Since the
destruction of the World Trade Center, both terrorism (with
its links to Islamic fundamentalism) and intensified security
(with its encroachment on civil liberties) have been part of
our lives. As a practising cybernetician,
I have asked myself what perception of circumstances could
have led to the terrorists’ acts of hopelessness and defiance?
In short, what were they reacting against?
The market’s overweening power
The extent to which the rules of the market economy trump
any and all other legitimate concerns has struck me for some
time. It seems the market economy is as rigid in its demands
as any ayatollah.
As a ‘cradle capitalist’ living under a liberal government,
I find this irritating and distasteful. So, it is predictable
that some denied access both to the comforts of a consumer
economy and to the rights of modern citizenship find these
demands intolerable. If ruling elites flaunt their wealth
while the majority of people live in poverty, discontent is
inevitable.
As my partner, the late pioneer cybernetician Stafford
Beer was fond of saying, “The purpose of a system is what
it does”. The current system produces luxury at the top,
anxious comfort in the middle, and misery at the bottom.
One of the activities Stafford and I enjoyed was touring
the cathedrals in Britain. A favourite was Durham Cathedral,
with its 900 years of history. What impressed me most was the
sheer reach of the Church. The Prince Bishops of Durham had their own army,
minted their own coin, directed trade and industry, provided
education, sponsored the arts and determined social relations
as well as pronouncing on the theological, moral and ethical
questions of the day. The Church even had its own legal
system, and its wrongdoers were not subject to the king’s law.
Today, it would be hard to refute that such influence is
held by the market. It is so much a part of our environment
that we don’t notice how inescapable it has become. Economic
considerations routinely conflict with the preservation of the
natural environment, human rights and social justice, and they
usually prevail.
Not even the rights of small countries to support a viable
agricultural and industrial sector, or of large countries to
protect their populations from being made guinea pigs of
genetically modified foods, are safe. International trade
agreements such as Gatt and Nafta protect commercial interests, but
there is no comparable international protection for human
beings or for nature.
Yes, we will protect the environment if it isn’t too
costly: even better if we can develop new industries that will
earn higher profits than the polluting ones. Yes, human rights
are important, but not important enough to turn away from
cheap oil, cheap labour and rich markets. Yes, it would be
nice if the small banana producing countries in the Caribbean
could earn a living, but we mustn’t allow exceptions to trade
agreements that favour large plantations, even if that tilts
farmers toward growing illegal drugs to survive.
And yes, it would be nice if ordinary people in countries
run by despots had legitimate means to address their
grievances and achieve their dreams. But, unless these despots
openly defy the United States, it’s not our job to intervene,
even if that leaves an open field for those who use religion
and its promise of rewards in the afterlife to motivate people
to violent conflict and terrorism.
The west spurns its friends
The west has a poor record of supporting informed and
progressive leaders in developing countries. For example, Mohammed Harbi, exiled from Algeria to
France, has received death threats from the Algerian secret
police, the radical Islamists and some ex-pied noir
settlers who have not forgiven him for his role in Algeria’s
National Liberation Front.
Ezatollah Sahabi of Iran became a dissident
after the CIA replaced Iran’s president, Mohammad Mossadeq,
with the monarchy. He was imprisoned by the Shah and then
again by the Islamic Republic after he criticised them for
their repressive practices. With power held by dictators,
beholden or not to the west, and no space for democratic
dissent, radical religious elements are likely to become the
only opposition.
In Iraq, with the secular despotism of Saddam Hussein
defeated, only fundamentalist religious forces are politically
well-organised. It is not certain that the United States will
be willing or able to stay until secular political groups can
acquire enough legitimacy to govern. President Bush’s
unwillingness to involve the UN in a meaningful way and his
distribution of lucrative contracts to political supporters at
home won’t help this process.
Two forms of religion
The system we have is perfectly designed to get the results
we’re getting. Although no one could deny the improvements in
human life and standard of living achieved through market
economies, or religion for that matter, neither has the
requisite variety to address the full range of human concerns.
