Making a case for STA:C — #1: Why I’m interested in people’s space-time-action perspectives & their significance for cognition and culture

Imagine anybody and everybody — all kinds of people who have all kinds of beliefs about all kinds of matters. Next, imagine stripping away their high-level ideologies, values, norms, and everyday beliefs, until you get down to their most basic notions that still amount to perceptive cognition about how the world around them looks and works. Stop there, before descending into a quivering mess of raw emotions, impulses, and instincts.

What's there, I contend, is an assemblage — metaphorically, a kind of layer or module — in the mind that consists of people's basic orientations (assumptions, perspectives, perceptions, beliefs) about the nature of social space, social time, and social action. Briefly, by space I refer to how people see their identity positioned in relation to others, and how they perceive other subjects and objects, near and far — how they perceive all this as being structured, arrayed, linked. By time, I refer to how people discern and prioritize the past, present, and future, and what content they give to the past, present, and future. By action, I mean a sense of agency, of efficacy — whether and how people think they can affect matters around them.

In short, how people think and behave depends on the kinds of deep-down space-time-action perspectives they have — not just any one but all three, as a kind of requisite triplex. All three orientations — space, time, and action — are essential for the mind to work in ways that represent social consciousness. A kind of “module” consisting of the three takes shape during infancy and childhood. It's permanently there from then on. No mind can work without it, and most everything people think and do gets processed in and through it. It amounts to requisite cognitive knowledge, because space-time-action orientations lie behind much — all? — human awareness and deliberation.

A SERENDIPITOUS NAP WHILE IN GRADUATE SCHOOL

This idea about how people think — about how a bundle of space-time-action cognitions underlies their thinking — seized me like a personal epiphany during a pensive nap fifty years ago (1966 or 1967). I was in graduate school and had fretted for weeks at my inability to understand a professor’s impressive lectures about the nature of time and its place in political philosophy, with references to Henri Bergson, Immanuel Kant, Karl Mannheim, Sheldon Wolin, and others whose names I’ve forgotten. I was gripped with interest, but flummoxed by despair.

What finally unfolded to me during this nap was that, yes, thinking is based on beliefs about time, but it requires beliefs about space as well. Furthermore, space and time orientations alone are not sufficient for full-fledged cognition of the world. The mind also revolves around an action or agency orientation — a sense of whether and what a person can and cannot affect in the world — and this action orientation is separate from the space and time senses. In sum, our space, time, and action senses are the cardinal elements of cognition, and beyond that, of culture and philosophy; and they should be recognized and studied as an interlaced triplex.

What a simple compelling idea. I wasn’t sure whether it was an entirely new idea (it wasn’t). And it arrived too late to help me with that professor’s class. But it gave me an excited initial conceptual grip on … well, on something

Back then, as a graduate student, I was interested in why people rebel — hey, it was the late 1960s — and I thought that analyzing space-time-action perceptions might be a revealing way to study that. It might even work better than a then-leading explanation, “relative deprivation,” which focused mostly on future expectations, a time orientation. So I proposed to develop the space-time-action idea through dissertation research on peasant unrest in Mexico. However, the people I found for my case study did not like being asked structured questions about their space-time-action orientations. They just wanted to tell me their stories, without interruptions, about why there was so much unrest in their area. So I had to put my idea aside, in favor of doing a more historical, conventional, much less theoretical dissertation.

SPORADIC EFFORTS WHILE AT RAND

After that, through with school and intent on fashioning a professional research career, I kept up my hopes for developing the idea. I persistently collected writings that related to it. I made a few wayward efforts to field it in RAND research projects on terrorism. I wrote a few pages outlining it in a RAND study about a dangerous leadership mentality that exhibits a unique set of space-time-action orientations — The Hubris-Nemesis Complex (1994). And I kept making notes and drafting sections for an eventual full write-up. But mostly I dithered while I kept my work focused on other interesting ideas at RAND that stemmed more from TIMN than STA:C.

In my view, STA:C is an easier simpler idea and framework to grasp than is TIMN. STA:C may even be a better idea than TIMN. But shifting to focus on it would have to wait until I retired and turned to blogging.

MEANWHILE, NEW THINKING FROM ACADEMIA AND ELSEWHERE

A lot has happened around the idea these past five decades. Space, time, and action (agency) have each become increasingly prominent concepts in different parts of academia. A new generation of postmodernists in sociology made the “turn to space” for theorizing in new (mostly Marxist?) ways about the nature of society. Seasoned social theorists who better reflect social-science traditions (such as Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells), along with cutting-edge psychologists, cognitive scientists, and linguists who study how our minds work (e.g., Philip Zimbardo, Steven Pinker, George Lakoff) all provided new takes and insights about space, time, and sometimes space-time perspectives. Journals and blogs also appeared about Society and Space, Space and Culture, and Time & Society. Elsewhere, psychologist Alberto Bandura has advanced the study of social agency and efficacy in ways that related to STA:C’s action element. Indeed, if I were to start elaborating about all these developments, adding more names and numerous quotes, this section would go on for pages.

