Languaging an Imagined Order #8

                If there is one sentence that could sum up the last several decades of critical analysis, it would be something like ‘the signifier is not the signified.’   That is, we cannot rely on language to represent what exists, only the differences in signifiers.  As much as folks tried to ‘systematize’ what language and other orders of signs mean and how they work, there is always an instability that exists outside the system(this is true with systems that use numbers, too, but that is another post)  Bakhtin described a view of language that moved both toward a structured usage and away from it at the same time.  Language can be made to serve an imagined order, but only for a while.  Eventually, the languaged order has to morph, it has to change through the languaging of changing beings.

                It is Maturana that uses the term languaging.  He defines it as ‘the coordination of coordination of behaviors.’  That is, we are not describing a world which is ‘out there,’ so much as we are making the world through our actions, including languaging, with others.   In the same way that action and non-action are expressions of intelligence, so are languaging and not languaging.  We tend to talk about the bodily intelligence of athletes and mechanics as instinct instead of intelligence, but their actions demonstrate an intelligence within a particular frame or structure.  Why shouldn’t languaging work the same way?  In wisdom traditions, the master often does not speak, or does so in cryptic and parsed phrases.  Because we have mistakenly thought that language describes something, we have poured or energy and time into saying more and more about the thing we’re trying to communicate.  I think that is problematic in at least two ways.

                The first is that more languaging does not create more clarity.  In fact, given the instability inherent in all semiotic systems, the more we flail about in them, churning up more and more instability, the more we are changing and destabilizing what we say.   In the process we trivialize the words or products and move further away from and not closer to the intended message.  Wisdom traditions produce fewer words and those words have to count for more.  A good example of over languaged orders is academic writing.  In science and academia, we produce billions of pages of ‘new’ material every year.  We are hardly producing more clarity.  Some of it is no doubt brilliant and can be used by others in a very small discourse community to create more valuable insights, but the majority of us do not partake in the conversation and most of what is produced doesn’t rise to this level.  As things become more specialized, more people retreat to an imagined order they can understand and participate in, no matter how dangerous and unrealistic that order may be.

                The second reason our assumptions about explaining are problematic involve imagined orders.  Because language creates instead of describing a world, languaging is always already compromised by the rift between imagined orders.  No culture has ever produced the level or amount of technical data or intellectual publication as ours.  Unfortunately, a lot of people we assume will be able to access it not only don’t, they reject it.  They are interpreting the world through the imagined order not using language to understand a preexisting order.  That means that talking to someone who has ordered the world differently will not produce agreement.  If their imagined order includes a God that would not allow the concept of evolution or climate change, presenting evidence of either is unlikely to change their mind

                Machine intelligence only intensifies the problem.  By making languaging a computerized function, we have created even more and even more useless information.  Meanwhile, the assumed commonality of the order we share falls further and further into fragmentation and disorder.   Intelligence in the age of cyborgs requires rethinking our connections to language.  Having the right answer or explanation matters little if it is not based in a shared regime of languaging.  If we want intelligence to be meaningful and culturally valuable, we have to back up and build a coordinated set of behaviors instead of assuming one already exists.  We have to use more foundational checks, and we should probably learn to write poetry and parables. 

My Secret Crush on Betsy De Vos

                It’s hard to figure out exactly which cabinet member of the Trump administration is the worst.  While there are cabinet heads who have more power and have the potential to do more harm, my personal choice is Betsy De Vos.  It’s hard to imagine someone less prepared to lead a department or less knowledgeable about the mission of the department than Betsy – whenever I say that I get a bad feeling about leaving out Ben Carson.  But it’s hard not to side with someone who spent 200 million on bribes and could only get a 50-50 split on the vote.  The point being that I have no argument with how bad she is, but there is still a part of me that loves the fact that she is the Secretary of Education.

                When was there ever a ‘good’ Secretary of Education?  Obama, in spite of his many accomplishments, pretty much whiffed on picking a good one.  In fact, the Federal focus on education has brought nothing but harm to public schools.  We have created a bureaucracy of dunces who have overmanaged and over-regulated public schools.  I understand the need to set standards for learning and to make sure that every child has a good school and a good teacher, but that has hardly been the result we’ve achieved.  Instead of moving forward with the things we know would help children learn, we have created a series of mandates that have drained local budgets and provided little in the way of results. 

