are unable to make their behavioral patterns conscious. When people are asked about their opinion (an aspect of the emotions), they often do not want to offend the other and give proper answers. People only want to share their most secret wishes with people they trust (partner, family, friends). Correct information about the customer can only be acquired by carefully observing and analyzing the activities of the customer (what he is doing). It is completely impossible for a company to observe the activities of all their customers. The only one who can do this is the customer himself.
Customers can observe their activities if they were able to gather personal activity-patterns, get the opportunity to analyze their behavior, and share their activity-patterns with others to get an advice. Most of the needed data is somewhere already available (patient records, buying behavior, payments etc) or can be made available by making connections to the tools the consumer is using in his personal- and work-environment (Emails, Content). The only thing that has to happen is that companies and government agencies make these patterns, which are most of the time privately owned by the customer, available.
It can be envisioned that all personal data is kept in a private space. Only the customer (the owner) can make the data available to others. This approach would prevent many problems in the current situation (e.g. spam).
The last step in a perfect rational demand oriented system is reached when the personal activity-patterns are automatically transformed in standardized need-messages that are sent out to appropriate providers.
Around 1993 I became responsible for Subsidy Management at ABN AMRO. The whole thing started when the bank contracted a specialized company called PNO. I was asked to coordinate their activities in the Bank.
First you have to write a proposal (estimate time (including advisor).
When you get a subsidy you have to spend time reporting (estimate time).
The sum of both multiplied by the price per hour result in the costs.
Multiply the sum of subsidy by the chance you get the subsidy. A simple way to do that is to estimate the amount of contenders. This gives you a simple statistical expectation.
If the Estimated sum is lower than the costs don’t spend your time and try to get money in a different way. In general when you are a small company stay out of subsidies.
If you really want to become rich start a company like PNO (Pecunia Non Olet, Money Does Not Stink).
When I met them I soon found out that I was there when the company was created. They started their activities at the same place (Hengelo) and the same building as the company of a friend of mine. This company (Utopics) developed the expert-system they use to track subsidy opportunities.
Until 1993 I did not realize that it was possible to acquire a huge amount of money when you play the game the right way.
The Subsidy Game is played the right way when you combine two things. You have to align your strategy and related projects with the vision of government and you have to create the right level of contacts.
When the local or international government defines a policy they look for instruments to support this policy. One of the instruments they use is subsidies. They pay you to do what they want you to do.
When you want to get a lot of money you have to align your policy with the policy of the government.
It is very important to understand that aligning your policy is a virtual act. You have to show that the policy is written down on paper. If you are clever you don’t have to adjust your plans. In reality you play the same game government is playing. They also act very differently at the inside.
They play the Game of Politics. The game of politics is a combination between the Unity (Plan, Model) and the Social (Emotions, Network) World-View. The game is about persuading people to accept a model or plan or asking an opinion about a plan.
The simple trick is to relate all the projects you are doing to the policies of the Government and translate the project-plan into a proposal for subsidy.
The next step is much more important. You have to influence the network of decision makers. I hope you are not a naive person who believes in an objective government.
Everybody in government can be influenced to do what you want. The only thing that counts is the price you have to pay. Please understand that bribing is possible but this is a very stupid way to get influence because it only influences one person.
To get an optimal result you have become an “important person” in the network of decision makers itself.
To do this you have practice the art of Public Relations (PR). When you are practicing PR you have to know WHO is WHO, visit meetings and parties and give something to receive something.
When the Subsidy-project grew I became involved in PR at a large scale. PR is really fun. You talk a lot, travel a lot, you eat (and drink) a lot and sometimes you make a beautiful deal.
Soon I found out that the power of the Dutch Government was gone. The power was moved to Brussels. I made a proposal the create a special lobby-office in Brussels and to my surprise top-management agreed.
This started a new level of sophisticated manipulation. Getting things done in Brussels is much more difficult that getting things done in the Hague.
Brussels can be compared with Washington and the European Union acts the same as the USA. Many things are decided behind close doors and the most important influencers are the rich companies.
To get some instant experience I visited a few lobby offices and talked with the managers to find out how they were doing “it”.
My most spectacular experience was with IBM. IBM seemed to me the perfect lobby machine. The manager of the Lobby Office was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of IBM and he also had the power to act.
Influencing EG Policy was a very important issue at IBM. You have to understand that the EG is deciding about many standards and the standards have to be built in the products of IBM.
When I got acquainted with the practices of Brussels I discovered many “bribing patterns”. Later they were also detected and many scandals appeared. Yes, High Level Officials of the EG asked for money and they were also payed.
When you are not a high level player in the Subsidy Business I advice you to make use of an advisor. Even if you use an advisor the changes are low. Because of the low changes you are able to make a simple calculation to find out if subsidies are something you have pursue.
At ABN AMRO I was responsible for one of the biggest training projects ever started. The complete IT-Staff and their customers had to be trained in “the ABN AMRO-way-of-working” after the merger took place.
We were able to use the most advanced people and tools to accomplish this aim. It made it possible to meet “the best minds on earth” and to learn about their vision and experience. Later we used this knowledge in every part of the bank.