Along the way, globalization and the information revolution — above all, the growth of the Internet and the Web — have prompted endless commentary from business, government, military, media, civil-society, and academic research leaders about how people’s orientations to social space, time, and action are being altered. Terrorism in particular has jarred people’s space, time, and action perceptions, leading to a plethora of new writings.

Yet, despite all this new thinking, no one else has yet turned to study space, time, and action orientations the way I saw them — as a trifold complex. This is both a surprise and a relief. It means I still have an opportunity (stand a chance) to advance the idea. Yet it may also mean there is some strange resistance to the idea — say because of entrenched specialization or credentialist dynamics in academia — or something else I don’t understand. I can’t tell yet. Onward, anyway!

ONWARD TO MAKING THE CASE FOR STA:C

I’d say all this provides new grist for the STA:C idea. The literatures about its three elements, and the potential audiences for it, have burgeoned. Besides, I believe STA:C can add value, for it insists on the trifold nature of this module in the mind. Most theorists keep focusing on the significance of people’s space OR time concepts, a few on the dual significance of space-time (or time-space) perceptions, and fewer still on the action / agency element. I rarely find a writing that starts to engage all three elements as a bundle. Yet it seems obvious to me that is the way to go. So I must persist, if only to release myself from the lingering spell of that long-ago nap.


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[Identical version posted on my Facebook page today, Nov 27.]

For the original, shorter version of this post, go here:
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-im-interested-in-space-time-action.html 

Readings about tribes and tribalism — #20: David Brin’s “Our tribal natures, the 'fear effect' and the end of ideologies” (2006)

Until now, all readings in this off-and-on (lately, muddlingly off) series have derived entirely from my interest in TIMN. This reading relates more to the other theoretical framework that interests me — the one about people’s space, time, action orientations and their importance in shaping cognition and culture (acronym STA:C).

In working on STA:C, I’ve noticed that people's space-time-action orientations often get assembled into particular views about “boundaries” and “horizons”. Furthermore, sensitivities about boundaries — about identifying, respecting, and defending boundaries — seem to characterize conservative far more than liberal / progressive thinking. Conservatism seems fundamentally concerned with boundaries of all sorts, especially traditional boundaries, while liberalism and progressivism seem oriented more toward horizons, especially new horizons. Indeed, if a policy or principle is not based on some sense of boundaries, it is questionably conservative.

While I’ve yet to do much with this observation — just a couple blog posts a few years ago — it explains my interest in today’s reading: futurist David Brin’s “Our tribal natures, the 'fear effect' and the end of ideologies” (2006). It’s an old but still-stimulating still-relevant post about how people’s sense of “horizons”, and to a lesser extent “boundaries”, figures in shaping their “tribalism” (and vice-versa).

TRIBALISM AS KEY FORCE THROUGHOUT HISTORY

Brin starts by identifying “tribalism as a deeply motivating force in history” that extends from ancient tribal through modern civilized societies. He is dismayed (as am I) that few social theorists have noticed tribalism’s importance, instead preferring to dwell on other social forces. Yet, wherever “devotion to a group, clan, or nation, has overwhelmed what might otherwise have seemed to be the individual's self-interest”, that’s where tribalism takes hold, deserving recognition from analysts as both cause and consequence.

Thus, Brin writes:

“In fact, while the models of Freud, Marx, and Machiavelli (also Madison, Keynes, Ghandi etc.) have attracted legions of followers, clearly influencing sociological, historical and psychological events, I believe a much stronger case can be made for tribalism as a deeply motivating force in history. After all, should not any theoretical explanation of our nature apply across the long span of time when human nature actually formed? Also, if you can find a pattern or patterns that seem to have held across all continents and almost all pre-metal tribes, isn’t there a much better chance that the trait really is natural? That it is not an artifact of later cultural imposition by contrived societies? …

“So, what might tribalism tell us about human nature, that was missed by Marx and Freud and Rand and all the others, with their post-literacy myopia? What traits seem to be shared BOTH by tribal and “civilized” societies? Are there any deep, ongoing themes?

“Over and over, we see how devotion to a group, clan, or nation, has overwhelmed what might otherwise have seemed to be the individual's self-interest. Nor should this be surprising, since, for most of the last million years, human beings lived in clans. Any man or woman who lost the faith and confidence of his or her tribe was in great danger. Often effectively dead.”

THE FEAR FACTOR AND PEOPLE’S PERCEPTUAL HORIZONS

Brin’s theme is that people’s “ambient fear level” is what drives them to cluster into tribes. The higher the fear level, the more people cling to their fellow tribal loyals close to home. The more the fear level declines, the more people become willing to broaden their “tribal boundaries”, even to include strangers. Thus his contention is that there is an “inverse correlation between ambient fear levels and the distance … of the “horizons” maintained by average members of a given culture.”