                Ever since A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, education has been a national issue.  The report spearheaded a conservative campaign to attack and delegitimize public education.  Teachers became the whipping boy of this effort, and have seen their autonomy and economic situation deteriorate since then.  A national department of education became the clearing house for every one size fits all placebo that would ‘solve’ the problem.  To be fair, there has been progress on helping students with special needs, but even that progress has come at the expense of other educational initiatives. 

                The bad things that started in the 80’s really became toxic with Bush’s  No Child Left Behind program.  NCLB, based on faulty evidence and under resourced proposals, ushered in a new age of blame and recrimination.  If teachers were bad before, they now became literal unionized (never leave out the unions when attacking teachers) monsters, sucking our schools dry with their contract demands and intentionally leaving students to rot.  NCLB introduced us to the advent of corporate sponsored assessment, where we perfected the process of turning nonsense into data.  Instead of real, valid local assessment, we started testing children at ridiculously early ages using instruments that were not valid and reliable.  Furthermore, all these ‘tests’ did was to replicate the existing economic stratification in our society.

                There are several things wrong with this.  First there is no ‘standard’ of achievement for young children being subjected to these tests.  We are creating ‘false positives’ everywhere we look by turning results well within the normal range of development and achievement into ‘failures.’  Second, almost all of these ‘failures’ are occurring in poor and minority students (imagine that).  Rather than enhancing the potential of these students we are suppressing it by taking the bogus test scores and using it as an excuse to subject them to the most mind numbing and draconian form of education imaginable.  What this means is we have blamed schools, and not devastating economic inequality, for the problems these students face.  Third, we have turned our public schools into a ‘market’ for corporate greed.  Text-book and testing companies and an army of paid consultants have made a fortune feeding and entrenching an inhumane and indefensible national educational policy. 

                We need smaller and more diverse schools, schools that develop local assessments and experiment with different forms of assessment that match the specific students they serve.  We need schools that value and empower teachers more than they do administrators.  Teachers need to be able to control their own work, and they need to be able to collaborate.  None of that will happen as long as there is a Secretary of Education who works for a presidential administration that plays politics with schools.  Let the last Secretary of Education be a clown, someone who makes it abundantly clear that the system is bankrupt.  Let Betsy be Shiva (gender differences aside) in our national dance of education.

                So, if we meet on the street and the topic of Betsy as Secretary of Education comes up, I’ll be right there with you.  I’ll match you horrible detail for horrible detail about her performance.  Just know that somewhere in the back of my mind there is a little voice that is saying ‘you go girl.’

We Can Stop Talking About Trump Now

                In the wake of the beautiful marches all across the country last Saturday, I think we have seen the beginnings of a new politics and a new vision for America.  That vision was diffuse and diverse and included a range of generations, identities, and issues.  It focused on what was unifying and not on the specifics of any one agenda.  To realize the potential it revealed, I think it has to do one more thing: it has to stop talking about Donald Trump.

                Trump was obviously the catalyst for the March.  It is the opposition to his ideas and values (he doesn’t really have policies) that made so many people come together to resist.  But we’ve seen his act.  He will continue to defy logic and reality.  He will trot out little minions spouting nonsense about ‘alternative facts,’ and he will continue his utter lack of decency.  He will always be stupid, reckless and incoherent, and we will, of course, have to resist his actions.  But there is no future that honors the spirit of the marches that keeps a focus on him.  Trump is an energy sink.  He will absorb and devour all the attention we give him.  Maybe the best thing to do is to ignore him.

                I’ve been part of protests that were fueled by anger – anger against a war or a policy, but Saturday didn’t seem like another one of those.  Maybe because it was organized and lead by women.  It seemed so much more inclusive and tolerant.  There were no pictures of burning limos or smashed windows.  After a campaign that failed to stop his rise to the presidency, the marches seemed like the ideal way to blunt his power.  People marched for something.  They drove across the country in the dark and the fog and crashed on couches in the living rooms of people they barely knew in order to show up and be heard.  Their signs and chants were funny and sometimes profane—as any carnival should be—but their intention was essentially humane. 

                Trump made us realize that if we want a better future we have to make it; it won’t happen on its own.  He made it possible for 2 million people on the streets and millions more at home to find each other.  Now that we have, let’s not let go.  The politics and future we want should be built to honor the people who are important to us and not just to negate Trump.  We need to remember the people who inspired us, who made – and still make – us believe we can be better.  We need to honor the people we love, the ones we get up every day to protect and care for.  We need to honor our mentors and teachers and accept responsibility for the ones who see us in those roles. 

