Operationalizing the

Theory of Everything
The Five Families of Cycles

Kenneth B. Tingey, PhD

Miroslaw Manicki, MD
October 11, 2016
CIMH Global

1 CONTENTS
2 A future guided by cycles ...................................................................................................................... 3
3 Process-products and cycles ................................................................................................................. 4
4 Three housekeeping issues ................................................................................................................... 7
4.1 Leftovers from the most recent capitalist cycle .........................................................................................11
4.2 Bringing legitimacy to organizations ..........................................................................................................12
4.3 Standard modeling for the Standard Model ..............................................................................................13
4.4 Historical perspective .................................................................................................................................18
5 The five cycle families that underscore our existence ........................................................................ 22
5.1 Nature – Bohmian ......................................................................................................................................24
5.2 Social – Parsonian ......................................................................................................................................40
5.3 Economic – Schumpeterian ........................................................................................................................49
5.4 Market – Hayekian .....................................................................................................................................57
5.5 Monetary – Keynesian ...............................................................................................................................61
6 Theory of everything in health (TOE-H) .............................................................................................. 67
6.1 Public and private health – two sides of the same coin .............................................................................68
6.2 Keynesian health – estimation based on aggregates .................................................................................69
6.3 Modern history and health in two nations ................................................................................................70
6.4 Establishing knowledge as the driving force ..............................................................................................75
6.5 What is to be done with finance once the science is in place ....................................................................77
6.6 Risks and real risks .....................................................................................................................................78
7 History and process-product............................................................................................................... 81
8 Appendix – Human Prosperity Model ................................................................................................. 88
8.1 Title: Human Prosperity Model .................................................................................................................88
8.2 Author/affiliation .......................................................................................................................................88

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8.3 Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................88
8.4 One sentence summary .............................................................................................................................88
8.5 Main text ....................................................................................................................................................89
8.6 Issues with regard to knowledge ...............................................................................................................89
8.7 Risks............................................................................................................................................................90
8.8 Gains from improved use of knowledge ....................................................................................................91
8.9 Generative taxonomies and knowledge use ..............................................................................................91
8.10 Revised prosperity model ..........................................................................................................................94
8.11 Additional Considerations ..........................................................................................................................94
8.12 References and Notes: ...............................................................................................................................95
8.13 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................96

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2 A FUTURE GUIDED BY CYCLES
Human affairs seem to stumble on from crisis to crisis. With regard to the economy in particular – but
also with regard to society and politics – the “fair skies” of good times tend to be interrupted by
unexpected events. Whenever it seems that it is time to relax and declare victory with regard to public
affairs, disturbances appear which, we are at time told, “…could not have been anticipated, or
predicted.” There is a way to more effectively secure our future. All of creation is based on cycles.
Everywhere we look we find processes converting inputs to outputs in predictable ways. Recognizing the
cycles and understanding the processes in question can lead to improved outcomes. Even when
perceived negative consequences of predictable cycles cannot be eliminated, they can be planned for.
The fact is, with planning, they may not be negative at all. Take the yearly seasons we experience,
resulting from orbits and rotations within our Solar System. These present us with variations based on
our terrestrial location and related changes in atmospheric patterns and other geophysical conditions.
The result is variety in terms of temperature, precipitation, and other seasonal weather factors.

Do these introduce crises or other forms of risk or concern? They may. At times, they have, including the
introduction of great harm injury, and death. Typically, however, the temporal seasons of Earth
represent useful, productive, and pleasant conditions of variety and change. Could mankind even out
the seasonal variations, eliminating winter, spring, summer, and autumn as cyclical events? It is
interesting to think about, at least to the point of minimizing exposure to seasonal changes. Any effort
to eliminate the variation itself is pointless, however, given our limitations in terms of knowledge and
resources. Well, this is to say, knowledge, because more of this requires less of the other. The effects of
such an attempt would be overwhelming. It would prohibit other activities and forestall objectives that
are surely far more important. With regard to cycles, it is important to expand our understanding of
them and how they related to one another, but to be very careful in picking our battles, selective. Many
cyclical factors are perfectly useful and understandable and can help to serve our continued needs if we
only know how to work with them. As indicated by Schumpeter, we need to consider a finite number of
cyclical layers in order to not get caught up in their complexities.1

The field of physics is a work in progress. For decades, physicists together have been attempting to bring
understanding of all phenomena under one umbrella. Some call this the “Theory of Everything.” Einstein
laid out the problem a century ago. Special relativity, that of electromagnetic phenomena, has yet to be
brought to full understanding of general relativity, that of gravity. The two additional forces enter in, the
strong and the weak atomic forces and subatomic phenomena. Two recent investigative projects
provided strong confirmation that work is on the right track. These are the Higgs boson tests at Large
Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) at CERN in Geneva2 and large-scale gravity wave detection projects

1
Schumpeter, J. A. and Fels, R. (Ed.). 1939/1964. Business cycles: A theoretical, historical, and statistical analysis of
the capitalist process. Philadelphia, PA: Porcupine Press, 105, 139-141.
2
O'Luanaigh, C. 2013, 14 March. New results indicate that new particle is a Higgs boson. Geneva: CERN. Retrieved
2013-10-09. Available online: http://home.cern/about/updates/2013/03/new-results-indicate-new-particle-higgs-
boson.

3
carried out through U.S. projects, soon to be joined by EU research partners.3 Both of these projects
serve to confirm Einstein’s work and subsequent efforts, leading to the Standard Model of particle
physics.4 These fall short of the “Theory of Everything (TOE)” in themselves, but they serve to confirm
something that serves our needs at this time. There is confirmation that there is order in the universe.5
When the TOE is found, if there is to be one, it will embody coherent processes of some kind. These will
repeat themselves following such patterns, conceivably amid unfathomable complexity, but in the
creation of demonstrable cycles that can be observed or deduced at some level and measured or
reliably estimated, at some level.

Physicists hope that they will be able to preserve and use what they know even if a TOE, when found, is
substantially different that current perceptions, once the depths of such knowledge are plumbed. At all
levels, they carry on their work in this manner, confident to the degree that they observe coherence and
confirmation. We can carry on the same. If all that they know conforms to such a model, we are on as
solid groundings as possible by committing to it as well. By operationalizing models as described herein,
we are preparing for incrementally more embrace of the TOE and what it represents. We will provide
technical information on this relationship in the section on David Bohm and fundamental natural cycles.

3 PROCESS-PRODUCTS AND CYCLES

Einstein changed forever our understanding of space and time. The result is spacetime, an indivisible
combination of the two concepts. Korzybski, adamant about clarity in all things, encouraged the use of
hyphens, temporal indexing, and dating to make spacetime relationships explicit, although he
concatenated these two terms without a hyphen. The point is to really emphasize relativity within
spacetime.

Kenneth recalls emphasis placed by Dell Allen on the fundamental relationship between processes and
products. He often quotes a college professor of his in industrial engineering, Professor Frederick
Preator, who said, “Without the process there is no product.”6 There is nothing metaphysical about this.
Product features result from the processes that came together to create them. In manufacturing, this
means that something happens, or a series of things happens in flows of materials, information, and
energy, that result in an outcome, a product.7 A product may or may not have mass; it may involve a
state of affairs or a general understanding – something communicated.

3
LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. 2016, June 16. LIGO does it again: A second robust
binary black hole coalescence observed. Pasadena, CA: Authors. Available online:
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160615.
4
Einstein, A. 1917/2015. Relativity: The special & the general theory: 100th anniversary edition. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
5
Hawking, S., and Mlodinow, L. 2010/2012. The grand design. New York: Bantam Books; Wilczek, F. 2008. The
lightness of being: Mass, ether, and the unification of forces. New York: Basic Books; Hawking, S., and Mlodinow, L.
2005.2008. A briefer history of time. New York: Basic Books; Thorne, K. S. 1994. Black holes & time warps: Einstein’s
outrageous legacy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
6
Allen, D. K. 2004, November 17. Taxonomy development: Classification, a superscience? Logan, UT: Utah State
University Center for E-Commerce.
7
Todd, R., Allen, D. K., and Alting, L. 1994. Fundamental principles of industrial manufacturing processes. New
York: Industrial Press, Inc., 2.

4
Product defects also result from the processes that create them. Of course, in commerce – society in
general – whether something is a defect as opposed to a feature is a matter of interpretation and
preference. In nature generally, there are hard constraints that serve to override our options with
regard to such judgments. That is the point of a nested approach to cycles.

Chronic diseases constitute a class of process-products that are not desirable. Cancer, for example, is
the result of a set of conversion processes that occur – a form of retrofitting, if it were – so that the
body creates malicious, deadly tumors. There is no metaphysics in this; there should be no surprise that
it is happening as long as you are looking for the right things: Inputs change and processes are modified,
just as if an auto parts manufacturer was secretly converted to armaments production or a
pharmaceutical company morphed into an illicit drug manufacturer. The inputs and the rhythms may
change only subtly, but there can be no question where the new, pernicious products are coming from if
an effort is being made to find out. This is nature turned against itself, at least from the perspective of
the people in question.

Understanding of process-products is what knowledge is. Chaos dwells outside of the bounds of
process-products. The unknown is where crises come from. Harold Blum provides guidance as to natural
processes and their fundamental impacts:

Since the sum total of all processes that go on in the universe entails an increase in
entropy, and since such processes go only one way in time, it may be expected that there
is a relationship between time and the second law of thermodynamics.8

This second law of thermodynamics causes that “all real processes go irreversibly”. This is because all
real processes result in increased in entropy, a condition of higher disorderliness and randomness. If this
were not the case, the processes in question could be reversed – essentially, the energy could be
reclaimed. Some have thought that the order that can be observed within living organisms serves as
refutation of this law, but this is not the case, as such organisms’ processes result in entropy elsewhere
in the system, ultimately in the universe. As stated by Blum, “…to measure the entropy change taking
place in living organisms as a whole, it would be necessary to include in our system the sun and some
additional portion of the universe, as well as the earth itself.”9 This leads to a fundamental
understanding of cause-and-effect, eventually, as knowledge of this flow of energy and how to make use
of it increases.

As Sir Arthur Eddington succinctly expressed it, the second law of thermodynamics is
“time’s arrow.” Implicit in this terse phrase is the idea that this law points the direction
of all real events in time, and an important corollary, is that it does not indicate when or
how fast any event will occur; it is time’s arrow, not time’s measuring stick.10

Variation of products over time outlines the characteristics of cycles. Thus, to understand a cycle, one
must understand the factors that go into its creation. This is to say that there must be understanding of
the process that created it. Fundamental to humans is the biological oxidation cycle, for example, in

8
Blum, H. F. 1951/1955. Time’s arrow and evolution, 2nd. edition revised. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
16.
9
Ibid., 15.
10
Ibid., 16.

5
which radiant energy from the sun is processed to manufacture energy-rich compounds, which can then
be processed and used by organisms in the form of free energy and heat. This is approximately constant,
with “very little … stored for long”. 11 Free energy and oxygen combines with glucose in particular to
stimulate intermediate steps of chemical reactions to support multitudes of cycles within organisms, the
process-products representative of time’s arrow in support of life.

We have discussed processes “above” the chemistry, at macro levels, within range of our natural senses,
for the most part. This is, of course, by far the more common kind of study. For one thing, it is by far the
more accessible kind of study. Instrumentation that extends our senses to the level of compounds and
elements is more readily available than that which is needed to study phenomena at pico levels and
smaller (eleven zeroes to the right of the decimal) and capable of evaluating quantum phenomena. That
is where photons of energy from the sun penetrate, where signals based on the atomic model
stimulates and organizes elements, molecules, and compounds, leading to proteins, tissues, organs,
energy pathways, and processes that general and support life. This is a grand progression from the
relative simple and straightforward to the massively complex – but not infinite – infrastructure of life.
Time’s arrow does not start with chemistry, nor genetics, nor metabolism, and eventually we want to
know how that works.

Kenneth has written about the possibility for encouraging the nesting of cycles in a manner that
leverages nature’s cycles and the processes that create them.12 This is a way of looking at social cycles in
the context of more fundamental physical cycles. There are many variations of cycles, from the very
slow to the very fast. These can have wide breadth and application or may be very small. Starting with
natural cycles – which are, of course unfathomably dense and complex – we can overlay manmade
processes that are dependent on them and function best reliant on each other, creating the foundation
for additional cycles. Representative taxonomies that reflect the characteristics of each family of cycles
were identified in the prior work, starting with physical and biological science together, followed by
society, the economy, market structures, and monetary systems.

For the five-cycle approach, we principally look at the work of David Bohm, Talcott Parsons, Joseph
Schumpeter, Frederich Hayek, and John Maynard Keynes. Each of these was a major contributor in the
kinds of processes and cycles that affect us and our societies. There works led to additions by others,
which we include where we deem relevant. This involves, in the order of their major publications,
nature and physics, society, meeting fundamental needs and wants through economics, establishing
foundations for functional markets, and defining and managing monetary elements based on these. This
approach is to look at the most fundamental factors in each case – root causes and their related
processes.

Surely, there are many areas of crossover and many feedback loops among the cycle families. They
represent causal chains that work their way up from nature to what are considered social categories.
Cycles exist; the point is to find them out where we do not know of them and learn more about them
where our knowledge is incomplete. Of course, our knowledge is always incomplete if not incorrect.
Nonetheless, “we can construct verbal and nonverbal maps that are more (or less) structurally similar to

11
Ibid., 89.
12
Tingey, K. B. 2016. Cycles of life: Groundings for human affairs. Logan, UT: Profundities LLC. Available online:
http://documents.2020globalhealth.com/docs/Cycles_of_Life-28.pdf.

6
the environment, and therefore more (or less) predictive”.13 This approach supports a rationality on an
unprecedented scale in modern times. This is very much in accord with Korzybski’s objectives of
purposive time-binding because humans “are uniquely characterized by the capacity of an individual or
a generation to begin where the former left off.”14

It is highly likely, however, given archeological and historical findings with regard to longstanding
cultures in the past and strong cultures in the present, that higher levels of reflection and rationality
with regard to natural process is possible. If so, we can look forward to more stable human conditions
and more functional, legitimate social systems and cultural institutions.

4 THREE HOUSEKEEPING ISSUES

Before we can consider the high road, prospects for nested cycles, their understanding and even
management, there are four issues that we need to consider. Omitting these, or ignoring them
altogether, will seriously compromise our efforts. Their consideration sets us up for consideration, then
action.

The first of these is that there is a good deal of “dust in the air” with respect to current conditions. There
have been serious disappointments of late. People have vested interests in all kinds of ideas. There is a
high degree of plasticity, politically and socially. Care must be taken to not give, nor take, offense
needlessly. It is not every day that a new model for civilization is presented; people are not going to be
prepared for such an event. Go easy on them.

Of course, the cycles we wish to understand, particularly the more fundamental ones, carry on either
with us or without us. Knowledge of this may or may not help. Elements that could be attributed to
other cycles may be discernable or not; our ability to recognize and evaluate them may or may not agree
with general perceptions – ours included. We need to temporarily weigh them in the balance to make
sense of present conditions. This may entail agreeing to disagree for the time-being.

The second question is that of organizational legitimacy. We will not be able to bring the questions and
parties together as needed without improved governance and heightened legitimacy. Musicians have it.
Experts and authorities need it, too.

The third issue involves information processing. The prevalent approach is a mess. For all its benefits,
the Internet has shown us something as to how big the muddle might become – far worse than it is now
– to the extent that it embraces more of our world. The point is that if we do not resolve fundamental
questions, but computerize and thus empower incorrect assumptions, we introduce – indeed, we
magnify – what Korzybski refers to as “un-sanity”. He sees our intellectual endowments as being
something special about humans – something unique from all other forms of life.

…to a large extent, even now we nearly all copy animals in our nervous processes.
Investigation further shows that such nervous reactions in man lead to non-survival,
pathological states of general infantilism, infantile private and public behavior, infantile

13
Anton, C., and Strate, L. 2012. Introduction. In C. Anton and L. Strate (Eds). 2012, Korzybski and… New York:
Institute of General Semantics, 11.
14
Korzybski, A. 1919/1950. Manhood of humanity, 2nd ed. Inglewood, NJ: Institute of General Semantics, 2.

7
 institutions, infantile ‘civilizations’ founded on strife, fights, brute competitions, these
being supposedly the ‘natural’ expression of ‘human nature’, as different commercialists
and their assistants, the militarists and priests, would have us believe.

As always in human affairs, in contrast to those of animals, the issues are circular. Our
rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own
infantilism on our institutions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to nervous
maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to
develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn,
they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic imitations. The vicious circle is
completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our
institutions. And so it goes, on and on.15

Hardened, even computerized, versions of un-sanity create a form of pernicious, negative “time-
binding”, an opposite effect as that described by Korzybski. Time-binding, as he designates, is a unique
and felicitous function of mankind, that of learning and then passing such knowledge to future
generations. Technically of late, much of that has occurred in terms of productive capacity, in
engineering, but politically and socially we are engaged in an intergenerational juggling spree of ideas
and models that do not work. Van der Pijl describes a multi-century pattern of failure that served to
summarily reject and subjugate the knowledge of millennia as represented by indigenous traditions
everywhere.16 Korzybski, 17 along with others,18 struggled to make sense of the immediacy and the
horror of the Great War of a century ago, given that mankind was supposedly situated on a pinnacle of
historical progress and civilization.19 This was not true at all; mostly the sense of optimism was based on
ignorance of world conditions.20

Eric Hobsbawm provides succinct evaluation of the two centuries with regard to the current dilemma.

The 19th century taught us that the desire for the perfect society is not satisfied by some
predetermined design for living … and we may suspect that even if such a new design
were to be the shape of the future we would not know, or be able today to determine,
what it would be. The function of the search for the perfect society is not to bring history
to a stop, but to open out its unknown and unknowable possibilities to all men and
women. In this sense the road to utopia, fortunately for the human race, is not blocked.

But, as we know, it can be blocked: by universal destruction, but a return to barbarism

by the dissolution of the hopes and values to which the 19th century aspired. The 20th has
taught us that these things are possible. History, the presiding divinity of both centuries,

15
Korzybski, A., and Kodish B., Pula, R. P., Anton, C., and Strate, L. (Eds.). 2010. Selections from science and sanity:
An introduction to non-aristotelian systems and general semantics, 2nd ed. Fort Worth, TX: Institute of General
Semantics, 1.
16
van der Pijl, K. 2014. The discipline of Western supremacy. Modes of foreign relations and political economy, Vol.
III. London: Pluto Press, London.
17
Kodish, B. I. 2011. Korzybski A biography. Pasadena, CA: Extensional Publishing, 52-119
18
Loconte, J. 2015. A hobbit, a wardrobe, and a great war. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.
19
Hobsbawm, E. J., 1987. The age of empire: 1875-1914. New York: Vintage Books, 303-304.
20
Davis, M. 2002. Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the Third World. London: Verso.

8
 no longer gives us, as men and women used to thing, the firm guarantee that humanity
would travel into the promised land, whatever exactly this was supposed to be. Still less
that they would reach it. It could come out differently. We know that it can, because we
live in the world the 19th century created, and we know that, titanic though its
achievements were, they are not what was then expected or dreamed.21

As it stands, misuse of information processing models and technologies compromises our cultures and
weakens the integrity of our civilization. There has been scientific enlightenment, resulting in peripheral
innovations and increased capacity, but certainly not sanity as described by Korzybski. Among other
things, he died over a half-century ago without finding any cohesive way to implement his model.
Clearly, he had far grander desires than to improve vocabulary and “soft skills” in general.22 Billions of
dollars have been invested on the notion that sane solutions can be skipped by humans in their entirety,
to be provided by electronic devices. This, of course, would be the ultimate victory of disembodied
mathematics over human semantics. Wouldn’t this be a curious state of affairs, to fail in our principle
task of time-binding, only to be bailed out by machines that we had launched?

Korzybski reportedly did not think of himself as a utopian. It is likely that no practical person would,
given the bad connotations “utopianism” implies. This being said, he was no shrinking violet where a
grand plan is concerned:

No doubt, a period of human development has ended. The only sensible way is to look
forward to a full understanding of the next phase, get hold of this understanding, keep it
under conscious and scientific control, and avoid this time, perhaps for the first time in
human history, the unnecessary decay, bewilderment, apathy, individual and mass
suffering in a human life-period, animalistically believed, up to now, to be unavoidable in
the passing of an era. Instead of being swept down by animalistic resistance to the
humanly unavoidable change, we must analyze, understand, and so keep conscious
control of one change to another, and, as yet, always higher state of human culture
[emphases in original].23

As Fernand Braudel famously indicated, civilization should above all be civil. Chaotic, unbridled channels
and connections are serving to erode this. Once again, as with the musicians, people listen to – and play
– the works of the great masters for a reason. Such works are satisfying, they are powerful, and they are
enlightening. They serve to integrate head, heart, and hand and point to what might be done by
embracing parsimony and power by means of active, process-based taxonomies – generative
taxonomies – beginning with the Standard Model of physics on up through the perspectives and layers
of reality that support our existence. In the 20th century, the thrust of fundamental science was co-opted
by political failure. We need to take it back.

21
Hobsbawm, 340.
22
Hayakawa, S. I., and Hayakawa, A. 1941/1992. Language in thought and action, 5th edition. New York: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt Publishers; Chase, S. 1936/1966. The tyranny of words. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Publishers.
23
Korzybski, A. 1933/1941. Science and sanity: An introduction to non-aristotelian systems and general semantics.
Lancaster, PA: The International, Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company, 49.

9
We need to consider the characteristics and opportunities represented by the five cycles that we have
chosen to focus on. The bookends of Einstein’s work, 1905 findings in special relativity and his 1915
publication in general relativity, have been rationalized mathematically by means of the Standard
Model, but descriptive groundings have yet to be found. The hope of the physicists for decades has been
to identify the link, the TOE, with an equation. Lacking that, semantic unification can do no harm,
particularly if the fruits of such efforts can be applied empirically and rationally. By supporting the
Standard Model in this most fundamental way, we can be prepared to embrace the TOE as well as the
myriad of processes and requirements that face us individually and collectively each day. We will
consider some tactics herein for accomplishing this.

Finally, history is our ally. As indicated in the earlier study, we are at an historical point, a time facing
conditions that are “in play”.

But if we can no longer believe that history guarantees us the right outcome, neither
does it guarantee us the wrong one. If offers the option, without any clear estimate of
the probability of our choice. The evidence that the world in the 21st century is not
negligible. If the world succeeds in not destroying itself, the probability will be quite
strong. But it will not amount to certainty. The only certain thing about the future is that
it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it.24

Nothing really bad has happened, not on a global scale. Perhaps we can anticipate such a thing, plan for
it, or avoid it altogether. History points to missed opportunities above all; our purpose is to consider
such possibilities in a general way before getting into the cycles and their processes in detail. Korzybski
considers time-binding principally from the perspective of the “bind-ers”. We, the “bind-ees” have the
option to reach back and emulate what has worked in the past – the record is quite well-defined, if
inevitably biased. Hobsbawm provides more insights in this regard:

A great many of the solutions and structures that we had in the past have been
destroyed by the extraordinary dynamism of the economy in which we live. This is
throwing an increasing number of men and women into a situation in which they cannot
appeal to clear norms, perspectives, and common values, in which they do not know
what to do with their own individual and collective existence.

This is true of institutions like the family, but also of political institutions that were the
foundations of civilizations, what Habermas called “the public sphere.” Politics, parties,
newspapers, organizations, representative assemblies, and states: none of these
operates in the way they use to any in which we supposed they would go on operating
for a long time to come. Their future is obscure.25

Coming to understand the cycles is an important step in the “time-bind-ee” role that we find ourselves
in with regard to culture and the groundings of civilization. This is to be combined with the “time-bind-
er” role that exists with regard to much new knowledge, particularly with those fundamental aspects of
our physical world as emerged in the 20th century. These were widely-developed, but both diluted and

24
Hobsbawm, 340.
25
Hobsbawm, E. J., and Polito, A., Cameron, A. (Tran.). 1999/2000. On the edge of the new century. New York: The
New Press, 167.