To some extent, the great institutions of the market
economy have realised this. A recent World Bank report sounds the alarm about a number of
acute problems; for example, while goods are moving more and
more freely, many people are trapped behind political
boundaries in desperate circumstances.
There are a number of similarities between the demands of
fundamentalist religions and those of the market economy.
Fundamentalist versions of religion and economics are known
for brooking no deviation from their central concepts and for
taking many of their own precepts literally even in the
presence of disconfirming evidence.
As participants in the market economy, we are called to
attend to advertisements. On TV, commercials may run
four or five times an hour for four minute intervals. How
often can one open a newspaper or a magazine, without going
through the ads? Where can one walk down a main street without
seeing signs and billboards?
There are ads on subways and before feature films. Some
ladies rooms present you with noisy commercial messages on a
video screen if you want to dry your hands. Similar screens
are being piloted in the back of New York taxis – one of the
few commercial spaces left where people enjoyed some privacy.
And the internet! Is that so different from ‘in your face’
religion with its frequent demands for public observance?
One of the distinctions between fundamentalist and modern
religions is the way they address children. While modern
religions teach children understandable lessons that relate to
their own experiences, fundamentalist versions ask children to
take on concepts that are far beyond their comprehension.
In television advertising, they actually speak about the
‘two to eleven year old market’. At the younger end of this
‘market’, they don’t even know what a commercial transaction
means. Older children and teenagers do, but they are easily
manipulated by advertising into making choices that are not in
their own best interests. Commercials are dominated by snack
foods that lay the groundwork for a lifetime of poor nutrition
and expensive ‘branded’ toys and clothing.
Controlling minds, governing spaces
Many of us are put off by religions that regard people as
of little value except as servants of their god. In the market
economy, while we think we are customers because we have
bought a ticket or subscribed to a magazine, we are also a
‘product’ and our value is based on our age, gender or income.
This leads to bizarre outcomes such as people from the wrong
postal code having their magazine subscriptions cancelled and
discontinuing popular radio and television shows because their
audiences were too old for the sponsors.
Fundamentalist religions have strict rules about what you
can and can’t talk about. In the mall where I used to live,
the Salvation Army wanted to continue their practice of
soliciting contributions for the needy at Christmas. Many
malls forbid this but, in our progressive community, it was
allowed – on condition that they use cardboard bells saying
‘ding’ and ‘dong’. Real bells might distract shoppers.
Restrictions on free speech in private
commercial space are much tighter than most governments would
even think of imposing. Unfortunately, there are fewer and
fewer public spaces where public speech is feasible. This was
a problem when I was active in local politics in the United
States. We couldn’t afford TV or much in the way of newspaper
ads and weren’t allowed in the shopping centres so we held up
signs and passed out leaflets at traffic lights like squeegee
kids. So much for public speech.
Religions often have an ‘elect’ with special privileges; so
does commerce. Some well-known politicians raised ‘cash for
questions’ or sold their attention to constituents who bought
expensive tickets to receptions and, coincidentally, came to
favour policies advanced by their contributors. Probably the
worst example was when the second Bush administration invited
the energy companies, including Enron, to formulate policy for
the Department of Energy – and weren’t even ashamed to admit
it.
This turns talking to one’s elected officials into a
commodity. Fundamentalist religions and the market economy
alike place little value on those outside their own circles.
No money in poor countries to buy the branded drugs they need
or develop them themselves (this after their herbal remedies
are patented and they’ve been guinea pigs in the tests) – too
bad. It is all ‘collateral damage’, but not wrong because
there was no ‘intention’ that people die. Are they the market
economy’s ‘infidels’?
Living in the “risk society”
Ulrich Beck proposes we think of ourselves
as a “risk society”. Such a society is as much about the
distribution of “bads” (or risks) as about the distribution of
goods. Often, vital information does not get through as the
hierarchy of wealth and power frequently precludes technical
people and workers on the ground from having genuine
communication with executive and political decision-makers.
