Dichotomy or Bifurcation ?
As I argued in Words ( ) our English language has become untrustworthy in many respects, partly as a result of the natural evolution of organizational structure, and sometimes as a deliberate attempt to hijack a word or phrase for some idiosyncratic purpose [to create a godterm]. Other times, when a word has connotative implications more general than one wishes to communicate it is appropriate to use the word along with the phrase in the sense of. This is one of those "other times". When I use the term dichotomy, I have in mind the development of some internal division or conflict within a previously unconflicted system. To illustrate in my usual hokey and irreverent style, when Adam and Eve were initially hanging out in the Garden of Eden they were given a set of behavioral instructions by god which they initially followed- the system of obedience to god's instructions contained no dichotomous elements. When Eve got involved with the devil, and Adam went along for the ride, the dichotomy was born. So within the set of god's instructions there were now two mutually exclusive possibilities, obedience or disobedience. Viewing the world dichotomously is just about our favorite way of looking at things. System of government-- capitalism, socialism; system of social values-- liberal, conservative; system of individual wealth -- rich, poor (at one time this system contained a third or middle class, but that distinction is no longer viable); system of law- legal, illegal, etc..
Taking a very narrow, hence hopelessly inadequate and oversimplified view of the birth of our nation, when we won our independence from England we gained the freedom to govern ourselves. That freedom was unequivocal, we could damn well do anything we wanted too. The forward progress (over time) of that freedom was potentially unrestricted, unchanging. But right away there were internal disagreements about the direction that freedom should take us. The conflicts eventually morphed themselves into the Democrats and Republicans, and the ebb and flow of dichotomous policies has guided us to our present state. Generally speaking this way of doing things has worked out fairly well. As long as the political parties are comparably empowered the course of the system is fairly predictable (haw when the democrats prevail, gee when the republicans prevail), and operates much like a steady state system in chaos theory.
Looking at that system from the perspective of my thoughts on the evolution of organizational structure ( ) one sees that over time the sweep of each ebb or flow gradually becomes less and less. Whether one finds my views on the way organizational systems evolve useful or not, it is irrefutable that changes in direction were much easier earlier in our history than they are now. Look at the way labor unions changed working conditions, or how Roosevelt initiated programs that brought us out of the depression. Thinking for the moment of the Democrats and Republicans as energy sources intent on pushing the course of our country in different directions it is obvious that in the present day neither is very successful in making significant changes. So in this little metaphorette the question becomes since that energy does not effect a systemic change in direction, what happens to it ? Gradually, as the direction the country takes becomes less and less directly affected by either Democratic energy or Republican energy, the respective energies begin to be diverted away from realistic attempts to change the direction of the country toward damaging the other half of the dichotomy: gridlock.
The gridlock between the parties does not mean the system stops moving, The country keeps on trucking, but the course it takes is influenced by factors other than the D's and R's. [lights dim, strange attractors enter stage right.] As the ineffectively directed path of the nation begins to produce unacceptable negative consequences for the country as a whole, the conflict between the dicotts can/will get pretty nasty. One example of this may well be in our near future.
Assuming that the Democrats don't self destruct as usual and Barack Obama becomes our next president, our nation will enter perhaps the most perilous period in our history, and chances of us coming out of that period in one piece are essentially imponderable. Not since Robert Kennedy has a national leader offered such a hopeful, agglutinative vision of our nation's potential future. What is so different now is that in the Kennedy era, we had the resources and perhaps the resolve to pull together as one nation had not crazed nihilism intervened. Now that goal is A Bridge Too Far - we don't have the money or the self respect and honesty to combine our energies and heal our broken nation. And when we fail, when peace and prosperity seems no closer, Obama will get the blame and the zombies of racial hatred that are buried in a grave much too shallow will rise again. And once again, or rather as usual, we will sublimate our rage away from a failed system of government for which we are each ultimately responsible and vent our anger against the scapegoats du jour, not because of their guilt, but simply because we view them as weaker and punishing them will help us feel vindicated. And once again we will fail to notice that our efforts to govern ourselves have little affect on the course of our country.