In his words:

“Human beings can be very flexible defining what is "my tribe." More often than not, the major determining factor is fear.

“When the ambient fear level is high, as in civil war-riven Lebanon, loyalties are kept close to home. Me against my brother. My brother and me against our cousins. We and our cousins against the world. Alliances merge and are broken quickly, along a sliding scale that appears to be remarkably consistent.

“The general trend seems to be this: the lower the ambient fear level declines, the more broadly a human being appears willing to define those tribal boundaries, and the more generous he or she is willing to be toward the stranger. …

“My contention is simple, that there exists an inverse correlation between ambient fear levels and the distance — in terms of space, time and kinship — of the “horizons” maintained by average members of a given culture.”

THREE KINDS OF FEAR-RELATED HORIZONS

Brin identifies three kinds of horizons that matter to fearful people: a threat-related “worry horizon”, a future-oriented “time horizon”, and an “otherness horizon” that also correspond to an inclusion horizon “since it is partly about deciding how many people you want to deal with as worthy negotiating partners, and where you draw the line, calling others foes.” The three horizons constantly expand and contract for various reasons, but overall, Brin stresses, they “seem to depend most upon the ambient level of fear.”

In his words:

“1) There is a "Worry Horizon" ... what threats concern you and your neighbors …

“2) There is also a “Time Horizon” having to do with how far into the future you devote your attention … either in dealing with threats or seeking opportunities …

“3) Another horizon might be called the "Otherness Horizon” — where one looks not for danger but for opportunities, adventures, new allies, new mating partners. … This could also be called the “Horizon of Inclusion” since it is partly about deciding how many people you want to deal with as worthy negotiating partners, and where you draw the line, calling others foes.

“What seems clear, examining historical records and a broad range of cultures, is that all of these horizons expand and contract in the manner described above. … But overall, these horizons seem to depend most upon the ambient level of fear.”

DYNAMICS OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Brin lauds America’s “unprecedented society” for having generated so much fear-alleviating prosperity that traditional tribal bonds could relax and allow ever-widening horizons and circles of inclusion. But lately, he says, many Americans have shifted away from inclusion, toward exclusion, hardening into the differences we see between “blue states” and “red states” on issue after issue. Thus, he concludes that his “model” about the movement of horizons (and boundaries) helps explain the growing red-blue differences and may be “the best one, yet … far better than any insipid “left-right political axis” or words such as “conservatism” and “liberalism.””

In his words:

“By these lights, most contemporary Americans live in an unprecedented society, where the vast majority of families have not known starvation or even significant want for so many generations that those kinds of fear are almost abstractions.

“This, in turn, has allowed traditional tribal bounds to relax and spread so far that "tolerance" and "otherness" are words of totemic power in this culture! Indeed, it is interesting to view the expanding circle of citizenship and inclusion as first the American colonies and then the Republic began experiencing unprecedented levels of prosperity and fear-reduction. The battles over inclusion that were fought in each generation (first against class division, then slavery, sexism, religious intolerance, racism...) tend to seem obvious to their children, who grow up within the newly-widened horizon set ... then wrestle with the next stage of the process. Continuing the widening of the circle.”

All to the good so far, but then matters took a turn, Brin observes:

“ … Certainly Timothy McVeigh had very different concepts of "inclusion horizons" than many of the fellow citizens he slew.

“Indeed, might one diagnose some recent phenomena in these terms? Why is it that citizens of New York and Washington DC — direct victims of 9/11 terrorism — remain utterly “blue state” in their fealty to expanded horizons — in time, threat and inclusion — while “red state” attitudes (perhaps oversimplifying) seem to draw closer in: e.g. higher enmity toward non-natives and immigrants, less concern about environmental degradation, more concern over “war” on terror, less interest in science and more in a pending end of the world?”

“Is this model the best one, yet, at explaining such differences? Certainly it is far better than any insipid “left-right political axis” or words such as “conservatism” and “liberalism.””

WHETHER PEOPLE CAN WIDEN THEIR HORIZONS

Brin says his readers should make “No mistake, I approve of this trend toward ever-widening horizons. … I am impatient for it to go much farther.” But he worries whether Americans can keep widening their horizons. More than that, he argues that the “doctrinaire left” is as “loopy” as the right in this regard, in that “One side [the right] resists the widening of horizons while the other [the left] would force it with a patronizing, oversimplifying sledge hammer.” But, for Brin, this is not, and should not be made into, a left-right matter. “Rather, this is about the true “liberal” notion of ever-increasing inclusion within the tent of human decency, while allowing a lot of give and negotiation and bickering and creative competition within the tent!.”

