Current schools of thought on the sources of objectivity

1. Literalist Fundamentalism: Hybrid of empiricism and scripturalism. Serves capitalism and/or tribalism.
2. New Ageism: Hybrid of tropes of modern science, superstition and common but uncanny experiences, which remain scientifically unexplored due to # 5.
3. Post Modernism: Ever changing truth lies between the lines in the ceaseless revolution against narratives of power.
4. Basic Science: Carries on halfway between rigour and rigor-mortis owing to emphasis on economic benefits, rigid schools of thought, and being a trope of legitimacy unto itself.
5. Reductionist Science: Puts the methodological cart before the ontological horse, confuses the intellectual filing cabinet for reality, hung up on "building blocks", misses context, life, imagines operational definitions to be exhaustive.
6. Promethean Science: A hubristic triumphalism of technology that, like dominionist religions, celebrates our conquest/dominion of nature.

Why hierarchy and innovation rarely mix: A Paean to Creative Nerds

There are thought leaders who can invite and harness the wealth of insight of creative and committed people. People who are creative and committed are often described as nerds. What distinguishes nerds from those reluctant to identify with nerdhood is that they are curious and creative as a matter of course, regardless of external incentives. In other words, their creativity is disinterested in the sense of being motivated to move the mental models forward and expand the frame of reference in their respective fields without reference to partisanship or entrenched tribal norms. They are the innovators who get us thinking, nudge us outside our comfort zone and drive the better side of what is called progress.

Although not inspired by extrinsic rewards, innovators are indeed hampered by disincentives, it should go without saying. Why would anyone disincentivize disinterested creativity and innovation rather than harness it? The only reason would be that it threatens the established order, that it is viewed as subversive to the order, and that the order is hegemonic.

Throughout history, great art was produced by unparalleled artists employed by the ruling class. Yet, the art is easily identified by era, indicating that style innovations were slow to accrue. Today, an exponentially expanding field of possibility is available to potential innovators, yet social structures  reproduce disincentives and thought innovation doesn't keep pace with the increase in available information and platforms to make it world changing. There is a canon that supports innovation-limiting social structures, a Canon of "objectivity" that belies its true nature.

The main value of The Canon resides in its false assurances of control:

• We set up a list of outcomes, assuming that no better / deeper understanding will emerge in pursuing them that might change them. We set up measures that readily stand in for the outcomes, although pursuing measures as ends can yield perverse effects. 
• We make a plan according to current knowledge, not in terms of the real world of ever-emerging possibilities.
• We then outline contingencies, assuming that we can adumbrate the list of relevant determinants of change.
• We execute a plan and consider deviations remarkable, requiring no end of justification and scrutiny, as if stasis were the norm. 
• We assign people formal titles and units, and expect their talents not to leak beyond these pre-defined impersonal roles.
• We break down challenges into discrete parts, and assign various disconnected units to tackle them and then wonder why everyone isn't on the same page. We might even measure the discrete successes of the units assuming that the sum of the parts is equal to the sum of the aggregate (not necessarily a "whole").
• We evaluate performance against set criteria in a changing landscape, although performance evaluations have been proven not to have any performance-enhancing value except in simple, transactional or mechanical activities. 

Where in the above is room for leveraging potentials? Whence engagement? The closure is almost complete. This perverts the ideal of the enlightenment and turns it on its head.

Nevertheless, the trope of objectivity allows the powerful to maintain control of the story of what should be done, how it should be done, and how well it was done, regardless of what actually happens, which tends to depend on ever shifting natural and cultural contexts. There is little to distinguish innovation from heresy, insubordination or subversion. The status quo is reproduced ad nauseum with nothing given legitimacy to challenge it.

That is not to say all people with high position are officious innovation stiflers. Many are thought leaders. What characterizes them?

They are open to possibility, have a desire to expand thought horizons for the greater good without any extrinsic incentive to do so. They have a keen eye for viable potential and encourage it. Their comfort zone is strong and wide, not because they control, but because they inspire trust and enthusiasm. They have a collegial appreciation of talent, seeing their employees as people with expanding potentials, not as pre-defined competency sets or roles.

Fundamental Instincts

Our overarching instinct is to preserve that narrative that preserves our place in the (now technologically defined) economic landscape; i.e., the economy (now global, not place-based). 

Cultural memes (anchors of the narrative) dislodge from terra firma - soccer, religion, politics - anything really - and stand in for our homestead/place. Dangerous because unbounded. That's why we're in the grip of so many "fundamentalisms".

The power of the "divine right of kings" didn't come from the kings but from this overarching instinct. 

(Hobbes articulated it without understanding.) Without place there is singularity.

The constellations of philosophy?

Hypothesis:

The patterns of every socio-economic organization in history and the powers that maintain them are supported by a tacit ontology (myth/theory of what reality is) that underpins public discourse and the social narrative. This ontology serves to legitimate the social order in the same way as the ancient belief in the "divine right of kings" or "mandate of heaven". (Another metaphor that may work in place of the divine right of kings might be heavenly/stellar constellations. Ancient rites seem to have connected them.)

