Towards an Advisory System

We just discussed two new professions, tribune and magistrate, that were proposed in Panorthosia. Comenius apparently wanted to phase these in at a later stage, when legal standards of world government are established. Their precursors, the guardians, would come before. These will be discussed in the next section of this book. The guardians would be tasked with founding the three Comenian institutions to be incorporated into every level of governance, the college, the consistory and the dicastery. From among themselves, the guardians would elect continental "presidents," who in turn would elect the first "senate of the world." These guardian scholars have another major task, to set up an entire "advisory system," as large and sophisticated as the educational system and legal system that are so familiar in the present day nationalist state. This advisory system is one of the major distinctions of Comenius's proposals for world governance in Panorthosia.

 

Advisors as Ironclad Assurance

By John Taylor; 2011 Apr 06, Baha 16, 168 BE

RTC-ROC; Advisors as Ironclad Assurance

 

 

 

 

Anyone proposing a world government must give ironclad assurance that it would never degrade into tyranny. A tyrannical world government would be the ultimate nightmare, since there is no place of exile to which anyone can escape.

 

One attempt at reassurance comes from Canadian world federalist Jim Stark. In his "Rescue Plan for Planet Earth; Democratic World Government through a Global Referendum," Stark suggests that politicians elected to the world government be required to undergo an updated version of the panopticon prison that Jeremy Bentham suggested as a punishment for criminals. Instead of living in Bentham's glass walled jail, however, Stark would subject global leaders to 24 hour surveillance by security cameras wherever they go. This oversight, including bathroom and bedroom time, would feed into the Internet and make their entire lives freely available for the inspection of any viewer. This total loss of privacy, Stark argues, is small price to pay for the perks of high office, including fame, fortune and a place in the history books.

 

John Amos Comenius anticipates the need for guaranteed protections against tyranny. Although he wrote Panorthosia over a hundred years before Jeremy Bentham, he agrees that total transparency is the best protection against corrupt power, but his approach to transparency is subtler and more thorough. Rather than imposing outside intervention, which is invasive, unwanted and ultimately hypocritical, why not encourage all citizens to subject themselves to regular scrutiny?

 

 

 

Comenius devotes an entire chapter of Panorthosia to the "hindrances to reform" and how to eliminate "stupidity, careless prejudice and obstinacy." He begins citing Seneca that, "It is mankind's most important attribute that we should not flock along the track of those who are ahead of us, going not in the right direction but where the going takes us." As Seneca implies, humans are both gregarious and solitary; we must put forth an effort, aided by solid expert advice in order to balance these opposite leanings, one to seek our own way to truth and two, to serve and participate in the "flock" or community around us.

Instead of steering a middle path between solitary independence and passive subservience to the group, the great human problem is that we ape the past. We shun the steering wheel completely and "refuse to adopt any changes which are offered;" we "reject them stubbornly, hating all changes and attempting to stifle them." (Panorthosia, Ch. 6, para 2, p. 99) In order to overcome this common prejudice against good sense, Comenius proposes a right to counselors balanced by a reciprocal (as opposed to legal) obligation to comply (RTC-ROC) to their advice.

 

This right and obligation encourages each and all in daily life to make regular, self-directed assessment, in accordance with Socrates dictum that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Comenius envisions this RTA-ROC as the universal form of a support system that, at great expense, has already been erected for those in prominent positions. The tribunes and magistrates just discussed are only two of an entire team of at least four advisors who help steer a person's behavior in the right direction. This coterie covers every area of expertise that persons in high office is likely to find necessary, including a spiritual counsellor, a lawyer, a philosopher and a doctor.

 

"Therefore every king, prince, consul, and even the individual citizen should have (1) his own preacher, as a guardian of his conscience, and a counsellor in the things which concern God, (2) his own lawyer as a supervisor in the things which concern man, (3) his own philosopher or sage to guide him in the business of life, and (4) his own doctor as guardian and director of his physical health." (Panorthosia, Ch. 24, para 1, pp. 110-111)

 

These consultants and the skills to use them cannot be left as an exclusive privilege of the elite. Everyone needs good advisors, not "yes men" but ones willing to act, like Socrates, as gadflies sometimes in order to assure integrity, that is, for removing weaknesses as well as bolstering personal strengths. This is at the heart of freedom and democracy, which, as we have seen, are the very cornerstone of thought and education, in Comenius's thinking. As the standard of virtue of individuals in ordinary homes is raised and universalized, so will that of the leaders who emerge from them and enter public life.

 

 

 

As we have seen, RTC-ROC imposes a primary burden on science, government, religion and civil society to offer full support to any changes a person deems necessary for happiness and well-being. When a person's means cannot cover costs, expert support and scrutiny is subsidized. This assures that access to sage advice will cease to be the exclusive privilege of aristocrats -- or their modern equivalents, CEO's, movie stars, athletes and other elites.

 

"Nevertheless great magnates (who have many heavy responsibilities) are allowed to have assistants who co-operate with them in drawing up their policies and putting them into action, as a safeguard against error and its ill-effects, just as our mind, which rules its own body like a queen, is provided with a guard of senses, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch." (Panorthosia, Ch. 24, p. 110)

 

The key to RTC-ROC is to subtly incorporate expert assessment into the planning process that directs the lifestyle of an autonomous, successful adult. Properly designed, the giving and taking of advice would soon seem as natural as breathing. A world government, therefore, should give, "consideration ... to the question of a private calendar which each individual can start for himself on an attached sheet of blank paper, as a record of past activities and future engagements." (Panorthosia, Ch. 25, para 10, p. 147-149) Today, of course, this planning can be much more sophisticated than a simple piece of paper. Expertise is already being incorporated into the "personal information management" (PIM) software that integrates individual activity with the world through the Internet. Future volumes of Cosmopolis Earth will deal with this question in more detail.