                Focusing on Trump is a one way ticket to the bottom.  There is nothing there worth building on.  We can be vigilant without becoming obsessed with his tawdry and childish actions.  It’s important to organize – it’s even more important to organize the- right way and for the right reasons.

                

Intelligence as Action and Non-Action

                Maturana likes to say that ultimately intelligence leads to action.  One of his favorite examples is about playing the piano.  You can talk all you want about how much you know about the piano, but at some point you have to actually play.  I take the point to be that intelligence is not something that is just mental.  Intelligence is an active element of the world.  This is similar to the point Hutchins makes in Cognition In The Wild, that intelligence is a cultural activity not just an individual capacity.  It makes no sense to think of intelligence as something stored in memory, rather it be in a book, a hard drive or an individual’s mind.  Intelligence is part of our being in the world not just our observation and contemplation of the world.

                I think this is another reason to shift our focus to the body as the center of intelligence.  We act in the world through our body and our senses.  We can think and language about the world, but tangible proof of that is expressed through the body.  The body is in the present.  We can think about the past or the future, but we can only act in the present, which means that we can only be intelligent in the present.

                The other important consideration for me is that intentional non-action is as important as action.  What we choose not to do or say has as much impact as what we say and do.  I want to avoid implying that the body is only present in action.  It can also be still and silent.  In fact, intelligence is often choosing wisely between action and no-action.  I have not called it inaction because that implies a passive and unconscious state.  Intelligence is our mindful participation in existence and not a test score or memory game.

                This post is short, but I hope it makes a point I can return to in the foll

Epistemology #6

The Body – it ain’t what you think

                It’s increasingly clear that the Western concept of mind is seriously flawed.  Even the research into brain function and cognition continually points to the importance of the body.  The insular consciousness that Descartes and Kant place at the center of knowing is a myth.  The mind/body split is a well- known problem in Western Philosophy, but it’s hard to get any further beyond it than Husserl and Phenomenology.  I’m not interested in Phenomenology.  No matter how much it expands the idea of consciousness, it still leaves the mind in the center of what it means to know.  I want to argue that a 21^st Century epistemology has to place the body at the center of cognition.

                It is hard for those of us (probably everyone reading this) who grew up with the ingrained idea of a self that had consciousness to feel very comfortable with this idea.  It is second nature for us to start any discussion of intelligence and knowing with the mind.  Descartes taught us to start our exploration of the world on the inside and move outward.  The problem is that we have never been able to define or locate the ‘mind.’  We assume that our consciousness is our own, and that it exists separate and independent from the ‘objective’ reality of the world.  I think we have to question that assumption.  There at least two levels of this challenge.  The first is to see the body as the source of not just all of our experiences in the world but as the only source of intelligence we possess.  The second is to see the body connected to the intelligence in the world which is not human.

                We exist as a body.  All of the input we use in cognition and consciousness is generated through it.  We experience the world as part of it, not as some alien and unconscious creature outside of it.   Whatever correlation exists between consciousness, intelligence and life, we participate in it through our body.  We not only think in this matrix, we feel in it.  We are an extension of it, and the habit we’ve developed of devaluing our experience and mistrusting the immediate experience of our existence has led us to a concept of intelligence that is both flawed and dangerous.  It is flawed because it assumes we can step outside ourselves and find a purer way of ‘knowing’ the world.  We all know the physical and emotional side of us is inferior.  The image from Plato of white and black horses fighting over control of the chariot comes from the Greek skepticism of the physical world and two millennia of Christian doctrine fearing and mistrusting the body and the physical world (and anything feminine) has made this a naturalized view of what it means to be human.  The best example of an alternative view I’ve read recently is Daniel Hinton’s book, Existence.   

                The danger of thinking of intelligence as disembodied is that it tempts us to lose our biological connection to the world.  We lose the capacity to see the limits of what we can think and maintain our structural coupling, in Maturana’a terms, with the world.  In fact, I think that one of the dangers some people see in AI come from the way it mirrors a disembodied view of the mind and intelligence.  There is no doubt that it has been powerful.  As Sloterdijk demonstrates in, In the World Interior of Capital, it is precisely this move that allows a Eurocentric view of the world to diminish a cosmic consciousness and turn everything and everyplace into a way to make money.  The consequences of that are all too obvious in the impending environmental disaster we face.  We will never ‘solve’ the problems of the environment or rampant capitalism as long as we hold on to a disembodied concept of mind.