10
hijacked by the political failures of the period. The tasks are related and are critical to time-binding’s
ultimate benefit to mankind, getting back on track. As written by Korzybski:

It is no mystery that when we want to look further into the past and the future we need
higher and higher order abstractions. By training in this passing to higher and higher
abstractions we train the ‘mind’ to be more efficient; this ‘mental’ expanding should be
the structure and semantic aim of every education.26

There is a general malaise. It has lasted for almost a decade by everyone’s count. Some hold that it has
been longer than that.27 As mentioned in the prior study, this should come as no surprise. Schumpeter in
particular outlined how capitalism in particular – absentee ownership with singular demands for
continually increasing financial profit – conveys actions and events that undermine its existence. This
extends to political as well as to social and environmental factors. We can see this in the definitions and
discussions of the cycles themselves.

4.1 LEFTOVERS FROM THE MOST RECENT CAPITALIST CYCLE

One of the more detailed concurrent records of what is wrong – centered on the United States – comes
from David Stockman, who has experience in government as well as in the private sector.28 Others also
report conditions that are very grim.29 There is good news, however. Although the record is problematic
in the hundred years of financial decay that Stockman describes, as documented by Chalmers Johnson30
and others,31 there are grounds for optimism when considering possibilities for lasting reforms, for
stability. Well, Johnson isn’t optimistic, but he does chart out a way.32 Fernand Braudel takes great stock
in a slow pace of change and a people “waist deep in daily routine.”33 This implies stability of a kind.
There are other optimists, but these often present breezy arguments, ignoring institutional and cultural

26
Korzybski, 1933/1941, 483.
27
Greider, W. 1992. Who will tell the people? The betrayal of American democracy. New York: Touchstone/Simon
& Schuster; Hoogvelt, A. M. M. 1982. The Third World in global development. Houndmills, Hampshire, UK:
Macmillan Education Ltd.; Gordon, M. S. (Ed.). 1965. Poverty in America. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing
Company.
28
Stockman, D. A. 2013. The great deformation: The corruption of capitalism in America. New York: PublicAffairs.
29
King, M. 2016. The end of alchemy: Money, banking, and the future of the global economy. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company; Wolff, R. D. 2016. Capitalism’s crisis deepens. Chicago: Haymarket Books; Wolf, M. 2008/2010.
Fixing global finance. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Hobsbawm, E., and Polito, A., Cameron,
A. (Tran.). 1999/2000. On the edge of the new century. New York: The New Press.
30
Johnson, C. 2006. Nemesis: The last days of the American republic. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
31
Pinker, S. 2011. The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. New York: Penguin Books; Stiglitz, J.
E. 2006/2007. Making globalization work. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
32
Johnson, C. 2010. Dismantling the empire: America’s last best hope. New York: Metropolitan Books.
33
Braudel, F., and Ranum, P. M. (Tran.). Afterthoughts on material civilization and capitalism. Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press.

11
barriers to cooperation and adoption,34 especially the Keynesians,35 who pride themselves in being able
to talk their way out of anything.36

Can it be that the current state of economic knowledge is not wrong, simply that it matters too much?
Absent staged controls over more fundamental questions, economic policies may inadvertently “upset
the apple cart” where more effective staging would support more fundamental stability. That is the
essence of the staged cycle concept.

4.2 BRINGING LEGITIMACY TO ORGANIZATIONS

Demographers seem to be in a good mood.37 Organizational theorists are not; there is a supreme
organizational crisis.38 There are cognitive and sociopolitical aspects to organizations – both formal and
informal – that lead to their legitimacy. If these are not met, any plans at reform and improvement are
doomed.39 Just when organizations are needed in this way, they are retreating from the scene – both
theoretically and in reality.

The shift to post-industrialism has meant that organizations no longer envelop the social
lives of their members and structure their careers, and even the notion of “membership”
is suspect given the relatively short attachments between employees and firms in the
predominant service organizations. To give a recent example: In 2006 there were
400,000 mortgage brokers working in 50,000 firms in the United States. The business of
intermediating between home borrowers and lenders – an industry that was virtually
non-existent two decades previously, when banks and [savings and loan organizations]
wrote mortgages – employed more Americans than the entire textile industry. Moreover,
in light of the 2007 mortgage meltdown, the industry is likely to be nearly non-existent
again in 2008.40

There continue to be some, but not nearly as many. For that matter, those that there were cannot be
said to have served to mitigate risks if that was their purpose. All forms of activity suffer from the

34
Diamandis, P. H., and Kotler, S. 2012. Abundance: The future is better than you think. New York: Free Press.
35
Mahbubani, K., and Summers, L. H. 2016. The fusion of civilizations: The case for global optimism. Foreign
Affairs, 95(3), 126-135; Eichengreen, B. 2015. Hall of mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the
uses – and misuses – of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Wolf, M. 2014/2015. The shifts and the shocks:
What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis. New York: Penguin Books; Greenspan, A.
2007. The age of turbulence: Adventures in a new world. New York: Penguin Group.
36
McClosky, D. N. 1985/1998. The rhetoric of economics, 2nd ed. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
37
Khanna, P. 2016. Connectography: Mapping the future of global civilization. New York: Random House.
38
Gordon, R. J. 2016. Chapter 8: Working conditions on the job and at home. In R. J. Gordon, The rise and fall of
American growth: The U. S. standard of living since the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 247-
287; Acemoglu, D., and Robinson, J. A. 2012. Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. New
York: Crown Business.
39
Aldrich, H. E., and Ruef, M. 1999/2006. Organizations evolving, 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 179-207.
40
Davis, G. F., and Zald, M. N. 2008. Afterward: Sociological classics and the canon in the study of organizations. In
P. S. Adler (Ed.), 2008, The Oxford handbook of sociology and organization studies: Classical foundations. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 642-643.

12
weakening of organizations and resulting social and economic chaos and instability. Pamela Tolbert and
Shon Hiatt consider…

…a common concern with the general problem of organizational leaders’ propensity to

exploit decision-making power for their own private interests, and thus to govern in
ways that are contrary to the stated goals of the organization.41

These concerns are of more than a little importance. Theoretical understandings and conceptual
approaches will uniformly die on the line without conquest of organizational issues, consideration of
absentee ownership and control factors, questions of agency and ethics, boundary questions, and
bureaucratic considerations that are beyond the typical prejudicial and condescending jibes. In this,
Talcott Parsons emerges as being persistently important.42 Parsons, as filtered through Aldrich, formed
the basis for dual control and the reinforcement of cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy of
organizations by means of fluidity and immersion. These are key elements underscoring confidence in
the fundamental ability to identify and work in and through processes and cycles to achieve the goals
we have laid out here.43

4.3 STANDARD MODELING FOR THE STANDARD MODEL

On top of this is the matter of information technologies as used by organizations. Unbridled costs for
such systems, as are common, could perhaps be forgiven if they did not fundamentally interrupt
prospects for empowerment of people or process.44 Computer systems as they stand cannot be justified
by increases in productivity, which have not been present during computer adoption periods, a problem
from which technologists are quick to recuse themselves.45 Not only do organizational computers
introduce impenetrable barriers to desired functionality that compromise the legitimacy of
organizations and force users into a “command-and-control environment” commandeered by
technologists,46 they substantially reduce opportunities for dynamic collaboration and enhancement of
knowledge and knowledge-based processes.47

Figure 1: Representative mockup of pervasive attitude of Silicon Valley technologists is indeed a fair
representation of their attitudes with regard to public and private policies and rights. Under such
conditions, how can intimate, complex, and context-sensitive issues as are presented by nature and
society be managed with any confidence?

41
Adler, P. S. 2008. Chapter 1: Introduction. A social science which forgets its founders is lost. In P. S. Adler (Ed.),
2008, The Oxford handbook of sociology and organization studies: Classical foundations. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 9.
42
Heckscher, C. 2008. Parsons as an organization theorist. In P. S. Adler (Ed.), 2008, The Oxford handbook of
sociology and organization studies: Classical foundations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 607-632.
43
Tingey, K. B. 2009. Methods-based management: Breakthrough performance on limited budgets. San Diego, CA:
University Publishers.
44
Paper, D. J., Tingey, K. B., and Mok, W. 2003. The relationship between bpr and erp systems: A failed project.
Journal of Cases on Information Technology (JCIT), 5(1): 45-62.
45
Landauer, T. K. 1995. The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability and productivity. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press.
46
Jacobs, B. 2005. “Computer science” is not science and “software engineering” is not engineering. Ashburn, VA:
Findy Services. Available: http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/science.htm. Downloaded May 13, 2005.
47
Tingey, K. B. 2014. The solution: Permanescence. Logan UT: Profundities LLC.

13
The tools of technology are undeniably
powerful. There is a sturdy foundation
of hardware and standards and
capabilities for low-level, basic
technologies. In those fundamental
levels, engineering is effective. The open
source movement of recent decades has
provided very effective tools, in reaction
to commercial abuses where software is
concerned. Interestingly, the core of
enterprise computing, including tools Figure 1: Representative mockup of pervasive attitude of Silicon Valley
technologists
that form the basis for the large-scale
Internet competitors, are based on open source technologies, the Linux operating system serving as the
centerpiece for this.

The problem with regard to irrelevance and non-responsiveness resides in the arcane, arbitrarily
complex and redundant logic design models provided, in their lack of groundings with regard to context
and process, and in a resulting inability to dynamically define and work within contexts. Of all of the
shortcomings from the prevalent Silicon Valley software model, the abuse of and lack of respect for
context is the most damaging.

This problem is endlessly hinted at from all levels of governance and management, but technologists do
not even feel that they need to address the issue, given their formidable advantages with regard to the
digital design barrier. Organizational governance is fundamentally compromised by the problem. Due to
fear, uncertainty, doubt on the part of organizational leaders, technologists essentially report directly to
the highest governance level, enjoying an effective “blank check” with regard to their wants and the
fiscal capabilities of the organization in question. Silicon Valley leaders have no answer to the regular
drumbeat of catastrophically damaging and expensive large-scale projects that surface. In health, these
include Canada’s billion-dollar health system, or 2009 “eHealth” fiasco in Ontario48 and the UK’s health
system failure with the “Connecting for Heath” program from 2004 to 2014.49 The UK/National Health
Service humiliation cost England and its partners approximately £12 billion, with minimal utility – and
ongoing costs.50 This problem is further outlined by Ian Bogost:

Recent years have seen prominent failures on software. Massive data breaches at
Target, Home Depot, BlueCross BlueShield, Anthem, Harvard University, LastPass, and
Ashley Madison only scratch the surface of the cybersecurity issues posed by today’s
computer systems. The Volkswagen diesel-emissions exploit was caused by a software
failing, even if it seems to have been engineered, as it were, deliberately.

48
CBC News. 2009, October 7. EHealth scandal a $1b waste: Auditor. Canadian Broadcasting Company. Available
online: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ehealth-scandal-a-1b-waste-auditor-1.808640.
49
House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. 2009, 14 January. The National programme for IT in the NSH:
Progress since 2006. London: UK House of Commons/The Stationery Office Limited.
50
House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. 2013, 15 July. The dismantled National programme for IT in the
NSH. London: UK House of Commons/The Stationery Office Limited.

14
 But these problems are just the most urgent and most memorable. Today’s computer
systems pose individual and communal dangers that we’d never accept in more concrete
structures like bridges, skyscrapers, power plants and missile-defense systems. Apple’s
iOS 9 update reportedly “bricked” certain phones, making them unusable. Services like
Google Docs go down for mysterious reasons, leaving those whose work depends on
them in a lurch…

When it comes to skyscrapers and bridges and power plants and elevators and the like,
engineering has been, and will continue to be, managed partly by professional
standards, and partly by regulation around the expertise and duties of engineers. But
fifty years’ worth of attempts to turn software development into a legitimate
engineering practice have failed…51

Engineerwashing entails a shift from the noun to the verbal sense of “engineer.” An
engineer is a professional who designs, builds, and maintains systems. But to engineer
means skillfully, artfully, or even deviously contriving an outcome. To engineer is to jury-
rig, to get something working more or less, for a time. Sufficiently enough that it serves
an immediately obvious purpose, but without concern or perhaps even awareness of its
longevity. Engineering in this sense embodies MacGyver scrappiness, a doggedness
compatible with today’s values of innovative disruption. But the, no reasonable person
would want MacGyver building their bridges or buildings. Or software!52

There is a good deal of enthusiasm on the part of technologists in spite of this. Perhaps there is
enthusiasm because of this. There is and has been an obvious “bait and switch” strategy on the part of
technologists, at least in the last several decades as capitalism has become more embedded. Remember
if you will the Hewlett-Packard Company of old. Fathers of the famous “HP Way”, David Packard and
William Hewlett oversaw a modern miracle of technological innovation, lasting quality, and stellar
examples of what it means to serve the public.53 They retired and the company swooned. Mr. Hewlett
and Mr. Packard came out of retirement and restored the old ways, with improved operational and
financial results. Then they retired again, died, and the company has been in a freefall ever since – fully
overtaken by capitalistic profit-taking. Kenneth was a reseller of HP UNIX products in the 1990s and
retains several old HP products that will last “forever”, or at least for many decades of further use.

Nothing comparable can be found on the markets for computer technology, not provided by HP or any
other firm. Not only are rational enterprise models not available, capitalistic inattention and profit-
taking guarantees that they will not be. It is not that the problem has gone fully unnoticed.54 Richard
Gabriel documents the closure of a successful, profitable software company – an employer of sixty
people – because the absentee owners considered that a $6 million company wasn’t worth taking the

51
Bogost, I. 2015, November 15. Programmers: Stop calling yourselves engineers: It undermines a long tradition of
designing and building infrastructure in the public interest. The Atlantic, 11. Available online: http://www.the
atlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/programmers-should-not-call-themselves-engineers/414271/.
52
Ibid., 10.
53
Packard, D. 1995. The HP way: How Bill Hewlett and I built our company. New York: HarperBusiness.
54
Orlikowsky, W. J., and Iaono, C. S. 2001. Research commentary: Desperately seeking the “it” in it research: A call
to theorizing the it artifact. Information Systems Research, 12(2): 121-134.

15
time and effort to sell.55 The story is particularly interesting to Kenneth because he knew the investors in
question and had worked with them on the financing of another company.

Everything is to be sold with a short life cycle, for one thing.56 It is not that technologists do not present
a good face to their presumed markets. Consider, for example, a presentation by Qualcomm with regard
to prospects for a pervasively, technologically-mitigated environment for the future, with devices
everywhere – monitoring, providing guidance, feedback, etc.57 The phenomenon is named “The Space
Within, The Space Without, The Space Beyond, and the Space Between”. If it is a good thing, perhaps
this would represent the lap of luxury. If not, it could involve a dystopian nightmare from which it would
be difficult to hide – particularly if they were to place “nano” devices here and there – and there and
there. There is no consideration of how coherence would be implanted in such a system, how it would
reflect, encourage, and enhance the various scientific and authoritative networks that rightly would
have something to do with them, how it would solve the “billions of dollars of failed projects” problem.
They talk of artificial intelligence in the next breath, but even if that were to prove effective, what would
happen to all of the millions of us that are actually thinking? Would we need to stop? What if the
machines disagreed with us? What if they disagreed with each other? Of course, they would. It is
ridiculous. At least, Stephen Hawking does not seem to be fooled.

We can see a microcosm of such chaos now, although it is not small at all. College dropout Mark
Zuckerberg, one of many college dropouts in the Silicon Valley culture,* is feeling “imperial ambitions” as
reported by The Economist.58 Of course, the magazine is engaged in a rhetorical flourish, but it is a good
one. We are, after all, talking about the next civilization. Remember the caustic criticism by Larry Ellison
of Oracle Corporation59 of his corporate clients that tried to customize their systems: We give you 80%
of what you need; the other 20% you don’t really need, a “fantasy”, really.60 He got away with saying
this, the result being that he became one of the richest, if not wisest, man in the world. Keep in mind,
though, when his team miraculously one the America’s Cup in San Francisco harbor, they threw away
the computers and listened to the experts – who then used the computers to do the impossible.61 Now,
that is the future.

We wouldn’t bring up this point if we weren’t aware of a solution. Here it is: Knowledge representations
stop short of what they could be. This forestalls effective computerization and collaboration. Imagine all
of the knowledge in the documents of the world functionally linked and interactive, available for the
people of the world to use when they need it. We don’t mean in an NSA/Eric Snowden (Silicon Valley)
“creepy” way, but in another way. Everything would be secure, all would be usable, with a way of

55
Gabriel, R. P. 1996. Patterns of software. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 177-178.
56
Yoffie, D. B. (Ed.). 1997. Competing in the age of digital convergence. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
57
Qualcomm Corporation. Could: Painting what’s possible. The Atlantic, 9, Sponsor Content. Available online:
http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/qualcomm-2016/the-space-between/950/.
*
This includes Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison on an undergraduate level. Sergey Brin and
Larry Page of Google did not complete their doctoral programs.
58
Leader. 2016, April 9. Imperial ambitions. The Economist, 11. Available online: http://www.economist.com/
news/leaders/21696521-mark-zuckerberg-prepares-fight-dominance-next-era-computing-imperial-ambitions.
59
Wilson, M. 1997. The difference between God and Larry Ellison. New York: Harper Perennial.
60
Ellison, L. Quotes. http://www.quoteswise.com/larry-ellison-quotes-4.html. Accessed May 21, 2014.
61
Woo, S. 2014, February 18. Against the wind: One of the greatest comebacks in sports History. The Wall Street
Journal, WSJ. Available online: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303393804579312803907849782.

16
prioritizing for nuance as well as for validity and quality. How this is to be done will be covered later. At
this point we should be able to agree that such a development, such a breakthrough in the
characterization and use of knowledge and of social priority and rules, is a good thing. It allows for an
optimal outcome in every case, just as symphonic musicians provide perfect performances of the works
of the great masters, time after time after time.

In between the wars, in times of reflection and hope, some 20th century leaders made progress in the
understanding of how the products of scientific inquiry may be used by society, even though they lacked
models for organizing and deploying such knowledge. Alfred Korzybski provided sound guidance in the
establishment of general semantics, but in the absence of computing capacity and the generative
taxonomy model that underscores fluidity of knowledge, there was no way for him and his followers to
directly implement those concepts.62 Imbued with a mature conception of spacetime and an uncanny
sense for what was missing in the conception of mankind within nature and with regard to science and
the “sanity” of man, Korzybski. As he wrote:

We see, first of all, that structurally we are immersed in a world full of energy
manifestations, out of which we abstract directly only a very small portion, these
abstractions being already colored by the specific functioning and structure of the
nervous system – the abstractors. Very probably, there are many more energy
manifestations which, as yet, we have not discovered. Every few years we discover some
new form of energy manifestation, and, at present, our knowledge is already so
advanced that it is highly probable that the list is much longer. Finally, and here the
whole ‘structure of human knowledge’ begins to play its role; for sanity we have to know
and evaluate this world around us, if we want to adjust ourselves satisfactorily to it.63

This is the very essence of our proposition. Korzybski referred to “time-binding” as a distinguishing
factor of the human race in contrast with the rest of the animal kingdom. This is that each generation of
mankind would, or at least could, learn from, apply, and then extend the knowledge gained by the prior
generation.64 This may have been the case anciently and in modern times there are some significant
examples, but with regard to the assimilation and use of scientific knowledge, this has to be considered
a highly optimistic observation. Of course, he was referring to mankind’s potential.

This line of reasoning was continued by Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist deeply knowledgeable
about genetics.65 Raised by a renowned geneticist – in fact, William Bateson, the scientist who defined
the term – Bateson became a champion of religion’s effects. This is not that he believed in religion
himself, but that he saw in history and in civilization meritorious effects of religious belief on the
individual and on society. He made the case for re-establishment of “the sacred” with regard to
knowledge and tradition.66 This is that knowledge, truly-gained, should be considered in the light of that

62
Kodish, B. I. 2011. Korzybski: A biography. Pasadena, CA: Extensional Publishing, 230
63
Korzybski, 1933/1941, 238-239.
64
Korzybski, A. Manhood of humanity: The science and art of human engineering. New York: Jefferson Publication,
25-26.
65
Bateson, G., Donaldson, R. E. (Ed.). 1991. Sacred unity: Further steps to an ecology of mind. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers; Bateson, G. 1979. Mind and nature. New York: E. P. Dutton; Bateson, G. 1972/2000. Steps
to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
66
Bateson, G., and Bateson, M. C. 1987. Angels fear: Towards an epistemology of the sacred. New York: Bantam
Books.

17
which is sacred, important and worthy of respect. In this way, mankind could reestablish a sense of unity
and coherence that was lost in a reckless rush to modernity.

The Australian aborigine had, in his totemic cosmology, a system that brought all of the
natural species and forces and human institutions, plants and animals, wind and
thunder, circumcision and the boomerang he used in hunting into relationship and
defined his place in that complex whole – and allowed him to use the sense of that
multiplicity of relations in the decisions of his life. The European peasant in the Middle
Ages went out to plow the fields in the presence of a great crowd (or cloud) of witnesses,
patron saints and powers and principalities, and, of course, angels. The truth that the
aborigine and the peasant share is the truth of integration. By contrast, we must be
concerned today because, although we can persuade our children to learn a long list of
facts about the world, they don’t seem to have the capacity to pull them together in a
single, unified understanding – there is no “pattern which connects”. For most human
beings through history, a pattern which connected their individual lives to the complex
regularity of the world in which they lived was a religion, an extended metaphor, which
made it possible for ordinary people to think at levels of integrated complexity otherwise
impossible. It is no wonder that the unity of God has so often been the focus of
meditation.67

Korzybski and Schumpeter, both of whom died in 1950, saw the future from different frames of
reference, both of which are of critical importance. Korzybski painted the picture of a desirable future,
with great hopes. Schumpeter documented what he considered to be an irreversible tragedy, but also
hopeful for a better outcome. Bateson, who lived to 1979, saw “cybernetics” as an important part of the
solution, but still unresolved as to the details. The solution would embrace spacetime. The solution
would be inclusive of society, mankind in nature, embracing and passing on a heritage based on
progressive contributions.68

4.4 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Even a cursory review of history reveals that the last few centuries of empire-building and aggressive
transformation of resources and energy represented a departure from prior practice in terms of degree,
with extreme consequences. It was a departure in scale, to be sure. Capitalism, for example, a major
factor in bringing these changes about, was long in coming. Modernization provided scale, and along
with that, power to financial capitalism:

The whole panoply of forms of capitalism – commercial, industrial, banking – was

already deployed in 13th century Florence, in 17th century Amsterdam, in London before
the 18th century. It is undoubtedly the case that in the early 19th century, the coming of

67
Ibid., 195-196.
68
Hilgartner, C. A. 2009. General semantics vs “the entire Western system of rationalizations. ETC: A Review of
General Semantics, 66(3), 297.

18
 machines made industrial production a high-profit sector and capitalism went over to it
on a massive scale.69

Gradually, fits and starts of individual initiative in what is now Europe became possible, from farm to
market and back again. With the centuries, individual gains brought new institutions, some of which
were repressive, limiting power and causing indebtedness of various kinds, referred to in Europe as the
“second serfdom.”70 Fits and starts of individual freedom, alternating with various forms of repression
and control created a pressure-cooker environment that contributed to several centuries of destabilizing
events, with both beneficial and shocking consequences. Lacking means of resolving questions of
religion and land reform and initiative, these were “exported” to new worlds and old worlds alike.

Dealing with the ragged edges of repressive monarchies resulted in a body of thought with respect to
society and organization that resulted in political and economic movements that broke out of them.
These occupied whatever grounds were encountered, some largely empty, but mostly populated by
people with inferior armaments that were ultimately subjected to the military power and economic
system of aggressive colonists from Europe. Ironically, in some cases, the economic status of the victims
was greater than that of the invaders. Great movements and programs were established, with powerful
new technologies and ideas, but great depredations also occurred that lacked feedback mechanisms and
corrective means typical of cycles.71

Europe was beginning to devour, to digest the world. We can therefore have no
sympathy with those economists of the past (and even some of the present) who seem to
feel sorry for it, doubting its economic health and maintaining that it suffered a
permanent monetary hemorrhage in the direction of the Far East. In the first place,
Europe did not die of it. And in the second, one might as well feel sorry for the successful
besieger of a town because he had to sacrifice powder, shot, and time on it.72

The hopes of modernization came crashing down with the advent of the Great War in 1914, which
signaled that something was very wrong with the modern world.73 Unfortunately, the 20th century has
provided a proving ground for many ideas that have not proved fruitful.

