Peter Emmerson

2. Atlee and socialist idealism.

Miliband and co.’s posturing and obfuscation was from my perspective rather predictable.  They were working to a well prepared script indicative of deep long-term flaws in policy that pattern Labour’s ideological message.  These problems have incapacitated even competent Labour governors ever since 1945 when Attlee’s people re-balanced responsibility for personal welfare in favour of governmental functionaries.  Living with this legacy for governors of all persuasions has been tortuous, for what was deemed to be a cure for social injustice, has turned-out to be nothing more than just another great experiment in socialist doctrine.  On reflection this outcome was extremely likely when you realize that Beveridge’s group in developing post-war British welfare provision were as far as I’m concerned, driven more by wish-statements aimed at achieving ideals such as social justice and equality, rather than carefully engineered, practical objectives that could be evaluated and modified.  Concomitantly, politicians since 1945 have been tied up with constant operational tinkering to defend governmentally managed welfare policies that in idealistically promising all, could never deliver.  Interdependently, we have services plagued by insatiable expectation and demand, as people nowadays take much less personal, familial and neighbourhood responsibility for their difficulties than they used to.  Even though governmentally driven welfare provision was checked and in some cases reversed after 1979, centralized control from London has been largely undiminished as local authorities and professional bodies have continued to be undermined.  How could Attlee’s figuration have been so naïve?

Figurations in the Labour Party committed political suicide and let down those who need them: Michael Foot and Ed Miliband?

1. Ed Miliband – what a mess!

You could see and hear in Ed Miliband’s Tuesday speech of Labour’s 2014 party conference why Cameron’s Tory figuration would win in 2015.  Labour leaders seemed paralysed by issues of Scottish independence at referendum time.  For me its later stages were lit up by an old soldier’s return to battle as Gordon Brown threw off his post-prime ministerial anonymity to take on those who wanted independence.  It was great to see him striding around a political platform having licked his wounds for long enough.  There was no posturing or ambiguity here, we could see it mattered.  He came out fighting with a passion, until then, only displayed by Yes campaigners.  His visceral performances arguably stemmed a damaging flow of voters away from saying ‘No’, sufficient to avoid defeat.

Brown’s strident conviction deployed with such effect contrasted markedly with that of his successor.  What I saw from Ed Miliband at Labour’s conference in 2014 was a diffident, unconvincing display of a man totally out of his depth, short on charisma and an ability to put together a team that could develop a set of policies needed to win an election.  Miliband was a man lost, leading a shadow cabinet mostly as inept as he was.  Miliband’s figuration had four years to develop a manifesto fit to send packing a governing coalition formed in 2010 of a defensive, uncosy alliance working with a legacy of banking catastrophes and business collapse.  Subsequently, coalition partners over-borrowed and over-borrowed whilst cutting and cutting and cutting.  Labour was their only substantive alternative and should have been out of sight by September 2014, preparing for electoral victory in May.  Instead they were playing for time, executing what amounted to little more than a tactical defence focussed on exploiting government weaknesses or spewing out tawdry mantras of idealistic nonsense such as ‘togetherness’ which just paraphrased a Tory slogan: ‘we’re all in it together’.  Labour people were working safe NHS ground like a dazed boxer hoping to throw a lucky punch – team Miliband looked beaten.

The posturing and obfuscation displayed by team Miliband betrays other sub-executive, profound long-term flaws that pattern Labour’s ideological message, which have been incapacitating even competent Labour governors ever since 1945 when they changed the balance of responsibility for personal welfare in favour of governmental functionaries.  Living with the legacy of these changes has been tortuous, for what was deemed to be the panacea for social injustice, has turned-out to be nothing more than just another great experiment in socialism.  This outcome was extremely likely when you realize that the plans formulated by Beveridge’s group were driven more by wish-statements that privileged idealistic aims such as social justice and equality over practically established engineered objectives that could be evaluated and modified.  Concomitantly, politicians since 1945 have been involved in constant operational tinkering to defend governmentally managed welfare programmes against insatiable expectation and demand, as people gradually developed the habit of unloading their self-reliance onto governmental officers for things that had been largely personal/familial/neighbourhood responsibilities.  However, more radical changes were made after the election of 1979 as significant numbers of people voted for governmentally managed welfare to be dismantled.  How could team Attlee have been so naïve?

