TOP Quarterly Update #9: 12 July 2013
Dear Member,
I’m back in an old groove.
My heroes when I was a young boy were scientists like Galileo Galilei, Michael Faraday and Louis Pasteur. And I dreamt of accompanying explorer-discoverers like Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama.
The wish for science led me to escape into a year of full-time neurophysiology research before completing medical studies. But, despite discovering something new, it proved somewhat pedestrian. And then I got waylaid by the spirit of the 1960s and the post-Freudian heroes who humanized psychoanalysis.
I was entranced by the mind and found that it was still largely an undiscovered country. Why shouldn’t I ignore all warnings and go boldly where others trod warily? But there was that little matter of making a living. Fortunately, I had another inclination: a wish to help others.
Somehow it all came together and, over decades, it led to the development of the Taxonomy called THEE. Since working on the TOP website, I have become progressively convinced that THEE is an object in its own right, a scientific object. The human mind adores patterns, and it can be hard to tell if they mean something. So I am both amazed and doubtful at having discovered that our existence as creative beings can be codified, much as the periodic table codifies material existence.
Time can seem cyclic. I feel myself somehow returning to my scientific roots. But in a new way. I am moving from observing and classifying real world phenomena found in the field to studying conjectures about that field-work—just like the regular academic scientist I used to be. I want to address my doubts.
It feels strange. But it feels good. I’ll tell you a little about it below. In future letters you will hear more. But first …
Latest Postings
I have almost completed my postings about goodness. The components for producing goodness
are now completely posted.
The Tree framework that emerges when you actually try to apply this in life is in process of being posted. It reveals contradictions: we must both «endure hardships» in situations and also «break out of situations»; we have to «meet our own needs» and also «put others first». Perhaps you can work out something that makes life easier. If so, contribute on the relevant topic.
Once this Tree framework is posted, I will offer a few reflections on the whole Satellite. Overall, I think the various patterns have provided a comprehensive coverage. I have, however, omitted developing the Root Spiral and the three frameworks that presumably flow from it. I believe they would have been about what makes for a good community: that is to say goodness from the perspective of the community—as distinct from a person's life in their community however enlightened or primitive it may be. Anyone interested in tackling this?
I think we have all probably had more than enough of goodness. It is time to turn to something down to earth: work, its management and organization ...
Framework Room
This subject, colloquially referred to as , has proved to be a good example of why I need to work in a Studio. I realized recently that I will have to re-arrange the sections posted there.
Based on my experiences with Elliott Jaques 30 years ago, I currently present the hierarchical as the first framework. Other frameworks, some completely new, then follow.
Not surprisingly, taxonomic inquiry suggests an entirely different and far more intuitive order of presentation.
Let me try to explain.
The natural taxonomic starting point is the set of 7 methods for managing work situations. These are obvious, relevant and usable by all of us, regardless of our personal capability. This framework generates a useful classification of management consultancies.
Emerging from this Typology comes a Spiral for strengthening management to deal with complexity. You may recall that Spirals deal with context. Work is about changing reality, and capability corresponds to our way of constructing reality using language. So our personal capability is the context that governs how we handle a method to do work. The Spiral naturally generates the capability—determined —which is where I had previously started the exposition.
There are then a few more logical steps: the dynamics of accountability, and (soon to be posted) the organization of management which will reveal socio-emotional dynamics within organizations.
Once completed, re-arranged and revised for continuity, this series will be moved into a Satellite. (If this is all new for you, it might be easiest to wait for that.)
Running with the Herd
Herding is an innate biological instinct. We can manage it if we choose, but we cannot escape it. When herding leads to a financial mania, we enjoy the ride but become part of the collateral damage during the collapse.
Scientific consensus is also a phenomenon of herding. Being right is no protection, so woe betide anyone who stands in the way. The consensus, enthusiastically embraced as always, is eventually shown to be wrong in part or sometimes in its essence.
The current materialistic consensus is that brain functioning determines our personal functioning. Human experience is real. We do experience, scientists and philosophers agree, but that is a matter of neuronal firing. It just happens. It is. By contrast, free will is an illusion. The self is an illusion. Purpose and meaning are illusions.
Instead of becoming a scientific pariah, I am willing to go along with this notion. I will accept that we exist inside an illusion. (As you know, I call that illusion: psychosocial reality.) But once I take this scientific position, I find I cannot avoid its implications.
From a practical perspective, I notice that we function through our illusions. To ensure I get some social support (and even financing), I will genuinely but provisionally accept that we all live in illusory societies, enable illusory laws and do illusory work in our illusion of markets or within illusory organizations. However, most of us also live under the illusion that some illusions are better than others.
It is easy to construct illusions that people can embrace willingly, as demagogues and charismatics do for their own power and glory: appealing to base instincts that can enslave and kill millions. The real challenge is surely to construct and use illusions that enable each and all to thrive.
To do that, it seems sensible to study the workings of the illusion itself, and not restrict ourselves to neuronal connections and synaptic chemistry. Fortunately, from a scientific perspective, the psychosocial illusion, like the physical cosmos, is universal, perennial and evolving. Dedicated, dispassionate and rigorous (yet illusory) investigation should lead to illusory yet valid knowledge; and that should offer relevant and effective ways to deal with our (illusory) personal and social issues.
It turns out that, while psychosocial illusions have an immense superficial variety, there are underlying fundamentals. It is these fundamentals that the Taxonomy encapsulates with surprising, useful and aesthetic results. If THEE is a real scientific object, then it will generate findings that did not go into its construction ...
Architecture Room
In the main part of the site, human illusions (psychosocial reality) are the scientific object of study. Whereas in the privacy of this Studio Room, I am treating THEE as a scientific object worthy of study in its own right.
Scientific objects have their own fascination. As one of my illusions is a belief in science, I think testing conjectures will have significance.
Let me give an example of my first foray.
You may recall that in all THEE hierarchies, the even-numbered levels and the odd-numbered levels seem to be polar opposites on some crucial dimension. I call it the oscillating duality. It evidently ensures a discontinuity between levels, but beyond that I neither understand what this duality is, nor what it represents, nor what it signifies.
In that state of ignorance, I stumbled on the finding that the poles of the duality in the could be reversed if I mentally forced myself to devise or enable that. This leads to the various elements becoming elements of other . The original posting was definite about this proposition, but somewhat vague in its explanation and examples. (It has since been revised.)
So I investigated further. You can see details in the Forcing Duality Reversal section of the Room. I have now covered all 49 reversal possibilities (i.e. 7 levels in each of 7 Hierarchies).
Although there are surely some errors and misunderstandings, the pattern that emerged is striking and unexpected. It has three features as summarized here. I suspect that THEE is telling us something, if we can only work out what that is!
As a preliminary, I suspect that each Primary Hierarchy can be flipped as a whole. The result is to generate a completely new sort of Tree framework. My current view is that these may be about how to handle crucial life situations where we have to force ourselves.
That’s it till next time, but more soon ...
Take care and thanks for your support.
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