Conclusion

Computer-aided Visualization of Psycho-social Structures (Part #17)

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The world crisis may be viewed as the closing of an ecological trap, in the multiple sense elaborated here, and as a failure of communication between governments and governed, between disciplines, between organizations, between generations, and between psychological states. It is not a matter of improving the technical means by which new information is generated or transferred from A to B, indeed it is this which is setting the pace. It is in the processes of interpretation, integration and comprehension that the problem lies.8 It is useless to step up the bombardement of the human organism by pellets of information and unrelated, "useful" but mutually antagonistic concepts unless the pellets are so organized as to be capable of faster assimilation. [27]

This integation must extend to the systems of interpretation by which alone communications have meaning and enable human beings to influence one another -- it is in this domain that coherence and continuity havealmost completely been lost. But in order to re-integrate what is being so explosively torn apart, it is necessary to look at the psycho-social system in its currently fragmented state -- this poses much subtler problems of communication for which the device described here may be of major significance.

Each entity in the psycho-social system must be "recognized" as it iscurrently fragmented, because in this state each fragment has its own relations with other parts of the system which we must necessarily comprehend. They have emerged into existence as relative invariants, for some other part of the system, in response to system conditions which must be understood before attempting any premature integration back into "natural wholes" -- and before using models which assume the existence of such integrated wholes or which deny the significance of some entities or relationships. In particular it may be an advantage to attack the myth of society as a unified whole and the myth of man the individual -- before establishing well-founded bases for any such beliefs.

To clarify the two myths, a new "Origin of Species" [43] is required to showhow and in what way each psycho-social system species arose and how it relates to other species. The only unity to be hoped for at this stage is an eco-systemic unity -- not some Utopian community of man.

A common ecological framework is required for the massive existing programs of which the United Nations is a focal point namely disarmement, development, and environment -- but apart from interrelating them the missing program,in the form of "psycho-cultural development" of the person, needs to be elaborated. One cannot expect someone suffering from physical starvation, structural violence, etc. to do much for himself, but nor can one expect someone suffering from mental and emotional starvation, fragmentation, etc. to want to do much for anyone else -- we do not know what "information vitamins"we are chronically deprived of in psycho-systemic terms. The crisis i a global and multidisciplinary one of "psycho-environmental evolution".

Three other problems of introducing change must be recognized. StaffordBeer has formulated Le Chatelier's Principle for the psycho-social system which he considers that would-be leaders and reformers of social systems often fail to appreciate: social systems do not need to respondto "progressive change" by defeat or violent reaction. They can simplyadjust their internal equilibrium very slightly, "accepting" the change, and then offset and contain all its effects so that the macro- systemic characteristics remain the same. The other problem he notes is that most of the problems perceived as problems are in fact bogus problems generated by theories about social progress and the way society works. [34] a third problem is that people and organizations tend to create and detect problems to provide a necessary psycho-social tension to reinforce identity -- as such there may be a preference for problem solving activity rather than actually achieving a solutionto the problem.

In the face of this confused, unstable situation in which organization and concepts are increasingly inadequate to the tasks demanded of them,it is not some magic centrally developed policy on which society can depend. The systemic momentum and inertia are too great. People and organizations must turn to the necessity of knitting together theelements of the organizational and conceptual not works in which theyparticipate, in order to respond creatively to the problems they perceive in terms of their growing eco-systemic sensitivity to their psycho-social environments.2 Society as a whole therefore depends on a global and multidisciplinary set of inter-dependent dynamic, self-compensating networks each responding rapidly to locally perceived problems. The networks need to be galvanized into a stabilized existence in which their maximum self-transformation potential is realized.

Identification should however be increasingly with the dynamic potential of people and organizations to reform networks and configurations of skills appropriate to each new emerging problem and less with a particular evolving network of relationships.47

A device such as that described here could constitute a vital catalyst to the processes required in this more sophisticated environment. Perhaps it will only be with such devices that man can "track" the daily changes in structures in such a psycho-social system and identify the relative invariants which provide the framework for evolving order. In value of a visualization approach to serve change agents at all levels is well summarized by Harold Lasswell:

"Why do we put so much emphasis on audio-visual means of portraying goal, trend, condition, projection, and alternative? Partly because so many valuable participants in decision-making have dramatizing imaginations...They are not enamoured of numbers or of analytic abstractions. They are at their best in deliberations that encourage contextuality by a varied repertory of means, and where an immediate sense of time, space, and figure is retained." [48]

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