Labour’s willingness in 1945 to construct and put into operation an untested, prototype welfare model grounded in ideals was unfortunately very predictable.  One of the areas where developments in engineering have had little impact is political life.  Sadly, this is still the case.  Correspondingly, the standard procedures for analysing and solving political problems remain rooted in ancient theometaphysical conventions that utilize ideal terms such as ‘democracy’.  Oxford University degrees such as Philosophy, Politics & Economics, so connected with those who achieve political eminence (see Adrian Wooldridge’s article in The Sunday Times, 28/12/14, p22), evidence this pattern – why not EPE, Engineering, Politics & Economics?  20/01/15 was Democracy Day on BBC Radio 4.  I listened to a brief debate chaired by Today’s ultimate authority on these issues, the public philosopher, Michael Sandel from Harvard and the LSE.  We could have been in ancient Athens listening to Socrates (Plato).  Contemporary political thactivity is shot-through with fantastical notions like democracy that structure political analysis according to ancient idealistic rules whilst at the same time reinforcing the status and longevity of such ways of thacting and the people who purvey them.  Why is this a problem?  It is a problem because these techniques have failed us in some of the most pressing human tragedies: just consider our continuing preparedness to resort to serious violence in resolving human conflicts.  In addition, the problems that confront British people in 2015AD are very different from those of Greek people in 500BC.  We in Britain have benefitted enormously from taking an engineering approach to our material problems.  However, as stated above, we have seen much less application of this approach to psychosocial issues.  One reason for this limited development is our unquestioned reliance on obsolete, inappropriate ancient habits, which is why Sandel chaired the debate rather than a political engineer.  Isn’t 2500 years of failure sufficient time to judge such conventions unfit for purpose?  The limited level of penetration into political analysis by engineering methods is alarming.  Unfortunately, the nearest a systematic application of engineering methods has come to sorting out human problems is illness where we have largely jettisoned of Hippocratic and Galenic models.  Why do we continue on this merry go round of dreams as regards psychosocial issues?

People use their ideals or truth-beliefs in all sorts of ways, but I want to concentrate on how we deploy such fantasies to obtain sufficient influence to take control of our lives, whether it be in relation to our mundane problems or achieving high governmental office: listen to Barack Obama’s inaugural address of 2008 where he states his vision of the ‘change’ that could in fact not possibly come.  Unlike Obama, team Attlee achieved landslide victory in 1945 which provided them with a mandate to put their truth-beliefs into action and make big changes.  Truths function by reassuring us that we are in control of our circumstances.  For the most part truths come to us from previous generations as tried and tested, ready-made proverbial guides for managing life’s ups and downs.  Examples are: fatalistic beliefs, which allow us to offload responsibilities for what happens onto something or someone else – ‘what will be, will be’; rationalistic convictions, that motivate us to take responsibility and plan – ‘your fate is in your own hands’. 

There are however other, higher order truths, developed by professional truth-finders who have honed their techniques since ancient times in an attempt to manufacture knowledge that is immune to the perfidies of profane experience, knowledge that can be relied upon with absolute certainty.  This work has been carried out by two groups of people who operate interdependently: priests (theologians) who oversee supernatural (religious) knowledge and philosophers/pure mathematicians (metaphysicians) who supervise the formulation of reasoned/logical (secular) truths.  From what I can see these people have in common one aim and that is to find the absolute truth of things, hence, I call them theometaphysicians. 

Their programme of formal truth finding has been very influential.  The Ten Commandments that Moses is said to have received from God has been adopted by enormous numbers of people as well as Jews.  The ideas of ancient philosophers such as Plato and their logical methods have defined our ways of thacting for millennia.  The pure mathematics credited to Pythagoras continues to influence contemporary mathematicians and engineers.  These formal truths are absolute, they cannot be disproven.  This is their great attraction!  They provide security by reassuring us that certain knowledge and stability persists above, below and within mundanity (mundane existence), guiding its comparatively uncertain processes.  Knowing with certainty offers the possibility of absolute control over our fears and anxieties about earthly volatility: religious truths clearly have great utility in this respect as the willingness of martyrs to accept torturous deaths evidences!  Nonetheless, we must not underrate the significance of metaphysical truths such as justice and equality in human motivation.

The purveyors of these profoundest, truest of truths, offer up the possibility of thacting with absolute authority, control and security in a world that is always changing; absolute truths are secure mental platforms on which to stand and make judgements on chaotic life experiences!  Thus, these truths are held in highest regard and accrue serious status and influence, as do the theometaphysicians who supply them, whether priests like the Pope, philosophers like Michael Sandel or pure mathematicians like Stephen Hawking.  However, just because they are more truthful does not make them more useful.  In fact I would argue that the opposite is the case: using them distorts our perceptions and impedes the development of engineered problem solving efforts.  Absolute truths merely mimic earthly mundanity, they do not replicate it: such truths are not in evidence anywhere other than the minds of people: the absolute truth of the Ten Commandments is a matter of faith not fact; the absolute truth of a logical argument breaks down when the facts have to be taken into account; the absolute truth of Pythagoras’ theorem is reliant on a triangle that cannot exist.  Absolute truths are mental tools or what Tversky & Kahneman (1974) call heuristics, which do not constitute mundane reality as many influential people believe, they merely model it.  Absolute truth heuristics were developed by ancient people to deal with their specific fears and anxieties so that they could function effectively.  We have inherited their words and conventions and continue to apply them uncritically even when they have outlived their usefulness; because like them, absolute truths make us feel safe. 

