science-fiction-economic-collapse

[Mark Kohut]

Interesting, Ian...
 
This, from the article, leads me to ask if this paragraph may be part of the 
suggestive meanings to the Chumsworld airship civilization in AtD?
The grace into which they are last seen flying into, between the Wars?
An Iceland Spar-like, i.e.refracted from the known world, as/into an utopian 'world'? 
 
Discussion question of the day. Maybe?
 
"The irony of a post-scarcity setting is that our civilisation could
have achieved it a century or more ago. Once again, the solutions are
not technological but rooted in our own nature as human beings.
Overcoming or improving our nature may require a moment of
society-wide Satori. Whether we are ready for that yet is up for
debate."


 
 
 
This is where Spiral Dynamics and other AQAL disciplines help in
mapping the terrain, and helping to show how it is we are where we are
in terms of social and cultural development in the contemporary
political morass. They aver that societies evolve and develop in paths
very like those of individuals, which only makes sense in that in both
terms we refer to humans. Individuals all begin at the same
rudimentary stage of development, then develop along lines
representative of what we might loosely call "skill sets". For
instance, sports stars evince exceptional development along a line we
could label kinesthetics; musicians and other artistis have especial
aesthetic development; Einsteins and Schweitzers show strong cognitive
development; etc. The point is, while we all show some development
along all the many lines of development, no one excels in all of them,
and some really go great-guns along one or a few lines as in the
sciences or economics, for instance. We often call these folks
geniuses, but they may have very rudimentary skills in, say,
interpersonal relationship, morality, compassion, etc.

Some people in every era of human history have out-developed others in
their milieux. In some ways these folks are regarded as freaks, but
they often inspire others to follow along where they pioneer the way.
And just as everyone starts at the same stage, everyone also has the
potential to develop to any point along the various lines; and the
more people who take up the trail after a real trail-blazer, the
easier it becomes for others to follow along as well. I think it's
safe to say that most 'trends' can be cited as examples of this
phenomenon, but not all trends have equal value in human development,
and the vast majority get dropped relatively quickly. But the ones not
eliminated persist and deepen and broaden both in their appeal to
others and in their practical relation to social evolution.

Also, development along any line may consist of any number of steps,
or stages discovered via states of awareness of the further potential
ahead of them. These are insights, and can help an individual pursue
the further training needed to achieve the next stage, or center of
gravity, in the discipline.

Societies develop according to the impetus of the developmental arrays
prevalent among their participants. So we get societies of great
technical and economic power, like the USA, which may show very poor
development in ethical or spiritual intelligence. That's not to say
everyone in the US is a moral dunce. Not at all. On the contrary, we
have shown some profound capacities for recognizing and reaching out
to help others in need--even when we get it all wrong and lend support
to the bad guys, or send money and supplies that never reach the
people most in need--we have the capacity for care and sometimes do a
very good job of delivering. But, and this where it most hurts, we
have developed amazing technological capacities and yet apply those to
militaristic / dominance disciplines instead of using those abilities
to discover more harmonious ways of living with others and with our
host planet.

The significant point here is that of the 'center of gravity'
phenomenon. When you add up all the various lines of development in an
individual or a group, you get a sort of central locus of overall
development. For instance, to someone at, say, an 'autonomous' stage
of cognitive development it may seem inevitable that conflicts arise
and they try to rise to define those conflicts at the cognitive level,
but if they are morally 'conformist', they may try to solve those
arising conflicts according to the group with which they identify,
and, furthermore, be rather intolerant of people who do not see things
their way, all depending upon where their overall center of gravity
is. This is because whatever insight we gain will always be
interpreted back to our center of gravity, rather than up to our
furthest developmental reaches. I think this combination really is at
the heart of much of the current American political disjuncture. A
great variety of people at relatively advanced stages of cognitive
development take profoundly differing reads on the current milieu
because they identify with differing views of moral and ethical
virtue, but few can step outside their egoic attachments to fully
recognize the needs and status of others with views different from
their own. Once a significant portion of people reach a level of
development comparable to, say, an Elizabeth Warren, in terms of
cognitive and valuative measures, a number of things start to happen.
They begin to see that their own interests are intimately bound with
the general welfare of everyone else, which really inspires some folks
with middling valuative perspectives but high cognitive ability and
training, while really pissing off the folks with very good cognitive
skills and relatively naive values.

The point is that we could not have achieved a post-scarcity setting a
hundred years ago, because there were not enough people who had
developed beyond individualistic thinking and values. As more people
see the concerns and relative effectiveness of their more
highly-developed peers, they begin to lock into those values memes and
start to develop in relation to that stage of perceived desirability,
and ever more complex responses come into reckoning. Are there enough
people yet at high enough stages of development to allow
post-scarcity? Well, I think not, but there is some evidence that more
complex and subtle values are entering the military all the time. I
think that, ultimately, it will rely on where the military stands as
to how far our society can go in terms of actually helping others
instead of setting out to destroy them.

All this is a very rudimentary reading of the overall schema AQAL
offers, but I hope it reflects, somewhat, the potential this very
complex, yet elegantly simple mapping technique offers. Whether it can
prove itself useful in defusing the current mess, so that we can move
into a position of offering stewardship rather than policing to the
world remains to be seen.

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 1:07 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/dec/01/science-fiction-economic-collapse



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant