In exploring the evidence of human anomaly let us take a look at why humanity is in the condition it is and why they find there is such universal agreement that these conditions are unnatural as well as undesirable. I would like to suggest that this issue involves basic and fundamental aspects of human identity that have been overlooked because they are not as exotic as the detailed discoveries we have made about ourselves and our world.
It is obvious to all that the human race has undergone a process of development from the moment humans first appeared on the planet to what we are today. But when we discuss human development it is not that larger process of development we are not concerned about. Instead, human development addresses the development of individual human beings within the parameters defined by the identity of human beings. The same is true of almost every academic discipline or body of knowledge which is associated with the term human.
Systems Theory lies at the heart of this philosophy. Generally, a system is any set or group of interdependent or temporally interacting parts and Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founder of General Systems Theory, defined a system operationally as “an entity which maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts. Every part of a system reflects, in whole or in part, the characteristics of the system. Under the terms of General Systems Theory, which posits that a system is composed of systems, or more precisely subsystems, humanity is a system and each human being is also a system. In the same way that we can assess the development of an individual human being by comparing it with the collective development of other human beings we can also assess the development of the human race by comparing it with the development of other systems that comprise the ecological system we call planet earth. We should expect that the human race will operate according to all the rules that govern the operation of systems. The first of these rules is that each component in a system functions according to the parameters that have been defined by the system to which it belongs.
4 comments:
So I'm guessing we're going to ask
1. What are the parameters of humanity?
2. How do these parameters parallel and also differ from the parameters of other systems 'above' and 'below' ours?
3. How can I as a subsystem element of the larger human system support my own development and my system's development too?
These questions are good material for a separate blog. In fact, they point in the direction in which I was leaning.
The logic in this post is convoluted and the thinking/analysis flawed and self-serving. While at first blush one may accept the definition of Systems, it is a quantum leap to then say that humans may be assessed by comparing them to the other component parts of this system, i.e. the other organisms that exist on this planet etc. The major flaw in this analysis is the failure to recognise that the human specie is the most developed (in the ordinary sense of the word) and most complex/advanced of all. This being so, any attempt to measure/analyse the more complex by comparison to the less complex/advanced is not sustainable, and destabilises the foundation of this discussion. The analysis can only be credible if the entity being measured is compared / assessed by reference to other like entities or more complex/advanced entities.
An automobile is a group of systems. If the air filter isn't functioning according to its parameters, the engine will soon cease running efficiently. If the engine is not functioning within its parameters, it directly effects all of the less complex systems that make up the automobile. If all subsystems are functioning within their parameters, the automobile will function as designed unless an external system intervenes.
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