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Understanding Systems vs. How the Human Mind Seems Wired to Think

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Andrew Schmookler
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Here's a passage from the first chapter of the P of T that speaks to how changes in the parts can be governed by forces operating in their systemic environment:

<blockquote>The selective process stands outside the immediate arena of human existence. An analogy may be drawn from biological selection. When coal began to coat everything in Britain with dust, a species of moth that had been white began over the generations to darken. The light-colored individuals were too easily spotted by predators against the coal dust and were selected against. Yet, that selection directed a change toward darkness in no way implies that darkness became central to the butterfly’s life processes, determining how it flew, what it ate, how it reproduced, and so on. By the same token, the parable of the tribes can claim that the selection for the ways of power has dominated the profound transformations of the evolution of civilization without claiming that power has been the central preoccupation of civilized peoples or that power maximization has been their principal goal [much less that the striving for power is as central to human nature as it has been to the evolution of civilization].</blockquote>

I go on to acknowledge the important differences between moths changing unawares in an environment changing colors on them, and people caught up in a struggle for power they could not avoid but certainly could observe and experience.  

But the important thing the two situations have in common is that it is the larger environment, not the individual actors, that determine which among the living variations will survive to shape the future of those entities.  

That's what I mean by "from the outside in."

Perhaps my Harvard psychiatrist friend was reflecting a professional bias of a field that focuses on the individual (or even the group) psyche.  But, from interactions with many people, I believe it is more than that.

My guess is that it is our nature to think of causality in human terms, with forces at work at the human scale.  That works well for understanding what's going on in the kinds of relationships that were important for the overwhelming majority of homo sapiens' time on this planet-- friends, enemies, families, rivals, etc. In those circumstances, there probably was little reason to be able to think more abstractly about the dynamics of much larger wholes.

But in our complex, large-scale world --as I see it-- many, probably most, of the major determinants of how things unfold are at a different level.  Namely, at the level of the vast systems in which we are embedded.  And these systems cannot be understood in terms of the thoughts, feelings and preferences of constituent parts, like us.

The true dynamics of these systems have to be found at the macro scale, where the highest level system unfolds according to a logic of its own.

Here are some systems I believe to be of that sort:  the biosphere of Darwinian selection; the interactive overarching intersocietal system of civilization (the subject of the P of T); and the competitive market economy, analyzed in social evolutionary terms in my ILLUSION OF CHOICE.   

(In that work, I try to show that the market economy is another sphere which unfolds according to a logic of its own, and thus --OVER TIME, and if not adequately corrected by countervailing collective choice-- imposes a future on people who only SEEM to be governing the system with their choices.  Any society that adopts a market economic system and that does not compensate against that logic, I argue, will inexorably be driven into a future the main aspects of which are predictable from the dynamics of the system and are not those that the people, if they could CHOOSE, would have chosen.)

 To suggest that understanding the way that our destiny is shaped by the dynamics of systems runs against the human grain is not, of course, equivalent to saying that people are inherently incapable of such understanding.  Obviously, many people do understand the dynamics of biological evolution as explained by the Darwinian dynamics.

But if only 38 percent of the American people believe in the validity of evolutionary theory, one important factor may be that it is difficult for many people to wrap their minds around the logic of the theory.  For many people, it seems obvious that --to refer back to the 18th century thinker, William Paley-- if you find a watch on the ground, you know there must be a watchmaker.  Or, if you see a well-designed creature, there must be a Designer.

Explanations make sense in terms of actors with purposes.

I would bet that of the 62 percent of the American public who are not among those who believe evolutionary theory to be valid, there will be very, very few who would be capable of furnishing a cogent account of what that theory is and how it works.  (And it is quite possible that many of the 38 percent who do believe in evolution have no real understanding of it either, but simply assume that the scientists must be right.)

One could reasonably predict also that traditionalist-conservatives would be over-represented in that 62 percent who reject evolutionary theory.  The obvious interpretation of such a finding --or reason for predicting it-- would be that a larger proportion of these people have religious reasons for wanting to reject the theory.  And of course that would be part of it.

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Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is (more...)
 
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