Safety is experienced at various levels, one being self-belief.  By deploying a-t heuristics (absolute truths) we are safe in the knowledge that we can thact with conviction, even when confronted by serious resistance from people with far more influence than ourselves.  Belief in absolute truth will sustain us during periods of obscurity when all seems lost.  Orwell (1989, pp. 92-3) explains this process well in his book 1984 when describing what gives Winston Smith the strength and motivation to live with desperate isolation and resist Big Brother: “His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in the debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.  And yet he was in the right!  They were wrong and he was right.  The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended.  Truisms are true, hold on to that! ……. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.  If that is granted all else follows”.  Ideals can fortify us to take a stand, by providing us with something that is worth fighting and dying for – the absolute certainty that we are right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong and should be stopped.  Such certainty opens up the possibility of managing our fear and anxiety so that we can be assertive and live rather than just existing in dissonant apathy so well described by Sartre in The Roads to Freedom.  In giving us a definite reason to die a-t heuristics motivate us to live!

Nonetheless, the facts suggest that such beliefs are illusory as pointed out some 300 years ago by the philosopher David Hume.  As far as I can see, certainty of thaction is a habit learned from a previous generation, fostered by centuries of commitment to the efficacy of a-t heuristics conjured by ancient people very different from ourselves with comparatively little knowledge of engineering.  I want to look at a modern example, socialism, developed by theometaphysicians during the 18^th and 19^th centuries committed to ideals that celebrate and proselytize the virtues of togetherness or limited personal autonomy.  However, socialism is also an ideological weapon, in the grand Socratic dialectical fashion, with which to win an argument and if necessary mobilize an army of people with reason to fight and die in the battle with so-called capitalists, who are without doubt wrong.  From socialism’s point of view capitalists are bullies and liars who busy themselves exploiting their potential for greater personal autonomy through commercial thactivities.  From an engineering perspective both socialism, and capitalism for that matter, are a-t heuristics manufactured by theometaphysicians  to help us avoid engagement with comparatively uncertain mundanity, the former espousing ideals such as social justice and equality epitomized by Marx’ dialectical class model, the latter extolling the virtues of individual freedom and inequality governed by the divine hand of the market as per Smith’s model of political economy.  As such both socialism and capitalism provide definitive answers to what is going wrong and what needs to be done, opening up the possibility of achieving levels of self-belief (the illusion of conviction) needed to push on at all costs even in the face of serious resistance that may well end in martyrdom or killing others.  The a-t heuristic socialism offered justification for teams Stalin and Mao to sanction genocidal killing and the forced migration of large numbers of people who threatened the ideals of their revolutions.  On a less murderous scale, socialism authorized team Attlee to give government officials responsibility for managing personal welfare.  Both were done with conviction, conviction driven by self-belief in the absolute truth, the a-t heuristic that is socialism.  In fact, as with all a-t heuristics, socialism is an over-simplification of what goes on, high on ideals low on engineering, patterned by theometaphysical rules developed by modern specialists in the provision of certainty and control such as Marx, for imposition onto comparatively uncertain mundanity and its insecurities.  Rather than engage more fully with mundanity by deploying techniques of engineering that should make us wary of anything ending in ‘ism’, we continue to adopt illusions such as socialism to justify our feelings and make us feel safe in the fight with those with whom we disagree.  The absolute truth offloads personal responsibility for killing and dying.

We could easily discuss such issues in relation to another more recent version of conviction politics, associated with an equally idealistic enterprise: the obsession with the individual and the market that characterises the a-t heuristic capitalism, an ideal which drove team Thatcher to destroy the lives of so many who stood in their way.  This essay is not a polemic against socialism; it is a polemic against the committed and uncritical application of a-t heuristics.  In allowing the a-t heuristic of socialism to govern their policy making, team Attlee was thacting normally and duly delivered us down the well-trodden road of impossible dreamy abstractions and the continued deafness to those with little influence.  These conventions are so habituated into our thactivity that they seem as natural as drinking water.  In fact they are human inventions that desensitize our critical faculties to the extent that we ignore more fruitful, mundane, engineering forms of analysis.  Thus, we persist in deploying ideals ill-suited to analysing our political problems that were developed by people with very different priorities. Our engineering triumphs testify to the inadequacies of their ancient ways when dealing with earthly issues such as other people.  However, applying engineering techniques will be uncomfortable because they take us beyond our safety zone from certain knowledge into comparatively uncertain mundanity, where a-t heuristics are abandoned. Thus we are left with our much less secure engineered heuristics such as proverbial beliefs (p-b heuristics) rather than truths of any sort.  P-b heuristics are at best contingent, assessable as probabilities not certainties.  Living a life with p-b heuristics denies complete self-belief and correspondingly amplifies feelings of personal responsibility in the comparatively uncertain process making any decision.  As engineered heuristics don’t offer any ultimate authorities, living is more insecure and anxiety laden, a condition wrongly termed post-modern when in fact it is very, very modern.