In his words:

“ … It is ironic, though, how few seem to realize that the new era of Omni-Inclusion is based upon prosperity and lack of fear brought on by prosperity, and that our morality of universal tolerance would have been considered terminally sappy and dangerous by every other culture in human history.

“This is — in my view — the deepest smug insanity of the left. Yes, the “right” obviously suffers from shorter horizons. That is their dire craziness. But the doctrinaire left is just as loopy. Because they take expanded horizons as a deeply fundamental ‘given’ of human morality. Like Rousseau, they simply ASSUME, as something basic, a value system that is actually extremely recent and entirely contingent. …

“On the other hand, if one takes history into account and cheerfully accepts the incremental progress that it portrays, then the Modernist Agenda of pragmatic improvement makes a great deal of sense. Face it. Rousseau was a sap. All of this is about Locke. The sooner the “wide-horizons” people realize it, the more effective they will be at pursuing their agenda, of widening horizons ever farther!

“In fact, this process of horizon-widening is not INTRINSICALLY a feature of the left ... though it is intrinsic to liberalism in the older and truer meaning of the word. It is utterly compatible with the four accountability arenas, for example (science, markets, democracy, courts... and the candidate for becoming a fifth arena – the internet. …

“Hence, once again, we see that this is not a matter best handled on a left-right basis. Both dogmatic extremes ignore history and are effectively quite mad! One side resists the widening of horizons while the other would force it with a patronizing, oversimplifying sledge hammer.

“Rather, this is about the true “liberal” notion of ever-increasing inclusion within the tent of human decency, while allowing a lot of give and negotiation and bickering and creative competition within the tent!

“The crucial issue is this — can the long process of expanding human horizons be studied in order to determine crucial narrow points and bottlenecks that inhibit horizon broadening, among both individuals and cultures?”

A FEW AFTER-THOUGHTS OF MY OWN

From STA:C and TIMN standpoints, I am delighted to see Brin recognize that the tribal form is essential and recurs all across history; that people’s orientations toward boundaries and horizons are central to their political (including tribal) views; that conservative thinking tends to be associated more with tight boundaries, liberal thinking more with loose horizons; and that perceptual fluctuations in either boundaries or horizons may cause changes in the other.

Yet, I have two tentative criticisms of his write-up:

(1) It essentially advises conservatives to expand their horizons, when they might be equally-well advised to reconsider their sense of boundaries. How people think about horizons and boundaries should be analyzed and addressed jointly — or so I’m supposing today.

(2) When I first started to read David’s post, I was ready to note that he emphasized horizons to the neglect of boundaries. But as I read deeper, I saw that was not really so. Nonetheless, I’d propose that his “model” would benefit from including as much about boundaries as about horizons, and from drawing sharper distinctions between the two kinds of cognitions and their implications for how people think and act.

To read his post in full, go here:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/06/altruistic-horizons-our-tribal-natures.html


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For more about boundaries and horizons from a STA:C standpoint, browse these two blog posts:

http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2015/09/boundaries-part-1-spatial-predilection.html

http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-nra-in-light-of-stac-and-timn-part.html

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For a later analysis by Brin about the significance of horizons of inclusion — “All of those are epiphenomena of the battle over horizons -- whether we're a culture that looks ahead toward future times, that confidently explores newness in knowledge, technology, goods and services... and one that expands horizons of inclusion.” — go to his blog here:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/09/sovereignty-and-world-wide-rush-toward.html

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[I posted an earlier shorter write-up of this post on my Facebook page, on  Nov 24.]

Readings on tribes and tribalism — #19: a series by James Fallows on using the words “tribal,” “tribe,” and “tribalism”

I started this series of readings largely because I’d found, in reactions to my TIMN writings, that people generally do not cotton to language about tribes, tribalism, or tribalization. It doesn’t fit well in American political discourse; nor among social theorists.

Yet, “tribes” remains the best term available for characterizing the oldest form of organization in the TIMN framework about past, present, and future social evolution. Indeed, the tribal form is still what people revert to, when the more advanced TIMN forms fail them. With this series of readings, I have tried to show I am not alone in my thinking about the significance of the T/tribal form.

So it’s most interesting to learn that Atlantic magazine writer James Fallows encountered a similar difficulty using the word “tribal” to describe recent Republican behavior. What ensued resembles what I’ve experienced.

Here’s what happened: Fallows posted “that today’s GOP leaders, notably Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House, had essentially abdicated their constitutional responsibilities and were behaving in a “tribal” sense” — and readers promptly criticized him for using the word “tribal”. Then, instead of letting it pass, Fallows went on to post a series of Notes about his readers’ emailed reactions — about the pros and cons, and rights and wrongs, of using “tribal”, “tribes”, and “tribalism” in today’s American political context, and about what might be more advisable terms.

