How The Grinch Flunked Ecology and Stole the Whole Damn Year
OK, I’m going to give away this whole piece with the first quotes. Can you figure out where I’m going with ’em – – –
Athens distributed its most responsible public positions by lottery: army generalships, water supply, everything. …Professionals existed but did not make key decisions; they were only technicians, never well regarded because prevailing opinion held that technicians had enslaved their own minds. –The Way It Used To Be by John Taylor Gatto
Some First Nation folks have a related outlook which clarifies things – – –
My own tradition disbelieves in “experts.” “That which enables, disables also” means that a physicist will fail in understanding in many other areas, precisely because of the amount of time she/he spends on physics and therefore not on other things. Such people are not considered “experts,” but “those extensively informed on part of the whole“. –A NATIVE AMERICAN WORLDVIEW, by Paula Underwood Spencer
And a practical application – – –
“…everything is too important ever to be entrusted to professional experts, because every organization of such professionals and every established social organization becomes a vested-interest institution more concerned with its efforts to maintain itself or advance its own interests than to achieve the purpose that society expects it to achieve.” –Carroll Quigley, ex-president William Jefferson Clinton’s mentor
Here’s the typical reaction when an “organization of such professionals” is challenged – – –
“I’d lie. We have to survive after-all.” –my childhood friend just before an internal evaluation to determine if the organization he headed actually was reducing the prison recidivism rate. He didn’t have to lie.
Particularly note Paula Underwood Spencer’s sentence, “Such people are not considered ‘experts,’ but ‘those extensively informed on part of the whole‘.”
Maybe that use of the word “whole” reminds you of ecology? Not yet? Well I’m pretty sure it will – – –
When Dr. Fauci and I were growing up — he’s five years older — our pale-face cultures — and even science — were a lot more narrow-minded, restricted and boxed-in, mostly because of a few language quirks and associated habits of thought.
Then along came General Semantics, operations research which morphed into systems analysis, and finally, in the 1960s, the environmental movement which popularized ecology.
They all helped us see through the barriers, walls and borders we inadvertantly impose on reality because of those quirks of language and habits of thought. They helped us see the Bigger Picture, and of course, that there always is one.
Here’s the definition of systems analysis that gives our discussion a small assist – – –
Another view sees system analysis as a problem-solving technique that breaks down a system into its component pieces for the purpose of studying how well those component parts work and interact to accomplish their purpose.[1… Systems analysis – Wikipedia
Systems analysis showed us we were always drawing lines — mental and otherwise — around parts of things, and thus, as per Paula Underwood Spencer, dividing the whole up into parts. That schooled us, implicitly at least, that there was always something on the other side of every line.
This is my favorite icon for that enlightenment, especially for folks of Dr. Fauci’s and my generations – – –
We know that the earth is round. We know there are people on it. We know that they are all like us. But when you fly around it time and time again —90 minutes to get around the whole earth—again and again and again, it comes in a different way. It doesn’t come in through the head. It comes in through the heart, in through the gut. When you come down from that experience, you’ve crossed thousands and thousands of borders and boundaries that are artificially created. They work nice on maps. You paint them orange and blue and green. But that’s not what it is when viewed from space. You don’t even see those boundaries and borders. We created them, guys, and it’s up to us to do something about it. …That’s what comes through to you when you’re up there in space, when you’re flying aro
Article from LewRockwell
