C-251. State of “Union”
Which would be worse: 1/ To lose a union, as product, that we have? Or: 2/ To have not achieved the union, as process, that we needed? Keeping in mind that failure in (1) can be due to failure in (2). How are we to interpret “… toward a more perfect union.” Product or process? “Union” confounds them. That pesky “-ion” suffix again.* Does “union” point to a One or to an “as one”? Can the individual-community relationship be viable except via “as one”? Procedurally, that is. Architecturally.
B-speak manages with “union” to store away in a closet our toughest procedural CEM challenge by pointing to a product rather than to the requisite process. The process of splicing the individual with the community. “…Toward a more perfect Union” has to be a happening, a becoming, aided by procedural technologies. Not a conceptual notion expressing a wishful objective.
Community is helpless without union. Union is a test of community. For democracy to work, we need to work at democracy. Toward full freedom. Extending beyond freedom FROM and OF to freedom TO. Work together to bring individual and community together for collective capability needed to solve many of our problems ... most especially democracy as an operating system … in balance with a control system.
Like “individual” and “community,” “union” needs to be a theoretical construct instead of a concept, so that we can make the most technologically – i.e., developmentally and architecturally -- of functionality re needed functionality … and not continue to plod along to the criterion of functional/dysfunctional re step outcomes, evolving rather than developing.
As a concept, “union” refers to a relationship of individuals. As in the cases of a marriage, a nation state, or a labor force. It can thus serve, only weakly, interpreting “… toward a more perfect Union” without provision for procedural development of the individual-community linkage.**
Perhaps the way forward here is to think of union as a third self. A happening, just as individual and community are happenings, the becomings they must be, realized in steps made and taken. Steps desperately in need of improved procedural technology to become effective molecular steps. And of theoretical foundations on which, and with which, we can come up with this needed innovation in behavioral architecture. Whether spoken of as “human infrastructure” or not.
***
“Tragedy of the commons? Union is yet another tragedy of the commons … of that Commons we need but have not built, an operating system for collective problem solving. A tragedy much more serious than the loss of this or that shared portion of an inherited natural resource. A “sin of omission” that extends across our assorted “sins of commission.”
There is for Union as for the other Commons problems a technical solution. But it is a multi-layered technical solution, of tech for tech for tech (extended procedural differentiation), up front in the next molecular step.
Lacking a Grasp of the Nature of Things and thus an incomplete and inaccurate view of needed functionality, lacking a theory FOR the behavioral architecture of functionality, lacking a behavioral science appropriate to S-universe step making and taking, lacking a language to leverage progress forward (beyond WISA re WITA, to WICF and WTITBTA) … lacking all this and plagued by B-ness and B-speak, it cannot be surprising that Union is talked about conceptually and ineffectually, as in instances such as the lack of national unity when beset by contending political parties, such as the seeming inevitability of bad feelings after an election contested with negativism.
We have this problem of civic architecture. It is not enough to pay homage and allegiance to what we have built. There is more, much more to be built in light of the Nature of Things and the Expansion.
***
* Troublesome, but in a good way too. By confounding process and product, it raises the question of why make a word work so hard. One answer would be that an important phenomenon needs attention: that “differentiation” is the abductive (logically speaking) source of both process and product, that slice and splice technologies apply to both – i.e., that we should attend to differentiation and, of course, to its source then too. And it’s not just the “-ion” words that have to carry this freight. Many words in B-speak serve conceptually as both noun and verb (e.g., “step,” “game,” “structure”), responding to needed functionality. (And in message theory [App. XX] the need becomes clearer, because an R-word comprises two nouns and two verbs.)
** Too easily the relationship of individual and community becomes a calculus of the community/individual ratio, predicated on instances. Community versus individual? Which is – which should be – the more important? The values of the individual or of the community in guiding our behavior?
In light of the very useful Search feature now available, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.
(c) 2021 R. F. Carter
B-speak manages with “union” to store away in a closet our toughest procedural CEM challenge by pointing to a product rather than to the requisite process. The process of splicing the individual with the community. “…Toward a more perfect Union” has to be a happening, a becoming, aided by procedural technologies. Not a conceptual notion expressing a wishful objective.
Community is helpless without union. Union is a test of community. For democracy to work, we need to work at democracy. Toward full freedom. Extending beyond freedom FROM and OF to freedom TO. Work together to bring individual and community together for collective capability needed to solve many of our problems ... most especially democracy as an operating system … in balance with a control system.
Like “individual” and “community,” “union” needs to be a theoretical construct instead of a concept, so that we can make the most technologically – i.e., developmentally and architecturally -- of functionality re needed functionality … and not continue to plod along to the criterion of functional/dysfunctional re step outcomes, evolving rather than developing.
As a concept, “union” refers to a relationship of individuals. As in the cases of a marriage, a nation state, or a labor force. It can thus serve, only weakly, interpreting “… toward a more perfect Union” without provision for procedural development of the individual-community linkage.**
Perhaps the way forward here is to think of union as a third self. A happening, just as individual and community are happenings, the becomings they must be, realized in steps made and taken. Steps desperately in need of improved procedural technology to become effective molecular steps. And of theoretical foundations on which, and with which, we can come up with this needed innovation in behavioral architecture. Whether spoken of as “human infrastructure” or not.
“Tragedy of the commons? Union is yet another tragedy of the commons … of that Commons we need but have not built, an operating system for collective problem solving. A tragedy much more serious than the loss of this or that shared portion of an inherited natural resource. A “sin of omission” that extends across our assorted “sins of commission.”
There is for Union as for the other Commons problems a technical solution. But it is a multi-layered technical solution, of tech for tech for tech (extended procedural differentiation), up front in the next molecular step.
Lacking a Grasp of the Nature of Things and thus an incomplete and inaccurate view of needed functionality, lacking a theory FOR the behavioral architecture of functionality, lacking a behavioral science appropriate to S-universe step making and taking, lacking a language to leverage progress forward (beyond WISA re WITA, to WICF and WTITBTA) … lacking all this and plagued by B-ness and B-speak, it cannot be surprising that Union is talked about conceptually and ineffectually, as in instances such as the lack of national unity when beset by contending political parties, such as the seeming inevitability of bad feelings after an election contested with negativism.
We have this problem of civic architecture. It is not enough to pay homage and allegiance to what we have built. There is more, much more to be built in light of the Nature of Things and the Expansion.
* Troublesome, but in a good way too. By confounding process and product, it raises the question of why make a word work so hard. One answer would be that an important phenomenon needs attention: that “differentiation” is the abductive (logically speaking) source of both process and product, that slice and splice technologies apply to both – i.e., that we should attend to differentiation and, of course, to its source then too. And it’s not just the “-ion” words that have to carry this freight. Many words in B-speak serve conceptually as both noun and verb (e.g., “step,” “game,” “structure”), responding to needed functionality. (And in message theory [App. XX] the need becomes clearer, because an R-word comprises two nouns and two verbs.)
** Too easily the relationship of individual and community becomes a calculus of the community/individual ratio, predicated on instances. Community versus individual? Which is – which should be – the more important? The values of the individual or of the community in guiding our behavior?
In light of the very useful Search feature now available, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.
(c) 2021 R. F. Carter
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