Philosophers are by trade apologists for or critics of the divine right of kings (i.e., the ontology that underpins the social narrative). It is changes in technology that occasion changes in the social narrative (and only indirectly philosophy) because technological change gives rise to the need for changes in the patterns of economic and thus social organization, which then calls forth a new narrative. Philosophers gain a following when they contribute to a sustaining narrative, or to one held onto by soon-to-be eclipsed powers (there's usually a lag...).

Change Discourse: Public and Private Worlds

No doubt, we all have our secrets, but even those are framed using the belief systems available to us through public discourse. Our lives are lived in the public domain. 

Who each of us is in the public world is very much a part of our identities as private people. If you are a woman, for instance, your personal and social identity is still largely defined by the roles you play in the lives of men.  In turn, the roles of men and women evolve with the types of division of labour required to support the economy given a level of technology. 

Women's lives throughout history were until very recently restricted to the private sphere. While it is said that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, in fact, to express any of her thoughts, women must conceive and articulate their thoughts in terms that are comprehended in a public world that has been almost entirely defined by men who had economic power.  Women's personal identities were defined through the interests and needs of the men: Mother, lover, madonna, whore... Woman means wooed by man; i.e., wife of man.  Consider also the distinction in language between matter and spirit, and the patriarchal nature of religion, and also the symbols for masculine (mind) and feminine (body). Matter/Mater... More on this later.

The default gender is the masculine. Political power (political majority) is not measured in terms of how many women there are in relation to men, or even how many women there are in boardrooms in relation to men, but that we have to relate woman's success to that of the norm, the default gender, male.

Every thought we have can be articulated, but then it has already been forged in the public discourse. Even if we keep to ourselves, our selves are more publicly determined than self-determined because our opportunities to articulate our identities to ourselves are framed and validated in the public sphere. If there's too much of a discrepancy between how we view ourselves and our public reception, we lack legitimacy and credibility (and it is assumed the fault lies with us) and we feel alienated, disenfranchised, marginalized, even crazy. 

So what is the "private sphere"? Is it the sphere dominated by women? No, it's the sphere demarcated, defined and dominated by the historical economy. The economics of the home is publicly defined, and that definition informs our expectations of the roles of women and types of discussion men will engage in about their private lives. The default reality is the public world.

Due to changes in how we produce and distribute goods, larger numbers of women have access to the public domain than ever before. But being a woman doesn't make one's talk less patriarchal. If the discourse is becoming less patriarchal, it is because social organization around the modes of production requires it, or it is because we are becoming more aware of the affect of our institutions during times of change, and more aware of the effect of the terms of discourse. We no longer see our social institutions as natural arrangements, but as historical developments and therefore we can question them.

Change Discourse

It's been a long time since I posted a blog entry on Peripheral Vision.

I've decided to contribute something a little different now - on subjects that I have been thinking about for a very long time.  I was going to open another blog, but thought that it would save distractions if I just continued here.

I should warn you that this is going to be pretty "big picture" but for all that, it is definitely not going to be abstract. Over the next few months of postings (I hope) you'll come across terms such as "narrative" and "social discourse" but let's be clear - those are not abstract concepts like "the average family" or the GDP.

Social discourse is that living sea of language that you inherit from the many cultures in which you were raised. It's the theatre of your cognition, the shaper of your experiences and what allows you to communicate a wealth of information to others by means of these mere marks on the screen, or those little puffs of air that resonate throughout the cafe. It's the window through which you look out from your inner self to the world around you. It's the sedimented history of thousands and thousands of years of human existence.  It sorts, organizes and informs your basic, habitual awareness.  It exists in the world around you. (If you still think that's abstract, you can blame that label on several trends in the evolution of social discourse ;). Social discourse or narrative is mainly about the habitual tags, labels and markers we give to all of our personal experiences in the private or public sphere. It's the channel through which things make sense to us and amongst us when we take in, think or talk about them.

Social discourse traverses generations and changes the conditions of our understanding over time. It carries a set of key connotations that have some very strong influences on our experiences. They arise from living in a natural world and the social organization demanded from a given level of technology. Social discourse influences and is influenced by the needs that a level of technology produces:  The needs that organize us around gathering, changing and distributing nature's provisions, the ideals that support that organization. The core ideas in our cognition and evaluations are:

• The definition of private versus public
• Gender, family, and reproductive relationships
• Power relationships (e.g., boss, employee; government, capitalist)
• Values (e.g., "freedom" "kindness" or "success" - what are they?)
• Human beings and our understanding relation to the planet Earth
• What we take to be real in the universe

However, there's usually a lag and some upheaval before the brain and heart catch up with the hands but now, all of our core ideas are about to change markedly .... and therefore so will our experience.