 

Once RTA-ROC is implemented, the panopticon solution of glass walls and surveillance cameras will seem less a cure to corruption than a cause and symptom. It would mean that there is no need for double standards or special rules for some and not others; no need to turn everyone into an idle and officious Peeping Tom monitoring security cameras or Internet videos depicting the every move of global leaders.

 

Instead, everyone is subject to scrutiny both by specially trained consultants and everyone offers advice as amateur, citizen volunteers. Because everyone gives and receives advice, there are no double standards. Anything less than that forces hypocrisy upon us all as we hold others up to higher standards than we do for ourselves. Hypocrisy on the part of the people is no more excusable than hypocrisy in an elite; indeed, one could argue that it is ethically worse.

 

With both rich and poor enjoying the best advisors and factotums as "safeguards against error," and "guards" to their perceptions, there is ironclad assurance against both errors of our own and peripheral damage from folly in those around us. This explains why Comenius objects in principle to scrutiny of those above by those below, which he compares to sending energy to the sun in hopes of making it brighter.

 

"It is essential that those who are appointed to rule over others should themselves be honest, wise, pious, brave, and vigilant, since nothing can rule unless it is right, nor enlighten unless it is full of light." (Panorthosia, Ch. 24, para 1, p. 110)

 

Pansophism selects for wisdom, and wisdom aims at the entirety of knowledge. In such a system, only highly advanced souls, ones both virtuous and expert, would be elected to office. To subject them to ogling by strangers, people who by definition are ignorant of their whole situation, would only spread the sort of insolence that worsens whatever corruption is already active. Better, Comenius argues, to concentrate upon whatever clears our perceptions and makes us true to our higher nature.

 

"Since human nature has been blinded by its corruption, my Universal Education discussed how it should be safeguarded from downfall by wise guidance, and all its senses kept open to everything..." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 11, pp. 146-147)

 

At best, external overview affects conduct by threatening shaming or discovery of wrongdoing in future. This helps, but it is a weak effect that bolsters neither sincerity nor probity.

 

 

 

Worse, obligatory intrusion of leaders obstructs another goal of reform: reconciliation. In order to unite the world we all need to learn to show compassion and forgiveness to one another, not judgmental condemnation. People only change on their own initiative anyways, so the best way to make people better is to wait until they want to call in personal and then offer the best consultants available to work with them to rectify the shortcomings in their life. Such interventions are direct, ethical and focus exactly upon what needs to be improved in the here and now.

 

This responsiveness to the will of individuals does not mean, however, that RTA-ROC need be applied in a slapdash or random manner. It is still true that, generally speaking, the higher the responsibilities the more directed, standardized and dependable the counsellor and her advice have to be. This is necessary, if only in order to have full assurance against tyranny -- Aristotle defined "tyranny" as rule of the foolish and ignorant. Rules of pansophy would regulate where parliamentarians in a world parliament, or indeed any leaders, get their advice. These laws would ensure that the best teachers and experts are chosen as their aids, confidants and consultants. But these legal requirements are only the tip of a very large iceberg.

 

Through such legal provisions, essential questions would be taken on by the advisors themselves. Everything is not left to the whim of their clients. An entire cycle of instruction starts at the basic but crucial level the individual, then proceeds to parenthood and family membership, and so on up the organizational chart. As the potential effects of each decision maker's resolutions broadens, so do the assurances of good advice.

William Ury: The walk from "no" to "yes" talks at TED and in San Diego

William Ury: The walk from "no" to "yes" | Video on TED.com

You have got to watch this. Then read the Master's first talk in Paris Talks. Same prescription. Same message since Abraham.

written format: http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/PT/pt-1.html

spoken format: http://librivox.org/talks-by-abdul-baha-given-in-paris-by-abdu%E2%80%99l-baha-%E2%80%98abbas/

See also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1NHqPDzqoU

::

Elections and Monkey Brains

The Primal Three Musketeers

By John Taylor; 2010 Nov 16, Qudrat 13, 167 BE

This is sort of a review of a humour book I just read:

Scott Adams, Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful, Portfolio, 2007, pp. 252-253

I say sort of a review because I will also be talking here about some political ideas recently posted by Adams on his Dilbert blog. That is where the material for this book came from originally as well.

I was very glad to have a funny book like "Monkey Brain" to keep my spirits up during the past month, during which I suffered a seemingly endless severe cold or flu. Part of the misery for a talkative fellow like me was that every time I opened my mouth to talk I would go into coughing fits that threatened to drown me. I was feverish and voiceless, and I needed something to laugh at.

I enjoy Adams' twisted ideas and often cruel, power-mad sense of humour. You never know what he is going to come up with next. I have read most of his previous books with great pleasure, and I am realizing now that his ideas about politics have influenced me more than I imagined. His jokes are like a hammer that drives in some highly pointed ideas.

Adams watches and reads the news constantly, and comes up with half-cocked ideas that often have a touch of genius. He is a non-believer in God, but no anti-theist; he has as little patience for extreme skeptics as for dogmatic believers. Nevertheless, at times I found his lack of a grasp of the fundamentals of faith quite bothersome. This negated some of the benefit of the humour.

One good thing about Adams is that he sees how pathetically broken the political system is and tries to come up with suggestions. All are original, some are totally facetious, and others are serious and certainly deserve lengthy treatment. I am addressing some of them in the book I am writing -- especially my planned third volume, which will be on ways to improve democracy.