In the dying years of the 20th century we live in the shadow of a seemingly irresistible
consensus. This the belief that laissez-faire capitalism has so clearly demonstrated its
superiority over all imaginable economic systems that any deviation from it is ultimately
untenable and unsustainable. Accordingly, it is argued, every country must now dedicate
itself to establishing a fully liberalized economic system, in which the state will have only
a minimal role; societies which henceforth seek to interfere with the free operation of
the market will do so to their detriment.

69
Braudel, F. and Reynolds, S. (Tran.). 1979/1984. The perspective of the world. Civilization and capitalism, 15th to
18th century, Vol. 3. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 621.
70
Braudel, F. and Mayne, R. (Trans.). 1987/1993. A history of civilizations. New York: Penguin Books, 318.
71
Davis, M. 2001. Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the Third World. London: Verso.
72
Braudel, F., and Reynolds, S. 1979/1981, The structures of everyday life. Civilization & Capitalism 15th-18th
century, Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 457.
73
Meyer, G. J. 2006. A world undone: The story of the Great War, 1914-1918. New York: Random House. Cited in
Loconte, J. 2015. A hobbit, a wardrobe, and a great war. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

19
The rapid advance of this new consensus to near universal acceptance owes much to the
recent conspicuous failure of economic models based on extensive state intervention to
deliver adequate levels of prosperity or security – most spectacularly in the fallen Soviet
empire. Yet despite this apparently compelling logic, anyone endowed with a reasonable
capacity for impartial observation of everyday realities – and for treating official
propaganda with due skepticism – might recognize that such claims of a triumph for the
free market and of its supposedly magical powers are profoundly perverse for at least
three reasons.

First, they ignore the truth that over the two decades since the late 1970s – when official
opinion in the industrial market economies started to lose faith in state intervention –
any moves towards creating a recognizably free market economy have been largely
offset by measures of enhanced state intervention in support of private business
interests. Thus, notwithstanding an unprecedented shift away from public ownership in
favor of the private sector and extensive deregulation of the financial markets,
governments in all the industrialized countries have shown a redoubled tendency to use
taxpayers’ money to subsidize private enterprise (through tax breaks, grants, loan
guarantees, and other devices). For this reason, and also because it has proved
impossible to hold down the fiscal burden of welfare payments in a climate of chronic
economic stagnation, they have been unable to prevent the state’ role in the economy –
as reflected in the share of national income accounted for by governments – from
continuing to rise during the years since 1980.

Second, to the extent that liberalization has occurred in the world’s industrial market
economies since the late 1970s, it has not resulted in a general rise in prosperity, but
rather has failed to stop the spread of poverty to an ever growing proportion of the
population, and the remorseless rise in public deficits and indebtedness. Thus in Britain,
which is by no means untypical of industrialized countries in general, 25 per cent of the
population are now so financially deprived as to be dependent on various forms of state
benefit for their survival (compared with less than 10 per cent in the mid-1970s), while
the level of public debt as a proportion of national income has doubled over the same
period. Closely related to these developments is the inexorable slide in the rate of
economic growth, which in the industrialized countries as a whole has fallen
continuously, decade by decade, since the 1960s – so that the average for the first half of
the 1990s has been less than half that recorded thirty years earlier. Likewise, in the rest
of the world (comprising the so-called developing countries and the economies ‘in
transition’ from communism), the application of strongly liberalizing economic policies in
the 1980s and 1990s – largely at the behest of aid donors in the industrialized world –
has failed to prevent their economic performance and living standards from declining,
even relative to those of the increasingly stagnant industrial market economies.

Finally, any genuine move in the direction of laissez faire and the minimalist state would
represent a total reversal of the historic trend of the past hundred years or more which
favors progressively greater intervention by the state (notably in the form of welfare
benefits) to offset what have been perceived as the unacceptable side-effects – economic
and social – of the capitalist free market. It would therefore appear to put at risk the

20
 social and political stability which, since the late nineteenth century, governments, and
indeed most private-sector interest groups, have come to see as indispensable to the
development of industrial societies.74

Thus, this period of experimentation with ideas has come in conflict with the time-tested, organic ways
of the past, at times with horrible consequences.

The catastrophe of the native community is a direct result of the rapid and violent
disruption of the basic institutions of the victim (whether force is used in the process or
not does not seem altogether relevant) These institutions are disrupted by the very fact
that a market economy is foisted upon an entirely differently organized community;
labor and land are made into commodities, which, again, is only a short formula for the
liquidation of every and any cultural institution in an organic society… Indian masses in
the second half of the 19th century did not die of hunger because they were exploited by
Lancashire; they perished in large numbers because the Indian village community had
been demolished.75

As a rule, mankind has thrived and grown by adapting to the environment presented to it by nature.76
This is a feature of traditional societies, contributing to their remarkable stability. This also contributed
to prosperity. According to Paul Bairoch, the “…average standard of living in Europe was a little bit lower
than that of the rest of the world.”77 Also, Bairoch indicates that at the time of the French Revolution in
1798, “the largest manufacturing districts in the world were still the Yangzi Delta and Bengal, with
Lingan (modern Guangdong and Guangxi) and coastal Madras not far behind.”78 This speaks well for
mankind generally, not just modern society. With those factors in mind, we will consider in some detail
what is to be learned by encouraging a nested framework for understanding and working with natural
and social cycles such as they present themselves.

Of course, we have much more going for us in this regard than the five senses and the effects of time,
which were all that our ancestors had to work with. Happily, they made a marvelous time of it, setting
us up for success on an entirely new level. We of course need to have the wisdom, commitment, and
skill to extend to new levels. We have added powers, which have largely been misused. We have
become sloppy as well, this brought on by inappropriate or incomplete models and concepts, resulting
in low expectations. These need to be overcome. In our expectant moment, we face a monumental
challenge with respect to the future.

…no society in the world has yet given up tradition and the use of privilege. If this is ever
to be achieved, all the social hierarchies will have to be overthrown, not merely those of

74
Shutt, H. 1998.2009. The trouble with capitalism: An enquiry into the causes of global economic failure. London:
Zed Books, 1-2.
75
Polanyi, K. 1944. The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 159-160. Cited in Davis, 2001, 10.
76
Boserup, E. 1965. The conditions of agricultural growth: The economics of agrarian change under population
pressure. London: Allen & Unwin.
77
Bairoch, P. 1981. The main trends in national economic disparities since the Industrial Revolution. In P. Bairoch
and M. Levy-Leboyer (Eds), Disparities in economic development since the Industrial Revolution, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 7. Reported in Davis, 2001, 293.
78
Bairoch, P. 1982. International industrialization levels from 1750-1980. Journal of European Economic History,
11, 107. Reported in Davis, 2001, 293.

21
 money or state power, not only social privilege but the uneven weight of the past and of
culture. The experience of the socialist countries proves that the disappearance of a
single hierarchy – the economic hierarchy – raises scores of new problems and is not
enough on its own to establish equality, liberty or even plenty. A clear-sighted revolution,
if such a thing is even possible – and if it were, would the paralyzing weight of
circumstances allow it to remain so for long? – would find it very difficult to demolish
what should be demolished, while retaining what should be retained: freedom for
ordinary people, cultural independence, a market economy with no loaded dice, and a
little fraternity. It is a very tall order – especially since whenever capitalism is challenged,
it is invariably during a period of economic difficulty, whereas far-reaching structural
reform, which would inevitably be difficult and traumatic, requires a context of
abundance or even superabundance.79

Thus, a little bit of “sleight of hand” may be required to reorient priorities as is the case in a program
favoring nested cycles. Many gain from such an arrangement; it may be that taming capitalism would be
unpopular among members of the absentee owner class. Fortunately, one characteristic of these is their
absentee status. Another is that they are characteristically selective, if not myopic, in their choice of
priority:

While capitalism was most at home in the sphere of commerce, it did not occupy the
whole of this sector, but elected residence only on routes and in places where trade was
most lively. In everyday, traditional exchange or the very local market economy,
capitalism took little interest. Even in the most developed regions, there were some tasks
it willingly handled, others it shared, and others again which it would not accept, leaving
them firmly alone. Decisions of this kind might be aided and abetted, or alternatively
obstructed, by the state – the only obstructive agency that could at times take
capitalism’s place, drive it out or, on the contrary, force upon it a role it would not have
chosen of its own accord.80

Government is thus important to the process. Geography is also an important factor. The point is not to
eradicate capitalism, efforts at unfettered financial gain, but to channel it.

5 THE FIVE CYCLE FAMILIES THAT UNDERSCORE OUR EXISTENCE

There is far more going on in and around us than we can begin to fathom. In the most fundamental of
terms, we live in an environment of spacetime, a four-dimensional theater that extends the three
dimensions of space with forces in many directions through time in only one. In spacetime, everything
has some impact on everything else, at least with regard to the present and the future. Given its unified
foundations, nature can keep track of all of these. As parts of it all, our bodies, our minds, and all that
we are naturally integrates with the rest. How this occurs in its entirety is beyond our knowledge, even
beyond our imagination, but we do know that it all is conserved. This is to say that nothing is wasted or

79
Braudel, 1979/1984, 628.
80
Braudel, F. and Reynolds, S. (Tran.). 1979/1982. The wheels of commerce. Civilization and capitalism, 15th to 18th
century, Vol. 2. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 374.

22
lost, there is no cheating on the processes in question, and natural forces for equilibrium will have their
say long after we have anything to do with the matter.

In the mean-time, we do seem to have a say; we are having our day. This is a collective affair. Some of
our journeys through spacetime are in parallel, with little discernable overlap, but much of it is highly
interrelated, involving both the same space and the same time. We are creating imbalances, but they
will be corrected eventually by nature. We live with creative fictions, many based in our ignorant past.
These may or may not be helpful or useful. For example, we refer to “renewable” energies, where there
is no such thing. Energy is passing through Earth’s sphere, virtually all of it from our sun. We may artfully
catch it for reuse for a while, but eventually it will escape through the atmosphere. Some, of course, is
captured in Earth for a longer period, but eventually it, too, will go. We can develop improved ways of
capturing and using energy, but we are not renewing it at all and we cannot. Perhaps it is kind of a
pleasant fiction, but fiction it is and nothing more. This is how the dialog in economics can turn
everything upside down.

Our relationship with nature has collective as well as individual implications. From a collective
standpoint, we can say that the behavior of organizations as well as that of individuals, depends on
decisions made and actions taken that have an impact energy and matter available to us. For the most
part, this involves the infinitesimally small proportion of these available to Earth compared to the
entirety of the Solar System, let alone our universe. The problem is that to the degree that such social
conventions result in derivations from a natural course, they tend to matter progressively too much. In
other words, to the degree that we learn to navigate the dimensions in question in a skillful and deft
manner, things will go easier for us.

It is good to understand the powers of nature, their impact and their potential. Why would we want to
fight against these if we can turn them to our advantage? Kenneth has some experience in this regard:

Let me mention a personal example of this. Since my youth, I have been an avid trumpet
player. I still play. As is mostly the case with trumpet players, as with anyone engaged in
a physically-demanding activity, my prospects have ebbed and flowed at different times
and under different conditions. As a youth and young adult, I had more power in my
playing, but less knowledge and less experience. This limited the range of notes I could
play and wasted energy. I had a number of teachers – progressively more effective ones.
In college, I experienced something unexpected. I led the pep band as part of my
university assignment. In a basketball game, an opposing team brought a band with only
two trumpet players. This seemed odd until I heard them play. The two of them made
more sound than our twenty.

Most can recall seeing trumpet players obviously struggle to create sound. Some turn
odd colors; others show different, but obvious signs of strain. In the case of the two
players in the college pep band, there was none of that – it was clearly easy for them to
do what they did. Similar phenomena can be seen in athletics, where some individuals
are able to perform at different levels than all the rest. The same can be said for well-
designed machines and vehicles. They function in a class of their own – better
performance, requiring less of everything else, including less energy. Clearly, it is better
to cooperate with nature than to fight it.

23
Why, then, in human affairs is such optimization so rare? Our collective use of the energy that passes
through the planet is utterly pathetic. We generate by-products that end up as waste in virtually all of
our activities? We live in the midst of pollution, resulting in health risks and discomforts, that are
obviously unnecessary, given existing knowledge. Clearly, we are “swimming upstream.” This, again, is a
problem with individual as well as collective considerations. Some of these turn social and economic
affairs on their heads, as financial gain can result from mitigating problems that might otherwise not
exist. This raises a question. Is inefficiency a public good after all in that it serves to stimulate such
activities. Perhaps they stimulate some action that might not otherwise occur. Surely, we do not want to
become a race seduced into laziness and indolence due to an easy path.

To resolve such problems, we need to set priorities, to be sure. Surely, we want to resolve them. Why
wouldn’t we? Motivations and objectives of such a matter are mostly taken up elsewhere. This
document is to provide more detailed groundings as to what a five-cycle policy environment as
proposed will look like.

5.1 NATURE – BOHMIAN

David Bohm enjoyed a career that was central to the discovery and use of physical phenomena that
revolutionized the world in the last century. To his great disappointment, the transformation in question
was mostly not a positive one. A young Berkeley physicist, he was kept from work on the Manhattan
project, the original atomic bomb development effort beginning in 1942, although his academic
chairman was Robert Oppenheimer, head of that program. He had a more wide-ranging social
perspective than U.S. government security agencies were comfortable with. This did not dissuade
project leadership from taking his doctoral research away from him, classifying it and restricting his
access to it, and using the work as a central part of the effort. He wasn’t overly anxious to be a part of
the program anyway, but his subsequent career was for many years a matter of cat-and-mouse due to
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s political cleansing program in mid-century.

The fundamental groundings of nature, such findings, were withheld from society to be sure, coopted
for such efforts, also crowding out research that would lead to more productive ends. What if the world
had taken other paths? It is possible that in the social, political, and economic mind-set of the past a
rational program as we propose here was not possible. Before the Great War of 1914, it was thought
that all was well. Once the “domino effect” of war declarations began, conceptual and institutional
infrastructures melted away, allowing for insanity and mayhem to reign, literally. In the process, overt
empire-building eventually died out and the concept of personalized control repeatedly failed in the
West, but thrived in many part of Asia. This set up the decades-long competition between the regions
and their respective policy frameworks, which were not philosophically pure in either case.

Since WWII, there has been much confusion with regard to science and knowledge. In that time, both
enterprises were captured by individual and corporate prerogatives, largely driven by Keynesian-style
governance and capitalistically-inspired branding. This was done in the name of empiricism. These
developments supported detached applications of mathematics based on evaluation aggregated, static
figures, rather than detailed understanding of underlying processes. This allowed for inference to pass
for sufficient levels of knowledge regarding natural processes. This development was influenced and
encouraged by many factors in science and society, but it was ultimately enabled by generalized
enthusiasm for Keynesian models by policy leaders, economists, and bankers. It was not the “easy

24
money” aspect of Keynes’ teachings that did all of the damage in the period, but the use of aggregate
data for evaluation and policy implementation in a passive way, which ushered forth irrationality, from
which there is no deliverance.

In this we digress, but with a purpose. How do we restore nature to primacy as to policy and
development? How do we redirect our efforts to correspond to these imperatives on a higher level than
before, capturing and directing our efforts and those of the machines that extend our reach beyond that
of the ancients? This must be done by smoothing the path and defining the way rather than patching up
problems and crosscurrents created by fundamental errors. Nature must lead the way in such an
endeavor, our understanding of prospects constantly growing. Bohm made reference to the generative
order as the grounding for our efforts to come into consonance with nature.81 This order presents itself
in four dimensions. There are the three Cartesian directions, coupled with time. This is the basis for all.
Einstein, with whom Bohm worked, broke through the barrier in his two great works. Minkowsy,
Einstein’s mathematics professor, laid out the mathematics supporting it, and knowledge of the
fundamentals of nature extends from this foundation.

Thus, there is a flow of time through space, which we understand is a unified phenomenon, one a part
of the other in terms of space and time. There are untold phenomena occurring in spacetime,
overlapping and interacting with each other. It starts with a most comprehensible idea, the three
Cartesian coordinates that define the position of a point in geometric space. This is a grid representing
length and height and depth in some combination, traditionally x, y, and z. These three dimensions, as
can be seen in Figure 2, Diagram of Cartesian coordinates, demonstrate position in a point in time. This
is fundamental to all of our understanding.

Figure 2: Diagram of Cartesian coordinates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-dimensional_space_(mathematics)

Introducing time into the equation brought most compelling developments. This was more famously
carried out by Einstein in his miracle year in 1905 by means of his special relativity studies. The
traditional lightcone diagram, as can be seen in Figure 3: Lightcone representation of past, present, and
future events in Minkowski space, provides a frame of reference.

81
Bohm, D., and Peat, F. D. 1987. Science, order, and creativity: A dramatic new look at the creative roots of science
and life. New York: Bantam Books.

25
 Figure 3: Lightcone representation of past, present, and future events in Minkowski space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space

Reality is a representation of the four dimensions, but this cannot always be made by means of simple
variables. Each of these can be represented mathematically, but this, too, may constitute an incomplete
representation. Movement of phenomena through time can be considered as simultaneous or near-
simultaneous vectors. Each of these can be considered as in the simplified Figure 4: Vector field. This is a
two-dimensional representation of multi-dimensional space. Vector behavior can be independent within
the field or it can be patterned and conjoined with other vectors or forces.

Figure 4: Vector field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field#/media/File:VectorField.svg

Included is a commonly-used example of this, seen in Figure 5: Magnetic arrangement of iron filings, the
patterns of magnetism as can be seen by iron filings or other tiny magnetic grains when in range of a bar
magnet with north and south poles. The magnetic field arranges arcs of effect that spread the grains

26
along patterned paths. In this case, the algorithms are consistent and predictable when uninterrupted.
These are the most well-known of the limitless spectrum of electromagnetic forces.

Figure 5: Magnetic arrangement of iron filings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field#/media/File:Magnet0873.png

The question is one of mathematical representations of these events. These are typically partial
differential equations which nonetheless become overloaded and invalidated, given the complexity of
nature. There is another problem, that of context. Of course, that is the point of Minkowsky analysis, but
mathematics alone will not resolve the problem, as contextual confounding factors can arise from any
quarter. As such, mathematics can suffer the fate of a driverless car, capable of motion and power, but
more likely to generate damage than desirable outcomes. To this, we can add the question of scale of
outcomes. The car that can rightly carry a consumer to market to satisfy the desire of a moment may
wreak mortal damage on any number of people and render irreparable damage if misused.

This is a puzzle for the ages. To resolve such a problem requires a grand synthesis of unprecedented
proportion. It must be robust. It must be comprehensive. It must also be accessible, which is to say, easy
to learn and to use. From a functional standpoint, it must tie the primary forces of nature to human will
in a manner that makes each responsive to the requirements of the other. In the final analysis, humans
must defer to nature, but with clarity and relevance. Such an attachment could thus show us how and
point in the direction of possibilities that have not come to mind before.

This is a tall order, a challenging prospect. It can be said that many times we have tried and failed,
certainly in recent decades with the advent of electronic computers. Hopes have been repeatedly
raised, then dashed – typically in a “pool” of wasted money.

It would be helpful to know of an example of how such a way of living might be organized. How could
the requirements of quantum phenomena be made clear – understandable to those who needed to act
on them – and capable of pointing actors in viable and useful directions? If such a tradition existed, we
could study it, learn from its characteristics and methods, and leverage its technical as well as cultural
and social features.

We have this. Sound has been conquered. Furthermore, the models, traditions, and technologies in
question were formalized hundreds of years ago. Based on nothing more than the unassisted ear,
musicians learned to capture the structure of aural harmonics in an information model built around

27
them.82 The voice was used to produce sound as well as many instruments, made of many plant-based,
later, metal materials. This was expanded to include an organizational model involving large numbers of
performers. They learned to do this in a fully integrated fashion – no small feat, given the different
technologies and performance requirements involved. Then, there is the famous, fickle “diva” that must
be pleased. Of course, she must also be able to perform, and when that time arrives, there is nowhere
for her to hide from the obvious.

Most importantly, the model brought felicitous results from a cultural perspective. It is present and
actively pursued in all parts of the world. It supports all music forms. It has a decidedly beneficial effect
on behavior and peace of mind. Imaging the state of the world without it.

Think of a competent musical performance in Minkowsky space. As time progresses, desired outcomes
are achieved based on structure, to be sure – but there is also room for interpretation and nuance. The
rich possibilities for independent as well as intermingled sounds will have been organized by composers,
who, with deep understanding of all of the factors that enter into the desired performance, have laid
out strict requirements for the performers. These must have developed skills in performing vocally or
with their instruments, but they needn’t understand the theories and questions considered by the
composers. The musical directors find themselves in between the two – interpreters of the composers’
demands, coaches and partners to the musicians in carrying out their interpretations. And – yes – this is
how jazz works, as well.

Could the “sacred” Minkowsky space be invaded, breaking the musical spell? Of course, this could be
the case, as all concert-goers can attest, but a continual effort to educate the public and introduce to
them the benefits of respecting such times and places, and the participants – and their musical
antecedents – reduces such interruptions and increases patronage.

Is it possible? Yes, it is possible. How can it be done? A common, inclusive language is needed that can
be used to maintain context and express all forms of mathematics and semantic forms. A tradition for
composition is required, emphasizing legitimacy with regard to knowledge and authority. An
organizational tradition will need to be established, including education and training of “directors” and
“performers” as per the symphonic model. There will need to be a means of readily extending the
results of such collaboration to the general public in easy, entertaining forms, as in music. Projects to
establish extensions of this will be essential in order to constantly increase the “repertoire” of natural
and social processes supported by the effort.

Later in this section and in the Appendix, we offer the “Human Prosperity Model” as a tool in support of
such efforts. The point is to provide a common process environment for their use in defining vectors in
spacetime. There are limitless options in terms of pattern, frequency of oscillation, energy, and length.
In reality, there are contravening effects as well, some of which are environmental, common, and
predictable, some being alien, rare, and perplexing. There is the question of these vectors are to be
defined. Represented in Figure 4 as simple arrows, they are processes that are dynamic and related. As

82
More information on this can be found here: Tingey, K. B. 1998/2008. Dual control in music and business:
Music’s common language as an example for business. Logan, UT USA: Profundities LLC. Available online:
http://profundities.info/DualControl/. Also see Helmholtz, H. 1885/1954. On the sensations of tone. New York:
Longmans & Co., Dover Publications.

28
such, they affect one another. In an impossibly complex mix in many cases, they can be represented by
mathematics and logic. Not very well, it seems. Bohm makes reference to Alfred Korzybski, father of
general semantics. Thoughts, words, numbers, calculations, observations, perceptions – are all
incomplete and insufficient.83 Then, there is the famous interpretive difference between Einstein and
Niels Bohr as to whether observation is possible at all. The bad news at least for the time-being is that
Bohr won the argument, not the outcome that we would want. Observation at the atomic and
subatomic levels does upset outcomes.

We could just give up – to live day-by-day in our sensual spaces, unaware of events at their most basic
levels. Of course, mankind has progressed a great deal on that score. Problems inherent with such a
path in part stimulated this work, a passive approach is clearly the default option. On this score alone, it
should not be discounted.

We must do what we can, however. Such a conclusion is at least an implicit motivation for this paper.
There is immense upside to such a path. Critically, there is a chilling downside if scientific knowledge is
not systematically supported: Technology, much of it developed at least on the fringes of advanced
science, is not going back into the “enchanted lamp” even if we tried to put it there. The capabilities it
brings for rearranging matter and effecting energy constitutes a family of risks that compromise
mankind’s continued existence.

The good news from general semantics perspective is the conclusion that we must do this together.
Arriving at understanding and understanding is a community effort. According to Gregory Bateson, it is
the community effort: The idea of the sole practitioner “slaving in isolated genius” will not work. The
generational effort at scientific branding of isolated phenomena based on empirical inference based on
calculations on the general linear model never really was well-advised.

…a new way of thinking about the nature of order and organization in living systems, a
unified body of theory so encompassing that it illuminates al particular areas of study of
biology and behavior. It is interdisciplinary not in the usual and simple sense of
exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to
many disciplines.84

Had nature turned out to be simple and simplistic – a supposition that lived on through the 20th century
where there was grounding for it or not – we possibly could have progressed by means of individualistic,
superhuman efforts to discover magic bullets. Or, that we could dictate to or overpower nature. That
would have been nice. We still would have needed to overcome our organizational limitations, at least –
eventually. A society of loosely-connected, or even autonomous individuals is always subject to the
irrationality of the lone wolf, empowered by arcane and skewed associations of lone wolves themselves.
Bateson further clarifies such assumptions – which manifest themselves in several of the cycles:

…the ideas which dominate our civilization at the present time date in their most virulent
form from the Industrial Revolution. They may be summarized as:
1. It’s us against the environment.
2. It’s us against other men.

83
Bohm and Peat, 8-9.
84
Bateson and Donaldson, xii.

29
 3. It’s the individual (or the individual company, or the individual nation) that
matters.
4. We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that
control.
5. We live within an infinitely expanding “frontier.”
6. Economic determinism is common sense.
7. Technology will do it for us.85

Once again, these are not concepts as derived from traditional societies, but frameworks that emerged
from the recent centuries of European dominance. From his particular anthropological work in New
Guinea and elsewhere, Bateson provided guidelines in the classification and understanding of nature’s
processes. These are in the concepts of Creatura and Pleroma:

Creatura. A Gnostic term borrowed by Jung, which [is] used to refer to all processes in
which the analog of cause is information or difference. Sometimes … used to refer to the
entire biological and social realm, necessarily embodied in material forms subject to
physical laws of causation as well as the distinctive processes of life.86

Pleroma. The material world, characterized by the kinds of regularities described in the
physical sciences. The sharp contrast between Pleroma and Creatura, the world of
communication, is blurred by the fact that human knowledge of Pleroma is entirely
mediated by Creatura processes of response to difference.87

This challenge of interpreting natural cycles in itself involves iterative factors, as mankind is in this way
positioned within nature. Bateson in particular is optimistic on this score.

If you’re seriously dedicated to anything, be it art, science, or whatever, that which you
are dedicated to is going to be a pretty big component to what is sacred to you. But we
scientists are, or should be, pretty humble about what we know We don’t think we really
know any of the answers. And this has some very curious effects. On the whole, most
people feel that a great deal is known, and what is not immediately knowable they
throw into the supernatural into guesswork, or into folklore. But the scientists won’t
allow himself to do that. We really believe that someday we shall know what these
things are all about, and that they can be known. This is our sacred. We are all sort of
Don Quixote characters who are willing to believe that it is worthwhile to go out and tilt
at the windmills of the nature of beauty and the nature of the sacred, and all the rest of
it. We are arrogant about what we might know tomorrow, but humble because we know
so little today.88

Continuing in a hopeful mode,

To achieve, in a few generations, anything like the healthy system dreamed of above or
even to get out of the grooves of fatal destiny in which our civilization is now caught,

85
Bateson, 1972/2000, 500.
86
Bateson and Bateson, 1987, 207.
87
Ibid., 211.
88
Bateson and Donaldson, 270.

30
 very great flexibility will be needed. It is right, therefore, to examine this concept with
some care. Indeed, this is a crucial concept. We should evaluate not so much the values
and trends of relevant variables as the relation between these trends and ecological
flexibility.89

… Social flexibility is a resource as precious as oil or titanium and must be budgeted in

appropriate ways, to be spent (like fat) upon needed change. Broadly, since the “eating
up” of flexibility is due to regenerative (i.e., escalating) subsystems within the civilization,
it is, in the end, these that must be controlled.90

Consideration of each of the cycle families needs to be given to the nature of that family’s composition
and contribution. Famously, we know that in a certain way, many economic breakthroughs represent a
“plucking” from a gray area of possibilities that may well have gone unnoticed but for the efforts of
entrepreneurs in question. Organizational authorities, as opposed to networked interaction, could kill
such prospects. In science there typically must be such a combination of individual and group efforts,
with a document as the object, at least from a production standpoint. This has proven a comfortable
arrangement, having lasted for thousands of years, since the beginnings of writing and ciphering. It
provides a very incomplete solution, however, with regard to the question of reality and our conception
of it in an ongoing and interactive way.

Documents and other static forms of knowledge representation are of limited utility in such a battle.
Apart from being untethered reflections of reality, they do not do anything. They serve tutorial functions
in their review and motivational functions in their development, but such static representations slow
peoples’ minds to a crawl in the heat of the battle. If one doesn’t know the answer before, there isn’t
time to find it out by means of a document, or a database search, or a multimedia extravaganza in the
moment of need. Their largely unstructured nature dooms the enterprise from the outset.

Kenneth has developed, not yet published, a model for matching human knowledge, however frail and
disjointed, with the realities of nature. It is included here as an Appendix. The essence of that model
appears below:

Prosp = (KU-KM-KI)-NGPrisk-Crisk * (E x B)
In this equation, Prosp, or prosperity, equals knowledge net of misapplied, incorrect or incomplete
knowledge, geopolitical risks and cosmic risks as it is made functionally available in the electromagnetic
spectrum. The usefulness of this is further described in the model in the form of taxonomies – static
ones as they are generally understood and dynamic, or generative, ones as are explained therein. As
must be, this entails a semantic as well as numeric phenomenon. Only in this way can the richness of
nature be meaningfully modeled and acted on.

Returning to the Einstein-Bohr breakdown, Bohm characterized what happened as a fault of

communications. He points out that there was no disagreement in the maths of relativity and quantum
effects, but in the “informal language” that framed their discussions. They could find no common
ground linguistically. Einstein insisted on clarity in the form of signals that were unambiguous, while
Bohr insisted on ambiguity itself. Ultimately, the breakdown in communication not only contributed to

89
Bateson and Bateson, 1972/2000, 504.
90
Ibid., 505.

31
the persistent inability to achieve the TOE, it resulted in an awkward social event at Princeton when they
were both on faculty when Bohr and his students lined up across the room from Einstein and his
students like boys vs. girls at a junior high school dance.

…both Einstein and Bohr emphasized particular notions of meaning in the informal
language of physics. But while, for Bohr, the meaning of fundamental concepts could be
ambiguous, in Einstein’s view they had to be unambiguous. The two men engaged in a
long series of discussions about these issues over the following years. However, in
retrospect, it has become clear that it was never possible to resolve the issues that stood
between them because their different uses of informal language implied conflicting
notions about the nature of truth and reality and about what is an acceptable type of
scientific theory…

…their differences did not arise within the mathematical formalism itself, for Einstein
agreed that the formalism of quantum theory is essentially correct. Yet as a result of the
different ways they were using the informal language, the two men became separated
by an abyss.

This separation has had particularly serious consequences in the development of

relativity and quantum theory, for there is now no common, informal language that
covers them both. As a result, although both theories are regarded as fundamental, they
exist in an uneasy union with no real way of unifying them. Even within the quantum
theory itself there is a serious failure of communication between the various
interpretations. Attempts to hold dialogs between these points of view are characterized
by the same sort of rigidity, with respect to fundamental assumptions, that was present
in the exchanges between Bohr and Einstein. In addition, there is considerable confusion
as physicists fail to distinguish between the essential, though extremely subtle,
differences between the various approaches.

There is so little awareness of the unbridgeable differences between physicists today

because sustained efforts to engage in dialogue have not been made with the kind of
persistence shown by Bohr and Einstein. Today the general atmosphere is such that a
physicist can do little more than state, and restate, a particular point of view. Various
approaches are generally taken to be rivals, with each participant attempting to
convince the others of the truth of a particular position, or at least that it deserves
serious attention. Yet at the same time, there is a general tendency to regard the whole
question of interpretation and the role of informal language as not being particularly
important, and instead to focus upon the mathematics about which everyone agrees.91

This brings to mind the less-known discussions between Joseph Schumpeter, Frederich Hayek, and John
Maynard Keynes. Schumpeter and Hayek took a position similar to Einstein: Some level of understanding
of underlying processes is of extreme importance. Keynes was not unlike Bohr in his more relax stance
with regard to the details. Less concern with process, Keynes and Bohr were content with probabilities.

91
Bohm and Peat, 86-87.

32
Of course, Bohm’s point was that the breakdown was in an inability to use words to resolve the
question.

These questions served a major part of Joseph Woodger’s investigations in science, logic, and language
focused largely on the needs of biology. His point is that the intricacies and nature and of science cannot
be spoken using general-purpose languages.

Metaphors, for example, with which some branches of biology abound, are often
suggestive and may be harmless enough if they are recognized for what they are. But at
best they are makeshifts and substitutes for genuine biological statements, and the fact
that recourse is had to them is surely a sign of immaturity. Science demands great
linguistic austerity and discipline, and the canons of good style in scientific writing are
different from those in other kinds of literature.

…yet again, biology, like other sciences, begins with observations on the familiar things
of everyday life, and its results are at first adequately expressed in the language of
everyday life. But as it advances it widens the scope of its observations. This invention of
successful hypotheses brings with it the invention of new apparatus for observation. The
records of observations made with such apparatus are meaningless apart from the
theory of the apparatus – the hypotheses which have led to its invention. Is it not to be
expected then that sooner or later the linguistic habits of everyday life will cease to do
justice to this increasing complexity and novelty of observation and hypothesis? 92

While we do not suggest that the TOE impasse is based on linguistics, clearly the lack of an integrative
mechanism has taken its toll. Fluidity of knowledge, coupled with its ability to support all static as well as
process-oriented forms of knowledge in readily computerized form, could eliminate perhaps some of
the barriers faced by the camps in question – whether with regard to the TEO generally or with the
questions of finance and economics that were not addressed in the early stages of the Keynesian era.

This is the point with the generative taxonomy model. It allows for inclusive use of mathematics,
semantics, formal, and informal language elements while preserving deep context with regard to the
situation at hand. The model is well-adapted to being data-driven. Thus, the Prosperity model, a
generative taxonomy approach, when positioned within Minkowsky Space, will provide a reliable guide.
Making use of such a general-purpose polyglot environment, scientists and other knowledge
practitioners have a far greater palate for understanding and implementation than from mathematics
and informal languages alone. In this way, we can understand beneficial social action as described by
Talcott Parsons in light of the forces of nature. The one family cycles is to function within possibilities
presented by the other.

Nature divides itself into two main categories. The first of these is the study of the inanimate; the
second is in the study of living things. Separating the two is really quite problematic. Several scientists
have questioned this distinction. We do. The tree of knowledge is simply too complex and nuanced to
declare arbitrary barriers of any kind. Bohm’s work serves as an integrating structure for the laws of

92
Woodger, J. H. 1952. Biology and language: An introduction to the methodology of the biological sciences
including medicine. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press, 8.

33
physics, leading to an understanding of biology.93 Linus Pauling’s work provides insights into the
underlying quantum supports for chemical interactions, both physical and biological. Together with the
work of Bohm, it provides structure for the understanding of how individuals and organizations can live
and thrive in nature.

…it is necessary, for the understanding of life, to go beyond the quantum theory and the
super implicate order, into an infinity of generative and implicate orders from which
present theory has been abstracted. In doing so, however, it is not intended to seek the
“ultimate origin of life” in a reductionist way by going, for example, to an even more
fundamental microscopic theory than the quantum theory. Rather it is being proposed
that a deeper generative order is common to all life and to inanimate matter as well. It is
not therefore an attempt to explain life in terms of matter but rather to see how both
emerge out of a common overall generative order. Within this order there is room for
new kinds of “pools of information” from which life could be generated. The wholeness
of the living being, and even more of the conscious being, can then be understood in a
natural way, rather as the wholeness of the molecule and the superconducting system is
understood (although it must not be forgotten that life is much subtler and more
complex than molecules and superconducting systems). Life is no longer seen as the
result of somewhat fortuitous factors, which perhaps happened only on an isolated
planet, such as Earth. Rather it is seen to be enfolded universally, deep within the
generative order.94

Such perceptions are mirrored in observations of convergence on the part of evolutionary biologists. In
the words of Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University:

…however challenging the prospect we will continue to uncover ever-deeper sets of

order in the organization of the Universe. There will be no “End of Science”, indeed very
much the reverse. [Also], mental states are neither illusions nor fictions, and although
necessarily interpreted through biological systems, they possess their own reality. Here
we encounter a problem so fundamental that the usual response is to ignore it. At one
level at least our mental world draws on information from the sensory realm. Studded
with convergences, often with extraordinary sensitivities that take us to the limits of the
physical universe, in whatever modality we choose to investigate – as familiar as color
vision or remote as electrosensation – a fundamental contradiction seems to arise. In
each case, what is utterly familiar elides into mysterious abstractions. Sensory systems
tell us about the world, but whatever approach we adopt we are not a whit closer to
providing an explanation for the corresponding qualia of experience.

One might respond that if the world is to be understood at all, it requires some sort of
interpretation, but if that is all there is to the matter, then we would seem to have no
warrant that what we perceive possesses any reality, let alone has any relevance beyond
our species. One might also insist that sensory modalities of which we have no direct

93
Bohm and Peat,
94
Bohm and Peat, 200-201.

34
 experience and can only “interpret” using scientific instruments, as it the case with
electroperception and infrared detection, are effectively unknowable. Yet it will be
evident that the many convergences in sensory systems, not least at the molecular level
of transduction, point to a commonality of processes.95

The history of science follows closely behind the history of invention of devices and techniques that
extend our sensory reach. These include telescopes to extend our sight in terms of distance,
microscopes to allow us to view small phenomena at short range. We enjoy various electronic
technologies for their ability to transform phenomena beyond our sense so that we can experience
them in one or more of these ways. Various spectroscopic techniques, along with devices that make use
of them, have been shown to be able to split up segments of the electromagnetic spectrum in particular,
allowing us to learn about them and to evaluate them.

Korzybski presented a representation of human capabilities as were understood in 1933, as can be seen
in Figure 6: Human senses and the electromagnetic spectrum.96 The material is dated, to be sure, but its
accuracy is profound, nonetheless. These relationships have been known for a long time with negligible
progress toward understanding them.

Spacetime conveys important geophysical conditions. There are many physical properties and
relationships that relate to special conditions. Our individual interpretations of spacetime skew
significantly toward certain frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum. We are highly influenced
by our principal senses – what we can see, (ophthalmoception), hear (audioception), taste
(gustaoception), smell (olfacoception or olfacception), and touch (tactioception). Taste and smell
interpret biochemical messaging leading down to the spectrum, while the other senses interact directly
with electromagnetic fields. In all, they reflect actions of a very small proportion of the spectrum.
Nonetheless, they support overwhelming awareness of and preference for oscillations in those ranges.
Touch represents an illusion of contact, where in fact, the pressures that are felt result from
electromagnetic reactions. This is, of course, is reflected in the famous equation of Einstein, e=mc2. Slow
vibrations can be sensed, of course, as indicated in Figure 6.

Table 1: Human Senses as Proportion of Electromagnetic Spectrum, outlines the proportion of coverage
of the full spectrum of photons – broadly-speaking, the spectrum of light – that are discernible by means
of typical human capacities, including sight, sound, smell, touch and pressure, and radiant heat.97 Taste
is included in Table 1 to accentuate its absence, since adequate documentation. Here it can be seen that
humans participate directly if very little of what goes on within the spectrum, only to just under a
hundredth of a percent.

95
Morris, S. C. 2015. The runes of evolution: How the Universe became self-aware. West Conshohocken, PA:
Templeton Press, 295.
96
Korzybski, 1933/1941, 237. Citing C. J. Herrick, 1931, An introduction to neurology, 5th ed. [2nd ed. of 1918 in our
library]. Philadelphia: W. B. Sanders & Company, 89 [77].
97
Ranges as available are used from Figure 6, which are more liberal than many reported levels. Figures for smell
are calculated from Turin, L. 1996. A spectroscopic mechanism for primary olfactory reception. Chemical Senses,
21, 774. Taste frequencies, at least in part conceptually similar to those for smell, are confounded by the
biochemical nature of taste and digestion. In the apparent absence of a leader in the quantum underpinnings of
taste as per Turin for smell, the work of Hervé This points in a promising direction. See This, H. 2006. Molecular
gastronomy: Exploring the science of flavor. New York: Columbia University Press.

35
 Figure 6: Human senses and the electromagnetic spectrum

Of this, 99.5% is derived from our ability to sense radiant heat. Sight, likely our most obvious sense,
comprises only 4/10,000 of the spectrum, the others representing much less. Of course, in large part,
this is a life-preserving blessing in that Earth’s atmosphere provides much-needed blockage with regard
to very high vibration, high power cosmic rays that would do great damage. Taste and smell overlap in

36
important ways and little quantum data is available on taste. It is included, however, with no values,
mostly as a reminder that taste figures are not included.

Table 1: Human Senses as Proportion of Electromagnetic Spectrum

Proportion of Percentage of
Percentage of Spectrum
Spectrum All of the Senses
Sight 4E-06 0.0004000% 0.499375780273503%
Sound 2.997E-16 0.000000000000029970% 0.000000000037416%
Taste - - -
Smell 1.38E-30 0.00000000000000000000% 0.000000000000000%
Touch & pressure 1.551E-17 0.000000000000155% 0.000000000193633%
Radiant heat 7.97E-06 0.079700000000000% 99.500624219495400%
Total 0.08010000000015710000%

As can also be seen in Table 1, relationships between the spectrum and the skin, the internal ear, and
the retina are very limited with respect to the spectrum’s breadth. It cannot be ruled out that there are
other corporeal receptors of which we are not aware. Reference to skin as a receptor is short-sighted if
the body is considered as a part of an open system, such as is nature. There are many forms of contact
and transmission throughout the body that reflect sensual phenomena, not the least of which is when
pain is felt in the organs and interstitial tissues where little or no sensation has been noticed before. This
is a normal aspect of the body’s defense mechanisms, the acidic, quasi-permeable outer shell and open
orifices, the inflammatory and immune systems in particular. It is a most unpleasant “call to arms” to
feel acute, persistent pain in a place that you had not been aware, at least in terms of your senses, that
there was a place.

Electromagnetic phenomena know few bounds. There are ebbs and flows of these, including the effects
of cosmic storms and solar fluctuations. These can further be modified or eliminated artificially as with
Helmholtz coils, which can cancel out or alter such fields and there are some natural shields and means
of deforming and altering electromagnetic fields. By the same token, the multitude of interactions
within the body, from quantum levels up through the chemistry, genetics, and proteins in support of
ongoing metabolic stasis, interact with these. We have written about this.98

It is most evident that findings in this regard have not arisen through a lack of looking. Medical research
is decidedly Newtonian and macro by nature. A commentary at the death of Steve Jobs, the American
entrepreneur who died of pancreatic cancer, was that that particular condition was common because
[and we paraphrase] “it is difficult to ‘get in and see’ the pancreas,”. Never mind that the conditions to
manufacture the cancer in question would have had to be present and active in the system for a good
deal of time to create such a problem, as it indeed would have had to be created by the body. Even
Walter Cannon, who provided an excellent synthesis of the underpinnings of health, clearly positioned
the “fluid matrix” of our metabolic system inside a protective shell that was itself inert and dead. We
comment on this later, but here the question is one of limits. His description of the requirements of

98
Tingey, K. B., Manicki, M., Spendlove, R., Daines, J., Farnes, L., Ostojic, D., Lee, S. 2015. Quantum epidemiology:
Leveraging the data-driven health tradition. Logan, UT/Warsaw, Poland: CIMH Global.

37
health are poetic and useful, but clearly macro-oriented, keyed on what we sense with our in-born
receptors:

To the simple organism which may be found attached to the rocks of the bed of a stream
the flowing water brings the food and oxygen needed for existence and carries away the
waste. These single-cell creatures can live only in watery surroundings; if the stream
dries they die or enter a dormant state. Similar conditions prevail for the incalculable
myriads of cells which constitute our bodies. Each cell has requirements like those of the
single cell in the flowing stream. The cells of our bodies, however, are shut way from any
chances to obtain directly food, water, and oxygen from the distant larger environment,
or to discharge into it the waste materials which result from activity. These conveniences
for getting supplies and eliminating debris have been provided by the development of
moving streams within the body itself – the blood and lymph streams.99

The jump, we might say, to thinking in quantum and cosmic terms in lieu of Newtonian, macro
considerations that are understandable based on sensual data and common knowledge, is a challenging
one for society, limiting factors from economic and political quarters notwithstanding. One result is a
most curious debate in the science of smell, olfacoception or olfacception as previously referenced.
Accepted science, shape theory, has held that odors are identified by means of a “lock-and-key”
mechanism between odor molecules and olfactory receptors. Under this theory, odor molecules attach
to olfactory receptors as a molecular level in a mechanical fashion, as a plug would attach to a
compatible socket.100

Luca Turin presented the case for a vibrational source of olfaction by demonstrating that fragrance
specialists – human and otherwise – can distinguish between fragrances with different vibrational
profiles but identical molecular structures.101 He provided evidence of a match by means of a
“vibrational transduction mechanism.” Malcolm Dyson had attempted to demonstrate a vibrational
basis for odor detection using spectroscopy in a straightforward way, but inconsistencies had led to the
shape theory leading out for the last part of the 20th century. This theory had problems, though; it was
not conclusive as there were many inconsistencies, particularly where considering left and right hand
molecules and identical molecules with different shapes.

His vibrational theory is described as being wildly radical. In a 2004 article in Nature Neuroscience,
Turin’s concept was described as having “no credence in scientific circles.”102 Here is a semantic
bombshell if ever there was one. How can this be? Clearly, the underlying factor with regard to the
sense of smell, as in all things, will be found to be vibrational. That is what electromagnetism is all
about; that is what all of creation is about. If Turin isn’t exactly right in this case, he is at least looking in
the right place, is he not? Subsequent studies have confirmed the work to the point that it can be said:

99
Cannon, W. B. 1932/1967. The wisdom of the body: How the body reacts to disturbance and danger and
maintains the stability essential to life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 27-28.
100
Al-Khalili, J., and McFadden, J. 2014. Life on the edge: The coming age of quantum biology. London: Bantam
Press, 136-169.
101
Turin, L. 1996. A spectroscopic mechanism for primary olfactory reception. Chemical Senses 21, 773-791,
102
Al-Khalili and McFadden, 164.

38
 So, although considerable controversy remains, the only theory that provides an
explanation of how flies and humans can distinguish the smells of normal and
deuterated compounds is based on the quantum mechanism of inelastic electron
tunneling.103

Nested among the comments about the phenomenon were statements like the concepts would perhaps
be acceptable “in a while “, but “there was too much on the line” currently, which appears to
demonstrate a confused set of priorities. There were some decidedly non-scientific factors that had
entered into the process. Once published, Turin had received funding for a private venture to pursue his
claims and there had been a prominent book on his efforts, directed at the general public, and a BBC
documentary promoting his findings.104 Discoveries such as this have the potential to turn existing
economic and social arrangements upside down. How is this to be considered?

Our position is that problems such as this can be considered more effectively in a tight, rather than a
loose policy environment. Consider the work of Dyson, who got the vision for quantum potential for
fragrance science in the 1920s, but that could not yet make the case for vibration over shape as the
critical link. This was the work of a scientist, effective work, but it did not bring progress in this field at
that time as he and others had hoped. That failure, along with the historical fact that the world of
physics was waylaid and compromised in the 20th century due to political chaos and crisis, allowed
macro-Newtonian medical practice to become detached from such fundamental science.

Turin’s work now is key to this effort to reengage with those longstanding, but largely unused, forms of
knowledge. He obviously has strong scientific and craft skills in many areas – doing specialist work in
more than one field. One challenge he faces was in his particular field of study, in olfaction, but he has
to make the case for quantum science in fields of study that have not necessarily been informed in
questions of quantum mechanics, but that are quite certain that the findings in question would call their
work into question and likely bring economic, social, and political harm.

