Fiat and world-making as an individual opportunity

Requisite Meta-reflection on Engagement in Systemic Change? (Part #8)

These examples can however be understood otherwise as being indicative of a means whereby individuals and groups can achieve systemic change and transformation by "seeing it so" -- or "making it so" in military jargon -- irrespective of views to the contrary or of making known their distinctive worldview. Variants of the process can be recognized in marketing concerns with achieving "buy in", usefully explored as a form of investment (Investing Attention Essential to Viable Growth: radical self-reflexive reappropriation of financial skills and insights, 2014). Beyond the preoccupations of secrecy by authority, this points to the possibility that the viability of civilization may be curiously dependent on individual silence (Civilization as a Global Configuration of Silences, 2013; Global Strategic Implications of the "Unsaid": from myth-making towards a "wisdom society", 2003).

The opportunity is perhaps epitomised by the phrase Eppur si muove (And yet it moves) attributed to the Italian mathematician, physicist and philosopher Galileo Galilei, after being forced formally to recant his claims that the Earth moves around the Sun rather than the converse (as declared by fiat by Catholic authority). Articulation of any model by an individual can be seen in this light.

The poorly explored opportunity for systemic change is therefore to imagine the situation otherwise, "connecting the dots" of observation such as to form a different and more fruitful pattern (Groupthink: the Search for Archaeoraptor as a Metaphoric Tale, 2002) . A reminder of this possibility was offered on the cover of the Last Whole Earth Catalog (1974): We can't put it together; it is together. The possibility is otherwise understood by the phrasing of the title of a book by physicist Stephen Hawking (The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: the most astounding papers of quantum physics -- and how they shook the scientific world, 2011).

This alternative possibility can be argued more extensively in relation to current strategic frameworks (Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present, 2012). The latter took the form of a review of a report to the Club of Rome (Jørgen Randers, 2052: a global forecast for the next forty years, 2012). This is seemingly one of several initiatives using that suspiciously distant time as a focus, including: Global Europe 2050 of the European Commission; Vision 2050: new agenda for business of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The focus is challenged by one critic as avoiding consideration of the earlier commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015 (Paul Seaman, Essay: Sustainability and WBCSD:s myopic Vision 2050, July 2012). These were reframed in 2013 by a Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Repeated displacement of strategic focus to a somewhat mythical future contrasts curiously with the political focus on the immediate present and its reframing through the next press release. In that sense there is indeed a concern by authority to revision the present imaginatively -- if cynically -- whilst avoiding longer-term concerns or the present consequences of those of the past (Vigorous Application of Derivative Thinking to Derivative Problems, 2013). The pattern of strategic envisioning by authority over past decades could be usefully compared to the confidence trickery characteristic of Find the Lady at any fair ground. "Find the strategy"? The present can however be re-imagined more radically and effectively by the individual.

Dependence on such processes to avoid civilizational collapse recalls the classic tale of the prisoner condemned to death by a king. Following a proposal by the prisoner to the king, the execution was postponed whilst the prisoner taught his horse to talk. When this incredible proposal was queried by a fellow prisoner, the proposer indicated that it was a simple matter: The king might die, I might die, or the horse might learn to talk. However, in the meantime I remain alive.

Given the ready use of fiat by authority, there is then a case for recognizing the alternative interpretation that can be drawn from the much-cited remark by Abraham Lincoln: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Given claims by authority variously to represent the individual, there is a case for exploring the manner in which confidence in such authoritative representation could be "withheld" by the individual in some way. This could be understood as a further stage in the current systematic erosion of popular trust -- one form of radicalisation. Assertion of authority can no longer be assumed to be viable as an unquestionable focus for belief.

It is in this sense that the much-cited poem of W. B. Yeats now merits careful analysis in systemic terms with respect to new possibilities of systemic change:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(The Second Coming, 1919)

Dating from the aftermath of World War I, learning from such an analysis could be all the more urgent in the light of arguments regarding the possibility of World War III (Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, Global Research, 2012; Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe, 2013).

The poem could be recognized as the eulogy of conventional authority -- and of the poignant nostalgia of the aquilifer, as imperial eagle-bearer. Of particular relevance to any analysis is exploration of "mere anarchy" being "loosed upon the world", as understood with respect to a knowledge-based global society. The analysis would then explore the breakdown of connectivity with respect to the "pattern that connects" -- in a civilization allegedly connected to an ever greater degree.

The deprecatory use of "mere" would call for reinterpretation in recognition of the value increasingly attributed to local and the individual. Similarly the sense of "anarchy" would call for recognition in terms of the arguments of such as Paul Feyerabend in promoting epistemological anarchism (Against Method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge, 1975) or of Henryk Skolimowski (The Participatory Mind: a new theory of knowledge and of the universe, 1994)

This possibility can be contrasted with that advocated in various progressive arenas, as argued separately (From Changing the Strategic Game to Changing the Strategic Frame: missing cognitive possibility in changing the system not the planet, 2010). Seeing things otherwise is arguably the essence of non-violent system change.

It is especially appropriate to recognize the manner in which the language of systemic externalities mirrors that of existential experience -- seemingly inadvertently -- most notably with respect to depression and inflation. This echoes the contrasting tendencies to doom-mongering and hope-mongering (Symmetrical vision: beyond the self-delusion of optimism, positive thinking and hope-mongering, 2008; Radical Cognitive Mirroring of Globalization: dynamically inning the unquestioningly outed, 2014).

Common to both the external and internal focus is clearly the nature, quality and engagement associated with credibility and confidence. The foundational role of self-confidence is obviously as significant to that of a civilization as to an individual -- with the vulnerability to collapse its erosion may imply. Hence the need for careful exploration of the poem's reference to "conviction". Similarly, what are the problematic consequences of "passionate intensity" -- suggestive as it is of tunnel vision?

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Fiat and world-making as an individual opportunity