One essay in Monkey Brain in particular touches on issues that are very important to me; it is called "The Future of Voting." Here he suggests the idea of a law preventing any kind of political advertising.

"... we should ban all political advertising. I realize it's an issue of free speech, but ... freedom has always had lots of restrictions. For example, you can't libel someone, and you can't lie about your product's effectiveness, and you can't yell "Fire" if there's no fire. If a political ad sways an election and causes an unnecessary war (just to pick an example), then it's a lot like yelling "Fire." We routinely limit free speech when the alternative is worse." (Scott Adams, Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful, Portfolio, 2007, p. 253)

Here we see a confusion about freedom of speech that seems to be coming to a head in the U.S. It is the puss in a festering boil of corruption that is destroying their entire political system. The question that should be asked first is, "Free speech for whom?" Liberty of expression begins and ends as an individual right. It cannot be a group right.

As soon as you let entities -- groups, corporations, governments, organizations -- have an equal right to free speech along with individuals, then by that very fact you crowd out and nullify the right of individuals to say whatever they are moved to say. How can one voice compete against many? How can one voice compete against money, against vested interests, against even one other opinion? It is impossible.

A single mind and the opinions it forms are valuable if and only if they come out of the spirit of truth. Unlike groups, only an individual mind can investigate reality directly and come up with something new, be it through prayer, reflection, science, work experience, or whatever. A group can either amplify that genius or block it out. The amplification is what J.C. was talking about when He said, "When two of you gather in my name (i.e., in His spirit) then I am the third ... if three, I am the fourth, and so forth... " The trick of consultation is to let that spirit speak, and to follow that. And only an individual voice can stumble over the way the spirit wants to take us.

Adams, in a blog posting, tentatively suggests that political parties should perhaps be banned outright. Like a lot of others these days, he thinks that maybe we should be scientific about investigating the possibility.

"Imagine a democratic political system in which no one is allowed to be a member of a political party. How would things be different? My hypothesis is that confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance, or something of that nature, influences voters to irrationally agree with the platform of their own party no matter what the facts suggest. My hypothesis is easy enough to test. All you'd need to do is come up with a phony issue and present it to your test subjects as something to which their party agrees, or disagrees, and see if party affiliation influences opinions. I think the effect would be large." (Scott Adams, Dilbert Blog, "Eliminating political parties," Nov 5-6, 2010 <http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/eliminating_political_parties/>)

In this suggestion, Adams is coming close to the total ban on politicking that is a rule for Baha'i elections. As a Baha'i, I used to jump up and down when I heard such suggestions, but now I am realizing that my viewpoint was too narrow. This ban on loose tongues at voting time is much older than the Revelation of Baha'u'llah.

Hellas had a systemic bias against politicking. This put it in the perfect position to invent democracy. How so? Religion was part of the political process -- in a good way. That is, priests themselves did not interfere, but they had the all important role of acting as hosts for many political functions. We forget that in Ancient Greece drama, banking and elections all were religious activities that often took place on holy ground, at the local temple. In other words, the location itself forbade loose tongues. You did not cheat in your banking or tax payments because the local god and oracle were right there, looking right over over your shoulder as it were.

Same thing for free speech. There was no need for legal sanctions in Hellas. What people said was limited by an inherent sense of the sacred. There could be no jostling for power, attacking others, all the garbage that is now fair game in elections if you were standing on holy ground, if, to use a Jewish analogy, you were standing in front of the burning bush and you were standing on cold earth, with your shoes off. Verbal vitriol is destroying democracy today, and the worse it gets the less and less people can appreciate the sacred nature of voting. The solution is simple. Forbid any talk at all about whom to vote for except on your ballot itself; then stage the election on the holiest ground available. Anybody who shoots off their mouth there will be committing sacrilege, limited by their own sense of shame.

Recent research has found that this effect has a tremendous influence on people, irrespective of what they believe, irrespective even of what they are thinking. In one study they left out a cup of coins along with coffee, relying on the honour system for paying. Some did not pay, some helped themselves to the money. But when they put up a poster with an image of eyes -- not even a face, just eyes -- looking right at you, suddenly the number of cheaters and freeloaders dropped drastically.

In other words, if you held a vote in the local synagogue or Buddhist monastery, it does not matter if voters are Jewish or Buddhist, they would feel the sacredness of the place and act accordingly. Another study found that children left alone cheated far less at a game if it was suggested that an invisible fairy girl was in the room with them. Whether they believed that this fairy girl existed did not matter. The suggestion that she was there all but wiped out cheating.

So, if voters said a few prayers together before the ballot is cast, probably this effect would multiply, even for atheists.

The most important thing to do is to unite religion, science and politics into a single process of investigation of truth. We forget that this ultimate goal is why conflict and arguing was tolerated in the American model of politics in the first place. The clash of opinions under free speech is supposed to act like a scientific experiment that squeezes falsity out and leaves standing only the right ideas.

Adams in his defense of banning political advertising points out that the spark from the clash often shows how to solve the root problem.

"Finding fault is how you usually determine whose job it is to shape up and fix things. But sometimes, as in this case, the people who can fix it are not the ones at fault." (Scott Adams, Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful, Portfolio, 2007, p. 253)

For Adams, the invention of the Internet is what has changed the situation and made political parties and political advertising obsolete. Instead we should invent a sort of political Facebook to iron out the flaws of the present political order.