The people at the top can’t possibly have the necessary
experience to understand these concerns.
As Stafford Beer used to say, the president of the
organisation has the same size brain as the janitor. How can
good decisions be made at the top without effective
communication channels at lower levels? When catastrophes
occur, it’s difficult to hold anyone accountable.
It has been widely accepted that the market is inadequate
at calculating and accepting the full costs of its actions.
Indeed, the practice has been to exaggerate the benefits while
minimising the costs and structural adjustments. This
phenomenon is most easily measured in the environmental field
but it has equally serious impacts on social justice and human
rights. The rules of the market drive behaviour in this
direction although individual business people might prefer
other alternatives.
With so many real demands for fairness, justice and a
decent life falling on the deaf ears of the market economy,
what else would we expect but a fundamentalist alternative
with an equally implacable set of constructs based on
intangible rather than tangible goals? This is no less true
because some leaders in both camps are in it for personal
power and wealth.
If we want to strengthen the hand of Islamic (and other) moderates, then they have to be able to
achieve, and be seen to achieve, some real gains. The market
economy extols flexibility when it comes to expecting workers
to be mobile and show up if and when needed, whether or not
companies incur any continuing obligation to them, move
factories to cheap labour zones, or invest pension funds in
corporate adventures.
Would it be impossible to pay living wages, or to make
respect for human rights a condition of doing business? No
amount of security can eliminate the micro-revolts of
terrorism as long as there are people who are willing to die
to inflict damage. The only way is to eliminate the sources of
hopelessness and rage that fuel such profound discontent.
Reconfiguring Spaceship Earth
Polarities are dangerous if one cannot recognise that each
pole can have more than one opposite. The opposite of one
fundamentalism could be another, or it could be pluralism. The
opposite of modernism doesn’t have to be reactionism or
selective nostalgia for past values: it could be a rethinking
of what it means to be passengers on Spaceship Earth.
The field of cybernetics and systems has much to contribute
to the necessary public debate. It embraces complexity and the
parallel perspectives of observers of a probabilistic world.
It recognises chains of feedback loops that may have an effect
far from, and disproportionate to, their origins. It takes as
given a number of process laws, such as the ‘law of requisite
variety’ that states that a regulator of a system has to have
as much variety at its disposal as the system it is trying to
regulate. Does any public body presently have the variety to
regulate, say, the biogenetics industry?
A cornucopia of concepts, models and tools – many of them
interdisciplinary – are on offer.
Critical systems theory, hermeneutics and experimental
epistemologies look at power relations, assumptions and frames
of reference.
Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory, systemic anthropology
and family systems deal with individuals and small groups.
Beer’s Viable System Model and Russell
Ackoff’s Interactive Planning are among the tools that address
organisational structure; designing in as much autonomy and
democracy as the situation allows.
Forrester’s System Dynamics and other simulation packages,
applications of Hubert Maturana’s basic research on biology,
Prigogine’s work on non-linear systems, help understand the
interaction of traffic patterns as well as chemicals. All draw
upon understanding dynamic behaviours and how they interact.
The systems field has used its own concepts to pioneer
approaches designed to make debate more authentic and
inclusive – and used some of their own professional
conferences to try them out. (See the New Economics
Foundation’s Participation Works: 21 techniques of
community participation for the 21st century, 1998).
Beer’s Team Syntegrity process is a good example: it draws
upon geometry, neurophysiology, communication theory and
psychology in an intense planning protocol that shares maximum
information in a non-hierarchical format.
It would be nice, but not necessary, for a political party
to take on this body of work. All of us who have a stake in
this complicated and confusing world have a duty to make
public processes work. If we can’t do this, we will find
ourselves in a dystopia built by the short-sighted and whoever
wins – at whatever cost – the battle to impose a simplistic
solution.
The first step? Start talking. Ignore soundbites and spin
doctors. Start today using today’s tools to address today’s
problems.
Allenna
Leonard is president of the American Society for
Cybernetics. The views expressed here are her own and do not
reflect those of the Society.