As to commercial parties, they could likely see enormous financial, professional, and corporate
commitments vanish if Turin’s work proved valid. This in part could account for “overkill” in the Nature
Neuroscience editorial. Perhaps his cause was not helped when he made the jump to commercial
activity, raising the stakes in terms of breadth as well as theaters of action. He may have done this to
obtain continued funding for his work – funding of any kind – or it may have been motivated by desire
for entrepreneurial gain, which is another thing. Scientific requirements should stand on their own, to
be sure, and people should be free as a general rule to pursue their private objectives as a rule, but an
improved environment should be able to deal with both the means and the motivations in improved
ways. In all cases, heightened legitimacy in the areas of the five cycles and increased trust and
contentment on the part of people generally could possibly reduce incentives for outsized monetary
gain at the expense of other important conditions.

As to science and its application, mankind’s relationship with nature and science, it is important to think
in quantum as well as cosmic frames of reference. These got a start in the last century, but they fell out
of favor. How can this be done under conditions just described, where factors of resistance seem more

103
Ibid., 168.
104
Ibid., 163.

39
prominent than sources of friendship and support? These are consideration that owe their foundation
to all of the cycles under consideration.

5.2 SOCIAL – PARSONIAN

Talcott Parsons started his career as an economist, but as such he couldn’t stay there. He perceived that
there was simply too much to be understood with regard to social structures and requirements that
came before economics. This came to a head when a senior colleague at Harvard, Joseph Schumpeter,
offered to work together in a major project in which Parsons would lead – a significant sign of respect
from a colleague and friend. Parsons could not find it in him to respond in the matter in spite of their
friendship because he “needed a relatively complete formal break with economics”.105

Modernists are condescending. This is to say, they are condescending now. They used to be vicious and
murderous in order to achieve their aims. This is a matter of record, beyond opinion. The prices paid for
such condescension in the last century had catastrophic global implications, only some of which have
been acknowledged generally. Fortunately, much deeper knowledge of nature as coopted by failed
social and political developments has not destroyed us. A sense of satisfaction at the end of the 19th
century was false. Resulting from highly tenuous conceptions of natural and social affairs, reckless
colonialists had destroyed the foundations of what had worked for large segments of humankind for
untold generations. As indicated by Mike Davis:

The looms of India and China were defeated not so much by market competition as they
were forcibly dismantled by war, invasion, opium, and a Lancashire-imposed system of
one-way tariffs.106

This was further noted by Karl Polanyi:

The catastrophe of the native community is a direct result of the rapid and violent
disruption of the basic institutions of the victim (whether force is used in the process or
not does not seem altogether relevant). These institutions are disrupted by the very fact
that a market economy is foisted upon an entirely differently organized community;
labor and land are made into commodities, which, again, is only a short formula for the
liquidation of every and any cultural institution in an organic society…. Indian masses in
the second half of the nineteenth century did not die of hunger because they were
exploited by Lancashire; they perished in large numbers because the Indian village
community had been demolished.107

To be sure, the modernists grant no quarter to the traditionalists. It can be asked if there are
traditionalists left, or if a new form of traditionalist has surfaced – educated in the modernist
viewpoints, but open to ways of blending forms. They have not been eliminated, the most resilient of

105
Parsons, T. 1970. On building social systems theory. Daedalus, 99(4), 834.
106
Davis, M. 2001. Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the Third World. London: Verso,
295.
107
Polanyi, K. 1944/1957. The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon
Press, 159-160.

40
them,108 which is a good thing, because we may well have need for them.109 This is a point made by
Gregory Bateson, who wrote of a new synthesis that leaned heavily on tradition.110 In the words of his
Daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson,

… Gregory has found a place to stand and speak of “God,” somewhere between those
who find the word unusable and those who use it all too often to argue positions that
Gregory regarded as untenable. Playfully, he proposed a new name for the deity, but in
full seriousness he searched for an understanding of the related but more general term
“the sacred,” moving gingerly and cautiously onto holy ground, “where angels fear to
tread”. Given what we know about the biological world (that knowledge that Gregory
called “ecology,” with considerable cybernetic revision of the usage of this term by
members of the contemporary biological profession), and given what we are able to
understand about “knowing” (what Gregory called “epistemology,” again within a
cybernetic framework), he was attempting what one might mean by “the sacred.” Might
the concept of the sacred refer to matters intrinsic to description, and thus be recognized
as part of “necessity”? And if a viable clarity could be achieved, would it allow important
new insight? It seems possible that a mode of knowing that attributes a certain
sacredness to the organization of the biological world might be, in some significant
sense, more accurate and more appropriate to decision making…

This was a constellation of issues which, for Gregory needed to be addressed in order to
arrive at a theory of action in the living world…111

Answers are not only to be found in nature’s processes as we find them, but also in ourselves and in our
past. Embedded within these histories and the traditions that they disclose and explain are many of the
answers we seek.112 It is indeed in the processes of nature and of mankind’s civilizational underpinnings
that the answers are to be found. Viewing either from the viewpoint of the other is not viable. The
arguments here are for coming to know more, not less, about arriving at a more comprehensive
understanding of tradition – less condescending, to be sure. In this way, new forms of “international
relations”, or “relations with foreigners” can come about. Indeed, there is something natively foreign
about the lifestyles and the life processes of cultures and traditions other than one’s own, but
something in common and reassuring in honoring the right to the processes of each.

This is more than a matter of passive reliance. What can be said of erstwhile “jihadists” who forget to
stop and pray as dictated by the faith. This is more than a stricture; it is a longstanding means of
achieving a frame of reference and a desired state of being. In longstanding traditions, there is an
integrated unity in such things. As noted by Gregory Bateson, _____.

108
Said, E. 1993. Culture and imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
109
Hobsbawm, E. and Polito, A., Cameron, A. (Ed.) 1999/2000. On the edge of the new century. New York: The
New Press, 128-129.
110
Bateson, 1972/2000.
111
Bateson, G., and Bateson, M. C. 1987. Angels fear: Towards an epistemology of the sacred. New York: Bantam
Books, 8-9.
112
van der Pijl, 2010. The foreign encounter in myth and religion. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political
Economy, Vol. II. London: Pluto Press, viii-ix.

41
We can see secondary forms of economic adaptation, bringing tradition into modern policy frameworks,
by the Chilean “Chicago Boys” of late 1980s, creatively crafting capital barriers and other protective
structures,113 and in creativity on the periphery, as in Turkey.114 Albert Hirschman generally,115 and Scott
Nearing,116 who took his professor, Simon Patten’s, guidance on alternative social and economic systems
to heart by living an elemental lifestyle for most of his adult life.117 Ankie Hoogvelt is of this more open-
minded, broad, and reflective mode, considering social and cultural factors in the economic
development equation.118

Indeed, an argument existed that imperialists not only did harm to their vassals, but to their own
economies and people through inattention to both economic and social affairs119 and through a
perverse form of cultural competition, as between the English and the French in the early 19th
century.120 Van der Pijl offers a historical theory that with Britain in the lead, two fundamental
imbalances entered into international relations, (1) a sense of exceptionalism on the part of the English
with regard to the rest of the world, and (2) an imbalanced conception of economic governance,
guaranteeing the downward spiral of capitalism as described by Schumpeter as absentee owners make
progressively more demanding and less viable requirements on their corporate subordinates,
management and labor alike. The Dutch had much to do with the establishment of the outwardly
aggressive model in their intervention in the English Civil War in the 17th century. John Locke provided
the rationale – the economy taking precedence over society and instilling private property with an
“economically aggressive” aspect.121 This was buoyed up in the late 18th century by Adam Smith.

It would take until the 1820s before the bonds of language, culture, and property rights
brought the British Empire and the United States back into a common liberal line-up that
I call the Lockean heartland. This was the form in which the English-speaking West has
maintained its global hegemony until the present day…

This particular quality of a voluntary union also underlies the Anglophone chauvinism by
which the English-speaking West distinguishes itself from narrower nationalisms… It

113
Büchi, H. 2008. La transformación económica de Chile: El modelo de progreso. Santiago de Chile: Empresa El
Mercurio S. A. R.; Santiso, J. (Author), Sanmartin, C. and Murry, E. (Trans.). 2007. Latin America’s political economy
of the possible: Beyond good revolutionaries and free-marketeers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Bosworth, B. P.,
Dornbusch, R., and Labán, R. (Eds.) 1994. The Chilean economy: Policy lessons and challenges. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution.
114
Aydin, Z. 2005. The political economy of Turkey. London: Pluto Press, 138-178.
115
Hirschman, A. O., and Adelman, J. (Ed.). 2013. The essential Hirschman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
116
Nearing, H., and Nearing, S. 1954/1979. The good life. New York: Schocken Books.
117
Patten, S. N. 1902. The theory of prosperity. New York: The Macmillan Company; Patten, S. N. 1890/1895. The
economic basis of protection. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.
118
Hoogvelt, A. M. M. 1997/2001. Globalization and the postcolonial world: The new political economy of
development 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Hoogvelt, A. M. M. 1982. The Third World
in global development. Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Education Ltd; Hoogvelt, A. M. M. 1976. The
sociology of developing societies, 2nd ed. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.
119
Carey, H. C. 1858. Letters to the President on the foreign and domestic policy of the Union and its effects, as
exhibited in the condition of the people and the State. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
120
Said, E. 1993. W. Culture and imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 83.
121
van der Pijl, K. 2007. Nomads, empires, states. Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, Vol. I. London:
Pluto Press, 141.

42
 defines a broader area as ‘civilized’ according to certain rules which alone bestow on it
the label of ‘humanity’, whilst relegating those outside to barbarian status, evil or
otherwise. Thus, through pseudo-speciation, the heartland claims to occupy a superior
plane of civilized existence; no sovereign equality can be legitimately upheld against it.
The notion of innate rights, modelled on English birthright serves as the antenna seeking
out candidates for incursion into civilized humanity.

On the basis of the Lockean mutation, then, the foreign relations of England and its
ethnic offshoots would develop as a complex articulating different modes. In its quasi-
imperial attitude, there are already – given the universalism inherent in the imperial
concept of space – the roots for a notion of international community, indeed a global
‘commonwealth’ This combines sovereign equality for its members with a homogenizing
liberal culture from which no deviation is tolerated. Sovereign equality is always based
on a common normative system which also entails obligations; in this sense it marks the
final form of the evolving contradiction between separate political existence and
common humanity. In the case of the English-speaking West, however, we are looking at
a universalism in which the rest of the world is considered a backward anomaly.

The exchange aspect of the rise of a Lockean heartland resides in the growth of the
capitalist mode of production. Capital here enjoys the specific hospitality offered by the
unique combination of a series of states restricting their jurisdiction to their own
territory, whilst leaving transnational capital the largest possible free space. In the
exchanges with the rest of the world, the West seeks to extend this hospitality by trying
to pry open states that control their own societies and to dispossess the state classes
that resist Western hegemony and control.122

Edward Said used literature as a vehicle for examining inherent social and economic imbalances in
England, stimulating its imperial aspirations. He presents Jane Austen’s literary work Mansfield Park as a
representative example of a degree to which England in the early 19th century had given up on
cultivation and improvement of domestic lands and its labor in lieu of foreign exploits. As stated in that
novel, “What assures the domestic tranquility and attractive harmony of one [the English estate] is the
productivity and regulated discipline of the other [a slave-populated plantation in the West Indies].”123
Furthermore, the son and heir to the family in question was relegated to the British Navy, hopefully with
“continually good conduct and rising fame.”124 Fame in the context of empire-building was held in higher
regard than gains from establishing an economic foundation for the family by means of the estate itself.
Thus, from a productivity standpoint, there is no one at home – not in the estates or elsewhere in the
Motherland. As described at that time by the American H. C. Carey:

We thus have here, first, a system that is unsound and unnatural, and second, a theory
invented for the purpose of accounting for the poverty and wretchedness which are its
necessary results. The miseries of Ireland are charged to over-population, although
millions of acres of the richest soils of the kingdom are waiting drainage to take their
place among the most productive in the world, and although the people of Ireland are

122
Ibid., 143-144.
123
Said, Culture and imperialism, 87.
124
Ibid., 91.

43
 compelled to waste more labor than would pay, many times over, for all the cloth and
iron they consume. The wretchedness of Scotland is charged to overpopulation when a
large portion of the land is so tied up by entails as to forbid improvement, and almost to
forbid cultivation. The difficulty of obtaining food in England is ascribed to over-
population, when throughout the kingdom a large portion of the land is occupied as
pleasure grounds, by men whose fortunes are due to the system which has ruined
Ireland and India. Over-population is the ready excuse for all the evils of a vicious
system, and so will it continue to be…

To maintain the price of labor in England must be kept steadily at a point so low as to
enable her to underwork the Hindu, the German, and the American, with all the
disadvantage of freight and duties. To terminate it, the price of labor n England must be
raised to such a point as will prevent that competition and compel her to raise her own
food, leaving others to consume their own…125

Entail, something Kenneth has written about,126 was a major factor in the need for the English to look
outside of the British Isles for opportunity. Its effects in this case were to skew efforts offshore and limit
prospects for making use of much of the productive capacity of the great English estates in particular.
Carey further describes the effects of such chronic imbalances on the general populace. The imperial
venture can be seen as a direct cause of risks to the people with regard to their fundamental needs.

We have here a constantly diminishing quantity to be applied to the purchase of various

descriptions of food that from luxuries have become necessaries of life, and that of the
materials of clothing. It follows, of course, that as food is the article of prime necessity,
the amount that each expends of clothing is very small indeed; the consequence of which
is, that the people of England, engaged in furnishing cheap clothing to all the world, are
not only badly fed but exceedingly badly clothed, the cost of clothing, in labor, being so
great as to place it beyond their reach, the amount that can be expended for that
purpose tending rather to decrease.127

Traditional economic historians do not dwell on this point; rather they emphasize concepts stemming
from their logical framework, which is not grounded in social issues. This reflects the Lockean switch in
priorities mentioned earlier. For example, when considering limited agricultural development in the first
half of the 19th century, a “shift from agriculture” in his words, Nick Crafts cites “comparative
advantage” over other nations in manufacturing as the sole rationale. Otherwise, he said that Britain
could have become the granary, rather than the workshop for the rest of the world.128 Not mentioned is
that Britain could have become the granary for itself, although Crafts cites David Ricardo, who refutes
writings of Thomas Malthus on the benefits of growing domestic corn for security’s sake in order to

125
Carey, H. C. 1868. The harmony of interests: Agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial. Philadelphia, PA:
Henry Carey Baird, Industrial Publisher, 64-65.
126
Tingey, K. B. 1990/2008. Entail: A lingering question. A history and evaluation of inheritance and succession.
Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.
127
Carey, The harmony of interests, 57.
128
Crafts, N. 1981/1994. The industrial revolution. In Floud, R., and McCloskey, D. (Eds.), 1981/1994, The economic
history of Britain since 1700, 2nd ed., Vol. 1, 1700-1860. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 57-59.

44
overcome the effects on necessities of fluctuating prices.129 Crafts and Ricardo, however, do not
consider that social considerations, such as security and safety, might override the search for
disassociated, capitalistically-driven financial gain or related corporate, political, or military power.

The work of economic historians is an interesting phenomenon, in that it has typically described events
and conditions from a narrow lens. Clearly, economic history has been written with prevalent economic
theories in mind without perspectives such as would be provided from independent viewpoints.
Questions could include, “Were competitive – or at least multi-party market transactions occurred, was
this a matter of necessity, or were they in the long-term interest of colonizers or colonists themselves”?
Very little consideration of indigenous conditions or the nature of classical cultures and civilizations is
evident in such accounts. Furthermore, conditions in the colonizing states is lightly considered, resulting
in little evaluation of what drove them to aggressively and destructively impose themselves on other
societies around the world.

Entail, for example, is a legal act to withdraw ownership of property from commerce without end. This
resulted in limited opportunities for innovation, particularly in England, which encouraged aggressive
commercial efforts elsewhere, even among the aristocracy that owned property. There is a self-
satisfying essence to virtually all of this analysis, that colonization resulted in increased incomes in spite
of examples of abuse and want and that general improvement was the result. This is an insipid, self-
reinforcing argument that does not square with human conditions before the colonization period, nor
with conditions of instability that have often resulted from resulting imbalances.

Parsons did not exhibit radical traits – other than to insist in the primacy of the social over the economic,
which is probably a radical, if not a controversial position to take in many regimes. Along with Neil
Smelser, he published a major work between social and economic affairs.130 Parsons was quite
disappointed that the work made little impact. Much of his other work was instrumental to the
understanding of organizational legitimacy and the critical nature of action in social settings.

They make reference to economic systems in light of four general fundamental imperatives of social
systems: (1) latent pattern-maintenance and tension management; (2) goal-attainment; (3) adaptation;
and (4) integration. The economy is an adaptive sub-system of society, along with others.131 This is an
approach to economic issues as supporting desired and desirable social outcomes. This is a much more
iterative, collaborative concept. Parsons is much concerned with boundary questions within the
functional areas, between them and the economy, as it is known, and between the economy and the
societies which it serves. This is a complex task, with much variety, as outlined by Parsons:

Since I have attributed such importance to the process of differentiation in societal

development generally, but especially in its modern phase, the phenomenon of
pluralization with its distinctive features, conditions, and consequences becomes of

129
Malthus, T. R., Himmelfarb, G. (Ed.). 1798/1872/1960. On population, 1st and 7th ed. New York: The Modern
Library; Malthus, T. R. 1815. Importation of foreign corn The grounds of an opinion on the policy of restricting the
importation of foreign corn; intended as an Appendix to “Observations on the Corn Law.” London: John Murray
and J. Johnson & Co.
130
Parsons, T., and Smelser, N. J. 1956. Economy and society: A major contribution to the synthesis of economic and
sociological theory. New York: Free Press.
131
Ibid., 13-28.

45
 substantive importance… It has become more and more evident that the phenomena in
this range are of critical significance to modern society, not only in the economic sphere,
but also in the articulation of occupation with kinship, ethnicity, religious structures, and
various aspects of the category of community. At the same time, for a combination of
reasons of ideology and intellectual history, the focus of attention and the development
of conceptual tools appropriate to this area have seriously lagged behind.132

Furthermore, in a world of spacetime awareness, it is difficult to hold onto geopolitics as it has been
known. It is difficult to “stuff” the complexities of unfettered social life into state documents based
principally on geography. There are examples of social systems of government in overlapping
geographical jurisdictions. The Ottoman millet system is a famous example of this; there are others as
well. With the reassertion of traditional societies around the world, we can see more of these. This
includes American Indian tribes in North America as well as Aboriginal tribes in Australia and the Maori
in New Zealand. There are many more of these; this is an important, timely issue.

One of the biggest challenges is that of priority itself. In the last few centuries, economic aspects have
been used to determine social goals. This can be seen in Max Weber’s depiction of modern capitalism.
Based on a highly-contorted version of Christian theology, developments that grossly expanded the
pervasiveness and effects of capitalism came to equate competition with righteousness. This is to say
that if a person – particularly the male head of household – competed favorably economically, that
person was all the more righteous. This passed the cultural means test in the late Middle Ages. After all,
supporting the needs of one’s family is surely a universal good. On the other hand, if a person did not
compete economically, that is, in the marketplace, he was found wanting. It wasn’t enough to work, to
gain a fair wage or return for efforts – or direct access to important and needed goods. Competition
itself became mandatory. This hardly passes the religious means test of Jesus’ teachings, but that was
beside the point. The selective, materialistic, self-serving “gospel” of aggressive, far-flung capitalism
emerged to be combined with denial and inaction with regard to home country conditions and rules.

Are these boundary questions? Surely, employment fits within the rubric of economics, but, on the
other hand, primary human needs are in question. Is this not a social issue, one that is central to all else?
Nature makes no requirement of a wage, where transactions in fundamentals speak for themselves.
Korzybski made strong statements with regard to boundary issues between society and economy and
the misunderstanding and misuse of symbols in the process:

The affairs of man are conducted by our own, man-made rules and according to man-
made theories. Man’s achievements rest upon the use of symbols. For this reason, we
must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the
symbols, rule us. Now, the term ‘symbol’ applies to a variety of things words and money
included. A piece of paper, called a dollar or a pound, has very little value if the other
fellow refuses to take it; so we see that money must be considered as a symbol for
human agreement, as well as deeds to property stocks, bonds, etc. The reality behind the
money-symbol is doctrinal, ‘mental’, and one of the most precious characteristics of
mankind. But it must be used properly; that is, with the proper understanding of its
structure and ways of functioning. It constitutes a grave danger when misused.

132
Parsons, 1970, 856.

46
 When we say ‘our rulers’, we mean those who are engaged in the manipulation of
symbols. There is no escape from the fact that they do, and that they always will, rule
mankind, because we constitute a symbolic class of life, and we cannot cease from being
so, except by regressing to the animal level.133

Our entire enterprise is thus a matter of establishing, adjudicating, and managing such symbols. It comes
as no revelation to learn that money is misused. It is similarly not surprising to learn of the social
underpinnings for much of this misuse, with money as a symbol and with regard to symbols in general
that get out of hand. Korzybski describes these using very direct language, possibly harsh from a
contemporary perspective, but possibly persuasive nonetheless:

Many children and feeble-minded show distinct acquisitiveness. Like some animals, they
show a tendency for collection of objects, and value their collections highly… Children
seldom stick to anything for long. They hunt for new excitements, and the old toys are
often soon forgotten. Similarly, grown-up infants hunt for new excitements, for new
toys, whether they be a house or an automobile, and wife or a lover… An adult evaluates
a man by whet he has in his head or character, but the infantile type largely judges him
by the symbols (money) which he has, or the kind of hat or clothes he wears…134

Money represents a symbol for all human time-binding characteristics. Animals do not
have it. No doubt bees produce honey, but these products of the bees do not constitute
wealth until man puts his hands on them. Money is not edible or habitable. It is
worthless if the other fellow refuses to take it. The multi-ordinal reality behind the
symbol is found in human agreement. The value behind the symbol is doctrinal. Fido
does not discriminate between the different orders of abstractions. If we copy him, we
worship the symbol alone. ‘In gold we trust’ becomes the motto, with all its
identifications and destructive consequences. Smith should not identify the multi-ordinal
reality behind the symbol with the symbol. It is amusing, when not tragic, to see how the
so-called ‘practical man’ deals mostly with fictitious values, for which he is willing to live
and die. When he has the upper hand and ignorantly plays with symbols, disregarding
the multi-ordinal realities behind them, of course, he drives civilization to disasters.
History is full of examples of this.135

We see the utter folly of racing to accumulate symbols, worthless in themselves, while
destroying the ‘mental’ and ‘moral’ values which are behind the symbols. For it is useless
to ‘own’ a semantically unbalanced world. Such ownership is a fiction, no matter how
stable it may look on paper. Commercialism, as a creed, is a folly of this type. Someday
even economists, bankers and merchants will understand that such ‘impractical’ works …
lead to the revision of standards of evaluation and are directly helping the stabilization
of an economic system. Meanwhile, in their ignorance, they do their best to keep the
economic system unscientific, and, therefore, unbalanced. History shows clearly how the
rulers have generally made life unbearable for the rest of mankind, and what bloody
results have followed… Whether [these] disasters will occur, the unknown future shall

133
Korzybski, 1933/1941, 76-77.
134
Ibid., 519.
135
Ibid., 549.

47
 decide; but out of this unknown, one fact remains a certainty; namely, that this will
depend on whether or not science can take hold of human affairs; I hope it can, but the
blind forces of identification are so strong and powerful that perhaps such hopes are
premature.136

Wholesale commitment of commerce to monetary symbolism is unkind to many. It was not enough that
a person in need presented himself in a “work guarantee” environment. It must have been that such an
activity be socially low. Such workers must be categorized as “unskilled” persons. Such persons are
considered to be “unemployed” in such frameworks, not of their own doing, but as an artifact of a
presumed market for labor. Apparently, no one needs or wants them to be able to work, at least not at
a mutually-agreeable wage rate. In this, economic presumptions put society on a “tightrope”, high in the
sky indeed, where people have been induced – or forced – to forego direct activities in support of their
fundamental needs as an act of faith in the existence and presumed behaviors of such chimeric
phenomena as markets, particularly where items on the long list of market prerequisites are not
present.