"Lots of voters don't use the Internet, especially the elderly. But that will change over time. And elections are often so close that it wouldn't take much movement to improve the results. ... I think a couple of twenty-somethings with Web skills could alter the face of democracy forever. And maybe make a few billion dollars for themselves along the way." (id.)

Of course, when argumentation is done poorly or is taken to an extreme, all three, science, religion and politics, are destroyed. All that is left are inflammatory verbal wars. This is something that Plato realized and agonized over, as do I. Think about it. A democratic regime killed Plato's beloved mentor, Socrates. Yet as I slow-read his last work, the Laws, I notice that here Plato is, at the end of his life, toying and experimenting with democratic methods. In spite of his famous suspicion of what democracy could become, he was not throwing it out. He knew that any future government for all time has to have a democratic element.

For example, over and over Plato suggests very much the same thing that Adams does, unknowingly, that we should experimentally combine democracy with polling and come up with something that I call meta-democracy. I'll talk about that in future.

Anyways, let us close with Plato's suggestion that the three goals of religion (sobriety), science (wisdom) and politics (love) are all, in essence, the same goal. They are the primal Three Musketeers, one for all, and all for one:

"You must reflect that when we say he must look to sobriety, or again to wisdom, or to amity, these ends are not distinct but identical." (Plato, Collected Dialogues, The Laws, 693c, p. 1282)

The Right to Tutelage

Counsel as Right and Obligation

The Next Chapter of Cosmopolis, Volume One

By John Taylor; 2010 Oct 25 Ilm 07, 167 BE

In the previous chapter we looked at how a democratic world republic can avert the danger of increasingly warlike technology by introducing an inherently pacific technology, the cornerstone of which is the stele robot. This promulgating machine can act as the main interface between our living, human word and inanimate cyberspace, both virtual and physical. The software "DNA" of the robotic stele is a personal information manager (PIM) and, for institutional steles, a group information manager (GIM). Every tool and machine will follow the stele's lead, having legal and ethical inhibitions built into it. The transparent security of the cosmopolitan condition will give rise to a new architecture and infrastructure; the second volume of Cosmopolis will concentrate upon that massive design makeover of the built world. For the balance of this volume, I will linger on the PIM and GIM software runs the stele, specifically the aims and grounds, both philosophical and humanitarian, upon which all cosmopolitan citizens will have to agree upon as they manage this "ghost in the machine."

As an educator, John Amos Comenius held that a world government can only come about if it is upheld by universal education. We all are born with brains, so schooling must be available for all, young and old, rich and poor, to grow those brains as much as possible throughout life. In developed countries this is no longer as controversial as it was for Comenius in the 17th Century. However, a close reading of Panorthosia reveals that Comenius went even further. He upheld a kind of "right to counsellors," where everyone, even those who are not full time students, has the right to the best advice available -- in fact we obliged to take full advantage of sage advice.

Theatres of Wisdom

Comenius proposed hiring sage coaches and advisors to increase the chances that each and all will do the right thing at the right time. Like Plato, Comenius understood that wisdom is best taught indirectly, through music and the arts. As a tool for this he suggested what he called "theatres of wisdom,"

"I mean that all men should be wisely guided from the earliest age and constantly thereafter through the theatres of wisdom, and should all have endless opportunities of exercising their senses, their reason, and their faith." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 11, pp. 146-147)

These theatres might be a combination of drama, simulations, games and experiments designed to allow each new generation, as Comenius puts it, to see the world with all their faculties, sense, mind and faith. Once we see all aspects of life from this balanced perspective, wisdom comes naturally.

Today we can do much more with this idea of "theatres of wisdom." Interactivity and social networking could enable our Stele mediators to inculcate in everybody an intimate appreciation of what Comenius called "pansophy," being wise universally, taking the entire human race as the grounds of identity.

Long after Comenius, Buckminster Fuller in the mid Twentieth Century experimented with what he called the World Game, a simulation using data about global resources designed to help youth grasp the complexities of running an entire planet. More recently, Jane McGonigal, director of games research for Institute for the Future at Palo Alto, California, has suggested that we tap into the vast pool of time and talent expended by gamers -- according to her there are now half a billion gamers who average 25 hours a week solving difficult problems. (Serious Fun, by Samantha Murphy, New Scientist, 22 May, 2010, p. 37)

McGonigal points out that we would do well to tap the resource of games and the army of gamers who have grown out of computers and the Internet to solve some of the technical challenges of the present hour. For example, she points out that stopping climate change demands painful sacrifices right now for benefits that tend to be delayed, uncertain and for most all but invisible. It demands major lifestyle adjustments for few immediate rewards.

Such problems were mastered long ago by the authors of computer games. They are experts in tying long term needs with short term incentives in compelling ways. So effective are their techniques that their games can be addictive for some.

Certain computer and video games have already been made available that are specially designed for direct global problem solving. Among these are "Chore Wars," an online game designed to bring the clever incentives of computer games to the common domestic problem of persuading reluctant family members to help with the housework. Other games being developed include "World Without Oil," which makes players think about how to adapt to oil shortages, "Food Force," for disaster relief, and "Fate of the World," where players steer the planet through 200 years of a warming planet.

McGonigal makes an excellent suggestion to enlist this large unused army of online gamers, who are clever problem solvers, to alleviate creeping climate de-stabilization. No doubt the PIM's in the Stele could incorporate interactive games to encourage such creative responses and adaptation in most people's lives. But the technical aspects of global warming are only the visible part of problem. The greater part is lack of wisdom.

