Peter E. Pflaum - Golden Globe - The Synergy Network http://www.wiredbrain.net/documents// pflaump@cfl.rr.com WEEK 10: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY HUMAN POTENTIAL: I'M OK - PARADIGMS: HUMANS BEING AND THE SOCIETIES THEY CREATE, DEVELOP, LEARN AND CHANGE. The first level of understanding of change is classification. Terms and words have meaning concerning objects, characteristics, common experience, and the implications of language. The first question you need to ask is - what is the referent? What are you talking about? What is going on here? Give an example of description and classification of a common object, or behavior, or types of objects or behavior. For example cars - what are the classes of cars - what makes them different? What people drive which cars - what does buying a particular car imply - what is the social context and meaning of owing a Buick or a Neon? The second level of analysis is comparison. Think of some different ways of making classifications. Cars can be grouped for tax reasons, for status reasons, by age of owners, by American vs. foreign. American cars made overseas and foreign cars made in America make the categories complex - you have to make decisions about the content of autos, or the ownership of the factory. Why make the distinction? It depends on your aims or missions. Before you make judgments you have to know what you are talking about. Judgments come last not first. WEEK 10: LEVELS OF THOUGHT Sociology Chapter 10 - Family Life and Population Brazil Social Science - CHAPTER 11 World and its people - Population and environment BEING HUMAN Each human and humanity must find unity with the natural world in our own unique way. The future of the species depends on the choices we make. We become awareness of new physical and mental possibilities. We are increasing the freedom of choice both in our use of our biology and our consciousness. This freedom is the reason for our existence as people and how humanity got where it is today. Unanswered questions, such as what is important to us as individuals and a society and what criteria are used to make decisions, these are no longer abstract philosophical wanderings of a leisure class but critical to all of us. What we can learn from the biological and cultural history of the species opens a foundation for a few powerful central ideas. Technology and science progress by using theories that make sense of complex reality. Social science has failed to produce simple powerful ideas (since Marx and Freud). We have more small ideas only useful in special markets. The career needs of academic and commercial specialist has given us less and less social insight into the important questions. Social science has wished the important questions away by avoiding value issues. Without a human value system all becomes noise, the tinkling of drums and the sound of idiots clashing at night. The critical events in human history are the increasing ability of people to use culture (technology) to transform the environment. (The plow, the bow and arrow, accounting, laws and religions, irrigation, the corporation, social security insurance, spacecraft) Technology is cultural. It is a group of people with special knowledge, working together using tools and ideas. First with simple tools and hominidae social organization. (Pack behavior of Baboons and Chimps). Homo sapiens have developed complex brains that process language (ideas) and express them with symbols. This ability made us half angles and half beasts. The success of social organization (technology) bypassed biological and environmental limits. All life expands if it is possible and is only limited by other life and physics. (Food supply, climate, competition in its niche) Human organizational ability made possible by image producing brains and language has created a global society dependent on thoughts and the communications of ideas. (Stock markets, networks, medical systems, contracts and deals) The uniquely human factors are critical to understanding how to survive in this man created environment. Understanding human nature has never been more important and more difficult. The species has created a condition where it is dependent on itself for its survival. It has created a collective Frankinstein. Human judgment has never been more important if we are to manage the new complex systems. Science alone cannot help much in managing the technology it creates. The future of the species has for thousands of years been dependent on the choices made by each generation. Those choices were in context of a natural world. Some choices worked better than others in this context. Evolution continued with culture (technology) only slowly taking over from biology. Social systems could slowly transform the limits of the environment. The first homindae stood upright. They descended from the trees to the savanna. They used tools, fire, and communications to survive and spread. For hundreds of thousands of years "hunters - gathers" lived in close relationship with nature. Homo sapiens developed complex specialized brains for the processing of images and words in separated but connected parts of the brain. The right brain left brain specialization (yin-yang) gave power to communications and ideas through symbols. Human were limited as all life was by limits on resources and competitions of other species. Population spread widely but thinly. Physical limits kept a balance. Our image producing brain could conceive of new ways of using the resources available. We could learn and teach others. Our knowledge could be passed on in writing. This started a technological explosion about 10,000 years ago. People developed complex social systems of production, distribution and trade. Economics is a form of political and social management. We need to understand social systems as wholes. We can learn about our biological character from the genes that carry history. Genics build on the old in complex layers. Each new ability is layered over the old characteristics. (Our reptile brain and cave man feelings)Domestic animals, canals, wagons, weapons, grow and become complex. In the last few centuries the technological explosion has been overwhelming. We are now as a species dependent on thought and communications to make choices that will allow continued survival. The success of social organization, technology has bypassed biological and environmental limits. Cities use energy that depends on complex social, political, economic systems that require choices. The growing awareness of possibilities, the technological freedom to choice rests on environmental and biological systems not designed by nature but ourselves. The survival of the species depends on the collective efforts of the species to understand and deal with a world of its own making. We have created a world we must control and limit. We must redefine a unity with the natural world in a new and unique way. The basic unanswered questions of social and personal life - what is important and the criteria used to make choices are more important that ever. Moral and philosophical - cosmic questions are all around us. Being human is progressively more difficult. Since we are human we might as well try to make a go of it.