In the initial offending post, Fallows had criticized Congress’s retreat from established norms, notably the traditional reliance on checks and balances, as follows:

“The boring name for these unwritten rules is “norms.” Boring or not, they’re at the center of the potential crisis over Donald Trump’s performance in office. By the letter of the Constitution, and by the unwritten norms of American separation-of-powers governance, the main restraint on an overreaching, dishonest, or incompetent executive is a resolute legislative branch. But today’s legislative leaders—Mitch McConnell and his slim Republican majority in the Senate, Paul Ryan and his large Republican majority in the House—are ostentatiously refusing to play that check-and-balance function. They are operating as members of a tribe, the Republican tribe, rather than as components of a branch, the checks-and-balances legislative branch. …

“Because the legislative majority is choosing a tribal rather than a governing role, the checks and balances necessary for democracy have fallen to an ad-hoc group of others [generals, judges, the press, the prosecutor].”

Fallows’ subsequent posts presented feedback from a wide variety of readers. Most were quite critical and suggested other terms: e.g., clan, club, faction, sect, clique, cabal, gang, partisan, pack, team, kin-group, affinity group, my kind, even Japanese counter-part terms, and most unusual and unexpected of all, Paretoism. They also brought up in-group vs. out-group and we vs. they dynamics, as well as herd mentality, group think, identitarianism, and even the Parsonian distinction between ascribed and achieved identities.

Quite a pile of suggestions. I’ve run into most of them too. Yet, as his series has progressed, more readers (myself included) recommended he stay with “tribe” words.

Along the way, Fallows extolled two books that bear on his take: Harold Isaacs’ Idols of the Tribe, and Andrew Bard Schmookler’s The Parable of the Tribes. First I’ve heard of Isaacs’ book. Schmookler’s I already have.

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Meanwhile, I sent the following email to Fallows, summing up my view (but he didn’t use it):

Yes, “tribes” is the best term for what you are analyzing. Its usage has problems, including that anthropologists have long disparaged the concept and Americans generally don’t cotton to the term. I know this from experience as a RAND researcher, now retired, who continues to have an interest in reading and writing about theories of social evolution.

What I’ve found is that, over the ages, people have come up with four cardinal forms of organization for constructing their societies: tribes (i.e. kinships), hierarchical institutions, markets, and information-age networks. Each form has different purposes and uses, along with different philosophical and strategic implications. Each form also has both bright and dark sides, and can be used for good or ill; societies can get them wrong as well as right, in ways that affect their usage of the other forms.

For various reasons, these forms have arisen and matured at different rates — tribes took shape first, hierarchical institutions were next, then markets, and now networks are on the rise. Societies progress according to their abilities to add and combine these forms (and their resulting sectors of activity). How people manage to use and combine the forms, their bright and dark sides, pretty much determines what kind of society they end up with. Advanced societies depend on their people’s abilities to use all four forms in a coherent, well-balanced, well-functioning whole.

Thus, when matters go well, societies advance by adopting and using these forms progressively and properly. But when matters do not go well — for example, if leaders make a mess of the institutional (i.e., government) and market forms, or if people cannot find places for themselves in the institutional, market, or emerging network sectors — then people revert to organizing and behaving in terms of the tribal form, often in dark ways. That’s what’s happening now here in America.

No society can do well without the tribal form evolving well. Its main dynamic is kinship, which gives people a distinct sense of identity and belonging. It is initially expressed best in families, clans, and classic tribes; later in community spirit, civic clubs, and patriotic nationalism; as well as in positive group identities about religion, ideology, ethnicity, and even regarding sports teams and commercial brands. Thus, tribes and tribalism per se are not a bad thing; some is good and necessary.

But dark sides — malignant tribalism — may show up too, as in urban youth gangs, criminal gangs, sectarian militias, partisan cliques, millenarian movements, charismatic cults, etc. Most worrisome now is the tribalization of our partisan politics, especially on the Republican/conservative side.

For when people turn darkly tribal, they exhibit similar patterns of thought and action, no matter their religious, political, or other identity: They boldly tout their unique identity. They exalt “us” and demonize “them. They express sensitive narratives about respect, honor, pride, and dignity for themselves — but call for revenge and retribution for transgressors. All very ugly, and often violent.

Even though the term “tribes” is problematic, I’ve found no better term. Terms such as kinships or kindreds might be alternatives, but aren’t quite adequate either. Clans is too narrow. Bands, gangs, and the like are too small to qualify. Affinity groups is too academic.

So I’d stick with “tribes” — it’s the first and forever form that no society can do without, for better or worse.

