Bruno Lussato

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Value generator scales – HUMELD

The great french poët wrote : « it’s not the great ideas which moves crowds but the great emotions. »

In fact ideas could be the frame of emotions. The revolutionary formula :
« liberty, equality, fraternity » as contradictory as it could be, was a support of torbid feelings as utopia, jealousy, hatred, negation of personality, etc.
But how define emotions ? Or more precisely categories of feelings, which can move crowds as individuals ?

To know it, you must like a child ask the question : why ? until you have the answer : « I don’t know » or « it’s like this » or « because it’s what I want », or « I want this because I want it ».

A long lasting and painstacking survey could reduce the various kind of motivations which push people to act, to six primary scales.

I used for that, factorial analysis that i learned and practized during years when I was a student at INNETOP, (to day Institute of industrial psychology).

It is not the place, in this popularized talk to detail the method but anyone can understand the result of this reduction.

The individuals acts according to six scales, each one being an oriented vector, having a negative pole and a positive one - between the (+) and the (–)pole, we can have many hues like for example a neutral pole (o) (neither-nor), and intermediary values. A scale who admit only the two pole is said « dichotomic » and denotes a special, fanatic way of thinking. « Either black or white, you’re my friend or my enemy ! »

CHRONICLE

The metasystems theory II

THE MEANING OF MEANING

This is the title of the book of Richard and Ogden about the various definitions of the word, which are as numerous than those of the word "system".

The general concept of meaning deals with De Saussure statement about the nature of language. For the first and the greatest pioneer of the linguists, a word as a sentence, a symbol or a sign, are like the both sides of a sheet of paper : the first is the signified SG the second the signifier SN. When you cut the sheet with scissors you cut in the same time the two sides.

The signified SG bears the meaning. It is the object itself: a cow, a headache, your mother... The SN is what stands for the signifier : the words [COW] or [MUCCA] or [VACCA] or the drawing of a cow... or the sentence [MAL DI TESTA],or [MAMMA], [MUTTER] etc...  The SN can be too a statue, a drawing, a painting, a symbol etc.

In the set theory the relations between the SG and the SN is named a mapping and the various kind of mapping describe approximatively the typologies of meanings.

The systems theory add complexity to the concept of mapping, because one's consider not only the mapping between the elements of the first and second set, but too the mapping of the relations (structure or characteristic). In other words, the relation between the word (or the model) and the thing, can vary from a purely conventional (code) to a trompe-l'oeil which leads to fraud and deceit.

You remember perharps that there was in ancient Greece a contest between Phidias  the greatest sculptor of the classical style and another talented artist. The day of the contest, two paintings were exhibited, both hidden behind a red curtain. The Phidias challenger pulled the curtain of his masterpiece, and a magnificent bunch appear, so lifelike that very soon the painting was covered by a lot of birds, which wanted to pick up the grape. Under a thunderous applause the triumphant artist summoned Phidias : open your curtain, and show us if you can surpass my tour de force!  But Phidias did not move and the curtain was closed. "Draw the curtain! " protested the assistance. Phidias told them : it is the painting you see, the curtain is the painting. If my challenger deceived birds, I deceived men.

As I tried to tell it, this story is revealing of the present mix up of reality and fiction. More and more, people confuses virtual images and facts and reality. But the birds could not eat painted grapes, and you cannot grasp the feeling and humanity which permeates the on-live concert or the real love. Pornography on the screen kills sensuality and even sex.

I would like to give you another revealing example of the confusion between reality (the Signified) and the model which stands for it (The Signifier).

You know what voodoo is. A shaman or a wizard moulds the image of an enemy. This small statue is the model of the real man. When the wizard drives a stake into the heart of the figurine with a long needle, the enemy will be felled by a heart attack, and in a similar way if it is the brain that is touched, the enemy could be struck by a brain desease.

THE MAGICAL THINKING

It appears when we believe that the word (or the symbol) could retain properties for the thing. I.e. that when the reality could be substitued by a mediator. Alfred Korzybski and S.E. Hayakawa, were the most celebrated researcher in the field of the discipline named Semantics which explores the relations between the signs and symbols and what they represent. General Semantics, founded by Korzybski, struggles against the pitfalls of abstraction. He points to an object and declares : "Don't say this is a pant, show it with your fingers! The meaning is not the word, it is the thing!"