Mistrust of differences, and prejudicial practices as social policy have diminished significantly in the last few decades, much to our benefit. But like some malevolent èminence grise, bigotry bides it time just below our facade of social justice and equality. And when the economic pain becomes so great that we must act out our anger, we will take it out on each other, and the train to chaos will roll on. Our species does not tolerate hopelessness very well, and world wide, when living conditions become harsh enough and the people are helpless to improve their lives, they take out that anger on those equally helpless, but different. We are not immune to that phenomenon, and we are running out of reserves to stave off those conditions.
Dichotomies are a common, perhaps necessary, stage in the development of system organization, yet their effectiveness decreases over time as ritual replaces innovation. Much like the uncoordinated contracting of heart muscles in ventricular fibrillation, there is an increase in activity but little systemic movement. What that means in practical terms is that whomever we elect as our next president will be unable to stem our inexorable descent into chaos. With McCain, the chaotic storms will most likely originate internationally, with Obama the equally destructive winds will most likely originate internally.
One of the reasons this post has been so long in coming is my reluctance to add my voice to the prophets of doom wailing "the end is near". And yet even a cursory look at the history of nations and beyond to the history of the earth itself leaves no doubt that the status quo always changes- dramatically. Whether my view that all organizational systems reach a stage of stasis where they can no longer support a steady state development and chaos ensues has any validity outside this sentence is unimportant. At some level I believe essentially all of us know the world will change, and yet we stand in the path of fate and recite our mantra- Not Yet-Not That Much!!
Once dichotomous elements reach the point where their energies are no longer effective in directing the path of their system, and focus most of their energy against each other, I don't believe it is possible for them to reorganize enough to get back to system guidance. Dichotomies cannot produce evolutionary change, but bifurcations can. While bifurcations and dichotomies develop in the same stew pot [so to speak, which is my entry into the dumbest metaphor contest] they develop very differently. Dichotomies are always adversarial, an attribute that eventually leads to "their system" becoming chaotic. Bifurcations develop with little or no regard for other bifurcations in the system. That is some part of a steady state system becomes a strange attractor and begins the self similar process of growth. [see the period doubling process in ]. Most bifurcations [ think fad] are quickly absorbed back into the system movement and disappear. But when a significant evolutionary change occurs in a system, it originated in a bifurcation, which is a concept out of which I will try to make sense next time.
As I argued in Words ( ) our English language has become untrustworthy in many respects, partly as a result of the natural evolution of organizational structure, and sometimes as a deliberate attempt to hijack a word or phrase for some idiosyncratic purpose [to create a godterm]. Other times, when a word has connotative implications more general than one wishes to communicate it is appropriate to use the word along with the phrase in the sense of. This is one of those "other times". When I use the term dichotomy, I have in mind the development of some internal division or conflict within a previously unconflicted system. To illustrate in my usual hokey and irreverent style, when Adam and Eve were initially hanging out in the Garden of Eden they were given a set of behavioral instructions by god which they initially followed- the system of obedience to god's instructions contained no dichotomous elements. When Eve got involved with the devil, and Adam went along for the ride, the dichotomy was born. So within the set of god's instructions there were now two mutually exclusive possibilities, obedience or disobedience. Viewing the world dichotomously is just about our favorite way of looking at things. System of government-- capitalism, socialism; system of social values-- liberal, conservative; system of individual wealth -- rich, poor (at one time this system contained a third or middle class, but that distinction is no longer viable); system of law- legal, illegal, etc..
Taking a very narrow, hence hopelessly inadequate and oversimplified view of the birth of our nation, when we won our independence from England we gained the freedom to govern ourselves. That freedom was unequivocal, we could damn well do anything we wanted too. The forward progress (over time) of that freedom was potentially unrestricted, unchanging. But right away there were internal disagreements about the direction that freedom should take us. The conflicts eventually morphed themselves into the Democrats and Republicans, and the ebb and flow of dichotomous policies has guided us to our present state. Generally speaking this way of doing things has worked out fairly well. As long as the political parties are comparably empowered the course of the system is fairly predictable (haw when the democrats prevail, gee when the republicans prevail), and operates much like a steady state system in chaos theory.