Protestants are a good example of people who moved in this direction by rejecting the ultimate authority of Roman Catholic priests in wishing to know God for themselves.  Accordingly, Protestants engage with mundanity much more directly through personal reading and interpretation of the scriptures, God’s words, which must be made accessible by translation from the language of clerics, Latin, into German, English, Dutch etc. Such religious changes correspond to a push for general literacy: “if I don’t read my soul be lost, it’s nobody’s fault but mine” as the song goes.  Protestants need their personal bibles: salvation is a matter for you and your God; providence will inform you of your progress in doing God’s will.  Not unsurprisingly a further move towards mundanity was developed by someone brought up in this tradition – Nietzsche.  Nietzsche’s move was even more difficult than the move from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism because he abandoned supernatural safety altogether.  He was the last philosopher!  By smashing once and for all the theometaphysical model, his work put an end to the programme that was inaugurated by the post-Socratic ancient Greeks.  His philosophy of earthly solitude is as far as philosophers can go without becoming engineers.  He was paid back for his heresy by being ostracized and stigmatized.  His philosophy is an attempt to describe the agony and ecstasy of ‘overcoming’ his habituation to these ancient theometaphysical ways.  I would interpret his work as the impossible struggle to make philosophical sense of his fuller engagement with comparative uncertainty.  The legacy of his pioneering effort is to leave philosophical heuristics behind and use engineering heuristics to foster as full an engagement with comparatively uncertain mundanity as possible.  But as Nietzsche so bravely affirms, to leave the safety provided by absolute truths is very isolating and dangerous!  Concomitantly, we still largely maintain our passionate attachment to political ideals such as democracy, justice and equality continuing to apply them to our mundane problems just because they are truer and safer.  This is a serious mistake!

Unlike the Tories, the Labour leadership seem paralysed by the outcomes of the Scottish referendum.  For me the highlight of the final weeks of the Scottish referendum was to see an old soldier return to the fray – Stormin’ Gordon Brown.  It was great to see him striding around the political platform having licked his wounds for long enough.  There was no posturing here, we could see it mattered.  He came out fighting with a passion, until then, only displayed by Yes campaigners.  His visceral performances arguably stemmed the flow of voters away from the No campaign sufficient to avoid defeat. 

The strident conviction deployed with such effect by the previous Labour leader contrasts markedly with the performance of his successor.  What I saw from Ed Miliband on the Tuesday of the last Labour Party Conference was the diffident, unconvincing display of a man totally out of his depth, short on charisma and the ability to put together a team that could develop the ideas needed to win an election.  Miliband is a man lost, leading a shadow cabinet who are for the most part as inept as he is.  Team Miliband have had four years to develop policies fit to send packing governors who have been on the back foot ever since their uncosy alliances were formed during the severe business collapse.  Subsequently, the governing partners have over-borrowed and over-borrowed whilst cutting and cutting and cutting: Labour as the only substantive alternative should by now be out of sight, preparing for electoral victory next May.  Instead they are playing for time executing what amounts to little more than a tactical defence focussed on exploiting government weaknesses or spewing out tawdry mantras of idealistic nonsense such as ‘togetherness’ (arguably just paraphrasing the Tory slogan of ‘we’re all in it together’), working the safe ground of the NHS, like a dazed boxer on the ropes hoping to throw a lucky punch – team Miliband look beaten.

 1.8 Darwin’s use of mutation as a piece of process technology and its implications for lowered ideals, more science and greater relative uncertainty.

Mathematics is the main defence against the insecurity of relative uncertainty when doing science. It is therefore not too surprising to find ‘me-oriented’ mathematicians idolized, worshipped, promoted and defended with a zeal that would do any religious fundamentalist credit: the status accorded Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg and Hawking is ample evidence. Where ‘me-oriented’ scientists are concerned, we see a similar process occurring – I am thinking of Smith, Marx and Freud. I was tempted to put the biologist Darwin in this last category because he was an early over-idealistic scientist and his ideas have been proselytized or attacked as passionately as any religious doctrine. However, his model of evolutionary development does contain a considerable amount of strategically significant process technology, which from my position, separates it out from the theories of the three social scientists mentioned above. For example, Darwin’s use of the concept of ‘mutation’ moves us away from ‘me-oriented’ perceptual models dominated by ideals that imply some sort of mega-human presence guiding the functioning of the universe, to a greater engagement with reality and ‘they-oriented’, process perceptions, that owe less to the truth techniques of theometaphysics, and more to the relative uncertainty of sense data.

The Darwinian model is less engaged with idealism in another sense being less systematized by mathematics. Darwin’s theory is a response to the unsatisfactory explanations provided by the prevailing models of his time such as creationism or the arguments of Lamarck, as regards the factual problem of “the distribution of the inhabitants of South America” (p, 5.). His attempt to persuade us of the value of natural selection contains comparatively little mathematical justification: he offers no algorithm (mathematical formula) at the basis of life. There is however, plenty of evidence of ‘me-orientation’ in the model in the form of philosophical (Cartesian) idealism, which produces such a considerable amount of systematic analysis that his ability to achieve the level of ‘they-orientation’ needed for a fuller investigation of processes, is curbed. An example, is Darwin’s unquestioned belief in the validity of rationality/logic, which makes him vulnerable to over-confidence as to the certainty of his judgement that heredity is of supreme importance in the process of mutation and the development life-forms: the dichotomy of nature-nurture, a piece of system technology, patterns Darwin’s network of analysis into which he inserts mutation. Consequently, he embarks on a causal, systematic style of analysis rather than one of interdependencies and process, even though he is aware of the need for process technology in the form of the concept mutation. In addition, his commitment to rationality as a truth technique justifies the adoption of a moral stance that qualifies him to make truth statements about the beneficence of natural selection at the expense of learning, certainly where ants are concerned (p, 180). Such certainty is typical of a ‘me-oriented’ approach that sanctions and privileges ideals, validating a perceptual habitus that understands the universe in terms such as ‘the laws of nature’, as well as licensing forms of analysis that emphasize the pre-eminence of the rational over experience and inheritance over learning/culture; a way of seeing that can be traced back, in modern terms, to Descartes.

