SATURDAY, OCT 22, 2016: NOTE TO FILE
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: INFORMATION, FROM THE WIRES, SYSTEM
Abstract: That it is systems of subsystems all the way up and down suggests thinking about levels within the hierarchy. Donella Meadows, in Thinking in Systems: A Primer, envisions us "dancing with the system" perhaps to the music of the spheres.
TUCSON (A-P) — Our grasp of Kepler's vision of the spheres, the planets, may be too limited to hear the music in our mind's ear. There are spheres other than those planets form—systems of subsystems:
We are (maybe) living in an unosphere within a galactosphere we call the Milky Way, in a solarsphere, Sol's solar system, on a planetosphere, the third rock from 'our' sun, as energysphere subsystem dissipative structures within Earth's envirosphere having a biosphere that includes at least one species able to transmit memeoshere information to posterity as individiospheres and sociospheres that have a noösphere that includes a cognosphere (perhaps unlike crows) containing vetted information in the academosphere mostly concerned with nature narratives that include science and systems science that connects all the dots having to do with the biospherics and systems ecology that includes the study of pre-prattle organisms and human ecology that includes social systems and human studies with room for even more minutiae.
Note: The above is not a conceptology as usual, one among many to choose from, but one that attempts to parse the "what-is" as-is based on weighing evidence (listening to Nature who has all the answers) that does not allow you to pick and choose what you want to think. A Jesuit would have a different mind map based on Biblical exegesis. An ultra woke professor has a different mind map and tells a different tale. Kim Jong-un (or DJT et al.) would have another based on what his father taught him. Any two maps may differ such that both can't be right. Both could be wrong/delusional, but contradictions set limits. Consider subjecting all elements of your mind map (especially as schooled into you) to the flames of an all consuming doubt and see what is left, i.e. question everything and while you're at it, rethink everything.
As is your sort of mind map, so is your sort of life. If you are part of a collective that selects for its own failure, e.g. modern techno-industrial consumer society/monetary BAU culture, then failure to persist may be the outcome of a faulty mind map (e.g. one that denies that there could be too many humans or that humans could cause their own extinction because God loves them or because Growth is good and more is better).
Questioning one's mind map can clarify one's mind wonderfully and perhaps help humans persist on the planet longer by not growing at the expense of a planetary life-support system. Voting in the next election or taking to the streets to protest (affect the next next election or replace the existing political system with another) may not be what works.
In the above map, galaxies are, solar systems are, planets are, social control systems are... as evidenced. The unosphere is the One, everything else is the Many as the mind parses it. The politicoreligiosphere is not the study of politics and organized religion (politicology is), but references the actual control system in a society of humans that may pursue peace or wage war to commit empire building with or without anyone thinking about it or studying it as a politicologist.
Ecolacy, systems science literacy, includes the study of social control systems based on an ecocentric understanding of natural law rather than humancentric politics or religion-as-usual. All concepts, all "studies of" are part of the information sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subsystem of memetic species, the highest to be valued product of human endeavor (not the Pyramids,.. not even smartphones or cars).
The deeper down the subsystem, the more difficult and rarer. Note that eco-nomics (biophysical economics) and politicology, at a far down level, are among the least fully-formed sciences (most in need of new concepts/names) as objective understanding of these areas requires the greatest freedom form self interest and the ideological narratives that dominate the chatosphere. Ideology is a modern cognitive pathology of empire-building complex societies. There is no evidence that for 500 thousand years our ancestors (their tribal chatosphere) were burdened by complex belief systems of ideological certitudes, of chant and cant, so ancestral chatting among individuals having frequent repeat face-time interactions would be a different dynamic that today's technology enabled addictive screen-time social media (since covid-19 American children's screen-time has increased 50 percent).
There is currently a blending of chatosphere and academosphere, e.g. in Indian universities by societal and governmental decree, students can major in and end up with PhDs in astrology (Vedic, not the false astrology known in the West). Students who major in astrology are celebrated by their community and can look forward to being well employed (paid). Those with PhDs in astrology (or NCE sustainability studies) can be part of transdisciplinarian teams, along with astronomers claiming an alternative way of knowing.
Suggesting that at best astronomers merely have an alternative claim to knowing, that all ways of knowing are equally unprivileged, is postmodern-speak, perhaps ground zero for 20th century academic wordsmithery. Putting the chatosphere back in taverns would be progressive. Chatting among members of a band of related humans is normal per last 300,000 years of what worked, but not belief-based ideological chant, cant, and prattle that is modern as normalized by moderns (i.e. humans of NIMH in need of compasion, love and understanding—to be loved and understood, and with belief therapy to acquire some of the same).
Systems science is the last, the climax science that unifies all the others, the conceptual macroscope that illuminates all the focused views of special interest. Today's SYSTEM serving social narratives (ideologically tainted) within academia (e.g. postmodernism, politicized narratives, neoclassical economics, cognitive linguistics, autoethnography, astrology) will not be listed; sufficient to note that at 12th-17th century Oxford, theology (also not listed above) was a SYSTEM serving social narrative, though at the time no one, with the possible exception of a court jester, could openly say so. Today's court jesters can question democracy, human rights, sustainable development, or the value of money/growth.
For how mind maps factor into a design for a viable civilization 4.0, consider a bit more.
In graphical form:
Poster size image to print.
At bottom, actual photo of sunset through Earth's atmosphere as seen from orbit and above a Hubble Ultra Deep Field view.