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Here’s the first in Fallows’ series, the post that triggered reaction to his using the word “tribal”: “Congress: The Broken Check and Balance”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/republicans-in-congress-youve-got-another-chance/544466/

Here’s the second post, where reader feedback kicks in:  “On the Many Connotations of ‘Tribalism’”

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/10/on-the-many-connotations-of-tribalism/544535/

Here’s the third:  “‘The Parable of the Tribes’”

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/11/the-parable-of-the-tribes/544610/

Here’s the fourth in his series:  “‘Scorn for Tribalism Is an American Tradition’”

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/11/scorn-for-tribalism-is-an-american-tradition/544616/

And the fifth: “The Uses of 'Tribalism' in American Politics” or “A Nation of Tribes, and Members of the Tribe”

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/11/a-nation-of-tribes-and-members-of-the-tribe/544907/

Finally, the sixth, which appears to be the last in Fallows’ series: “Tribalism, Before and After the Virginia Vote”

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/11/tribalism-before-and-after-the-virginia-vote/545408/

[I posted an earlier write-up of this post on my Facebook page, during Nov 3-9]

A TIMN-ish article by George Monbiot

Guardian columnist George Monbiot makes TIMN-ish points in this analysis of how to think about a society’s economic spheres. He criticizes that most people, especially our leaders, act as though there are only two: the state sphere, and the market sphere — i.e., the public and private sectors. Not so, says Monbiot, for there are really “four major economic sectors: the market, the state, the household and the commons.”

This maps perfectly well with TIMN’s four evolutionary forms: tribes, institutions, markets, and networks. The household sector, first recognized by Aristotle, took shape, mostly around families, ages ago as the T/tribal form arose. Monbiot notes that this sector goes unrecognized these days, yet its activities (e.g., home health care) greatly subsidize the next two sectors. The state and market sectors fit respectively with TIMN’s +I/institutional form and the later +M/market form. As for the commons sector, Monbiot observes that it emerged ages ago, then got mostly enclosed and disregarded by political and economic elites, and is only now making a comeback. As for TIMN, it expects the rise of the +N/network form to generate a separate new sector in the decades ahead, most likely a commons sector. Today, recognition of its importance, distinctiveness, and future potential is growing anew, thanks partly to writings by Elinor Ostrom and to theory-and-practice efforts by activist outfits like The P2P Foundation and the Commons Strategies Group.

So, Monbiot’s four sectors map well with TIMN. But that’s not all that is TIMN-ish here. He further argues that all four are so valuable that they should be kept in “balance” — a strategic dynamic in TIMN theory — by working to strengthen the weaker two, namely households and commons. Finally, while he doesn’t offer an explicitly evolutionary viewpoint à la TIMN, he hints that a proper recognition of all four sectors could induce “the social and environmental transformation for which so many of us have been waiting.” TIMN foresees that as well.

Here are some eye-catching passages:

“Both sides seem to agree that state and market are the only sectors worth discussing: politics should move one way or the other along this linear scale. In fact, there are four major economic sectors: the market, the state, the household and the commons. The neglect of the last two by both neoliberals and social democrats has created many of the monstrosities of our times.” …

“I’m not proposing we abandon either market or state, but that we balance them by defending and expanding the two neglected sectors.” …

“I hope such parties can take the obvious step, and recognise that the economy has four sectors, not two. That’s the point at which it can begin: the social and environmental transformation for which so many of us have been waiting.”

How far Monbiot can/will continue to move in this direction, I’ve no idea, for his writings are fairly new to me. He is somewhere on the Left. But that’s fine with me, for now I can add his name to the few other writers, all on the Left, who are also developing frameworks that have much in common with TIMN, notably Michel Bauwens and Kojin Karatani. I’m still waiting and hoping for thinkers on the Right to become more TIMN-ish.

A step I wish Monbiot had taken — it’s somewhat implied but not stated explicitly — is to point out that his four-part design would make a sound basis for crafting a new political narrative that reorients how people think about current trends and also looks far ahead to a brighter future. He does write appealingly about the importance of political narratives in a prior article (I’ll point to it in the first comment below), but he has yet to put it all together. I want to do likewise with (and for) TIMN, but I’m moving and maneuvering awfully slowly these days.

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/27/rich-assets-resources-prosperity-commons-george-monbiot

——

As noted above, here’s the article (and book) where Monbiot provides a stirring analysis of the importance of “powerful political narratives”, in which he observes that:

“The first observation is the least original. It is the realisation that it is not strong leaders or parties that dominate politics as much as powerful political narratives. The political history of the second half of the 20th century could be summarised as the conflict between its two great narratives: the stories told by Keynesian social democracy and by neoliberalism.” …

“But because we have failed to understand what is possible, and above all failed to replace our tired political stories with a compelling narrative of transformation and restoration, we have failed to realise this potential. As we rekindle our imagination, we discover our power to act. And that is the point at which we become unstoppable.”

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/09/george-monbiot-how-de-we-get-out-of-this-mess


[I posted an earlier write-up of this post on my Facebook page, on Oct 17.]