However, On the Origin of Species does not privilege theology or mathematics, thereby diluting the level of ‘me-orientation’ to the extent that Darwin is able to work with more ‘they-oriented’ perceptions and engage more thoroughly with reality than his predecessors, producing a more scientific model. Because it addresses processes, albeit structured by a perceptual habitus that is patterned by a commitment to the ideals of philosophical logic and systematic analysis, the model of evolution as natural selection is lower in idealism than its competitors. Interdependently, the greater level of relative detachment (‘they-orientation’) achieved by Darwin correlates with a concomitant rise in the experience of relative uncertainty, both in the model itself and in the lives of those who find it useful. Darwin’s much closer proximity with reality, produces a less ideal set of perceptions that makes the idea of a divine presence comparatively incongruous as a method of explaining human development. Hence, he uses mutation rather than creation.

The latter point goes some way to explaining the fear and animosity that has accompanied the growth in popularity of the process concept of mutation and Darwin’s model of evolution. As a piece of process technology, mutation implies dynamism rather than stability, even though it is often spoken of in conjunction with the ideal notion of randomness with all its connotations of absolute freedom from being meddled with, other than by a divine being. Whilst the notion of mutation can never be free of idealism, any more than any other human conception, it does loosen our hold on the ‘me-oriented’ notion of cause and effect by opening further the possibility of considering the less certain analysis of interdependencies implied in a process model of the the way life-forms operate, albeit injected with a good dose of stability via system technology adapted from the philosophers: Darwin’s diagrams of inheritance are a good example, (p. 90).

 1.7 Process Technology: an answer to the problems of the new mathematical idealism – the study of interdependencies rather than cause and effect.

 I think it’s fair to say that you can never feel safe: the notion of safety is just another ideal. But as Maslow pointed out, we can achieve a level of security, what might be termed ‘relative safety’, that allows us the facility to get involved in less pressing activities such as socializing and contemplating the realisation of personal potential. Even though from my perspective his notion of ‘self actualisation’ is too heavily contaminated with idealism to be much use scientifically, it does offer an insight as to the conditions necessary for the growth in the numbers of scientists since the 17^th century. As far as I’m concerned, to do science people must not only have their immediate practical needs under control, but also must feel sufficiently secure to relinquish enough of a hold on their ideals to allow them to explore and conjecture about reality, without being traumatized by the experience: venturing into the unknown world outside, and trespassing on the territory of supernatural beings was dangerous. It is not therefore very surprising that early scientists carried with them a sturdy package of ideals on their uncomfortable, risky journey into greater relative detachment and, interdependently, greater relative uncertainty.

In this sense developments in new mathematical technology have been crucial to the expansion of science, not just because they offered greater technical expertise, but also because they provided a different type of truth tool kit, much more suited to the research of reality than religious or philosophical truth finding techniques. Thus, scientists were well fortified by a more mathematicized model of certainty on their voyage into the forbidden world outside. This is not to say that the truth technologies of religion and philosophy were abandoned, although religious truths clearly took a big hit with the demolition of its authority over the spirit world and its taboos. The growth of mathematics is more of an accommodation producing a new mix, still including plenty of the non-mathematical technology of truth such as philosophical systems technology and its dichotomies: positive-negative being a prominent example.

In the hostile territory of reality where scientists operate, sheer sensory information overwhelms human consciousness diluting the relevance of much in our ancient truth technology (especially theology), which was designed to cope with egocentric, ‘me-oriented’ insecurities about how I/we cope with the surrounding world outside. When you actually get out there (into the world outside the human mind and its ideals) and try to understand the very thing that our ancient truths protected us from, you are confronted with different and even greater problems of relative uncertainty in the form of ‘they-oriented’ insecurities, which are better suited to ‘they-oriented’ ideals such as mathematics to give them form. Not only did the new model of ideals (theometaphysics) dominated by mathematics provide a greater potential for engaging with reality, it also patterned our perceptions and understanding of that relatively uncertain ‘they oriented’ world outside, giving it the appearance of something predictable and much more stable than is in fact the case. Early physicists spoke of laws interdependent with the truths of the new, more mathematicized theometaphysics. This confirmed the findings of earlier truth-finders that certainty is everywhere, probably still governed by divine presences.