Professional Tutelage an Obligation

Comenius held that the right to counsel will have to involve more than plays and games, important as they may be. We will always need personal contact with professional tutors. It is desirable to have at least one generalist teacher in our lives for each of the three main tasks of life, which are one, to maintain a good relationship with oneself, two, relations with other people and, three, with our God -- perhaps for non-believers this could be relations with long term, future considerations. Each relation needs to be well maintained in order to live a full, balanced and creative life.

Like Comenius, Plato recognized that we have an internal three-fold responsibility that extends out into social relations, "A legislator should have three aims in his enactments -- the society for which he makes them must have freedom, it must have amity with itself, must have understanding." (Laws, 701d) A good consultant in one of the three areas would need to be a non-specialist, wise in dispensing advice, but also have enough training to recognize when more specialized advice is required.

Most countries already recognize a limited version of the right to counsel, for example when a person is threatened by serious illness or a long prison sentence. Court systems in developed nations today recognize a limited right to counsel; the state appoints a lawyer for poor or disadvantaged persons who are charged with a serious crime. Similarly, when threatened by illness most countries see to it that paying for medical fees is not the primary consideration. What Comenius suggested was that we broaden this right to counsel by assuring that every citizen has full access to what he called pansophy, universal wisdom.

As it is today, large companies and institutions spend huge sums for lobbyists and consultants of all kinds; celebrities, athletes and the wealthy routinely edify themselves by hiring fitness coaches and every kind of consultant, whose pricy services assure that dependable advice is ready to hand. At first glance, to have the public purse pay for such advisors for the poor seems like an extravagant expense. However, it is the same chain of reasoning that persuaded governments around the world that a good education is cheaper in the long run than courts and prisons, and that preventive medicine is more economical than drugs, surgery and other interventions.

The United States is the only developed nation to reject this reasoning. Michael Moore's documentary film, "Sicko," dramatizes how the American health care system, the most expensive in the world, fails by pinching pennies and intervening only when health is in rapid decline. As the film depicts, much poorer Cubans end up healthier overall by spending on keeping patients healthy in the first place. Similarly, it is cheaper to teach young people how to avoid wrongdoing than to pay for an oversize police force, lawyers, trials and prisons that result. As the recent British statistical study, "The Spirit Level," shows, societies that eliminate extreme inequalities avoid situations where crime tends to occur. Egalitarian nations are better off by almost every measure.

A wise leadership has to go beyond providing timely legal and medical advice. It should see to it that all, rich and poor, can retain appropriate advisors of every kind, and at every stage of life, from cradle to grave. A universal right to advice would not only avert dangers to life and limb, such as accidents, illnesses, and even unhappiness, it would also tend to eliminate outright folly, the long string of bad choices that lead to addiction, suicide and other sorts of disastrous decline.

The roots of this imperative are found in wisdom literature. The Bible, for example, advises: "Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end." (Prov 19:20-22, KJV) Similarly, Plato held it a basic aim of rule of law to uphold wisdom. "... it was ignorance, in its greatest form, which at that time destroyed the power we have described ... it follows that the lawgiver must try to implant in States as much wisdom as possible, and to root out folly to the utmost of his power." (Plato, Laws, R.G. Bury, tr., 688e) Another translation seems to put it more emphatically: "A legislator's aim must be to create all the wisdom he can in a community, and with all his might to eradicate unwisdom." (Laws, 688, Collected Writings, p. 1283)

Pansophy and Perception

Our chief aim must be to establish wisdom and to steer away from folly. The way to do this is systematically to uphold Comenius's pansophy, or universal wisdom. Pansophy is orders of magnitude more powerful than desultory wisdom, wisdom some of the time for a chosen few. Perhaps most persuasively, Comenius held that universal wisdom would completely eliminate corruption. Its first effect, Comenius believed, is that it would clear our perceptions, since folly corrupts both mind and soul.

"Since human nature has been blinded by its corruption, my Universal Education discussed how it should be safeguarded from downfall by wise guidance, and all its senses kept open to everything..." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 11, pp. 146-147)

As technology advances, Comenius' prescience becomes ever more evident. Science today clarifies and magnifies our senses with astonishing efficiency. We can set up an almost unlimited array of sensors, RFID devices, dials, readouts and other indicators to enhance our senses; ever cheaper and more capacious computer memory allows us to store reams of data and retrieve it when needed. As electronics becomes more miniaturized and sophisticated, sensory devices become cheaper and more common.

Comenius would point out, though, that rivers of data input and output does not necessarily add up to wisdom. Indeed, a flood of enhanced sensory data at our fingertips only increases our need for clever intervention by human sages. Even if wise experts are programming the PIM's of the steles that organize our lives, still, nothing can take the place of human contact. Each of us needs a skilled teacher and role model at every stage of our development, someone who is ready to dispense just the right advice at exactly the right time.

What Price Universal Consultancy?

The promulgation of a universal right to advice would empower each new generation to put an end to dangers that now seem engrained in human nature. For example, according to the World Health Organization, the two most mortal killers are tobacco and alcohol -- with other kinds of substance abuse, legal and otherwise, following close behind. Essentially, this marks a failure of advice; the fact that such a danger to human health does not soon disappear on its own is a sure sign that wisdom is being systematically blocked out by folly.

What youth, properly guided, would ever voluntarily choose to sacrifice not only his or her own well being but that of friends and family by becoming an addict? What perpetuates this blight to human health? Nothing but naked folly. Yet every day young people around the world blunder into a new cycle of addiction. In view of the loss of life and trillions of dollars wasted every year by addiction, we stand to gain a great deal by only a slight reduction of addiction rates to tobacco, alcohol and other substances. Even a large expenditure for advisors for everybody could be justified by this potential gain alone.