The NRA in light of STA:C and TIMN: libertine and tribal — not truly conservative:

An excerpt from an old 2016 post, prompted in part by seeing reactions by the NRA and its cohorts to the recent mass-murder shooting in Las Vegas:

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My work on people’s space-time-action orientations and their import for cognition and culture (STA:C) indicates that conservatives think largely in terms of boundaries, far more so than progressives (they think more in terms of horizons). The NRA and its Republican cohorts claim to be highly conservative. Yet their views about guns are so lacking in boundaries as to mean they are not truly conservative — instead, they seem virtually libertine.

There are only a few issue areas where Republican conservatives favor largely unbounded policies. Guns is one such area, perhaps the major one. Here, their alignment with the NRA’s policies and positions is said to express conservatism. Yet, from what I’ve seen, the NRA and its fans have little sense of boundaries regarding gun production, technology, marketing, and ownership. They evidently believe that the more guns and the fewer the boundaries, the better for themselves and for American society and culture. Thus, if I look at the cognitive underpinnings from a STA:C perspective, the NRA’s positions are so unbounded that they contradict true conservatism.

Meanwhile, I gather some NRA proponents argue that the NRA is more a libertarian than a conservative actor. Some libertarians in particular seem to believe this. But the NRA has not embraced this view. Besides, a thorough libertarian would surely favor letting people acquire “smart guns” if that’s what they wanted, and wouldn’t necessarily oppose research on gun-related violence.

From all this, it seems reasonable to conclude, from a STA:C standpoint, that the NRA and its cohorts are not so conservative as they claim. Nor are they liberal in an old-fashioned pro-freedoms sense. And they’re not thoroughly libertarian either. Instead, when it comes to guns, their positions are essentially libertine — not quite in a dictionary-definition way, but close enough. For the NRA and its Republican cohorts espouse a kind of boundless “free love” for guns that seems a functional equivalent of the libertine “free love” for groins that Hippies used to tout in the 1960s. All self-servingly in the name of individualism, freedom, self-expression, and tribal identity — yet so lacking in boundaries as to contradict traditional conservatism.

Meanwhile, the NRA and its Republican cohorts have generated a significant boundary that is in keeping with today’s conservatism: a tribal boundary. The NRA and its cohorts seem to have evolved collectively much like a tribal identity movement built around “identity politics”, in ways that work to keep allies in line and outsiders at bay. The tribal boundary is the most important boundary I can find involving the NRA and its conservative Republican cohorts. (Tribalism has been evident among Republicans for years, as I once tried to lay out here.)

And how does this manifest itself? Extreme tribalists divide the world between “us” and “them”. They stress group identity, loyalty, and solidarity — kinships, brotherhoods, sisterhoods. They constantly talk about honor, pride, dignity, and respect. They flash totems and slogans. They claim tradition and purity for their side. They vilify and demonize opponents. They believe it’s morally okay — maybe not politically-correct, but tribally-correct for sure — to lie to and about outsiders. They readily turn combative and uncompromising. They force people to take sides, to become tribal. They shun moderates once on their side. They engage in magical and conspiratorial thinking about their prospects. Et cetera. And of course they accuse the other side — in this case, gun-control advocates — of tribalism.

This overall pattern of thought and action is common wherever people become susceptible to an excessive malignant tribalism. And it looks to me that the NRA has become bound up in it, partly as a way to advance its own institutional interests, but also as a way to claim a mantle of conservatism that, according to my understanding of STA:C, is questionable, if not in error.

I have no particular interest in the NRA. I’m fine with the Second Amendment and with owning some guns. I’m not steeped in gun policy matters, pro or con. I’ve no policy recommendations to push. And I suppose I’d be wiser to stay focused on other matters about STA:C and TIMN. But the NRA sure is an interesting creature from both STA:C and TIMN standpoints.

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Here’s a blog post from last year that elaborates on what I say above. I’d meant to go do a second post about how the NRA may correspond to what Jane Jacobs called “monstrous moral hybrids”, because of the ways the NRA mixes TIMN’s tribal, institutional, market, and network dynamics. Plus a third speculative post proposing that, if/as TIMN’s +N form takes hold in the decades ahead, creating a new commons sector that will subsume some of the resources and activities currently in the grip of our aging public and private sectors, then it may make sense to regard the Second Amendment as an assurance commons, having quite an effect on gun policy. But I’m not there yet…

http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-nra-in-light-of-stac-and-timn-part.html

[I posted an earlier write-up of this post on my Facebook page, on Oct 4.]

Readings on tribes and tribalism — #18: Andrew Sullivan, “Can Our Democracy Survive Tribalism” (2017)

Like I was sayin’ … just when I was wondering whether to continue this series urging thinking about tribes and tribalism systematically, not just as a synonym, or move on to something else, along comes this incisive sweeping article by Andrew Sullivan, “Can Our Democracy Survive Tribalism” (2017), that illuminates both the bright and dark sides of the tribal form while recognizing its essential nature. One of the best readings yet in this series — at least that’s my view today. Also worthy are review articles it has stirred up, especially Michael Gershon’s (as I’ve posted in the comments section).