However, the new ‘they-oriented’ theometaphysics is much more vulnerable to questioning than was its ‘me-oriented’ predecessor. There are two issues that I want to consider: dynamism and diversity. The bonds formed between the new ideals and reality are much more tenuous because there is nothing stable to hold on to: this contrasts strongly with the ‘me-oriented’ problems of the mind where stability is possible. The forces in the universe are just too dynamic to be held in place indefinitely. It is rather like a chemistry experiment where two compounds are mixed in a test-tube to produce a measurable, controllable reaction. In the simple, highly regulated world of the test-tube the ideal of a cause and effect explanation between the two reactive materials works well. However, when analysing much more real, complex and dynamic containers such as the human body the ideal of cause and effect is much more difficult to apply, understand and justify. Whilst this analogy is not perfect because a test-tube is not the mind, it is a practical attempt to mimic an ideal environment and provides a nice example of the importance of ideal states for human experience; they offer control. In the ‘me-oriented’ world of the mind complete control is possible via its capacity to develop absolute truths as stable models which can be projected onto the world outside to provide security. In the less ‘me-oriented’ world of the test-tube a lesser degree of control is possible but still sufficient to explore ideals such as cause and effect successfully. However, as we move further away from the mind to the human body as a biological problem, the ‘me-oriented’ methods of interpreting reality have much less influence and much less control over the dynamics of the real world. When taking a scientific position the balance of influence between the mind and its ideals moves in favour of reality and with it the level of control declines. The dominant issue of the mind is dealing with problems of stability and absolute truth; the dominant issue of reality (science) is dealing with problems of dynamism and relative uncertainty.

The problem of the fragility of the bonds ‘me-oriented’ mathematicians can develop when they engage with ‘they-oriented’ reality is not just about their lack of fit for analysing dynamism, it is also related to reality’s diversity: for ideals to prevail, they have to explain an awful lot more than just the problems of the mind. The problems of the mind can produce ‘me-oriented’ truths in the form of transpositions of reality such as mathematical proofs, Pythagorus’ triangle being a famous example. These transpositions are then projected back onto reality, thereby removing much of the diversity that does not approximate the perfect form. However, for scientists empirical facts are the bread and butter of experience, promoting a picture of diversity that overwhelms the mathematical proofs for which they were never designed: there are no straight lines, there is no way of measuring distance exactly. Diversity and complexity is everywhere and cannot be controlled and ignored via the ‘me-oriented’ perceptual habitus that Elias termed Homo clausus. In order to engage with the vastness of reality, as opposed to the problems of the mind, ‘me-oriented’ perceptual habits are of little use. For the study of reality we need a different perceptual habitus that fits with a ‘they-oriented’ scientific approach, described by Elias as Homines aperti, open people. Such people are sensitive to the dynamism and diversity of reality because they are aware of the requirement to meet the demands of interrogation from facts that inevitably at some point may call their conclusions into question. Concomitantly, reality is experienced with relative uncertainty.

As models of certainty, ideals will therefore always be found lacking as templates for the analysis of reality. ‘Me-orientation’, which looks for patterns such as cause and effect, will offer only limited understanding in comparison to ‘they-orientation’ and the more difficult problem of analysing interdependencies. I think it is fair to say that the further from the mind (‘me-orientation’) and its idealistic patterns of analysis we travel, questions as to its usefulness arise; the level of sub-atomic particles being a prime example for which Heisenberg found it necessary to develop a whole new mathematics. Interrelatedly, we can observe his mathematics of ‘uncertainty’ as a contradiction in terms, for mathematics is all about certainty. The limits of mathematical usefulness may have been reached in the realm of particle physics where relative uncertainty bites hard on our consciousness. This level of relative detachment is difficult to live with, where ideals, rather like the oxygen at high altitude, are thinly spread around. To stretch the analogy slightly further, in such a rare place near to the boundary with space, a place of great ‘they-orientation’, we are likely to cling more obsessively to the security of mathematical ideals and even revert back to old and trusted methods of truth technology such as philosophy and theology, which unfortunately seems to be the case with modern theoretical physics. The question is how we can move further into science with less of the comfort provided by mathematical ideals. The answer may be process technology.

 1.6 The case against system technology and the positive-negative dichotomy: time for change!

 ‘Interdepend’ is a word but also a tool for analysis and is therefore a piece of ‘process technology’ used to stress the co-existence of variables without being guilty of over-extending by specifying what causes what. The idea is to ditch the misleading conventions associated with ‘systems analysis’ that rely heavily on ascertaining causal relationships, in favour of a model which uses the notion of process. One important feature of this programme should be the removal of an ancient and fundamental implement in the application of systems analysis – the dichotomy. A prime example of an extremely influential dichotomy features in this essay: ‘positive-negative’.

The deletion of positive-negative as a tool of analysis could have benefits beyond the boundaries of social science. Only the other day I heard one of the physicists using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern explaining that they could now keep ‘antimatter’ (anti-hydrogen) in existence for a quarter of an hour. I would respectfully suggest that whatever it is that they are developing it is not ‘antimatter’. Dichotomies are ancient linguistic tools of system technology that have been employed by theometaphysicians theologians, philosophers and mathematicians) to explore the possibilities of absolute certainty, in order, I would suggest, to find two things: personal comfort in an extremely threatening physical environment; a justification for action, especially the subjugation of others. On this level systems analysis is a technique put together by people to protect themselves from anxiety at a time when they were much more vulnerable to catastrophe than we in the West are today. The search for certainty through systems analysis was an element in the defence/attack strategy of ancient people in their battle to gain control over the turbulence and potential devastation of life’s experiences. From then on it serves to maintain that control, not only over what is idealistically called nature, but equally usefully, to justify the authority of those who have social influence. Systems analysis is a method of providing security through ideals!