Such perceptions are not representative of reasonable alternatives in such matters; as it way they
resulted in quite negative social as well as economic outcomes. This is indeed semantics gone awry.
What of a highly skilled person that would work to fulfill basic needs so that time is available for
advanced thought in his or her field of knowledge? Such a condition would allow for knowledge
development unencumbered by institutional or economic restrictions. It could be a means of thus
supporting basic research, coupled with the commitment and resources of individuals involved. It is
possible that people could put social issues, or other persona factors, ahead of monetary stores and the
aggregation of things.

A guaranteed means of working for life’s necessities would also provide viable options for individuals
with organizational affiliations that were toxic to them, counterproductive, or functioning in ways that
were antithetical to their moral or cognitive desires. Without a viable option of this kind, many
individuals live professional and work lives of quiet desperation. On the one hand, they need the
symbolic rewards gained in this way to meet their basic needs and those of their families. In a singular
monetary system – a controlled system of symbols, there are no other options – at least that are legally
and socially acceptable. On the other hand, they may well be called on to carry out activities contrary to
their knowledge of processes and their requirements and to their desire for fulfillment. This will likely
result in marginal outcomes – at least not as desirable as would otherwise be the case – leading to
compromised states of mental and physical health, as well. It may well be best to deal with means of
acquiring such necessities directly and relegate the highly abstract, symbolic activities to wants more
than to needs. There would be a certain beneficial level of sanity in such a move, as society would not be
placed at risk thereby.

Individuals in operating and supervisory roles, even line workers, may well be correct as to what needs
to be done – at least more so than their superiors. This may particularly be the case in a capitalist
environment of absentee ownership. Operational priorities of this kind do constitute a challenge to
capitalism, to control through absentee ownership. The lack of a viable means of relying on talent in this
manner substantially retards outcomes. This is surely a check on competition and open market activity.

136
Ibid., 549-550.

48
Who better to compete than former managers and workers? Their employers would need to treat them
better under more fluid economic conditions, where they could reset their careers with minimal risk.
This introduces a major paradox. By insisting on implementation of policies that require labor
competition, commercial competition and renewal suffers.

Social factors should underlie economic priorities and structures. To the extent that this is possible,
human conditions will improve. It may be helpful to provide an example as to how this occurs. During
the Great Depression in the United States, there was considerable interest in the history of China’s “ever
normal” granaries as a means of providing for basic nutritional needs of people in times of need. In
times of need people would be able to call upon such stores to stave off hunger, if not starvation. Such
plans were criticized as applying to “hard times” only. Of course, one purpose of such reserves is to ward
off the effects of hard times. It is inconceivable that such plans could be construed in any other way, for
once times of need present themselves, it is too late perhaps to establish effective savings plans.

Furthermore, there was interest in means of providing people with alternatives with regard to
necessities, including job guarantees. In one sense, this was described as a means of providing for
“stores” of non-skilled employment. This is to say, that non-skilled individuals would be given the
opportunity to work at a basic level.

5.3 ECONOMIC – SCHUMPETERIAN

Schumpeter was rare among economists in that he was persistent in calling attention to the processes
and preferences that underscored the actions of the economy. He consistently pointed out that society
came first. Astonishingly, many economist and others are either not aware of the distinction, they are of
the opposite opinion – which doesn’t bear scrutiny; certainly there are economic laws of some kind that
must be complied with when faced with the realities of nature and established social preferences and
commitments. Overriding economic laws, by this way of thinking, when broken, would confer some
form of natural or metaphysical penalty. The two latter cases are very similar. If economics legitimately
should take precedence over the preferences and commitments of society, economics is a powerful
force, indeed. Individuals with knowledge of those laws would legitimately belong at the helm of
societal as well as political affairs, as we see much the case currently. Schumpeter was not that kind of
economist.

Typically, economists, once they acknowledge that money is and has always been an artificial construct,
immediately thereafter treat monetary phenomena as though money were a primary economic good.
Schumpeter did not. Economists are famous for lining up long lists of unlikely simplifying assumptions in
their analysis and then acting as if their results were valid in all cases. Schumpeter did not. It is this
wiser, humbler approach to economics exemplified by his work that we refer to here.

49
He wasn’t perfect in this regard. He demonstrated dismissiveness with regard to Jevon’s responsiveness
to Herschel’s demonstration of relationships between sunspots and crop yields. The force of his work
was clear, however, the emphasis on cycles and processes. It
must be understood that if guessing continues to be the
primary decision policy – deciding without full access to
data, nor to a full range knowledge-based processes –
outcomes will continue to be compromised. There is much
literature that warns us of the implications of indecision of
this kind. Following is an enduring and endearing interaction
between the protagonist Alice and the Cheshire Cat as also
shown in Figure 7: Alice with disembodied smile of the
Cheshire Cat.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go

Figure 7: Alice with disembodied smile of the
Cheshire Cat. By Andres Rodriguez. https://www.
flickr.com/photos/symic/3473931409
from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to
get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the
Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an
explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you
only walk long enough.”137

Caught in an empirical undercurrent, the science of our time needs to come to a remembrance
of the possibilities with regard to knowledge and to the nature of the fundamental tasks that
they represent. As seen in Figure 8: Moving from guesses to informed, process-based decisions,
the point of the matter is to continually come to understand the root causes of individual
health conditions. Once known, such information can be used for private and public purposes.
This, of course, presumes an effective, yet tight information processing model that rigorously
protects context. In this way, the same data can be used for different purposes, according to
the science as well as for social, political, and financial policy.
What would an economy look like that was based on processes and root causes and such? The
prevailing logic, the neo-liberal one, is a pretty open affair in this regard, with repeated
references to “invisible hands” and passive refereeing of the selling and buying of things and
things that people do, the famous Frenchness of “laissez-faire” and Latinness of “caveat
emptor”. “Individual freedom,” that is the thing. These are marketing-driven ideas, certainly not
impeded by the absentee ownership of capitalism. To many, such concepts are as fundamental
as their most cherished religious beliefs, and – as long documented by Weber – intertwined
with them.

137
Carroll, L., Tenniel, J. (Illus.) 1865. Chapter Six – Pig and pepper. In Author, Alice in wonderland. London:
Macmillan.

50
 Figure 8: Moving from guesses to informed, process-based decisions

He and others document a slowly-developing Gospel of Commerce, redacted from the Biblical
Gospels, always with a twist, that is buried deep in the underpinnings of prevalent economic
frameworks in the West. The Gospel of Commerce is not the real Gospel, the one that emerged
from the culture of the Hebrews and earlier from Mesopotamia, but a selective redaction with
the effect of justifying initiative and materialist outcomes as some form of religious
ascendance, if not justification. Such are the foundations of the “greed is good” mantra of
empirically-centered economics, where processes do not matter, but statistical evaluation of
outcomes do. The essence of the argument is metaphysical. It is:
𝐵𝑎𝑑1 + 𝐵𝑎𝑑2 + 𝐵𝑎𝑑3 + … + 𝐵𝑎𝑑𝑛 ≝ 𝐺𝑜𝑜𝑑
The argument, of course, is not redeemed by the law of large numbers. Perhaps at stated, the
question is presented in too harsh a format. A better rendition of the mind-set could be this:
𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑1 + 𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑2 + 𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑3 + … + 𝐺𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑛 ≝ 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑦 𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔
Weber outlines this religious and economic sleight of hand, a form of irrationality that fed on
religious sentiments while inserting the metaphysical and mysterious in the underpinnings of
economic thought and action. It is such misplaced faith that opened the door first to the
“invisible hand”, then to “laissez-faire” lack of policy, and then to faith and dependence on
monetary aggregates, which is Keynesianism. Although there are some disagreements among
adherents of these various schools of thought and other non-process-oriented ways of thinking,
they descend from this common faith, which is a corruption of the original faith.
It is true that the acquisition of wealth, attributed to piety, led to a dilemma, in all
respects similar to that into which the medieval monasteries constantly fell; the religious
guild led to wealth, wealth to fall from grace, and this again to the necessity of re-
constitution. Calvinism sought to void this difficulty through the idea that man was only
an administrator of what God had given him; it condemned enjoyment, yet permitted no

51
 flight from the world but rather regarded working together, with its rational discipline,
as the religious task of the individual. Out of this system of thought came our word
“calling,” which is known only to the languages influenced by the Protestant translation
of the Bible. It expresses the value placed upon rational activity carried on according to
the rational capitalistic principle, as the fulfillment of a God-given task.138

In this, we make no quarrel with success, as such an embedded philosophical connection can
serve to stimulate much activity, which it has in the case of modern development. We must
recognize this for what it is, however, and come to identify opportunities for improvements,
foundationally and in terms of policy. The point is, the whole proposition is irrational. From the
perspective of Alfred Korzybski, it is un-sane, which is to say, not sane. There is room for much
error here. Such an environment represents a hall of mirrors with regard to motivations and
rationales – and the appearance of method where there is none – that dooms the enterprise
from the outset.
There is such a thing as religious faith – long established by our ancestors, accompanied with
many defined and refined means of intoning religious outcomes. This involves textual guidance,
models of prayer and meditation, precision in carrying out carefully-contextual ordinances and
traditions, and longstanding mores. For the most part, these lead to outcomes that cannot
otherwise be achieved. Transubstantiation of those historically- and culturally- grounded,
integrated, forms of living with paradoxical, presumptive economic “magic” opens a Pandora’s
box of uncontrolled outcomes and much potential mayhem. As indicated by Joan Robinson:
Economics has always been partly a vehicle for the ruling ideology of each period as well
as partly a method of scientific investigation. It limps along with one foot in untested
hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans. … our task is to sort out, as best we
may, this mixture of ideology and science.139

Robinson’s contribution, as an enlightened Keynesian who outlived the midcentury break from the great
economists of cycles, is of great importance to this discussion. Historically, commercial served as
counterweight to centralized, paternal nationalized powers and oppressive aristocracies. Richard
Cantillon wrote the first acknowledged work in economics in 18th century France, carefully avoiding any
political questions so as to avoid censure and more. Mystery surrounding the publication of his “An
Essay on Economic Theory” reflects this question of dodging potentially oppressive governmental
powers. Missing was the question of which of economics and politics should be preeminent over the
other, but clearly emerging from Cantillon’s work – extending to that of Adam Smith and others was an
air of mystery as to how things can be done under a cloak of privacy, the pubic good emerging from
provide self-serving behavior.

Cantillon’s mode of the isolated estate is a conceptual analysis of the emergence of the
market economy from feudalism. It is the inspiration for Adam Smith’s invisible hand
because it demonstrates that entrepreneurial self-interest will regulate the economy of

138
Weber, M. 1927. General economic theory. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 367.
139
Robinson, J. 1962/2006. Economic philosophy. Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Publishers, Rutgers University/Transaction
Publishers, back cover.

52
 the isolated estate just as well or better than if the estate owner continued to make all
the decisions.140

In his time, Cantillon made it clear that economics and politics should be separate in their consideration.
He didn’t specify fact or opinion as to precedence. Ultimately, the question speaks to the nature of the
polity, the society in question. To view one or the other as always preeminent is surely counter-
productive, a semantic nightmare. Surely the general preference needs to build from the foundations of
nature and of life on up, but the details will need to be considered in light of preferences as considered
by people and the institutions they organize and support. Currently, we can see that economic forces
hold sway, able to quashing the debates with overwhelming economic power,141 a phenomenon that is
nonetheless waning.142 Capitalism does not join in the conversation, but attempts to buy it, if not buy it
out. Robinson quotes Schumpeter’s point that acquisition of money through commerce alone does not
buy respect, in that capitalists cannot “say boo to a goose – both in the drawing room and on the
platform” because all are aware that their only guide is monetary profit.143

Unfortunately, history has shown – certainly current history demonstrates – that persuasion is not
needed where money is in store. This, of course, a major factor in Schumpeter’s famous pessimism with
regard to capitalism’s cyclical character144. This is a major factor in absentee ownership’s self-destructive
nature, by constantly increasing demands for more financial provide from less effort and fewer, or at
least cheaper, inputs. The famous musical comedy, “The Sound of Music”, includes the song, “How Do
You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” Their solution was to “farm her out,” a strategy that served them all
well – and not a new or a novel one, for that matter.

If we were to sing a song, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Capitalists?” there would be a human
cry of righteous indignation, so fundamentally has the presumption of holiness surrounding the term
been implanted. Some “head-scratching” at least may result from clarification of the term’s technical
meaning, but without a sound alternative, the default reaction is certain to reassert itself; the issue was
not a rhetorical one in the first place. People associate capitalism – presumably in an unbridled state –
with concepts that they hold dear, many of which should be held dear. One of these is freedom, a
universal good to be sure.

Such bundling in this case is a major part of the problem: In a capitalistically-driven situation, customers
are not free to make real choices, but are limited only to those presented by means of the capitalist
system, which is relentlessly obsessed with continually providing less while demanding more. As
capitalism, ownership control separate from management, takes hold of commerce, nothing can be
taken for granted. The product that you purchased yesterday, at what seemed to be a fair price, cannot
be presumed to be available tomorrow under similar terms. The capitalist-absentee owners of the

140
Cantillon, R., Saucier, C. (Tran.), and Thornton, M. (Ed.). 2010/1730. An essay on economic theory. Auburn, AL:
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 14.
141
King, M. 2016. The end of alchemy: Money, banking, and the future of the global economy. New York: W. W.
Norton & Co.; Stockman, D. A. 2013. The great deformation: The corruption of capitalism in America. New York:
Public Affairs; Quiggin, J. 2010. Zombie economics: How dead ideas still walk among us. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press; Stiglitz, J. E. 2003. Globalization and its discontents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
142
Hoogvelt, A. 1997/2001. Globalization and the postcolonial world: The new political economy of development,
2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University.
143
Ibid., 20.
144
Schumpeter, J. A. 1950. Can capitalism survive? New York: Harper Perennial.

53
enterprises in question are likely to have made demands that forced changes – consistently to provide
less while demanding more. See Figure 9: Example of capitalist "less for more" strategy for a recent
example. Such strategies are common in our times, to be sure, resulting in higher prices, smaller
packaging, undesirable bundling, cheap materials and ingredients, and altered formulas. The ultimate
problem is that what is desired is simply no longer available, as it no longer qualified under the financial
sphincter effect of monetary zealotry.

Figure 9: Example of capitalist "less for more" strategy

Braudel notes that there are no historic players that have willingly devolved themselves of power and
privilege,145 so why should the capitalists be expected to do so? Schumpeter describes a pattern of
forced corruption that ultimately permeates society. The global primacy of corporatism attests to this.
Victory on their part has been declared for decades. John Kenneth Galbraith’s declaration of limits in the
1960s assumed domestic constraints146 and may have been premature, but there seems to be little
slowing down corporate self-enrichment and policy-shopping in their own form of “multilateralism”.147
They have power that extends far beyond economics, per se. This involves primary economic entities as
well as enterprises and institutions dedicated specifically to finance and money.

Much has been altered, from a global perspective, as a result of the Great Recession beginning in 2008.
Anything that smacks of core-periphery is now suspect more than ever. The periphery, to be sure, is on a
mission to address clear failings of a global economic environment. The path to do so is not entirely
clear. There seems to be an unwillingness, however, to suffer further from the mistakes of others. Of
course, this serves to compromise openness, for what that is worth. The point is that economic policy
has become embroiled with a varied combination of social, political, and military factors that have
skewed both understanding and outcomes. Economics as a discipline has been presumed from the
outset to be national in orientation, or put differently, to constitute a dimension of state-based policy.

The very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism. As a pure subject it is too difficult
to be a rewarding object of study; the beauty of mathematics and the satisfaction of

145
Braudel, 1979/1984, 628.
146
Galbraith, J. K. 1949. The American economy: Its substance and myth. In J. K. Gabraith, 1977, The Galbraith
Reader. New York: Bantam Books.
147
xxxx

54
 discoveries in the natural sciences are denied to the practitioners of this scrappy,
uncertain, ill-disciplined subject. It would never have been developed except in the hope
of throwing light upon questions of policy. But policy means nothing unless there is an
authority to carry it out, and authorities are national...

The hard-headed classicals made no bones about it. They were arguing against the
narrow nationalism of mercantilists in favor of a more far-sighted policy, but they were
in favor of free trade because it was good for Great Britain, not because it was good for
the world.148

Of course, there have been other considerations characterized by a lack of rational social framework. As
indicated by Robinson:

If the question is once put: Would a greater contribution to human welfare by an

investment in capacity to produce knick-knacks that have to be advertised in order to be
sold or an investment in improving health service? it seems to me that the answer would
only be too obvious; the best reply that laissez-faire ideology can offer is not to ask the
question.149

The first essential for economists, is … “to avoid talking at cross purposes” and,
addressing the world, reading their own doctrines aright, to combat, not foster, the
ideology which pretends that values which can be measured in terms of money are the
only ones that ought to count.150

For our purposes, positioning of economics, and commerce, in a social framework is greatly aided by
Talcott Parsons and Neil Smelser. They advocate a coordinated means of control of economic affairs
based on a process-based orientation. This serves to underscore the feasibility of applying a dual control
approach to economics within their framework.

Thus, we are left with the cycle itself, the capitalist cycle. This, as considered by Schumpeter based on
the best available evidence at that time, is the 54-year Kondratieff cycle. Braudel also documents these
cycles, back to 1845, when capitalist movements are held to dominate. He declares, furthermore, that
they existed “hundreds of years earlier”.151 Schumpeter’s point was that a coordinated dance between
social and economic factors. The process begins in an heroic vein with the entrepreneur, a class of
remarkable individuals that envision social change and make efforts to instigate them through
commercial means. It carries on to more substance, coupled with social and political influence as it
grows. This involves clusters of enterprises and supporting organizations that are dependent on the
fundamental innovation in question.

Excitement and entrepreneurism convert to predictability and financial management. Partly due to
mortality, partly due to a broadening of financial capital, the effort becomes increasingly divided,
ultimately a vehicle dedicated to financial profit. The acceptance process of the innovation wanes,
competition erodes its base, and the effects of increasingly demanding, remote ownership are to

148
Robinson, 124.
149
Robinson, 138.
150
Ibid., 147.
151
Braudel, 1979/1984, 80.

55
divorce decision-making, if not governance, from the realities of the innovation’s marketplace. Not
content to let it die, the financiers exert political pressures to counter market effects. This corrupts the
enterprises in question as well as the political and social environment that allowed for the innovation in
the first place. This is Schumpeter’s famous observation that capitalism sows the seeds of its own
demise.

As it stands, this is a well-recognized depiction of human frailty. There are those that would say that it is
inevitable. Significant efforts have been applied to forces other than those of capitalism, even in the
context of commerce. One of the most important of these, an enormous empirical effort throughout the
20th century, was the quality movement, which grew into what was termed the lean production
phenomenon. The objective there was quite the opposite of capitalism. The quality and lean productive
movement was dedicated to continually providing more for less.152 This is a movement to apply
knowledge, supported by continual empirical study, to achieve savings in all things – materials, labor,
energy, etc. – while continually also improving quality. This movement achieved great things in this
regard first at Western Electric in North America, where it started with the work of Walter Shewhart,153
the in the American materiel buildup during World War II and later in Japan under guidance from W.
Edwards Deming.

The Japanese rose to unprecedented heights by embracing, then expanding on the work of Shewhart,
attracting the attention again of American manufacturers.154 In the final analysis, the statistical approach
to management faltered in Japan, falling prey to financial and governance shortcomings there.155 In
corporations, it failed to prove a counterweight to capitalism’s crushing requirements.156 For one thing,
it has yet to be considered for its benefits to management, only viewed as a manufacturing method. This
could prove important in taming commerce. From a conceptual standpoint, continuous improvement
and capitalism could coexist. As shown in lean productions prime – in Japan in the 1970s – they prove a
potent combination.

If this is the case, is it possible to soften the blow, or to contain the capitalist effects as in a “tempest in a
teapot”? This is a question that relates to Korzybski’s concerns for sanity. Can this be achieved by
suspending society in an adaptable, self-correcting semantic network of sanity? This is more than a little
what time-binding promises. This would require a pervasive infrastructure of defining and managing
general semantics and context. From a conceptual standpoint, capitalism’s excesses could be used, but
also controlled through knowledge-based management of elements, leading to compounds and physical
materials, along with knowledge-based oversight of human issues in general, most particularly labor
inputs. Much of this is carried out informally, as there are mitigating factors in all cases – even in the
most aggressive cases of absentee ownership. Formalizing these processes, or at least systematizing
them, as will be discussed in the next section, can make this possible.

152
Womack, J. P., Jones, D. T., and Roos, D. 1990. The machine that changed the world: The story of lean
production. New York: Free Press.
153
Shewhart, W. A. 1931/1980. Economic control of quality of manufactured product. Milwaukee, WI: ASQC
Quality Press.
154
Deming, W. E. 1982/1986. Out of the crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
155
Tingey, K. B. 2009. Methods-based management: Breakthrough performance on a leaner budget. San Diego:
University Readers.
156
Deming, W. E. 1993. The new economics for industry, government, and education. Boston: MIT Press.

56
5.4 MARKET – HAYEKIAN
The Austrian obsession with market equilibrium is not altogether a lost cause. Equilibrium occurs
regularly in nature. For one thing, that is what homeostasis is, the processes that keep each of us well.
The lack of equilibrium in economic and social affairs provides evidence that we are not in harmony with
reality. We can see that it is folly to make the information concession – this particularly given the power
of modern technology. Mankind cannot go back to a time when his ignorance did not matter.
Technology needs to be tamed by the application of knowledge along with success in bring legitimacy to
organizations that have access to it and can manage it, most particularly governments.

If a mechanism for delivery of such knowledge did not exist, we would need to create it. Fortunately, we
have the Internet, which is under attack in various forms, but it exists, which is miracle enough on that
score. What a travesty it would be if we did not use it for this purpose before it is too late.

Hayek’s great effort was in making economics work. He was a practical man in this, world-wise with
regard to the use of prerogative. The rational conclusion in his time was that government was both
illegitimate and incompetent. If someone was going to need to guess with regard to economic affairs, it
had better be individuals in the private sector who would bear the brunt of such conjecturing, rather
than governmental employees, who may not care, even if they are competent, which can in no way be
assumed. Relationships between commercial and governmental interests have always assumed
something of a “cat-and-mouse” arrangement. Cantillon himself, who first wrote of modern economics,
was a sometime fugitive of justice in France as well as England. He had money, but there were many
who were not happy about how he obtained it. It is rumored that he died in a fire in England – possibly
by his own hand or from action of another – but also that he orchestrated that and lived out his life in
luxury in South America.

The question of Hayek and the economists of his age was that of market equilibria. They looked to
nature’s behavior in this matter as a model. This is an important question. There are countless ways of
considering this, of course, with questions derived from natural and biological history. We will consider
one that is not selected empirically, but which represents a rich store of understanding with regard to
human biology, which of direct interest to the question. What then, do such equilibria look like in
reality? Walter Cannon, a prominent medical doctor, researcher, and educator, provided a descriptive
and succinct description of this from the perspective of economics, using human life as the example.

It is important to understand just what Dr. Cannon considers relevant with regard to life and health. His
definition of the fluid matrix is central to such understanding and to any investigation of the natural and
social underpinnings of our continued existence.

We ordinarily speak of ourselves as air-inhabiting animals. A little reflection will disclose,

however, that interesting fact that we are separated from the air which surrounds us by
a layer of dead or inert material. The skin has an outer covering of dry and horny scales
(which may of course at times be wet with sweat), and the surfaces of the eyes and the
inner parts of the nose and the mouth are bathed in a salty water. All of us that is alive,
the vast multitudes of minute living elements or cells which compose our muscles,
glands, brain, nerves, and other parts, reside within this surface coat of non-living stuff.
And, except their sides where they are continuous one with another, the cells are in
contact with fluid. The living elements of the body, therefore, are water inhabitants, or

57
 inhabitants of water which has been modified by the addition of salt and thickened by an
aluminous or colloid material. In order to understand the significance of this watery
environment or fluid matrix, we must inquire into the services it performs and how it
performs them.157

Already we see unexpected boundary questions, as Cannon’s viewpoint of what is “alive” within us and
what is not is not generally-held. The perspective he brings, however, is directly applicable to our
question of equilibrium, at least from a physiological standpoint.