An American told ten years ago to a japanese engineer : "You're great! You get a computer for the price of a steak. " The japanese answered smiling : "We are miserable. We sell a steak for the price of a computer! But nobody can eat a computer!"

WHY MODERN ECONOMY IS A MAGIC THINKING ?

One of my colleagues at Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, in Paris, the celebrated Jacques Lesourne, a national glory, made a scandal. He claimed at his inaugural lesson, that one of factor of success in a entreprise was the quality of the management. For the economist orthodoxy, only external measurable factors were admitted. Dogma was most important of common sense, not to speak of reality.

Nothing is changed in the magic world of finance and of economy. In a study of monetary evolution, in the last papers, I demonstrated how the link between the sign (the coin or the numerical computerized statement) was built, then enriched by aesthetic and propaganda values, until the money unit was deprived of all its substance. The gold standard which insured the link between the signifier (the coin, or the numerical computerized statement) and the signified (the gold, military power,worldwide domination, industrial wealth) or, in the archaïc era, between 650 BC, a bull, a wife or two slaves. 

When the US had to affront the enormous expenditures of Vet-Nam war, all the gold of Fort Knox was in shortage, it was not sufficient enough to insure the convertibility of dollar in gold. Instead of stopping the war, or reduce government and military expenditures, they decreed the breaking of the semantic link between Signifier and signified. (Bretton Woods, 1944)

Henceforth the meaning of a signifier was a signifier! They could print banknotes ad infinitum .

To tell the truth, the signifier doesn't always stand for another signifier, but with a virtual, ghostly signified. For example, the counterpart of the banknote, is not the gold or any physical good, but hope of future huge benefits, the conviction that the country cannot collapse, that monetary system will be inescapable, that, as all wants the monetary worldwide organization it will be eternal.

Unfortunately this is wishful thinking. Nowadays, the states are in bankrupcy, and rich of debts. The computer and electronic industry don't creates any wealth, but the hope to reduce costs, hope all the time deceived. The Central Banks don't help producers of real wealth, as cars, houses for middle class, schools or planes, but bankers which are responsible of present state of affairs. If technology is well oriented with sustained development, it degenerates with internet, gigantic servers etc...

A proof of the artificiality of the economic system, is that it plays with soap bubbles. A pinprick is sufficient to reduce it at a vacuum cleaning state. Consider the Lehmann Brothers case. The hatred of two men, was enough to get rid of a prosperous bank 150 years old. Years of dedicated work and ultracompetent employees were destroyed in few days. What remained was empty space, complete vacuum. Why?

It is because the vacuum was yet in the bank, as in other banks. The activity of the bank represented figures, numbers, accounting units, not anything you could touch, feel, eat or use for your pleasure and every day life.

It would be much more difficult to get rid of machines, ground, in a car factory! Hatred would be not sufficient, the only thing it would do, is a transfer of share holders. The material goods  and services would leave a trace.

NEXT NOTES

HOW TO GET RID OF THE INTERNET?

WHY A MONETARY SYSTEM?

THE POWER OF THE MASS DISTRACTION ARMS

THE SEMANTIC THRESHOLD

Bruno Lussato

CHRONICLE

The metasystems theory

A POPULARIZATION

President Herriot told us than culture is what it remains when you have all forgotten. I believe that the foundations and basic roots of systems theories are buried somehere in my brain, but I forgot them. I studied them as a student, then during my pilgrimage to laboratories of such geniuses as Herbert Simon, or Pr. Forrester, and in fine, as an adjunct professor in the S cube (Social Science Systems) at the Wharton School, Penn. This paper concerns an idea about what is a System, the system approach, and the essential I retained of this enormous amount of information, I gathered during my encounters with the great founders of the systemic approach.

WHAT IS A SYSTEM?

There are more than 80 définitions of the concept from the most general (Klir and Valach) onto the most elaborate (Stafford Beer,my collegue at Wharton).

KLÌR AND VALACH

A System S results from the coupling os an Universum U and a characteristic A.

U is the population of the system, ie the number of elements which composes the system. A is the number of relations which interwines the elements of S. When each element is related to all the other elements, A is saturate and the graph which formalize it is strongly connected.

