Psychosocial implications: disorder or different drummer

Law and Order vs. Lore and Orders? (Part #4)

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• a matter of degree, namely how "organized" it is in terms of the interconnectivity between its parts
• a matter of kind, namely different styles of organization

Degree and kind may be readily entangled and confused. An obvious consequence is that any given psychosocial phenomenon (a group, a movement, an event, a belief system) may be perceived as "highly organized" or "totally disorganized". It may then be recognized as either admirable or a threat. The organization of al-Qaida and the Tea Party movement may then be fruitfully compared in contrast with a "tight" military organization (Cultivating Global Strategic Fantasies of Choice: learnings from Islamic Al-Qaida and the Republican Tea Party movement, 2010).

With respect to styles of organization, a summary of approaches is offered separately (Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993). Especially indicative are the:

• Axes of methodological bias (W. T. Jones, The Romantic Syndrome: toward a new method in cultural anthropology and the history of ideas, 1961)
  • Order vs disorder: Namely the range between a preference for system, structure, conceptual clarity, etc. and a preference for fluidity, muddle chaos, etc.
  • Static vs dynamic: Namely the range between a preference for the changeless, eternal, etc. and a preference for movement, for explanation in genetic and process terms, etc.
  • Continuity vs discreteness: Namely the range between a preference for wholeness, unity, etc and a preference for discreteness, plurality, diversity, etc.
  • Inner vs outer: Namely the range between a preference for being able to project oneself into the objects of one's experience (to experience them as one experiences oneself), and a preference for a relatively external, objective relation to them.
  • Sharp focus vs soft focus: Namely the range between a preference for clear, direct experience and a preference for threshold experiences, felt to be saturated with more meaning than is immediately present.
  • This world vs other world: Namely the range between preference for belief in the spatio-temporal world as self-explanatory and preference for belief that it is not and can only be comprehended in terms of other frames.
  • Spontaneity vs process: Namely the range between a preference for chance, freedom, accident, etc and a preference for explanations subject to laws and definable processes.
    
    
• Epistemological mindscapes, notably characteristic of distinct cultures (Magoroh Maruyama, Mindscapes, social patterns and future development of scientific theory types. Cybernetica, 1980):
  • H-mindscape (homogenistic, hierarchical, classificational): Parts are subordinated to the whole, with subcategories neatly grouped into supercategories. The strongest, or the majority, dominate at the expense of the weak (whether values, policies, problems, priorities, etc). Logic is deductive and axiomatic demanding sequential reasoning. Cause-effect relations may be deterministic or probabilistic.
  • I-mindscape (heterogenistic, individualistic, random): Only individuals are real, even when aggregated into society. Emphasis on self-sufficiency, independence and individual values. Design favours the random, the capricious and the unexpected. Scheduling and planning are to be avoided. Non-random events are improbable. Each question has its own answer; there are no universal principles.
  • S-mindscape (heterogenistic, interactive, homeostatic): Society consists of heterogeneous individuals who interact non-hierarchically to mutual advantages. Mutual dependency. Differences are desirable and contribute to the harmony of the whole. Maintenance of the natural equilibrium. Values are interrelated and cannot be rank-ordered. Avoidance of repetition. Causal loops. Categories not mutually exclusive. Objectivity is less useful than 'cross-subjectivity' or multiple viewpoints. Meaning is context dependent.
  • G-mindscape (heterogenistic, interactive, morphogenetic): Heterogeneous individuals interact non-hierarchically for mutual benefit, generating new patterns and harmony. Nature in continually changing requiring allowance for change. Values interact to generate new values and meanings. Values of deliberate (anticipatory) incompleteness. Causal loops. Multiple evolving meanings.

Whatever the schema by which styles and degrees of (preferred) order are distinguished, it is clear that there will be a tendency to deprecate alternative styles -- and possibly to perceive them as a threat meriting some form of action.

The argument could be considered highly relevant to any assessment of the achievement of the Christian Coalition of the Willing in their intervention in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. Clearly the Coalition preferred one form of order and deprecated another. The consequence was to engender a significant number of deaths and to create a country now subject to extreme sectarian violence. It has been repeatedly noted that the Coalition "won the war" which it had instigated and "lost the peace" regarding which it has proved to be incompetent. The Iraqi population can be conveniently blamed for "not getting their act together" after having been "liberated". The question of what kind of order fits best with that culture has been carefully avoided -- as analogous arguments are made with respect to intervention in Syria.

The sense in which politically there are aspirations to distinct degrees and styles of order are readily obscured. The confrontation between the "capitalist" growth-obsessed mainstream and various "alternatives" could be fruitfully explored from this perspective, as discussed separately (All Blacks of Davos vs All Greens of Porto Alegre: reframing global strategic discord through polyphony? 2007). The musical metaphor is consistent with the much-quoted saying by Henry David Thoreau:

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. (Walden, 1854)

Walden is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. His essay on Civil Disobedience (1849) is an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

More problematic is the sense in which only one form of order is to be recognized -- with the implication that "there can be only one" viable and acceptable form of order. This approach is characteristic of many strategic proposals framed as "the way" forward. This pattern could be recognized in various forms of imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, as well as their religious analogues. A dramatic manifestation might be the "laying down" of a western worldview in a non-western country through a process of carpet bombing.

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