Atkins, Earthworms, and Holocausts

I have been thinking about paradigms lately and about how difficult it is to recognize a new one when it's right before our eyes. The recent dust-up regarding the Atkins diet appears to my possibly uninformed mind as another case in which a paradigm-shattering framework (it's carbohydrates not fats, stupid!) is being ground down and reworked to fit back into the old paradigm. [Know my bias: I am an Atkins convert, having shed nearly 40 pounds and having maintained the weight loss for over four years. I have made my modifications over the years ("self-medication" my doctor calls it) that have enabled me to reap the benefits of reduced carbohydrates while avoiding the desperate yearning fanaticism produces. I do have ice cream now and then, and enjoy a special bread on special occasions.] The low-carb diet has produced everything Dr. Atkins promised: increased "good" cholesterol, decreased "bad" cholesterol, low triglycerides. It is painful (or interesting or humorous) to see the contortions some doctors go through to squeeze all that data back into the old formula: maybe the good cholesterol is not so good, and the bad not so bad, and maybe we misunderstood the triglyceride significance, and Atkins only works because you eat less and it really is calories that count, and on and on.

Sometimes I feel like am the Atkins of social systems theory, having formulated a paradigm-shattering model of human experience that gets squeezed and twisted until it fits comfortably into the existing frameworks - as if it's just another point of view. This came to me today as I ran across a piece I posted several years ago on a web site I've lost the key to." From Earthworms to Holocausts."  Shortly, I will post a piece entitled "There Are No New Paradigms...Yet" in which I make the case for my human systems perspective as possibly the only new paradigm in this field of systems and organizational behavior. So there, I've said it.

What to do about the Terrorists? Nothing

How to deal with terrorists? A lesson from the Power Lab: In all groups whose members feel marginalized and low power within the dominant culture, there is ALWAYS tension within the marginalized group, taking some form of the "Hards" versus the "Softs." The "Hards" are for  tough action against the Dominants while the "Softs" are more moderate in their approach. The real action is between the "Hards" and the "Softs" who are threatened by one another.

This Hard/Soft tension is always present; the only variation from setting to setting is its intensity. In a low intensity setting,for example, the "Hards"may be satisfied with making demands of the dominants, while the "Softs" prefer that they wouldn't. Today, in England and elsewhere throughout the world,this Hard/Soft tension is extreme, with the "Hards" wanting nothing less than the destruction of the dominant culture and its replacement with Islam, and the "Softs" fearful of the consequences the "Hards'" actions will have on them.

Since the tension is always present, all one can hope to do is influence the balance of "Hards" versus "Softs," that is, make moves that increase the size and power of the "Soft" camp while decreasing that of the "Hards." Generally, just the reverse occurs. The "Hards" attract all the attention:  How do we get tough with them, crack down on them, destroy them? Little attention is paid to the "Softs."

The focus on "Hards" is counter-productive; the more drastic the action of the Dominants, the more likely it is to be experienced as an attack on the whole of Islam, thus further toughening the "Hards" while alienating segments of the "Softs." 

There is no easy solution to terrorism. "Hards" are going to continue their murderous acts against the dominant culture; there is no way to convince them to do otherwise. All one can do is defend oneself as best one can. The long term struggle, however, is not between the "Hards" and the Dominants; it is the struggle within. And the wiser strategy for the Dominants is to do whatever they can to increase the size and strength of the "Soft" camp and support them in their struggle for survival.

This We Know For Certain: Nothing

The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools has won a major battle; after a 12-year struggle, it has managed to get schoolboards across the country to accept its Bible curriculum, a curriculum the Council maintains is currently being used by more than 175,000 students in 312 school districts in 37 states. (New York Times, August 1, 2005) This allegedly non-sectarian offering - "concerned with education not indoctrination" -  makes its  case for such sectarian chestnuts as creationism over evolution, the plausibility of Noah's world-wide flood, and  "documented research through NASA" that backs the biblical account of the sun standing still...twice!

Chalk this up as another skirmish in the ongoing struggle between the forces for certainty - embodied by David Barton, member of the Council's advisory board, vice chairman of the Texas Republican party, and an advocate of "biblical inerrancy" - and the forces for uncertainty - embodied by me.

I am all for a course that includes the Bible so long as it also includes a rich mix of spiritual writing including the full panoply of creation myths from around the world.  Now, before someone rushes off accusing me of being a relativist - your religion is as good as my religion which is as good as her religion, and so forth - let me assure you I am not. Just as the Council believes that our youth need to be grounded in certainty, I believe that they should be confronted with and enriched by the mystery of uncertainty.

My work over the past thirty-five years has impressed me with the human mind's intolerance for uncertainty, and our awesome capacity to create stories that provide us with the comfort of certainty. If our boss's actions are mysterious, our mind instantly creates a story that "explains" those actions. And, generally, when we make up a story, we don't think it's a story, we think it's the truth. One cannot have seen the world as I have seen it without suspecting that, in the face of the great mysteries of existence, throughout the ages and across the continents, we have created story upon story that reduces mystery to certainty.

On the one hand there is relativism, on the other is certainty (I love the term "inerrancy"); but what underlies them both is uncertainty.

As I said, I'm all in favor of the course; my title for it would be "What Stories We Create When We Really Don't Know Anything."