WHAT IS COMPLEXITY?

It is the product of A and U. C= A x U. In other terms, complexity increases when the population of a system and/or the number of connections increases too. For example, when one's ages, he loses neurones : U decreases. But the connections which integrates each neurone to all the others increases considerably. (Of course not in such illness as Alzeihmer's disease). Another example is the complexity of our planet. Not only population is exponentially growing, but the number of connections, thanks to internet, telephone and TV, growth even quicker, the result being a tremendous increase in complexity.

WHAT IS A DISCONTINUITY?

The Teilhard de Chardin disciple Lecompte du Nouÿ was the author of a revolutionary théory. To make a long story short let us affirm that when you cross a threshold toward an infinite dimensional change, new properties emerges. And not gradually but suddenly. Infinite decrease in weight and size, transform our classical experience, in quantum physics. Fishes are soluble, you're simultaneously here and everywhere in the galaxy, your cat is alive AND dead. Impossible ro understand for common brains. And don't forget that such a radical change appears at the treshold of 10¹⁴ grams, without transition, in one instant. Such behavior is called a discontinuity.

Another discontinuity appears when you reach the infinitely large distances. What emerges is relativity theory, no less disturbing than Quantum theory. How is it possible to think that when few days are lived by an austronaut, one hundred years passed on our planet?

The last discontinuity, but not the least, concerns the crossing the threshold of complexity.  A new property emerges brutally  in three steps:

1. when inanimate matter becomes complex, due to intricate loops of reactions, life appears.

2. The second step concerns brain complexity : the cousciousness is the result. A cow is conscious of its surroundings.

3. The third step appears with the increase of the complexity of the brain, self consciousness appears. The man is conscious, and he is conscious that he is conscious. 

MODERN MAN IS TRAINED NOT ACCEPT DISCONTINUITY
We must attribute this severe limitation of mind, to the dictatorship of neo darwinism theory.  In this doctrine, the concept of change by micromutations by essays and errors is a dogma. Only hazard can change this principle. The genetis and biology engineering were very well adapted to this model, and as they are a enormous source of profit, the the neodarwinian dogma is universally accepted, even if in medicine other paths could be explored.

Nevertheless, there is a branch of knowledge which rejects categorically the neo-darwinian dogma : the palaeontology.

According to new-darwinian doctrine, a reptile becomes a bird by small steps, small improvements. But it is impossible. To fly out of his nest, the small bird needs the concomitance of numerous factors such as the weight of the bones, the proportion between the size of the wings and that of the body, a brain change in structure, etc. If all these factors are not present in the same time, the small bird is unable to fly, falls from the nest and crashes. Therefore the chances of survival of a bird according to micromutations are nearly zero. Jean Stone has written a book about this subject, but Stone is a palaeontologist, not a biologist. That means that his status is much lower!

DISCONTINUITY AND CATASTROPHE THEORY

René Thom distinguished many varieties of discontinuities, that he calls catastrophes. The term is deceiving as all the discontinuities are not all catastrophic for us, but when a scientist don't want creates neologisms, he uses old terms in a specific ways. Instead creating new words for the discontinuity concept, he preferred to use the current word in a different sense.

The most serious catastroph that can jeopardize our civilization, consist in the fantastic increase of complexity due to modern real time means of communication. All the brains are intervconnected to acentral superbrain which acts according to its will and interests. Joël de Rosnay, a popular journalist wrote in his book on systems theory, that a new system : the sybionte, would dominates the world. It would be connected to all the brains of the planet and would control our behavior and  our value scales. The worst is that this aristocratic person, links oriented, would like very much the deprivation of part of our autonomy for the sake of public intereste. Instead the ego-citizens, we would be changed in equal citizens (citoyens egaux).

Is such an utopia possible. Are we loosing our power, our human control on events to obey to a superior systems which could decides for us?

JAY FORRESTER AND THE ECOLOGY CONCEPT

I met Forrester in his laboratory, at M.I.T. Professor Forrester is one of the major figures of the realm of the system approach. He was a gentleman farmer and became immensely rich with his discovery of the tores memory.  But his enormous fame came from his book Industrial Dynamics, followed by Urban dynamics and World dynamics.