                The second challenge to shifting our focus to the body and away from a mythical notion of the ‘mind,’ is to see the possibility of intelligence and consciousness as more than just human.  We live surrounded by other forms – plant and animal – that are essentially made of the same things we are.  We share the same dynamic and shifting membrane of reality with them.  How is it then, that we are the only form of intelligence or consciousness.  What if the world is animate and not inanimate.  My point here is not mystical; it is empirical.  There is mounting evidence that our insular ideas about what is and what is not ‘intelligent’ are badly out of step with the research.  My goal here is not to sell or promote one version or another of what that greater reality might be called or how it might function.  I just want to argue that we can no longer speak of intelligence or consciousness and ignore the implications of its existence.  An epistemology that accounts for an expanded sense of intelligence will have to grapple with that question.

               

                

Trump Validates Postmodernism

                I’m a postmodernist, an unapologetic one at that.

                I’ve spent years reading and hearing about how bad that is and how we are responsible for the moral decline of the West (like they had any morals to decline).  Mostly, people bemoan the fact that postmodernists have destroyed something they call “truth.”  Lately this has been a common theme among people responding to the election of Trump and demanding that institutions, particularly schools, get back to the business of teaching what is true, or this perceived decline in values will continue.

                My reading of the election of Trump and the appointment of his cabinet of rich, white guys is just the opposite.  I think this administration is about to prove once again (as if we haven’t seen this movie often enough already) just how dangerous “truth” can be.  I don’t think we will have to venture all that far into the world according to The Donald before the skeptical insights at the heart of postmodernism will be more and more valuable.  I think we’re about to get more “truth” than any of us can stand.

                For too many people, postmodernism is nothing more than surrender to moral and cultural relativism.  From a strong postmodern perspective, the observations about relativism are merely descriptive.  We look at a world where honest people acting in good faith see the same things and respond to them differently.  We look at a world where languaging creates not one but many “realities” that all claim a moral and objective high ground.  Pointing this out is not some kind descent into unresolved futility, it is simply recognizing that we live in a world where no single standpoint is adequate or just.  From this perspective it makes sense to distrust narratives about progress, freedom and justice because they are always already constructed out of only part of the whole.  Derrida teaches us that these kinds of hinges work both ways, that the free always contains the not free, that the just always contains the unjust.  The object is not to throw up our hands and say it’s too hard to figure out what we should say is true, but to recognize that it will take a lot of work and dialog among dissonant standpoints to arrive at a provisional truth.  All of us are blind to some things, whether that be privilege or bias, that are only exposed in contact with others. There are people who call themselves postmodernist who stop at the relativity part or engage in clever but bloodless word games, but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the more substantial parts of the philosophy because of them.

                I always find it amusing when people blame postmodernism for the decline in moral clarity.  They make it sound like a few poorly funded post-docs in English and Philosophy have destroyed the world.  These are people who often can’t even pay their rent.  The real destroyers of moral clarity are the regular suspects, the rich and the powerful.  They are the ones who shut off dissent and engagement to strangle the facts in support of their position.  They want to live in an oligarchy or plutocracy instead of a democracy.  With Trump taking office, they are closer than ever to getting their wish.  Neither Trump or the people he has surrounded himself with believe in dissent or alternative points of view.  They believe they – and only they – possess the truth.  They do not make good neighbors.  They are about to try and bring moral clarity to your world on their terms.  They are about to make “truth” the ugly and dangerous thing it has always been to those on the other side.

                Democracy is inherently an unstable form of governance.  When that instability gets mixed with unhealthy amounts of fear and clan identity it can get ugly.  The era of Trump is an ugly era.  The natural response is to defend ourselves from the anger and fear, but that is a flawed response.  We need to defend the other – the people least like us and most vulnerable.  If we’re going to continue to evolve as a democracy (and that’s a long way from certain), it is their voices and their perspectives that will take us there.  I think the insights of postmodernists are critical to this effort.  We have to expand our definition of who we are and not contract it.  We’ve been plodding along as if the future was guaranteed to us – it never is.  We have to make it. This will be hard work.  It is more dialogical than it is political in the sense that the institutions we’ve built to sustain a democratic society are in ruins.  Building a new, more diverse and decentralized social order will be difficult and take time and imagination, but the only way forward is often the hardest way.  See ya on the other side.

