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30 Jan 2002 @ 21:15, by mmmark. Social System Design
This is not my creation, but I made one small edit to Andrea Kulbacki's observation:
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.
Why not?
Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done around here.
And that my friends, is how social consciousness HAS been formed en masse! More >
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 25 Jan 2002 @ 02:31, by ming. Social System Design
In trying to figure out what democracy really is and how it might work, I notice in the dictionary that the ending -cracy signifies "rule" or "government" by the agent specified by the initial element. Thus democracy, theocracy, technocracy. But, really, I'm not at all interested in being ruled by any agency other than the whole and my own sense of what is right within it. So, maybe we need a system that isn't a -cracy. Or, if anything, it should be a "Holocracy", a system that is governed by the whole, by itself. Holocracy would be the government of whole systems. And, searching on the web for that term, it incidentally leads me to some interesting folks who are using that word. For example REM and my friend Neutopia; More >
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 6 Jan 2002 @ 22:18, by ming. Social System Design
The term "post-modernism" has always confused me. Or, rather, I must admit that I never got a good definition. Now, researching it some more, the best explanation I can find is in these pages. Modernism was characterized by a belief that rational, orderly progress of one well-identified central metaphor, such as Science or Capitalism or Communism, was going to solve things. Post-modernism is the end of belief in any such absolute truths; replaced with a sense that everything is relative; there are no universal answers or agreements; culture just fragments into a playful celebration of chaos. We're surfing across multiple paradigms, without any of them being the obvious RIGHT one. Mostly it means that Science and your local Political Paradigm have been deposed as gods of your world. You can make up the truth as well as they can. More >
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6 Dec 2001 @ 22:30, by ming. Social System Design
What I am looking for is a better global brain - a better way for us to be connected together, where our collective intelligence will tend to emerge.
I'm looking for a structure of inter-connectedness where more connections add up to more intelligence, rather than more confusion. It would become better when more people participate. Increased diversity would increase the rate of evolution, and make the whole system more intelligent and more stable. More >
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 3 Nov 2001 @ 06:45, by bernies. Social System Design
As of November, I have replicated all the copies of my Catalyst 4 Change (C4C) at [link] articles at Quick Topic.
Now readers can easily interact with each paragraph, within each thought-provoking article. More >
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