If we all concentrate upon the harmonies of wisdom, we will find joy in justice. Prudence and long term thinking will become our default.

Universal Consultancy

Pansophy

Pansophy and the Right to Counsel

By John Taylor; 2010 Aug 28, Asma 08, 167 BE

 

As an educator, John Amos Comenius believed that a world government could only persist if it is upheld by universal education. We all are born with brains, so school must be for all, young and old, rich and poor, throughout life. In developed nations this no longer sounds as radical as it did in the 17th Century; however, Comenius even asserted a kind of "right to counsellors," where even those who are not full time students are obliged to take full advantage of the best advice available.

We already recognize a limited version of the right to advice if a person is threatened by serious illness or a long prison sentence. Court systems in most developed nations today recognize a right to counsel if an individual is charged with a serious crime. Poor or disadvantaged persons get a court-appointed lawyer, paid for by the state, to defend their life. What Comenius suggested was that we broaden this right to counsel so as to make wisdom universal.

At first glance, paying for advisors for the poor seems like an extravagant expense. However, it could be justified for the same reasons that preventive medicine is known to be cheaper and more efficient in the long run. As the documentary film "Sicko" dramatizes, the American health care system is the most expensive in the world because it waits to intervene only when health is in rapid decline. Meanwhile, the much poorer Cubans are healthier overall because their doctors work to keep the people healthier in the first place.

 

Thus a wise society would retain advisors all the time, cradle to grave, in order to help the populace avoid choices that lead to disastrous decline. It is cheaper to teach people to avoid situations where crime can occur than to pay for trials, restitution and prisons. A universal right to advice would also put us in a position to completely avert other clear and present dangers to life and limb, such as accidents, illnesses, suicide and even unhappiness.

Of course, the roots of this imperative are found in Biblical wisdom literature, "Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end." (Prov 19:20-22, KJV) And, according to Plato, it is a basic aim of the rule of law to uphold wisdom.

"... it was ignorance, in its greatest form, which at that time destroyed the power we have described ... it follows that the lawgiver must try to implant in States as much wisdom as possible, and to root out folly to the utmost of his power." (R.G. Bury, tr., Laws, 688e)

Another translation puts this passage in the Laws more emphatically:

"A legislator's aim must be to create all the wisdom he can in a community, and with all his might to eradicate unwisdom." (Laws, 688, Collected Writings, p. 1283)

Comenius agreed with his predecessors that our chief aim must be to establish wisdom and to steer away from folly. The way to do this, he believed, would be to uphold what he called pansophy, or universal wisdom. Pansophy is an order of magnitude more powerful than just wisdom for a few. The services of experts and the wise are for everybody, not just a wealthy few; they must be available all the time, not just on special occasions. If each and all had the benefit of many advisors, everybody would become an active advocate of wisdom. We would know our own dignity, we would defend ourselves from error, and corruption would be completely eliminated. This, Comenius believed, would clear our perceptions, since folly corrupts both mind and soul.

"Since human nature has been blinded by its corruption, my Universal Education discussed how it should be safeguarded from downfall by wise guidance, and all its senses kept open to everything..." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 11, pp. 146-147)

Nowadays science allows us to clarify and magnify our senses with great efficiency. We can set up an almost unlimited array of sensors, RFID devices, dials, readouts and other indicators to enhance our senses and memory. As electronics becomes more miniaturized and sophisticated, these sensory devices become cheaper and more common. I think Comenius would point out, though, that this is not the same as wisdom. Indeed, having a flood of sensory data at our fingertips only increases our need for wise intervention by human sages. Each of us needs a skilled teacher at every stage of our development to dispense the right advice at just the right time.

Establishing a universal right to good advice would empower each new generation to put a final end to dangers that now seem to be engrained in human nature. For example, the World Health Organization says that the two most common dangers to human health are tobacco and alcohol (including other substance abuse, legal and otherwise). What youth, properly guided, would voluntarily choose to sacrifice their own well being by becoming an addict in order to perpetuate a blight to human health? Indeed, even if tobacco, alcohol and other substances were only substantially reduced, the expense of paying for advisors for everybody would be more than justified.

What then would a broader right to counsel entail?

It is axiomatic that the more complex the task, the more one stands in need of wise consultants. Modern life is complicated, so whenever we take a step, we should keep at hand at least one advisor. Today we call them by various names, consultants, tutors, mentors, fitness trainers, life coaches and guidance counsellors, but the point is that the first thing we hear about any decision must be nothing less than the best advice available. What is more, that advisor needs to be there when a choice is taken. She needs to be standing nearby, as it were, as every future smoker considers lighting up his first cigarette.

The Right and Obligation to Tutelage

The right to counsel, Comenius further held, entails at least one generalist advisor for each of the three main tasks of life, to maintain a good relationship with oneself, with other people and with our God (or, for non-believers, with our future, with long term considerations). Each relation must be well maintained in order to live a balanced, creative life. Plato recognized that this internal three-fold responsibility extends out into our social relations,

"A legislator should have three aims in his enactments -- the society for which he makes them must have freedom, it must have amity with itself, must have understanding." (Laws, 701d)

 

A good consultant in one of the three areas needs to be a generalist, wise in dispensing advice but also trained to recognize when more specialized advice is required.

 

The Comenian right to advice makes a slight but crucial adjustment to the criteria by which we call upon an advisor.

Today we operate on the principle that the more important the job, the greater the need for advice. Those with the most responsible positions retain entire counsels of advisors. Meanwhile, the poor, whose jobs if they exist at all, tend to be manual and inconsequential, are deemed to be in the least need of advice. A Comenian system takes on a slightly different operating principle: the more difficult the job, the more we stand in need of advice.