               

               

               

               

                

The Rise of the One Percent

                As the Trump presidency looms and the Trump cabinet is coming into focus, the rise of the one percent is closing in.  This is no ordinary transfer of power in what used to be world’s most stable democracy.  This is something completely different.  What is happening marks the end of over eight decades of cooperative government and liberal democracy dating back to the New Deal.  Over 75 years of ascendancy of American global power is about to end as nations – friend and foe – rush to arm themselves in the face of the most internationally  unpredictable and inept administration ever  preparing to take office.  Trump’s cabinet is the clearest sign of the consolidation of power in the hands of old, white, male billionaires who have no interest, experience or facility promoting policies that benefit anyone but themselves.  Trump ran as a populist, but he is setting himself up to rule as a plutocrat and dictator.

                Trump doesn’t deserve all the blame.  Mitch Mc Connell has been guiding us toward the end of democratic process for the last few years.  The refusal to confirm a Supreme Court judge, and the lack of confirmation for federal judges at all levels, has crippled one branch of government.  His refusal to work toward compromise, in spite of the fact that every position he holds is a minority position, has lowered public opinion and confidence in government to an all time low.  So low, that people would see a craven narcissist as a change agent.  Mc Connell has been matched, step for step, by Paul Ryan in the House.  When Trump takes office there will be no checks and balances left in place, and any procedural moves made by Democrats will be met with the same kind of response the Republicans made in North Carolina.  Ryan’s budget provides a clear indication of what we can look forward to.  Every program that benefits the poor and the vulnerable will be gutted to funnel more wealth to the top.  People who used to be in the middle, will find themselves slipping into the poor and vulnerable classes.

                Look at two areas that will be early targets, climate change and health care.  Trump has joked about climate change in the past, and his cabinet is loaded with people from the fossil fuel elite intent on extracting and burning every last drop of that fuel – the climate be damned.  The damage that these policies do cannot be undone.  Scientists are already trying to download as much data as they can from government data bases before they are erased or restricted.  NASA’s climate research will be halted and scientists will be weeded out of their government jobs.  Trump even promised to burn coal – COAL – in the face of economic and environmental arguments against it.  I can’t see even one speed bump in the Trump plan to ravage the environment.

                Health care is no better off.  Ryan and Mc Connell plan to repeal the ACA as soon as possible.  Of course, their public statements promise something better, but that has always been a lie.  The real Republican position is that most of us don’t deserve health care.  The argument that there is a Republican plan for health care is laughable.  The fact is that the ACA IS the Republican plan for health care and they won’t even support it.  We are headed back to the bad old days of people dying in Emergency Rooms and going bankrupt from health emergencies.  Women’s health issues and issues of access for women are going to revert to conditions not seen since the Fifties.  Medical care is going to go from a right to a luxury enjoyed only by a few.  The repeal of ‘Obamacare’ isn’t just the end of a law; it is the end of a philosophy of governing.

                The list of endangered programs doesn’t end here.  Public education, research in innumerable areas, housing, protection of workers and many more face the same fate.  The one percent see government as a way to consolidate and leverage their power, not to share the wealth.  There is a hard core social Calvinism baked into their view of the world.  They are a deserving elite, and the rest of us are an unfortunate and unnecessary problem.  At the end of the last Gilded Age workers were able to balance the political and economic policies a little because that economy need workers.  This one doesn’t.  It doesn’t take a factory or an office full of workers to write a Credit Default Swap.  Labor is not going to be the balancing force this time.  What could play that role is an open question.  The wealthiest among us do not seem to fear even the collapse of the environment.  It seems they have made a bet that a few will be able to survive with unlimited wealth and technology – that their children will live and ours won’t. 

                The rise of Trump and the one percenters marks the beginning of a new political and economic era. The old idea of politics and government will not be adequate to answer this challenge.  What Trump has done is to make the consequences clearer than they would have been under a normal political regime.  Under Trump, there isn’t even the pretense any more that this is business as usual. They are betting that we won’t rise up, that the phony left/right or conservative/liberal dichotomies will prevent us from resisting..  I think it’s time to call that bet.