To assure the same degree of stability in the social organism that has been attained in
the animal organism the latter suggest such control of the fluid matrix that its constancy
would be maintained. That would involve, in the first instance, the certainty of
continuous delivery by the moving stream of the necessities of existence. Food, clothing,
shelter, the means of warmth, and assistance in case of injury of disease are naturally
among these necessities. Stability would involve also the assurance of continuous
remuneration of individual labor – labor which would produce exchangeable goods and
which would be paid a wage sufficient to allow the laborer to take from the stream the
necessary things which he and those dependent on him require.158

There is much more attention to the question of needs than is the case in typical economic treatises on
equilibrium. To be sure, there, there is a fixation on price. Cannon describes a system that is much more
concerned with stability, with wide-ranging availability. He makes reference to wages in his exposition,
but does not indicate that there is such a phenomenon in the processes supporting the stability of the
fluid matrix. His emphasis of an ongoing need to “take from the stream the necessary things” supports
the notion that such necessities should be freely available, however this is achieved.

The organism suggests that stability is of prime importance. It is more important than
economy: the organism throws away not only water and salts, but also sugar, if they are
present in excess in the fluid matrix. This rejection is uneconomical. The organism is
driven into convulsions if the sugar supply runs too low, and the convulsions mark the
acme of the maneuvers which bring forth extra sugar from the hepatic reserves to
restore the normal glycemic percentage. Violent shivering may be induced to develop the
additional heat which prevents a fall of body temperature. All these extreme activities,
which are wasteful of energy, are not ordinarily employed, because smaller measures
suffice; but they are ready, whenever they are needed, to keep uniform the internal
environment.159

What Cannon considers here is an interesting dance of the highs and lows of interactions between
elements and processes, a dynamic set of forces that work on each other within certain ranges, with
only moderate efficiency. He describes a system in which oxygen must be immediately available, with
certain checks and balances. Fortunately, it is. The system outlines a similar need for sugar, but with a

157
Cannon, 27.
158
Ibid., 314-315.
159
Ibid., 317.

58
means of ensuring supply through storage and conversion. Otherwise, we would need a continuous
source of sugars similar to that of air. These actions take place in lockstep as long as there is availability.

Availability and stability are the things that human health, human homeostasis, depends upon. There is
no mention of currency in Cannon’s rendition, but that does not mean that there is not an accounting;
obviously, there is. Is there such a thing as price in nature? It may be difficult to arrive at such an
understanding at this time. First, we would have to understand of a common currency, for which there
are potential analogs. One of these could be light – defined as a broad view of the electromagnetic
spectrum or as the specific barrage of photons arriving constantly from the sun. This conceptually-
satisfying and probably semantically valid, but probably beyond our grasp at this time. Its understanding
in this light should be seriously considered. Higher-level compounds could suffice for currencies, such as
represented by oxygen and the sugars mentioned earlier. The problem there is that with each step
toward chemistry and structure, the currency question multiplies. There are simply too many needful
elements and underlying processes to serve as basis for accounting and transactions.

Perhaps the answer isn’t to establish an accounting, but to keep up with the one carried out by nature
itself. How is this to be done? There is a precedent; the accounting field has long supported a field of
research called “event accounting” that is suitable for such efforts.160 The research took a turn away
from its conceptual roots in the 1970s, but there are possibilities for application of the models using
existing technologies using the generative taxonomy approach.161

A prospective form of adaptability is also found in our nature. These are to be considered in efforts to
achieve equilibria. Cannon also provides some hints as to where they might be found.

The organism suggests, also, that there are early signs of disturbance of homeostasis
which, if sought, can be found. These warning signals are little known in the social
organism, and yet their discovery and the demonstration of their real value would make
contributions to social science of first-rate importance. In the complexity of modern
social interrelations, the strategic control would appear to reside in the devices for
distributing goods, in commerce and the flow of money rather than in manufacture and
production. Our bodily devices would indicate that the early warning signals, pointing to
social and economic danger, should perhaps be sought in sensitive indicators of
fluctuations of the commercial stream, though the causes of these fluctuations may be
found in industry.162

This question leads to the means by which Hayek’s knowledge problem can be resolved. The point is
that equilibrium, that being equilibrium in price, can be determined with adequate information. Hayek
despaired that such information could be made available. Korzybski affirmed that it must. Writing as he
did after the then-described “Great War”, he exercised the greatest of optimism, reaching back to pre-
modern remembrance, when civilizations were more civil. He elevated the discourse to the concept of
“time-binding”, by which each generation would present their findings – coupled with those who came
before – to their descendants, to mankind as a whole, in such a way as they could be used in perpetuity.

160
Sorter, G. 1969. An ‘events’ approach to basic accounting theory. Accounting Review, 44(1), 12-19.
161
Tingey, K. B. 2013. Chapter 5: George Sorter’s event accounting idea. In K. B. Tingey, 2013, The angels are in the
details: Control and regulation in a good way. Logan, UT: Profundities LLC, 110-162.
162
Ibid., 317-318.

59
This is knowledge of that kind, although its recognition and use has taken a negative turn in modern
times. This is not to say that there has not been progress; this is not to say that mankind is not better off
than it was before. It is possible, though, that this was the case in many ways. Given that our bodies do
not adapt well to conditions of fundamental risk and that modern economics is riddled with them,
consideration of the parameters of human homeostasis, as outlined by Cannon, warrants attention. In a
monetary economy, equilibrium has come to be based on a monetary model. As can be seen in Figure
10: Revenue equilibrium based on price, primary motivations exist for not establishing a price that is too
high or too low. This can result from any number of factors, many of which have nothing to do with
health needs and requirements.

Figure 10: Revenue equilibrium based on price

Does it matter that price is the dominant factor in economic decision-making? If equilibrium is what is
wanted, does it make sense to place it at several levels of abstraction away from its primary rationale,
especially if that involves the primary health needs of the people? This traditional way of looking at
products and services in the abstract may not have been a good idea, at least not in all things. Of course,
the plan has been to use price as being representative of a combination of factors, one of these being
need. This has to be viewed as a theory on top of theory on top of theory. There is a good deal of
metaphysics in this.

Figure 11: Requirements for equilibrium, or homeostasis, in humans provides guidelines as to the
fundamental health needs of people. This is as presented by Cannon. These are absolute necessities:
water, oxygen, consistent temperature, and nutrients. As long as these are available within a range, all is
fine. If their concentration grows on the high end, they are either stored in the body or expelled. If they
are too low, the body pulls on stored amounts or the person suffers, ultimately to die if the situation is
not readily resolved. Oxygen is the most critical from a short-term basis, as there is not means of storage
for this critical molecule. As Cannon indicates, the body has no problem throwing away what it does not
need – there is no optimization of that kind. The economy of nature in this way can be considered
wasteful. Of course, other organisms can make use of what the body in question throws away.

60
One conclusion that can be drawn from this is that equilibrium has clearly been considered in the light
of a search for a mean, a midpoint, when nature is more concerned about the variance, a range of
values that are likely and how they are to be accounted for. Of all of the mathematical and symbolic
questions that must be considered with regard to the critical need for these “constants”, how does the
price model fit in? If all of the other questions are answered in a responsive system in support of human
needs in general, isn’t price more of an accounting question than a driving force with regard to
availability and allocation? Shouldn’t it be?

Figure 11: Requirements for equilibrium, or homeostasis, in humans. Cannon, W. B. 1932/1967. The Wisdom of the Body.

So, equilibrium it is, but equilibrium in what? Hayek indicated that in the absence of adequate data, a
price mechanism was needed to balance out the guessing process that was thus necessary. This is a
form of surrogate equilibrium. This allows for a clearinghouse of sorts of issues and questions of various
kinds. Unfortunately, it does not allow for prioritization with regard to availability and fundamental
needs. Furthermore, is creates an environment that allows for withholding related products and services
for purposes of arbitration and coercion.

5.5 MONETARY – KEYNESIAN

John Maynard Keynes get the nod here, but with many provisos. He was wrong, but his ideas conquered
economics for seventy years and they continue to be influential. Monetary economics derived from
some of his work is at the base of all economic policy in our times. Keynesianism has been criticized,
with reason, but that is as far as it has gone. Nothing otherwise has changed – at least with regard to
most monetary policy and global financial governance norms.

Managing money is an essential function and a critical bridge between people, their institutions, and the
ongoing challenge of ensuring needs and filling wants. It is important that it be carried out effectively. It
is also important that it be carried out in a way that enhanced the legitimacy of governments, bringing
improved, more stable outcomes to their citizens and others.

61
A version of Keynesian called “Modern Money Theory” is an example of a monetary policy environment
that both corrects critical, recurrent policy errors, and supports social and natural requirements rather
than blocking them.163 This is indeed the tail of the dog fulfilling its proper function.

The bad boy in the Keynesian world was Hyman Minsky. The good boy was Paul Samuelson, a role
continued on by his nephew, Larry Summers. Everyone in economics in the postwar period fits into the
Keynesian mode in some way. Kenneth’s introduction to economics, in 1974 through the Samuelson’s
text’s 9th edition, shows the genealogy of neoclassical economists from Adam Smith to David Ricardo,
John Stewart Mills, Walras, and Marshall, listed together, and Keynes.164 There is no Hayek, no
Schumpeter. They are both quoted in the text and there is coverage of business cycles generally, but not
on the scale as described by cycle theories, not as a source of guiding principles and indicators as
emphasized earlier in this document.

The Keynesian model that is described is a simple one: Policy is in the process of being perfected. We
[the economists] think it is. Stability if this kind is thought of as a kind of static thing, like a gymnast
perched on a balance beam. Unfortunately, there are unpredictable crises that occasionally show that
there are policy errors. Typically, they [the Keynesian economists] attribute the problems, the crises, to
someone’s lack of judgment, but if that someone is in charge of a “too big to fail” organization and they
make big mistakes, they are not held to account, either in legal terms or through market mechanisms,
which they [the economists] otherwise describe as being sacrosanct. In fact, they [the economists – or,
at least politicians, based on warnings from the economists] resolve such crises, temporarily in fact,
more permanently in our minds, by extending very large quantities of money to such institutions.

From that point, they [Keynesians] hope that crises do not surface again. The gymnast is back balancing
on the beam. He or she makes little adjustments, but basically the action is static. They [the economists]
act like problems as occurred earlier will not resurface. The economists comment that the problems
might surface, but they do not think that the problems will do too much damage. This can be
interpreted that adverse conditions of this kind will not likely create damage that touches them [the
economists] personally. Those that it does touch personally [likely a gross understatement] need to
understand that the most recent crisis was a necessary fact of economic life, even though it could not
have been predicted. Their suffering is thus something of a public service. This is particularly true [in the
stated opinions of the economists] in countries in the economic periphery, created by Keynesian
policies, but also within the ranks of the “99%”, which were at one time referred to as the “90%”, even
the “80%.”* The escalation of the percentage of the “have nots” is one indication of impoverishment
that occurs in these “unpredictable” crises.

Such cycles, of course, were amply documented by Schumpeter and others as outlined earlier, but such
knowledge seems to have a “Teflon effect” on the economists, the Keynesians. This is as predicted by
Schumpeter, Hayek, and other traditional economists. It is interesting that Samuelson considered
Keynes as the central character of his time, as Hayek did not even consider Keynes to be an economist,

163
Wray, L. R. 2012/2015. Modern money theory: A primer on macroeconomics for sovereign monetary systems,
2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
164
Samuelson, P. A. 1955/1973. Economics, 9th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, back inside cover.
*
Making reference to increased income inequality throughout the world. See Oxfam. 2016, January 18. An
economy for the 1%. Oxford, UK: Oxfam GB for Oxfam International.

62
rather as a mathematician. He ruminated on the chances that Keynes would pass a simple test on the
basics of economic thought.165 Both Schumpeter and Hayek found Keynes’ willingness to make
assertions from aggregate figures without a knowledge of underlying details or processes utterly
appalling.

Minsky was of that postwar generation that embraced monetarism and he was clearly a Keynesian,
having written one of the major biographies of Keynes and having focused on monetary systems and
Keynesian models throughout his career. He studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard. He first
taught at Brown, then Berkeley, then Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Schumpeter had been
assigned to be Minsky’s doctoral adviser at Harvard, but the senior economist died before Minsky had
made much progress on his dissertation, so Wassily Leontief stepped in and helped him finish.
Schumpeter died in 1950 and Minsky graduated in 1953, so it is likely that the two never really worked
together. There is preciously little evidence of Schumpeter in Minsky’s writings, who constantly talked
and wrote of crises and not of cycles. This is a historic tragedy, as Schumpeter and Minsky shared strong
commitments to social underpinnings of economic affairs, more so than most any other economists.
Minsky didn’t seem to absorb much of what Schumpeter had to offer in this regard. Most particularly,
the recurrent habit of economists of being surprised by “crises” is fully unacceptable. In the future, it
needs to be an unpardonable sin, at least professionally.

This being said, Minsky’s persistent point was that the Keynesians didn’t understand money. This
resulted in their stumbling into crisis after crisis. He emphasized that a sovereign country cannot default
on its obligations; it creates the money it uses to pay the bills. What matters is real economic capacity.
This is also called the “production possibility frontier”. If a government extends money beyond capacity
limits – real or imposed – inflation and other problems will surface.166

There was a lot of the “old world” in Minsky. His parents were Menshevik refugees from Russia –
Belarus, to be exact. Similar to Schumpeter, he always held that economics needs to support desired
social goals. It was said that he was even too much of a reformist for the faculties of Brown and
Berkeley. That is one reason he went to a school in the heartland, to get away from administrative
pushback in the other schools. He got along with people from virtually all frames of reference, but he
was a reformer at heart and a man committed to promote the public good. He wrote that economics at
Chicago in particular was taught as…

…part of the study of society, where economic history, political science, sociology,
anthropology and economics were part of an integrated sequence aimed at
understanding modern society.167

A key element in this was a bookend concept to the idea of a central bank as the “lender of last resort”
in an economy. He taught that government should be the “employer of last resort,” (“ELR”) for social as
well as practical and economic reasons. Since a government, or at least a society, was supporting
unemployed persons anyway and governments could meet a payroll on its own, it can afford to hire
people to provide basic services and, indeed, should (i.e., Minsky’s job guarantee, or “JG”). It increases

165
Hayek, F. A., 1963. Chapter 1: The economics of the 1930s as seen from London. In F. A. Hayek, B. Caldwell (Ed.),
1995, Contra Keynes and Cambridge: Essays, correspondence. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 58-60.
166
Wray, L. R. 2016. Why Minsky matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
167
Ibid., 25.

63
capacity by improving public infrastructure in the case of related construction projects and it can meet
social needs of many kinds. It is intended to prevent social “dry rot” from people without purpose and
without income and to provide a ready stable of workers for organizations, who can be brought in with
fresh skills and functional attitudes. Such programs would provide a true floor for wage purposes and it
would remove the risk that basic needs of the people in question would not be filled. Minsky and others
even encourage non-monetary payment as a part of ELR/JG programs, helping to limit undesired effects
on monetary phenomena.

It [government] will need to limit the [ELR/JG] program’s impact on monetary demand,
which can be done by keeping the program’s monetary wage close to the average wage
earned in the informal sector. Thus rather than setting the wage at the minimum wage
in the formal sector, it might be set nearer to the wage of the informal sector. However,
poverty can be reduced if the JG/OLR total compensation package includes extra-market
provision of necessities. This could include domestically produced food, clothing, shelter,
and basic services (health care, child care, elder care, education transportation). Because
these would be provided “in kind”, the program’s workers would be less able to use
monetary income to substitute imports for domestic production. Further, production by
the workers could provide many or most of these goods and services, minimizing impacts
on the government’s budget, as well as impacts on the trade balance…

A phased implementation of the program will help to attenuate undesired impacts on

formal and informal markets, while also limiting the impact on the government’s
budget… The best projects proposed by individual community organizations (e.g., at the
village level) can be selected to employ a given number of heads of households from the
community…168

A socially-driven, nature-based approach, made effective by means of fluidity and dual control, would
provide an environment for public-private collaboration in the establishment of such plans. The
Optimum Performance Living (“OPL”) approach, guided by constant gathering and interpretation of data
from established observatories, would provide further guidance in the planning and administration of
such projects, many of which could become self-sustaining over time, particularly as the national system
matures from a disease orientation to function and optimal performance.169

We add to this two very important aspects of a job guarantee of this kind. First, the availability of such a
program takes the “sting” out of capitalism and of corruption and coercion in general. The need to
contract competitively for employment to meet basic needs places people in a position of compromise
where corruption is manifest. The need to please one’s superiors in an enterprise dedicated to financial
profit at the expense of all else, with want and deprivation as forced alternatives associated with
unemployment, is a form of servitude, if not outright slavery in extreme cases. If a person’s needs could
be met by means of a guaranteed available job, and those of dependents, opting out of coercive and
compromised employment situations would shift the balance of power in organizations toward of
integrity and legitimacy, making it more difficult for unethical overseers to staff a corrupt organization.

168
Ibid., 230-231.
169
See 2020 Program for Global Health Library at https://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/
R21FH0A75ZQ440.

64
Second, a job guarantee would provide an option to artists, intellectuals, and inventors to meet
fundamental needs and those of their families while pursuing their arts or crafts. Such an arrangement
would be a boon to society in general in that people could more readily pursue individual passions,
expand on their talents and training, and ultimately provide more valuable and satisfying offerings to
others – whether eventually commercial or not. This indeed is an example of how economic programs
could come to serve the needs of society in much more effective ways.

Minsky thus provides an interesting and important perspective. He does not “drink the Kool-Aid” as do
Keynesians in general. They get carried away with the romance of money, forgetting its place as a
placeholder for all of the aspects of life that lend themselves to economic transactions.

Keeping this in mind, what is it specifically that Keynes did? He consolidated thought as to the
mathematics surrounding the government of nations. This is accounting. This is to say that Keynesianism
is accounting. In a business, there is an accounting for periodic activity as in an income statement. The
same can be said for government. There can be an accounting for assets in a business. From a national
accounting standpoint, there is mostly a system for tracking money in its various forms. This is not
inconsequential, of course. It isn’t that there isn’t concern for other assets, as governments have vast
holdings. Economic accounting involves a form of revenue accounting, the famous Gross National
Product (GNP), which is the combination of private consumption, investment, and government
expenditure – net of imports and exports. This can also be looked at from the perspective of earnings
and costs, another way of looking at the same thing.

Keynesianism represents a tradition of manipulating such aggregate figures and of making sense of
them through induction and statistical inference. Making use of such an approach, one can predict
revenue based on prior sums and may likely be correct. One can assume to predict all economic
phenomena based on aggregate numbers that pass the plausibility test. If the numbers demonstrate
statistical significance at some level, one can make inferences. This is the basis for Keynesian
economists’ claim to scientific groundings – empirical judgments are thus routinely made based on
periodic accountings. Similar to corporate tradition, most such accountings are carried out quarterly and
annually.

Of course, such an approach is highly susceptible to periodic changes, particularly if they are non-
monetary in nature. These monetarist view as crises. Not monitoring – or even understanding – the
phenomena that are the root causes of changing developments, monetarists routinely find themselves
surprised and stunned. Why did they hit the tree? They weren’t even looking.

Keynesian economics establishes primacy to money stocks and, to a degree, financial flows of various
kinds. Of course, money is important. There is no question, however, that monetary phenomena can
create lives of their own – including the imposition of cycles that effect society, even nature, in
undesirable if not unpredictable ways. Apart from all other factors, money can affect an ability to trade
locally and globally and to establish capacity even where such activities are not justified by market
principles, nor by natural or social realities.

Many consider that Keynes’ message was one of monetary policy alone. This is to say, management of
money supply as a means of overseeing and directing the activity of the economy generally. That is not
the entire story, although it might hint at another problem, a perplexing one. By directing economic and
social policy by means of monetary actions, the fundamental processes of markets – let alone of society

65
– are ignored. This is described as analysis by means of monetary aggregates. This is the more heinous of
the two problems brought on by Keynes’ writings. The description of monetary policy as management
by looking through the rear-view mirror is only too apt, but relegating the fundamental processes of
society and of markets to non-use introduces night-blindness to the problem. Such an approach cannot
help but distort inputs as well as outputs.

If the knowledge problem can be resolved and if the particular problems of more fundamental processes
can be systematically resolved, there is an important place for monetary policy. There is not a problem
with the basic fiscal accounting model; it just needs to reflect one of many classification environments
without upsetting the rest.

A cycle approach as we propose herein is to put such things in perspective, particularly with the object
of minimizing the social impact of monetary cycles that impose themselves onto society, in an
environment not responsive to natural and social priorities. This is an area in which a Minsky-inspired
reading of Keynes is helpful. The irony is that Keynes, who famously was first to publicly denounce the
Treaty of Versailles’ drastic negative effects on rebuilding prospects for Germany and its people,170
emerges front-and-center in the establishment of a policy regime that has unquestionable imposed
pain, suffering, and turmoil on much of the world.171 For example, the mind-set underlying the famous,
but largely discredited Washington Consensus, the open market developmental model based on
“invisible hand” hopes and laissez faire “hands off” policy prescriptions can be directly traced to
Keynesian laxity with regard to data and process.

There is often disagreement between “open market” people – whose intellectual heritage stems from
Hayek’s declaration of defeat with regard to the “knowledge problem” – and the monetarist
economists, who routinely break rules of open markets in lieu of “winks” and “nods” from central
bankers who may or may not take actions that would affect money, interest, and equity stocks and
movements. Indeed, their philosophies extend to the remote poles of economic philosophy. Both
groups, however, share one characteristic that essentially trumps the rest: Both groups guess. That is
what they do. They guess at where things stand. They guess as to what needs to be done given such
suspected conditions. Then they guess as to whether others will “rationally” follow their lead, to achieve
hoped-for outcomes.

Consider these closing comments by Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, as you
ponder such a dilemma:

Only a recognition of the severity of the disequilibrium into which so many of the biggest
economies of the world have fallen, and of the nature of the alchemy of our system of
money and banking, will provide the courage to undertake bold reforms – the audacity
of pessimism.

170
Keynes, J. M. 1920. The economic consequences of the peace. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
171
Quiggin, J. 2010. Zombie economics: How dead ideas still walk among us. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press; Ffrench-Davis, R. and Griffith-Jones, S. (Eds.). 2003. From capital surges to drought: Seeking stability for
emerging economies. London: Palgrave Macmillan; Davis, M. 2002. Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and
the making of the Third World. London: Verso; Bairoch, P. 1993. Economics & world history: Myths and paradoxes.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Polanyi, D. 1944/2001. The great transformation: The political and
economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon Press.

66
 Why has almost every industrialized country found it difficult to overcome the challenges
of the stagnation that followed the financial crisis in 2007-9? Is this a failure of
individuals, institutions, or ideas? That is the fundamental question posed in this [King’s]
book. As a society we rely on all three to drive prosperity. But the greatest of these is
ideas. In the preface I referred to the wisdom of my Chinese friend who remarked about
the western world’s management of money and banking that “I don’t think you’ve quite
got the hang of it yet”…

For many centuries, money and banking were financial alchemy, seen as a source of
strength when in fact they were the weak link of a capitalist economy. A long-term
program for the reform of money and banking and the institutions of the global
economy will be driven only by an intellectual revolution. Much of that will have to be
the task of the next generation. But we must not use that as an excuse to postpone
reform. It is the young of today who will suffer from the next crisis – and without reform
the economic and human costs of that crisis will be bigger than last time. That is why,
more than ever, we need the audacity of pessimism. It is our best hope.172

This is worse than nothing. This exemplifies the emptiness of the Keynesian message. This post-post-
post Keynesian nihilism. The bar has sunk to a historically-low level. By admitting to defeat, one can
move forward. This is the monetarist confessional. If you confess, you can move forward. There is no
need for a messy and embarrassing repentance program. This is kind of an intellectual sleight of hand
and you only need one hand. There is no apology here, but a very curious “pep talk” to the younger
generation, one where pessimism is – optimistic? That is really just too ill-advised and self-serving to
even grasp. This should be an apology, at least.

