Adam Smith, Sociocybernetics, and a Decentralised Society ... A seminar led by John Raven1, followed by a discussion led
Non RPM JR conference papers: Espinosa seminar flyer 1p v2.docx
Adam Smith, Sociocybernetics, and a Decentralised Society
Harnessing Social Forces for a Sustainable Future and the Common Good. A seminar led by John Raven 1, followed by a discussion led by Angela Espinosa & Jon Walker 2 Hull University, Tue 13 December 2016, 11am-1 pm and 2 to 4 pm. Wilberforce LT 29
Over at least 3 millennia, acute observers of society have noted that hierarchical organisations tend to become governed by “committees of ignoramuses” who lack key information about the issues in relation to which they are taking decisions, create destructive working conditions for those working in them, and be endlessly destructive of habitat whilst contributing little to quality of life. Most of the work carried out can therefore be described as senseless, but the perceived need to execute it does legitimise the right of those higher in the hierarchy to command the compliance of others, usually against a backdrop of grossly dehumanising and demeaning conditions for those who fail to comply. The work is, therefore, not only senseless but deeply unethical: the destruction of habitat entailed is about to result in our extinction as a species and perhaps most life on earth and it directly undermines the quality of life of most of those involved. Yet those at the top cannot be “wise men” because they cannot know the most important things that would need to be known to act wisely let alone create conditions for sustainability. This is because, as Smith observed, if actor A initiates some entrepreneurial activity at location X and B initiates some other activity at point Y one cannot tell what will happen as those two developments come together. Smith’s solution was the ultimate in democracy. It was to allow everyone to vote with their pennies at both points. People could buy the entrepreneurs’ goods or services and invest in their enterprises. If the enterprises prospered, previously unimaginable developments would (and did) occur as they came together. Unfortunately, this solution does not, and cannot, work. In fact, the key information to be acted upon is widely dispersed in the hearts, heads, and hands of billions of people. The problem is to make arrangements to harness it. Both Adam Smith’s “market mechanism” and “democracy” were proposed as solutions to this problem. However, true to type, both (like so many other things – e.g. “education”) were corrupted into their opposites and have become facades for extreme command and control operations. Understanding how this came about is one of the key questions of our time. One implication of these things is that there is a need to find ways of conceptualising, mapping, measuring, and harnessing the social forces involved, perhaps in a similar way to that in which Forrester, Meadows, et al mapped the dynamic network of interactions between economic and physical forces heading the planet toward destruction. I say “perhaps in an analogous way” because the failure of the Limits to Growth report is precisely that its authors did not map the network of social forces controlling the inputs to the processes they map. Another is that it is vital to evolve an alternative answer to Adam Smith’s question of how to design a societal management/governance system which innovates, learns, and evolves without central direction. Since the very term “Cybernetics” has to do with governance, feedback, and steering, generating a range of answers capable of experimental implementation and generating systems learning would seem to be a central challenge for socio-cyberneticians. This seminar will explore answers to this question using a socio-cybernetic study of why the so-called “educational” system delivers hierarchy rather than the diversity of talents its very name implies.
Author of The New Wealth of Nations: The Societal Learning Arrangements needed for a Sustainable Society and many other publications viewable via www.johnraven.co.uk
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Authors of A Complexity Approach to Sustainability: Theory and Application.