One of the major targets we wanted to accomplish was to minimize training. People with IT-Skills are very expensive and every day they spend at a training costs a lot of money.
Minimizing training was translated into “Training on the Job”.
To minimize training we started to investigate where and why people were trained and we found many “hidden costs”.
People (mis-)used other people to learn. One of them was an Expert and the others phoned or mailed the expert to ask questions. The expert loved to do this but by “helping others” he (or she) was unable to their “real job”.
We gave them “time to help” but we started to investigate why (and how) one person became an expert and why the others did not spend much time to “learn the trade themselves”.
Experts are people who Explore everything in their own way. They have an internal priority to find out for themselves “how-it-works”. Experts are Explorers.
The others needed to be programmed (or a better term Instructed) and the best way to do this was (of course) Programmed Instruction. The funny thing is that “programmed instruction” can be programmed in a program.
When you create software you are able to create a kind of “meta-layer” that helps (it is called Help) the user. Creating a user-friendly help-system is very difficult to do. You have to balance between compact (Do This) and Extended Information (Why?).
When you develop a software-system the best way to do is to design the “help-software” first and the “real software” later.
Another category of “users” are the Inventors. They are sending a new Idea or Enhancement every day. Inventors are a burden to the organization because they are “way ahead” of the others and the “others” are a majority.
Most of the Inventors are “technology-watchers” and want “new gadgets” build into the System. With Inventors you have to apply the 80/20-rule. Skip 20% of their specification and the essence appears.
If you read this blog I have showed something called “Learning Styles”. Some people have to be Programmed to learn others Invent or Explore.
Learning Styles are created by combining the “Internal Organs” of the Human Being.
These organs are the Imagination, the Emotions, the Sensory-Motor System and the Cognition (“Thinking”). The fifth organ, Consciousness, monitors the balance between the other organs. It acts as the Observer.
When you combine the Four Organs you are able to create six (or twelve) combinations. When you want to put your Ideas in Practice you are an Inventor and when you want Apply the Rules you want to be Programmed.
The six combinations can be combined in a pattern (a triangle, a square) and if you arrange the people with different learning styles in the right pattern they can Help the others to learn.
If you arrange this pattern in the “wrong way” your Organ-ization will stagnate and Innovation will stop.
Perhaps the best way is to “let it go the way is goes” (the flow) but this is something Managers, People who want to Instruct, don’t like at all.
Will McWhinney defined six games. In the previous blogs I told you about the Game of Life and the Analytical Game. In this blog I want to tell you about a very special game called the Game of Politics.
The game of Politics is a conflict between the worldviews Unity and Social. Unity is the world of Norms and Social is the world of Values.
Many people consider the Game of Politics a “dirty” game. They don’t like politics at all.
It is a dirty game because many people that call themselves politicians are formulating and enforces rules (by the Analytical Game) but don’t apply the rules. They are not consistent.
It is not necessary to be consistent because everybody learns and makes mistakes but the “bad” politicians don’t admit their mistakes.
When they don’t admit their mistakes or deliberately misuse the rules they enforce, they are making use of the System for their own benefit. They want to gain or increase their power and/or their wealth.
When you want to increase your power you believe that your current power is not sufficient to protect your self. You are afraid. Although they never will admit this fear is the main driver of politicians that misuse the system.
When the fear becomes unbearable they develop an extreme position and focus on one worldview. If they do this they are not playing a game anymore. They are focused on one worldview (Unity) and develop a tendency that psychiatrist call Paranoid.
Many powerful leaders in history fell into the trap of fear to loose their power and created very powerful paranoid systems. Famous examples in recent history are of course Hitler and Stalin. When paranoid leaders enforce rules they become opportunistic. They don’t mind if the people believe they are inconsistent or “evil”. Every act is motivated by the impulsive reaction to a possible threat and every threat is part of a big conspiracy.
Let’s get back to the Game of Politics.
The Social worldview is the worldview of emotions. Emotions help you to evaluate attracting and repulsive forces. We show our emotions with our “body-language” and the tonality of the sounds we produce.
The Game of Politics is a game where we express our feelings directly in concepts. Our feeling evaluates so we could also say that the Game of Politics evaluates concepts and (the other way around) attracts or repels us when concepts are stated. We give our opinion.
The Game of Politics is very dependent on the Emotions.
The Emotions are a “very old part” of the Human. This part “does not understand” rational concepts.
The Emotions are “open” to manipulation when we are in a state a trance. We get into a state of trance when we are focused. This happens when we are looking at TV or a Movie or Driving a Car.
One of the most simple techniques to move a person into a trance-state is to “surprise” a person. We surprise a person when we do something the Expectation ( our Thinking) is not expecting. Surprise is the basis of hypnosis.
Many powerful politicians knew how to manage the Emotions. They are not managed by words. They are managed by the way the words sound and the body-language of the person who speaks the words.
The emotions are strongly managed by collective contexts. When people are united in a stadium the emotions connect. When pressure is used the personal fields of the humans unite into one collective field. They become one entity, a crowd.