As a representative of the system theory, Forrester was a powerful opponent to the tenants of system analysis. The systems analysis approach declares that to know an organization, you must study with the greatest décision, as painstaking as it can be, each of the elements which intervenes in its functioning.

On the contrary systemic approach put the emphasis on the relations. The behavior of a systems is therefore defined by the structure of its relation agencement. Forrester considers an organization as a fitting of elements and of channels animated by five sort of lows: monetary,(financial flows) capital (machines, land, etc), machine (computers, robots, etc), manpower (number and level of employees) and... psychologicological (motivation, creativity, ambiance, courage, entrepreneurial spirit etc.). All these elements and these channels where defined by complex level and flow equations. But the complexity of the system was fast growing with the predominance of positive or negative feed-back loops at such extent that thousand and millions of equations were necessary to calculate the behavior of the systems.

Instead of undertaking such an impossible task, Forrester had the idea to built a system homomorphous (i.e. analogical and simplified) of the actual system. Simulation and mapping, find their roots in this novation. Moreover, Forrester studied the way to design a cybernetic system, who could function eternally, craeting and destroying life, in a close cicuit and elaborate loops of feedback. He called ECOLOGY the designing of such systems, similar to Earth natural regulation.

I described the man who was facing me, a young student without prestige. And the professor was tall, blue eyed, staring at me with a metallic glance, reinforced by very fine silver-rimmed spectacles. He confessed that he was very embarrassed to define the psychological flows, and he coul'd not attend any cooperation with psychologists, awful people!

He was furious against Pears and Meadows, charlatans that claimed the end of the world for the end of the century, on the bais of a small model of 1200 equations Appointed by Club de Rome, presided by Aurelio Peccei, president of Fiat, they write a book which had an enormous influence, up to now : Halte à la croissance! , stop the growth !  His predictions were false but they influenced films as Space Odissey, Matrix, Green Soyeland, or Brazil. They wher among the generators of the ecologist movement, and of long-lasting devlopment current.

THE PRESENT OUTCOMES OF P.AND M. PREDICTIONS

Of course, the predictions of Pears and Meadows about the shortage of energy and gaz oil resources, appears today to be utopian and even ridiculous. But they had a positive consequence : to stress the importance of nature and  the emergence of negative outcomes of non controlled industrial growth.

To day, the predictions of the Club de Rome are false, but the warning was correct. The loss of control of the financial and industrial growth is the result of a generalized dispise of our leaders for nature and its cycles.

THE TWO STEPS OF THE FINAL CRISIS

We can predict two steps in what we can whithout exaggeration the final end af a world. 1. The disaster. 2. The catastrophe.

1. The disaster. It is already at our door. The industrial tissue is in complete recession and the liquid assets are important. With ten thousand dollars you can afford to control one hundred more shareholdings tha, a year ago, and we do not know when it will stop. The result is a loss of liquidities and a strong deflation. It is a real disaster for our industrial richness and such domains as employment, medicine, freedom of change, and even real goods like gold. (It could be prohibited, or its value artificially drop by injection of gold in the market bay central banks).

2. The catastrophe. The liquidity assets are only papers, like currency and money. Their value comes bay what they represent. Now, we now that if in the past they stand for gold, industries and physical wealth, today they stands for themselves. And what they represent is worst than nothing: they stand for considerable debts and abyssal losses of value. So in the final step, both shares and money, will have no value. Violence, amazment, revolutions, change in societal behavior, bartering economy, will succed to recession.

CAN WE AVOID THE TWO STEPS OF THE CRISIS?

Yes. But we must before understand the logic of the two staps and that is difficult because our education and our common sense prevent us to evaluate them honestly. We must considerate that the crisis is not of the same nature than in 1929. Today there is no sanctuary, no country to help us. Another consideration is to accept to struggle against one of the main factors of the crisis : the globalization. We must accept to destroy  integration and cut the links and the generalization of real time communications.

But there is another main factor of the crisis: the universal loss of meaning and the limitation of the value system to pleasure and utilitarian short term scales. This will be the subject of the second part of this paper.

 Good Night and dream to a better wisdom for the world leaders.

Bruno Lussato.