Gradually, at first in Europe, as people have gained more control the level of threat in their lives (we can identify a significant increase in self-confidence of certain influential figurations during the Renaissance) we have seen the development and expansion of more realistic types of analysis such as science. I would like to argue that the emergence of science as an industry interdepends with an increase in the numbers of people who felt ‘safe enough’ to risk exploring the potentials of the real world. Such a move implies controlling and modifying the influence of ‘me-orientation’ (relative involvement), high in idealism, because such knowledge is designed to comfort the worried mind of habituses besieged by reality and fate, rather than engaged with it. Such a ‘me-oriented’ habitus has much less value for those committed to exploiting reality. Interdependently, we see an increase in ‘they-orientation’ (relative detachment), and the development of a new brand of mathematicized idealism better fitted for the purpose of exploiting the world outside the mind. From my position scientists can never break the tie with idealism, any more than they can divorce themselves from their emotions such as fear, i.e., be totally realistic or what we term objective. However, I want to argue that in order to do science, they must control their level of ‘me-orientation’ and the pattern of ideals that correlates with it sufficiently to allow the facility to achieve the greater levels of ‘they-orientation’ (relative detachment) necessary to engage profitably with reality. Concomitantly, the influence of the ‘me-oriented’ ideals of religion and philosophy has declined in favour of the more ‘they-oriented’ mathematics as the level of realism has risen. However, the overall authority of ideals has been lowered by the move to greater realism.

Such adjustments in perceptual habitus are likely to be accompanied by far greater psychosocial discomfort as threats emerge that had until then been managed by the old truths of religion and philosophy: the decline in ‘me-oriented’ idealism leaves people more vulnerable to fear of relative uncertainty and the finality of death. Relatedly, the attack on idealism, for that is how it will be interpreted, is very likely to attract violent attempts at suppression because it undermines wider psychosocial relative stability: the violence of some religious fundamentalists are examples, whether it be the Inquisition or the more recent Taliban. We can also see the traumatising effects of a challenge to ideals (certainty) in scientific figurations over the potential discovery of particles that contradict Einstein’s mathematical model by exceeding the speed of light. ‘They-orientation’ is a state of greater relative detachment, in which our ‘me-oriented’ ideals (religion and philosophy) have far less influence, making us much more vulnerable to fear in relation to the fragility of our existence. In moving from a ‘me-oriented’ perceptual habitus we abandon much of the ancient religious and philosophical truth technology that has provided security for so long, in favour of a more ‘they-oriented’ mathematicized idealism that is much more vulnerable to relative uncertainty, because our minds have far less control. Interdependently, a more ‘they-oriented’ habitus has a different fear structure with a heightened awareness of the sheer dynamic futility of existence, albeit buttressed by the stabilising certainties of mathematics, which offers the comforting means for safe sleeping. But only temporarily as we gradually discover the limits of mathematical certainties as explanations of reality: the uncertainty of the particle world being a case in point. Greater levels of ‘relative uncertainty’ await scientists, as they move further into ‘they-orientation’, where even the comfort of mathematics is threatened. System technology and its dichotomies has little use here other than as politics in the defence against process technology.

1.5 An Example of Process Technology to Analyse Interdependencies.

With our present level of theoretical development in social science we will have to make do with checking out interdependencies (non-causal relationships between variables). There are some important techniques already available that can be used to examine interdependency such as the statistical method of ‘correlation’ which analyses the way two linear variables associate with one another. If we can describe compliance (levels of ‘yes-statements’) and authority (levels of social influence) as axes on a graph, we can plot any trend that occurs. My hypothesis is that high compliance will be associated with high authority and that as the levels of authority diminish so do the levels of compliance. As a result we should be able to plot a line that rises from left to right, what is called a positive correlation. The data can then be calculated to ascertain whether such a trend is significant: in other words the likelihood that the association between authority and compliance has occurred by chance – it may be that we start to entertain the idea of a real association only if the probability that it could be explained by chance is less than 0.01% (1/100).

This example is of course merely conjecture to amplify my point. However, such techniques whilst being very useful (the official advice on the danger of smoking tobacco is based on this method) do not specify a cause, they merely allow us to argue that variables co-exist with some degree of regularity: they ‘interdepend’.

Whilst correlation is very useful, it will only analyse the relationship between two linear variables. Social processes usually comprise of interdependencies involving multiples of variables as in the case I am examining here: high authority interdepends with high compliance, high pseudo-positivity, high levels of psychosocial discomfort, organisational under-performance and more. The problem is that our language is dominated by ‘system-speak’ and thus littered with conventions that are specified in terms of ‘it-statements’, geared to cause and effect explanations. This style of analysis may be OK for everyday existence where errors of prejudice may have only personal consequences. In social science however, this is not good enough as we strive to attain the highest levels of relative detachment possible, in an effort to say something more valid about the interdependencies of human life.