Looking at that system from the perspective of my thoughts on the evolution of organizational structure ( ) one sees that over time the sweep of each ebb or flow gradually becomes less and less. Whether one finds my views on the way organizational systems evolve useful or not, it is irrefutable that changes in direction were much easier earlier in our history than they are now. Look at the way labor unions changed working conditions, or how Roosevelt initiated programs that brought us out of the depression. Thinking for the moment of the Democrats and Republicans as energy sources intent on pushing the course of our country in different directions it is obvious that in the present day neither is very successful in making significant changes. So in this little metaphorette the question becomes since that energy does not effect a systemic change in direction, what happens to it ? Gradually, as the direction the country takes becomes less and less directly affected by either Democratic energy or Republican energy, the respective energies begin to be diverted away from realistic attempts to change the direction of the country toward damaging the other half of the dichotomy: gridlock.
The gridlock between the parties does not mean the system stops moving, The country keeps on trucking, but the course it takes is influenced by factors other than the D's and R's. [lights dim, strange attractors enter stage right.] As the ineffectively directed path of the nation begins to produce unacceptable negative consequences for the country as a whole, the conflict between the dicotts can/will get pretty nasty. One example of this may well be in our near future.
Assuming that the Democrats don't self destruct as usual and Barack Obama becomes our next president, our nation will enter perhaps the most perilous period in our history, and chances of us coming out of that period in one piece are essentially imponderable. Not since Robert Kennedy has a national leader offered such a hopeful, agglutinative vision of our nation's potential future. What is so different now is that in the Kennedy era, we had the resources and perhaps the resolve to pull together as one nation had not crazed nihilism intervened. Now that goal is A Bridge Too Far - we don't have the money or the self respect and honesty to combine our energies and heal our broken nation. And when we fail, when peace and prosperity seems no closer, Obama will get the blame and the zombies of racial hatred that are buried in a grave much too shallow will rise again. And once again, or rather as usual, we will sublimate our rage away from a failed system of government for which we are each ultimately responsible and vent our anger against the scapegoats du jour, not because of their guilt, but simply because we view them as weaker and punishing them will help us feel vindicated. And once again we will fail to notice that our efforts to govern ourselves have little affect on the course of our country.
Mistrust of differences, and prejudicial practices as social policy have diminished significantly in the last few decades, much to our benefit. But like some malevolent èminence grise, bigotry bides it time just below our facade of social justice and equality. And when the economic pain becomes so great that we must act out our anger, we will take it out on each other, and the train to chaos will roll on. Our species does not tolerate hopelessness very well, and world wide, when living conditions become harsh enough and the people are helpless to improve their lives, they take out that anger on those equally helpless, but different. We are not immune to that phenomenon, and we are running out of reserves to stave off those conditions.
Dichotomies are a common, perhaps necessary, stage in the development of system organization, yet their effectiveness decreases over time as ritual replaces innovation. Much like the uncoordinated contracting of heart muscles in ventricular fibrillation, there is an increase in activity but little systemic movement. What that means in practical terms is that whomever we elect as our next president will be unable to stem our inexorable descent into chaos. With McCain, the chaotic storms will most likely originate internationally, with Obama the equally destructive winds will most likely originate internally.
One of the reasons this post has been so long in coming is my reluctance to add my voice to the prophets of doom wailing "the end is near". And yet even a cursory look at the history of nations and beyond to the history of the earth itself leaves no doubt that the status quo always changes- dramatically. Whether my view that all organizational systems reach a stage of stasis where they can no longer support a steady state development and chaos ensues has any validity outside this sentence is unimportant. At some level I believe essentially all of us know the world will change, and yet we stand in the path of fate and recite our mantra- Not Yet-Not That Much!!
Once dichotomous elements reach the point where their energies are no longer effective in directing the path of their system, and focus most of their energy against each other, I don't believe it is possible for them to reorganize enough to get back to system guidance. Dichotomies cannot produce evolutionary change, but bifurcations can. While bifurcations and dichotomies develop in the same stew pot [so to speak, which is my entry into the dumbest metaphor contest] they develop very differently. Dichotomies are always adversarial, an attribute that eventually leads to "their system" becoming chaotic. Bifurcations develop with little or no regard for other bifurcations in the system. That is some part of a steady state system becomes a strange attractor and begins the self similar process of growth. [see the period doubling process in ]. Most bifurcations [ think fad] are quickly absorbed back into the system movement and disappear. But when a significant evolutionary change occurs in a system, it originated in a bifurcation, which is a concept out of which I will try to make sense next time.
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