That way, since poverty is by far the most difficult human condition, anyone in danger of poverty will be understood to be in greater need of the best advice. The rich, whose lives are easier than the poor, need fewer advisors. The indigent and those in danger of falling into poverty will get the best counselors first.

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The Consultorium, Part II

Geosphere, Towers and World Game

The Consultorium, Part II

Enhancements for the Consultorium

Yesterday we described a room in the neighbourhood where residents decide where to place their living units, among other things, which I called the consultorium. Before, I had been calling it a "war room," inspired by the large operations rooms of Winston Churchill and his generals during the Second World War. In this huge space they did it all, laid out a grand strategy on several fronts, and even some tactics, for allied forces. Their display was as simple as you could ask for, they just pushed little models of ships and tanks around on a large table, with minions running around. 

This idea seems fraught with possibilities for our data rich time. I cannot understand why we sit behind our little computer monitors and do not try to do something big, collective and interactive like Churchill's war room. However, I did not like the war analogy, since the consultorium is designed to plan out the reverse of war and conflict.

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In the second section of People without Borders I will go into detail about how the consultorium and its "cybernetic constitution" will reform democracy. Today I want to imagine some of the many technical additions that might aid users of the consultorium.

The Geosphere

Buckminster Fuller suggested several ideas that could supplement or even be incorporated into the structure of the consultorium. He came up with an electronic environment that he called the Geosphere. Essentially it would be a spherical television monitor for viewing an inventory of the world's resources. You could walk around and even inside this, "giant, 200-foot diameter sphere" that "will be a miniature earth -- the most accurate global representation of our planet ever to be realized." Its live data feed of the current state of the world allows users to interact with the data, like a spreadsheet performing "what if?" operations. This is similar to what climate scientists now are doing to see the effects of various emissions, soot, and other factors in climate change.

A geosphere would let all who visit see instantly the long term effects of any policy or course of action under consideration. In Fuller's words, it,

"would make it possible for humans to identify the true scale of themselves and their activities on this planet. Humans could thus comprehend much more readily that their personal survival problems (are) related intimately to all humanity's survival." (Fuller, R. Buckminster (1981). Critical Path. New York: St. Martin's Press. xxxiv-xxxv. ISBN 0312174888, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5113)

A geosphere of whatever size could display our entire world situation in a single glance, and prepare each and every one of us to defend our delicate planet in all our conversations and decisions.

I think that libraries should have at least two geospheres on their roof; one permanent, global geosphere to train the public in all that a world citizen needs to know, and another data sphere for other sorts of simulations and specialized interactive exhibits. This second, call it a datasphere, would be a place where the client walks in and sees a three dimensional Imax theatre in the round. Specialized dataspheres might travel around, moving from one library to the next. Similarly, museums might have their own kinds of dataspheres devoted to historical simulations.

In a hillside block project, the consultorium might have a resident geosphere hung right above the round table. It could be lowered from the ceiling, and retracted when not needed; or, alternatively, it might be blown up like a large balloon, and deflated into a small package when not in use. In the consultorium a geosphere could be made available before discussions begin, in order to put the present topic of deliberation into a planetary perspective. Even during meetings, participants might walk around the geosphere together, and climb into the sphere and ask questions together. When meetings are not going on, the geosphere could surround visitors with the complex data feeds of their community, and compare it with other, similar places around the planet. When a geosphere briefing is over the sphere could be either deflated into a small box or raised through the ceiling, leaving only the consultorium's round table.

Consultoria on High Towers

In a consultorium everything should be in accord with Comenius's vision of leaders bestriding the world, as if perched in a "high watchtower" well above the battlements of a castle. Perhaps this could be done literally. That is, place the consultorium high in the air so that the whole neighbourhood is visible in a single panorama outside large surrounding windows. Before consulting, members could survey their entire constituency from above.

Another idea is for the entire watchtower to have geospheres running down from top to bottom. The a block consultorium could brief members by moving from the top where it would see the buildings of its neighbourhood constituency directly, from above. Then it would moves down into a geosphere depicting the whole city, the region, the nation, the continent and finally the planet, each with data specially applied to whatever question they happen to be investigating. There would be no provincialism or NIMBYism in this neighbourhood!

The World Game

Another suggestion of Buckminster Fuller was a "world peace game," later shortened to World Game. This is a logistics simulation designed to involve young people in planning how to exploit, deploy and conserve world resources. The activity is perfectly designed to address the problem mentioned by Comenius, that everybody's business is nobody's business. It makes everybody's business somebody's business.

In the world game players are involved in a complex but engaging global simulation and, participants attest, the experience changes them forever. No longer do they see broad, complex interactions on our planet as a distant abstraction. It becomes their own property, a flower garden that we all must tend and grow to its maximum capacity. In Fuller's words,

"... World Game finds that the world's wealth and its medium of interchanges, i.e. the world's monetary accounting systems - have been divorced from one another... World Gaming requires progressive inventorying of condensed recalls of already introduced major concepts and their integration with one another, plus additional new concepts to produce newer and greater synergetic realization." (Critical Path)

What Fuller seems to be getting at here is very similar to Comenius's plan for world unification, that is, a sort of franchise system starting at the individual, going up from family, through to continents and ultimately the world government. Each level plays its own version of the world game, but it is always the same game since there is only one planet. Players of the game would capture all the "synergies" (a whole greater than its parts), but still be ready to work the local synergy of wherever they happen to be, in their own ROO "drawing board," in the family, household, neighbourhood, block, city, region, province, nation, continent or world consultorium.