1.4

Using the word ‘interdepend’.

As far as I’m aware using the verb ‘interdepend’ is new. It is difficult writing in terms of ‘processes’ because the conventions at your disposal are mostly geared to the analysis of ‘systems’ and therefore inappropriate for the examination of the dynamic patterns needed to describe and analyse social activities such as managing people. ‘System-speak’ presupposes a diagrammatic type of explanation, portraying people as inanimate points on a map, a classic example being the pyramidic model of responsibility and accountability synonymous with military organisation. Correspondingly, systems analysis is heavily reliant on the use of nouns such as Sergeant or Chief Executive, both expressive of function. The convention is to link these nouns with arrows or lines suggestive of cause and effect relationships (line management): the Sergeant gives orders to the Corporal; the Sales Manager sends information to the Sales Executive to account for the dip in orders. In this ‘top-down’ model, people are positioned by a series of ‘it-statements’ in relation to their job which defines their identity and purpose as if they were automata: they will have a job title and job description listing their duties. We also make more general ‘it-statements’ about things that are not objects when carrying out systemic analysis such as ‘the education system is dominated by a culture of compliance’ as if education and culture are things that can be weighed or measured. These ‘it-statements’ are noun-based descriptions that give a false impression of human relationships as lifeless and uniform, markedly unlike the reality I know, which is in fact vibrant and highly differentiated. In our attempt to use systemic concepts to find general or universal explanations we destroy that which we seek to understand.

The problem is that the complexities of most social variables do not allow simple cause and effect connections to be established beyond the banal experience of analysing an instruction: ‘Peter asked me to come here today’. Once we start to look at groups (figurations) of three or more people who make choices, such causal relationships may be impossible to stipulate. This is certainly the case when looking into the governing activities that are meant to educate people. The emphasis in this sentence stresses the verbs ‘governing’ and ‘educate’, suggestive of process, real people and complexity. Such ‘doing-statements’ contrast starkly with ‘it-statements’ by making it more difficult to idealize real human experiences with over-general summaries that promote a bland, simplistic set of perceptions that ignore fluidity and difference in favour of stability and commonality. We get a very different impression when using ‘doing-statements’ that warms and emotionalizes the whole analysis of government functioning, encouraging a focus on process, humanity and dynamics rather than systems, automata and statics. Such ‘process-language’ is geared to the figuration rather than the individual: no-one performs their activities in isolation, they operate interdependently with one another, their activities shaped by a network of variables such as geographical distance and social influence. Most of us start the day with our family and move to our work and then back again to our family. The bonds of interdependence that tie us together in these two figurations don’t perish as the space between us increases. If a family emergency occurs the level of familial social influence may be substantial enough to pull us away from working figurations. Our thinking and behaviour are structured in relation to others. Life is more about social processes rather than systems, and the language we use to describe and analyse it should ‘interdepend’ with the dynamics of those processes.

 1.3

Two well known examples of research into ‘yes-saying’ or what is often called compliance are the works of Milgram and Janis. However, their work tended to focus on formal situations where authority was clearly demarcated such as obeying instructions from more senior ranks or conformity to group pressure in the decision-making processes associated with governmental/company task groups. By looking at pseudo-positivity I want to examine a quieter, more informal and yet pervasive illustration of the authoritarian process, which prepares the ground for the giving of orders and the making of corporate decisions. An example concerns the use of pseudo-consultation as a tactic in the battle to obtain high levels of yes-saying and correspondingly, low levels of resistance. It relies on giving people the impression that they have been listened to. I have been witness to many of these exercises where managers give the impression that corporate objectives are being pursued in an open, reality-oriented (relatively detached) manner. At the time of writing those in the UK government trying to change the NHS may well be using this very tactic to deal with resistance to their plans. Practices of this sort con people into believing that their views are important and have been included in a decision-making process that has the appearance of subjecting managers’ proposals to critical appraisal. In fact such pseudo-consultations are merely exercises in compliance where any potential resistance is drained of its potency: opinions that differ from those of senior managers are comfortably ignored by being stigmatized as negative. Consequently, consultation is too often merely window dressing where the pseudo-positive prejudices of more senior managers are given formal approval by a process that just rubber stamps decisions already made.

Another indicator of pseudo-positivity, that often ‘interdepends’ with the activities of pseudo-positive, authoritarian managers is the use of clichéic language known as ‘management speak’. One contemporary illustration of this phenomenon that is exceptionally popular in these more authoritarian times is the word ‘challenging’. Only the other day Sir Michael Lyons, the out-going Chair of the BBC used ‘challenging’ liberally during an interview in a radio feedback programme. This morning, May 19^th, the word was used on the Today programme in connection with the problems facing the new incumbent, John Patten. From my experience, whenever people with authority (high social influence) use this word they are employing it to hide substantial levels of psychosocial discomfort at being confronted with demands from above that they feel are impossible to supply. Clichéic language seems particularly prevalent in public sector organisations such as the BBC which have, certainly since 1979, been under constant attack as over-comfortable parasites upon the tax-payer. When put under constant pressure to justify your existence, even when you excel, anyone will become defensive. The same can be said for process of educating people.