Bob, 1\/8\/09 post to Downslope<\/p>\n
Well, people ignoring contexts certainly do make it hard to learn from change, and even learning by hard experience after the fact doesn\u2019t always help. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Humans often are so fixated on old ideas in new worlds they only learn by generational succession (with old ideas dying off rather than changing by experience).<\/p>\n
There are kinds of problems where even that doesn\u2019t work either.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We seem to be struggling with one of them now, yet another in the long series of economic overshoot and societal collapses, fitting a similar pattern and occurring time and again throughout history at all kinds of scales large and small.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t even seem to see the pattern well enough to talk about it.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The curious thing is that even repeated powerful experience plus generational succession seem not to teach us a thing about it, and, it also seems never to get publically discussed. \u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s enduring silence about our greatest persistent tragic problem.<\/p>\n
I think profound denials like that may seem \u201chard wired\u201d, but if they are not shared by everyone I think it means they\u2019re cognitive not cultural, i.e. just inherited expert errors.\u00a0Our natural reaction is to work harder when we run into difficulty, but if nature is making things harder because of being overworked, that can trick us and be counterproductive.<\/p>\n
Then our impetus to ban together to sacrifice and recommit ourselves to work harder for the common good, but results in the environment becoming even more overworked and unresponsive, i.e. a decidedly heroic but mistaken response. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our present impasse, a failing economy and looming environmental and resource collapses of several kinds is signaling that nature is overworked, and for us all to heroically work harder.<\/p>\n
Possibly enough people could notice the error in a response to pushing old methods ever harder, when nature is actually calling for rather new ones, to take it as a signal to begin thinking on our feet and not blindly forging ahead.<\/p>\n
Phil Henshaw
\nNY NY\u00a0 www.synapse9.com
\n\u2014\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n
Bob, to post again on 1\/9\/09<\/p>\n
I think there is still something suspicious about the \u201ccone of silence\u201d around mankind\u2019s most persistently self-destructive behavior. The people who do it obviously includes nearly everyone, and thinking that it\u2019s constructive right up until it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n
How we then appear to fail to be self-critical enough to see or say what the real problem was after, is also part of what I\u2019m beginning to notice.<\/p>\n
Perhaps not everyone is doing it for a good motive, but couldn\u2019t the mass of people be doing it because of good motives, and prevented from openly discussing what those good motives run into, having no way to question them? I\u2019m thinking that it\u2019s the deep sincerity of people that is the real problem.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve talked with hundreds of truly dedicated environmental scientists and designers who see the problem and then quickly drop the subject when I point out the particular practices that do it, and I have not understood that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m beginning to think it\u2019s their own dedication and loyalty to the shared purposes of the community that prevent them from questioning whether those unspoken purposes become misguided when nature changes signals on us. The point at which multiplying self-interest stops being in the common interest is not determined by the people doing it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s determined by the point at which nature becomes less and less, rather than more and more responsive, the threshold of natural limits. Then the effect on the community of multiplying individual gains reverses too.<\/p>\n
Being loyal to the system of trust in individual gains that elevated the common good then naturally becomes misguided, right at it\u2019s peak of success. That change involves no change of heart or mind whatever, just continued dedication.<\/p>\n
At that point of diminishing returns, the same trusts that multiplied opportunity for all then reverse effect to shrink opportunity for all. We\u2019d be unable to discuss it because even acknowledging what is really wrong questions the dedication of the sincere and seems to require being disloyal to the common purpose.<\/p>\n
Is that \u2018getting warmer\u2019?<\/p>\n
Phil Henshaw
\nNY NY www.synapse9.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Bob, 1\/8\/09 post to Downslope Well, people ignoring contexts certainly do make it hard to learn from change, and even learning by hard experience after the fact doesn\u2019t always help. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Humans often are so fixated on old ideas in new worlds they only learn by generational succession (with old ideas dying off rather than changing … Continue reading Cognitive Gaps – not Learning From Experience<\/span>