I see the world game as a modernization of sports. As it is, sports are grossly obsolete and tend to do more harm than good. The elite sports we have today encourage obsessive practice with no effect on player's mortality or even the long-term quality of their lives or the communities in which they live. Today, sports are a confused medley of useless activities exploited for commercial profit, distracting millions of fans and viewers from what they should be doing, that is, participating and moving their own bodies.

In the beginning, sports trained the populace in skills that were needed at the time. In the Middle Ages, runners, archers and jousters learned skills needed for their country's defence. These activities were supported by the state in its own interest. Today we do not need millions of people trained to run, swim, kick balls or whatever the sport may be. We need new sports that encourage moderate activity balanced between physical and mental skills, activities that train the millions in lessons in synergy, lessons that Fuller's world game teaches. What we need are many similar sports to give many people the skills and confidence to stand up to the round table of a consultorium and make a meaningful contribution.

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Consultorium

Consultorium

A chapter from People Without Borders

 

The Consultorium, I

An Overview of the Oversight Room

By John Taylor; 2010 June 01, Azamat 14, 167 BE

The nerve center of the hillside complex is an interactive, computer-mediated conference room where many minds meet, meld and come to resolutions. The room has many uses, from multimedia briefing room to reference library to reception area for guests, but since its main use is deliberation and decision-making, let us call it a "consultorium." In the consultorium, residents regularly meet to decide who goes where, who does what and what their world will look like. Literally. With mobile living units (called ROO's) and shifting household units as well, members will come to a neighbourhood consultorium to decide where their units will be positioned next.

In accordance with the Comenian model of governance, there is an affiliated consultorium or the equivalent at every level of decision making, from the planetary senate to an individual's modular ROO living unit. Although the consultorium has all the latest technical and multimedia facilities at its command, in its basic form it can be as simple as a round table around which members confer equally. Because a stasis between equality and freedom is difficult (and has rarely been maintained for long) it would be valuable to encourage here a mythology like that of Arthur and his knights of the round table. Although the legend of Camelot implies that a high ideal of fellowship may be impossible to maintain for long, it has a clear lesson: the sole foundation is the idealism, integrity and virtue that each member brings to the round table.

Before going into the details of a neighbourhood consultorium, I want to discuss the background and general purpose of a consultorium, irrespective of what level of society it may occupy.

The earliest reference that I have come across to the idea of a consultorium is in John Amos Comenius's Universal Reform, where he calls it a "high watchtower." As the name implies, Comenius had in mind the Parable of the Watchtower in the Bible, which in turn used the model of a castle with a high place with a single perspective. Here the whole area can be surveyed and a single strategy devised taking into account every relevant factor.

"... since everybody's business is nobody's business, it is imperative that we select men of eminence for this solemn tower and see duty to survey the world, as it were, from a high watchtower that everything that is introduced is consistent with the sound reform of our affairs (that is, that there should be no loophole for falsehood, impiety or warmongering)." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 15, para 3, p. 216)

Comenius here grounds his idea in a subtle philosophical point that sometimes has been called the "tragedy of the commons." Everybody's business has to be made, openly and fairly, into somebody's business. That is the unique role of the consultorium, or, in Comenius's term, the "high watchtower." If everybody's business or any resource is left to drift on its own, the consequences are as dire as they are inevitable. As soon as everybody's business is neglected, it is appropriated, exploited and ruined.

The most commonly mentioned example of the tragedy of the commons is a common field of grass that several farmers have the right to take their cattle to graze. All can take advantage but nobody directly profits from maintaining it. Suddenly there is a free-for-all to gain from it before it is overgrazed and made into a field of mud.

Another example, mentioned less often, is the tragedy of the native peoples, aboriginals, hunter-gatherers and other ancient cultures with traditions of common land ownership. By one estimate, over half of the exposed surface of the planet was stolen from these hapless tribal peoples. They inhabited, maintained and managed their territory for millennia. As soon as it was taken out of their hands it took as little as a decade for outsiders to exploit and desecrate the land and ruin its climate and ecosystem. The process of land grabs and habitat destruction continues unabated, the latest being the human forest dwellers of central India and the non-human ocean dwellers of the Gulf of Mexico.

It is always highly profitable for a few to see to it that everybody's business remains nobody's business. After all, there is a whole world out there to grab.

Standing against the tragedy of the commons is the consultorium, a high watchtower designed to see to it that nothing is grabbed, that everybody understands comprehensively. The host institution of a watchtower, after due deliberation, appoints responsible, qualified parties as stewards of every part of the rightful heritage of humanity.

Inseparable from its physical space and dazzling data displays is a highly political function, a profoundly spiritual atmosphere and enlightened scientific methods. The consultorium is both heart and brain of a world democracy where, in Comenius's words, "everything ... that is consistent with sound reform" is brought out and decided upon, openly and transparently, by all concerned. Here the people and the senate join in assigning caretaker duty to what Comenius calls "men of eminence," who of course also include women, children and institutions too.

This is not to say that the technical features of the consultorium are not important. Vannevar Bush, Buckminster Fuller and others made brilliant contributions to our understanding of what could be done with the latest technology to support the consultorium. Bush proposed at the end of the Second World War the memex, a unified access point to all human knowledge compressed in a single device, an idea that since grew into the hyperlinks and the World Wide Web. Fuller had several ideas for "raising the watchtower" that should definitely be incorporated into the consultorium. Among others, he suggested the geosphere and the world game, both of which we will discuss next time.

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