I’m too slow right now to provide a substantial write-up, but here’s an excerpt that will, I hope, spur you to read the full article:

“I mean a new and compounding combination of all these differences into two coherent tribes, eerily balanced in political power, fighting not just to advance their own side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other.

“I mean two tribes whose mutual incomprehension and loathing can drown out their love of country, each of whom scans current events almost entirely to see if they advance not so much their country’s interests but their own. I mean two tribes where one contains most racial minorities and the other is disproportionately white; where one tribe lives on the coasts and in the cities and the other is scattered across a rural and exurban expanse; where one tribe holds on to traditional faith and the other is increasingly contemptuous of religion altogether; where one is viscerally nationalist and the other’s outlook is increasingly global; where each dominates a major political party; and, most dangerously, where both are growing in intensity as they move further apart.

“The project of American democracy — to live beyond such tribal identities, to construct a society based on the individual, to see ourselves as citizens of a people’s republic, to place religion off-limits, and even in recent years to embrace a multiracial and post-religious society — was always an extremely precarious endeavor. It rested, from the beginning, on an 18th-century hope that deep divides can be bridged by a culture of compromise, and that emotion can be defeated by reason. It failed once, spectacularly, in the most brutal civil war any Western democracy has experienced in modern times. And here we are, in an equally tribal era, with a deeply divisive president who is suddenly scrambling Washington’s political alignments, about to find out if we can prevent it from failing again. …

“Tribalism, it’s always worth remembering, is not one aspect of human experience. It’s the default human experience. It comes more naturally to us than any other way of life.”

Source:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/can-democracy-survive-tribalism.html

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Sullivan's article stirred up lots of commentary.

Here’s Michael Gerson’s up-beat review, “Tribalism triumphs in America”(2017:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tribalism-triumphs-in-america/2017/09/18/7c6a841a-9c95-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html

Here’s a down-beat review by Isaac Chotiner, “Andrew Sullivan’s simplistic diagnosis— and unrealistic cure—for what ails us” (2017):
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/09/what_andrew_sullivan_gets_wrong_about_our_tribal_times.html

[I posted an earlier write-up of this post on my Facebook page, on Sept 20.]

Readings in cognitive warfare — #6: Molly McKew on Russian information ops and the Gerasimov doctrine

Molly McKew is a leading analyst of Russian information operations. I’ve posted her writings three times before. Here’s her latest. It illuminates what’s called the Gerasimov Doctrine, which is constructed largely around soft-power measures for dividing and confounding people’s thinking and thus their behavior in a target society — in this case America.

Here’s an excerpt:

“The United States is the latest target. The Russian security state defines America as the primary adversary. The Russians know they can’t compete head-to-head with us—economically, militarily, technologically—so they create new battlefields. They are not aiming to become stronger than us, but to weaken us until we are equivalent.

“Russia might not have hacked American voting machines, but by selectively amplifying targeted disinformation and misinformation on social media—sometimes using materials acquired by hacking—and forging de facto information alliances with certain groups in the United States, it arguably won a significant battle without most Americans realizing it ever took place. The U.S. electoral system is the heart of the world’s most powerful democracy, and now—thanks to Russian actions—we’re locked in a national argument over its legitimacy. We’re at war with ourselves, and the enemy never fired a physical shot. “The information space opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy,” Gerasimov writes. (He also writes of using “internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”)

“Not all Russia-watchers agree on the Gerasimov Doctrine’s importance. Some say this is simply a new and well-articulated version of what Russians have always done, or that Putin is inflated as an all-powerful boogeyman, or that competition among the various oligarchic factions within the Kremlin means there is no central strategic purpose to their activities. But there’s no question that Russian intervention is systematic and multi-layered. This structure challenges us, because we don’t necessarily understand how it has been put into practice; like all guerrilla doctrine, it prioritizes conservation of resources and decentralization, which makes it harder to detect and follow. And strategically, its goals aren’t the ones we’re used to talking about. The Kremlin isn’t picking a winner; it’s weakening the enemy and building an environment in which anyone but the Kremlin loses.

“Herein lies the real power of the Gerasimov-style shadow war: It’s hard to muster resistance to an enemy you can’t see, or aren’t even sure is there. But it’s not an all-powerful approach; the shadowy puppeteering at the heart of the Gerasimov Doctrine also makes it inherently fragile. Its tactics begin to fail when light is thrown onto how they work and what they aim to achieve. This requires leadership and clarity about the threat—which we saw briefly in France, when the government rallied to warn voters about Russian info ops in advance of the presidential election. For now, though, America is still in the dark—not even on defense, let alone offense.”

Here’s the full article:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-foreign-policy-215538

[I posted an earlier write-up of this post on my Facebook page, on Sept 11.]