Positioning monetary policy as the outer shell, the highest level of processes and cycles, opportunities
for improving policies with surface, to be sure. More to the point, limitations in terms of scope and
concept carried by economists in general – Keynesians in particular – will simply have much more
limited effects on natural phenomena as well as social, cultural, and economic affairs. This will serve to
take the “sting” out of capitalism, as mentioned earlier.

6 THEORY OF EVERYTHING IN HEALTH (TOE-H)

Physics is not the only field stymied by a grand bifurcation. Health of the large – population health, and
health of the small – personal health, are two ways of looking at the same thing, with nonetheless
different areas of concentration. The Theory of Everything in Health, or TOE-H inherits much from the
Theory of Everything of physics. The question of integration in each case remains unresolved, or at least
unrecognized and imperfectly implemented. There is amalgamation of opposites, but with questionable
connections. There is no reasonable way to separate the two extremes in terms of scale in each case,
although there has always been a modern forced separation within TOE-H in terms of policy and
practice.

172
King, M. 2016. The end of alchemy: Money banking, and the future of the global economy. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 369-370.

67
Indeed, how can we know? From a scientific standpoint, the various large-scale epidemiological
studies carried out by China, including those conducted with epidemiologists from Cornell and
Oxford Universities, provides important groundings for economic activity, including what such a
phenomenon would look like. Those studies identified hundreds of correlations to be
considered based on a palette of 639 items, including biological tests, nutritional factors, social
and lifestyle considerations, environmental conditions, and clinical and disease
circumstances.173 We have also written about opportunities for making use of findings and
physics and other fundamental sciences in the development of public/private health
observatories.174

6.1 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HEALTH – TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
Each person’s health is independently-derived; there is no averaging out of conditions from the
population to the individual. There are ways of studying relationships in and between related or
proximate individuals that can help to understand the likelihood that what happens within one
individual or group of individuals will happen in others. There are particular pathways that must be
followed, specific processes, step-by-step, that need to occur, for parallel outcomes to present
themselves. Humans are both sentient and emotional. These characteristics point to a dynamic beyond
purely physical or biochemical, but that can affect health, making people more or less susceptible to
potential disease conditions. This being said, the fact that they happen in one individual does not mean
that they will occur in another.

Lacking other options, past policy has been based on guessing. Lacking instrumentation and knowhow to
understand root causes in full, various means have been employed through the years to leverage hints
available to observers at Newtonian levels. These are factors that can be seen by the naked eye and
using testing and imaging technologies that progressively extend vision and understanding. Testing has
advanced to a great degree, including not only chemical, but biological tests. Rather than make use of
the most fundamental available data to validate apparent conditions, visible clinical conditions are used
to justify further testing – something of the horse following the wagon. Such a tradition almost
eliminates the prospect of discovering deep conditions early, before they embed themselves and reduce
healing prospects of the people. Any time an advanced-stage condition is discovered, what was a risk is
now a fact – the system failed in that.

Of course, the lack of comprehensive information is couched in finer terms – probabilistic, stochastic,
and statistical decision-making, to name a few. Nonetheless, these are ways of guessing, at choosing
based on probabilities, rather than the knowledge of results of natural processes, step by step. Our

173
Tingey, K. Manicki, M., Putri, A., Farnes, L., Lee, S. Ostojic, D., Spendlove, R., and Stevens, D. 2015. The China
studies, global innovation, and legitimacy: Seeking truth from facts in public and private health. Logan, UT:
Spendlove Medical Research Institute; Tingey, K. Manicki, M., Putri, A., Farnes, L., Lee, S. Ostojic, D., Spendlove, R.,
and Stevens, D. 2015. Findings from the various China epidemiological studies resolving the three challenges of
effective health and medical policy. Logan, UT: Spendlove Medical Research Institute; Chen, J. S., Peto, R., Pan, W.
H. Liu B. Q., and Campbell, T. C., et al., 2006. Mortality, biochemistry, diet, and lifestyle in rural China: Geographical
study of the characteristics of 69 counties in mainland China and 16 areas in Taiwan. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
174
Tingey, K. B., Manicki, M., Spendlove, R., Daines, J., Farnes, L., Ostojic, D., Lee, S. 2015. Quantum epidemiology:
Leveraging the data-driven health tradition. Logan, UT/Warsaw, Poland: CIMH Global.

68
point is, why would you guess when you can know? If applied to the population generally, technologies
and methods can be applied in inexpensive ways to acquire a broader array of data on individual health
and evaluate it for personal as well as public evaluation. This can be done securely and privately. It can
tap into the highest levels of knowledge in all of the fields in question. This would eliminate the casino
environment associated with health care in the West. With such a large-scale health observatory
capacity backed by networked scientific governance TOE-H can be achieved.

Who came up with the idea that there is separation in health? Surely they weren’t scientists, or
individuals that made such a distinction based on fundamental health issues. True, there was the active
debate between Bernard and others and Pasteur and others with regard to fundamental physiological
requirements, but the expression of policy grew to ignore individual differences. Groups of people, all
would agree, do not become ill. People may coincidentally become ill due to a condition to which they
are independently susceptible. Of course, there are public emergencies, natural disasters, etc., that
prove damaging to large numbers of people by disturbing important conditions for life that are not
principally biological. These can disturb the quiet peace that people need to survive as well as restrict
access to nutrients, elements, etc. Furthermore, individuals cannot transfer good health to others,
although it can be said that psychological and emotional benefits or hindrances can be transferred from
person to person, eliciting good, bad, or incidental effects.

6.2 KEYNESIAN HEALTH – ESTIMATION BASED ON AGGREGATES

The fact is, in the Keynesian work of empirical economics, no one is going to question the separation of
public and private health – its rationale or its groundings. This is what Keynesian is, how Keynesianism
works. This is the very reason Schumpeter and Hayek feared for the fate of the world when they saw
Keynes’ star on the rise. In physics, Einstein was in the position of Schumpeter and Hayek and Bohr was
in the position of Keynes. In biology, it could be said that Bernard was in the first position and Pasteur
was in the second – advocating policy based on an educated guess that certain conditions would exist in
individuals based on public estimates.

The U. S. Institute of Medicine is trying to get where we are in this analysis, but they do not yet
recognize this key distinction – the “guessing” problem. There is wide scale guessing as to the data in
question and there is guessing as to what it means. Chapter 5 of “The Future of the Public's Health in the
21st Century” reference to the heath delivery system, the need for information based on scientific
groundings is secondary to sociopolitical and financial issues. It does not make reference to a need for a
higher degree of coherence.175 The presumption is that improved incentive and reward systems will
bring improved outcomes – If you support higher levels of communication, outcomes will improve.

One of the greatest indictments of Americans without insurance is that they would thus not have
adequate information, even based on reduced standards as we have described. This is based on a
presumed policy environment that puts the question of information gathering into an arena that is
highly compromised. Who wants more information? Who wants less? Who wants to have access to it?
Who does not want others to have access to it? In the environment in question, information becomes as

175
Committee on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century. 2003. Chapter 5: The health care delivery
system. In Author, The future of the public's health in the 21st century. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine/
National Academy of Sciences, 212-267.

69
much a weapon as a tool. This state of affairs worsens the guessing problem, elevating it to something
of a casino atmosphere.

Having a regular source of care improves chances of receiving personal preventive care
and screening services and improves the management of chronic disease. When risk
factors, such as high blood pressure, can be identified and treated, the chances of
developing conditions such as heart disease can be reduced. Similarly, if diseases can be
detected and treated when they are still in their early stages, subsequent rates of
morbidity and mortality can often be reduced. Without insurance, the chances of early
detection and treatment of risk factors or disease are low.176

Here we see embedded a collection of policy presumptions that demonstrate the lack of TOE-H
awareness. There is mention of “risk factors”, which are shorthand for vital signs for the most part – the
most common indications, as “high blood pressure” awareness. Are these risks of disease or of payment
for disease consequences? Given a private business presumption in private health care, there enters
into a family of conflicts of interest between financial organizations, providers, individuals, and the
public interest. The result is a brake on data-gathering and on evaluation. These are taken as articles of
faith, of fundamental factors that are not to be denied. The fact is, they are almost fully policy-driven,
subject to assumptions and presumptions that are not well-understood in our time.

Then there is the characterization of “vulnerable” populations, how they need insurance and how their
lack of it introduces risks to themselves and to society – mostly monetary, but also with regard to
infection, etc. The point is, without data, without knowing, it is not possible to judge their vulnerability.
Compare a profligate individual that is financially wealthy. Perhaps that person is obese, sedentary, and
subject to many of the maladies of a life of poor nutrition and bad habits. That person would not be
considered vulnerable as long as he or she was currently contracted with medical insurance. As outlined
in “The Future…”, a person in the full bloom of health, with good health habits and a vibrant lifestyle
could be considered vulnerable, and certainly would be from a financial standpoint. Of course, accidents
need to be factored in, in any case – but a good, healthy lifestyle is no accident.

6.3 MODERN HISTORY AND HEALTH IN TWO NATIONS

Policy based on the lack of essential knowledge factor is doomed from the beginning to be sure. Well, to
be kind, we have to consider the history – how did we arrive at such a problematic state of affairs?
There has been an effort to achieve rationality, to be sure. What is now considered public health is an
attempt to deal with disease conditions with some kind of efficiency. For one thing, this can be
considered an economizing effort. As population grows, individualistic efforts may have needed to be
withheld where a batch approach will serve. More to the point with regard to health, infectious diseases
have been shown to appear among the people and wreak havoc in a very short period of time. Arriving
at remedies has constituted much of what modern life is. Acting quickly has been imperative, even in
cases where known probabilities of success are evident.

Where attempts have been made in this regard, to estimate individual considerations with regard to a
larger population, we should expect to see improved results. In understanding our history, we first need

176
Committee on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century (CAHP21). 2003. The future of the public's
health in the 21st century. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences, 216.

70
to see what has been done when more complete levels of knowledge were not possible. This is, then, an
evaluation of the Keynesian approach – which began in the West long before Keynes himself came on
the scene. As seen in Figure 8, the struggle has been between “empirical” and “Newtonian” levels of
understanding. The history of public and private health in the United States is a case study in sometimes
cooperation, sometimes competition and sometimes outright confrontation in the process of sorting
these out. Table 2: History of Public and Private Health in the United States provides guidelines as to
how current policies came together.177

Table 2: History of Public and Private Health in the United States

Historical
development Timeframe Public/private implications PPP?
Responses to yellow 1793-1806 Demonstration of benefits of government, provider, +
fever and public cooperation against infectious disease;
health boards in cities; temporary commitment
Threat of cholera 1830s Boards slow to act; supporters accused of +
“impertinent interference” with commerce; cleanup
solutions only temporary
Sanitary reformers 1840s and Reform “swim against tide” to shame city officials to +
1850s clean up filth, garbage, and sewage; civic leaders
successfully spoke for immigrants and “laboring
population”
Civil War – turning 1860s and Military scare resulted in permanent urban health +
point 1870s boards; organization of American Public Health
Association (APHA) in 1873 for “sanitary science” and
“public hygiene”
Physicians’ 1880s Much collaboration between APHA and American +
participation Medical Association membership; sanitary science as
wealth factor in community growth
Progress at federal 1880s and Yellow fever epidemic helped encourage federal board +
level 1890s of health, but then lapsed after epidemic
Impact of immigration 1880 to Twenty-four million immigrants with genetic defects +
1920 and infectious diseases; quarantine an important
immigration issue; permanent public health service
Beginning of 1900 Many campaigns for improved housing, sanitary +
progressive reforms onward reform, maternal and child health, infectious disease
control, occupational safety, school hygiene, and
unadulterated food; combined with related sciences;
“public need over private greed”
Campaign for national 1910s Growing support for health as a public service; +
health insurance “sanitarian” to “keep … death rate low” along with
“district hygienists, internists, surgeons, and other
specialists”

177
Fee, E., and Brown, T. M. 2002. The unfulfilled promise of public health: Déjà vu all over again. Health Affairs,
21(6), 31-43.

71
 Table 2: History of Public and Private Health in the United States
Historical
development Timeframe Public/private implications PPP?
Right-wing reaction 1910s to Anti-minority and anti-immigrant groups and laws -
1920s emerge; quotas established and reaction to
“international” ideas
Assault from medical 1920 to Sheppard-Towner prenatal and child health legislation -
profession 1930 enacted in 1921, then strongly attacked by American
Medical Association (AMA) along with other “imported
socialist schemes” and effectively ended progress in
public health
The New Deal 1930s From 3% of public health budgets to many substantial +
programs for municipal health, public health
personnel, and municipal water and sewage; maternal
and child health support; resurgence of public health
in time of crisis
Impact of World War II Early Significant efforts against malaria and venereal disease +
1940s in the South; Center for Disease Control in Atlanta;
progress with yellow fever, typhus, and penicillin
Cold War and 1950s Apart from a successful private initiative against polio, -
McCarthyism any argument for public health was interpreted as
being support for socialism or communism; only CDC
thrived, with an anti-communist message
The War on Poverty 1964 Initiated by Lyndon Johnson, expanded access to +
elderly and poor, but exclusively through “high-
technology hospitals”; War on Poverty set up 150
neighborhood health centers; “brief flourishing of
several exciting experiments … to define … most
urgent public health and medical care priorities”
The Environmental 1960s Movements against pesticides, industrial pollution, +
Movement and other threats to the natural environment;
advancements in public health, the environment, and
quality of life; supports for occupational health
The ferment of the 1970s Public health prospects rise, then fall in 1973 with all -
1970s else with the federal budget crisis, “stuttering” of the
economy, and the energy crisis
Public health in retreat 1980s on From war on poverty to war on welfare under Reagan; -
responsibility for public health pushed to states and
counties; resurgence of emergencies with HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, Ebola virus, hantavirus, West Nile virus;
continued episodic response without permanent
solutions

Mostly we can see a pattern of cooperation. Of late, such has been eroded. Interestingly, others paths
were followed in the 20th century, not only within the Soviet world, but in Scandinavian countries as well
as the Commonwealth. Those paths involved different priorities, with muted private practice
opportunities. Public and private health were considered more in the same light in such regimes.

72
Understanding of health outcomes there – particularly with regard to public health – are instructive. Key
among these is the Scandinavian experience, that of the Commonwealth, and that of the Soviet system,
Russia and its affiliates, particularly in the postwar period. Scandinavia can be considered a success with
regard to the public/private health situation, at least better than most. As in many things, the
Scandinavian nations have avoided extremes of economic and social policy, resulting in impressive
health and economic outcomes. As to the Commonwealth – the UK’s National Health System (NHS) in
particular – we have written about that elsewhere.178

The Soviet experience contains a surprise. Beginning with a private system in the early 20th century, the
centrally-planned system, focused largely on public health initiatives, brought life expectancy to parity
with the industrialized countries by 1960, but later the trend reversed itself. Our point here is not to
evaluate the economic and social considerations of these outcomes, but public health ones. Westerners
love to point out shortcomings in Soviet-style health systems in the postwar period179 and some of them
are actually based in direct observation and fact.180

In the face of this, public health in the Soviet world was strong. Each person received by policy a basic,
annual health examination. Stemming from this, fundamental health requirements, including
pharmaceuticals, were provided. As has been amply documented, supplies were limited and availability
was unpredictable, and hoped-for launch on innovative activity did not occur,181 but individualized
attention to the medical needs of the people brought clear public health benefits. Most particularly, life
expectancy in Russia of 50 in 1930 rose to 70 by 1960 to be on par with Western conditions. As can be
seen in Figure 12: Life expectancy comparison for countries of interest, Russia and Poland achieved
comparable figures to those of the United States by the 1960s.

178
Tingey, K., Manicki, M., Farnes, L., Lee, S., Ostojić, D., and Orešič, T. 2013. In 2020 Program for Global Health:
Knowledge-driven universal coverage in this decade. Logan, Utah USA and Warsaw, Poland. CIMH Global, 64-73.
179
Foundation for Economic Education. 2008, December 19. Socialized health care: The communist dream and the
Soviet reality. Atlanta, GA: Author. Available online: https://fee.org/resources/socialized-health-care-the-
communist-dream-and-the-soviet-reality/.
180
Smith, H. 1976. The Russians. New York: Ballantine Books, 93-97.
181
Sutton, A. C. 1973. Western technology and Soviet economic development 1945 to 1965. Stanford, CA: Hoover
Institution Press, 423.

73
Figure 12: Life expectancy comparison for countries of interest

Much of this can be attributed to public health initiatives and specific attention to fundamental private
health requirements, including annual examinations.

Although there are many flaws that one might point up in these Soviet programs …
Soviet progress in the standard of living of its population has been substantial and my
fare far better when compared with Western societies than simple comparisons of
personal income would suggest. The principal blemish on this record is the recent decline
in life expectancy, particularly among Soviet males, which fell from a peak of 67.0 years
in 1964 to 61.9 years in 1980. … Much of this decline can be attributed to alcoholism and
excessive use of abortion as a means of contraception. … Yet, as the ultimate summary
statistic for the physical well-being of a population, this decline in life expectancy also
signals continued deficiencies in the Soviet standard of living, such as diets high in
saturated fats and deficient in vitamins, stressful working and living conditions, and poor
public health and individual medical care.182

These problems in Russia can be seen in Figure 13: Life expectancy challenges in Russia.

182
Roeder, P. R. 1988. Soviet political dynamics: Development of the first Leninist polity. New York: Harper & Rowe,
Publishers, 331-332.

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Figure 13: Life expectancy challenges in Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy

Our current systems represent a bifurcation that is troubling. It owes its existence to, and contributes to,
a counterproductive state of affairs. The secondary recovery, particular with regard to males, is
heartening. This is a much-studied phenomenon.183 It does underscore the importance of private health
to public questions as it does demonstrate public infrastructure contributions to the general health as
occurred in the Soviet environment up to the 1960s.

6.4 ESTABLISHING KNOWLEDGE AS THE DRIVING FORCE

The Institute of Medicine in 2010 sponsored a program covering any and all of the issues that would
reasonably be considered of importance.184 The object was to look at the fine goal of reducing health

183
Ernd, R., Richardson, E., and McKee, M. 2014. Trends in health systems in the former Soviet countries.
Copenhagen, DM: European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, World Health Organization; Antoun, J.,
Phillips, F., and Johnson, T. 2011. Post-Soviet transition: Improving health services delivery and management.
Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, 78: 436-448; Gorsadze, G., et al. 2010. Reforming sanitary-epidemiological service
in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: An exploratory study. BMC Public Health 10: 440-450;
Pietila, I., and Rytkonen, M. 2008. ‘Health is not a man’s domain’: Lay accounts of gender difference in life-
expectancy in Russia. Sociology of Health & Illness, 30(7): 1070-1085; Shkolnikov, V., and Leon, D. A. 2000.
Commentary: N Eberstadt’s ‘The health crisis in the USSR’ and sustainable mortality reversal in the post-Soviet
space during communism and after. International Journal of Epidemiology, 35: 1406-1409; Schutz, D. S., and
Rafferty, M. P. 1990. Soviet health care and perestroika. American Journal of Public Health, 80(2): 193-197;
184
IOM Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care. 2003. The healthcare imperative: Lowering costs and
improving outcomes: Workshop Series Summary. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine/National Academy of
Sciences, 216.

75
care costs by ten percent in ten years. How can this be when every incentive exists to push those costs
as high as can be? They complain that “only about 6 percent of national health expenditures is spent on
public and population health” but offered no fundamental integrative insights as we propose.185 Similar
to Otis Brawley’s call to action to the medical field. They need to go on doing what they are doing, but in
a more kind and gentler fashion, and they should not charge quite so much.186

David Stuckler and Karen Siegel present a much less sanguine story about what needs to be done.187 In
order to make a difference – with chronic disease they and their contributors describe a highly strategic
process of political, economic, organizational, symbolic, and scientific incentives to make a difference.
They advocate a very careful strategy of collaboration, avoiding tie-in’s with commercial interests
committed to the status quo, or worse. Stuckler and other refer to such parties as “cockroaches” that
“are everywhere”.188

The imperative is to enlist commitment and support of relevant governments. To be successful,

integrated social and economic programs must be implemented that will align all interests with a new
social and economic governance platform, and that country’s leadership position in it. This is the
substance of the question of TOE-H and related initiatives. Stuckler et al. emphasize the futility of calling
on moral imperatives. Morality, of course, lies at the base of such programs, but to be successful, they
must be economically, politically, and socially sustainable. People need to be able to make a living; they
must be able to compete.

The point of a cycle approach, of leveraging fluidity and dual control, is to capture critical issues within
cycles representing their most fundamental, causative elements. Returning to the IOM publications and
earlier works herein, it is clear that an integrated individual and community delivery system is necessary
to replace highly fragile current systems. The systems need to…

…refocus its efforts in health improvement and strengthen its collaboration with
governmental public health agencies to ensure the best possible disease surveillance, the
promotion of healthier communities as well as healthier individuals, and preparedness
for any emergencies.189

Thomas Friedan makes reference to a strong governmental role in bringing public and private health
interests and activities together.”190 This is not a matter of being nicer and charging less. It is a matter of
gathering data and using its power to channel activities. It is about establishing legitimate scientific
networks and empowering proven experts to design in system features themselves – process details –
so that optimal expectations can be understood and optimal activities can be carried. Such a system
needs to guide these people through the steps of such activities in a way that will also audit such

185
Ibid., 12.
186
Brawley, O. W., and Goldberg, P. 2013. How we do harm: A doctor breaks ranks about being sick in America.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
187
Stuckler, D., and Siegel, K. (Eds.). 2011. Sick societies: Responding to the global challenge of chronic disease.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
188
Stuckler, D., Basu, S., King, L., Steele, S., and McKee, M. 2011. The political economy of chronic disease. In
Stuckler, D., and Siegel, 2011, 166.
189
CAHP21, 2003, xvi.
190
Frieden, T. R. 2015. The future of public health, Shattuck Lecture. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(18):
1748-1754.

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processes and tie in specific rewards. Such a program can employ leverage, accomplishing a health care
policy trifecta: (1) Avoiding chronic diseases before they entrench themselves; (2) guiding people
through optimal life choices that will make them resilient, strong, and fulfilled; and (3) drastically
decreasing the financial burden of disease and poverty – enhanced by means of associated economic
development activities. All of this can be carried out through effective public-private partnerships where
government can leverage both knowledge and finance in an environment of free choice and
opportunity.

6.5 WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH FINANCE ONCE THE SCIENCE IS IN PLACE

To understand both opportunities and challenges, it is important to consider the prevalent relationship
between public and private health in the United States. North America enjoys world leadership in
science and technology; many of the methods and practices, as well as technologies and there are no
clear personalities as opinion leaders with regard to the public vs. private health question. This is
because the two activities are seldom considered in the same light. In short, public health is considered
to be governmental and poor; private health is considered to be rich and, well private, but in a different
way than might be imagined. The term’s original meaning is that it connoted specific contributions to
the health of individual private citizens. This involves interventions directed specifically to individuals
and families. It has also come to refer to the form of ownership or governance of the organizations in
involved, being private as opposed to governmentally-owned.

More than a few individuals have noted a trend toward “high living” in many nonprofit private health
enterprises – profit being clearly an artifact of accountants’ arcane journal entries. Even so, the sector is
not stable, growing in nominal terms and as a proportion of the economy as a whole. Although
nominally controlled by institutions with public and not-for-profit mandates, there is much institutional
and private profit-taking in the private heath arena. Growth forecasts are “off the charts” with regard to
all aspects of procedures, pharmaceuticals, devices, supplies, and related services.

Public health accounts for much more improvement to life span in the United States, for example, than
private health – over 80% of the extension. In spite of this, in 1988, it was perceived in an Institute of
Medicine (“IOM”) study that public health was in disarray, that much needed to be done to correct
related problems. Much was done. To chronical these actions and their affects, the major public health
agencies together commissioned a second major study, publish in 2003 by the IOM, which considered
the questions in greater depth. This was to look at progress and to consider prospects. From the study, a
recognizable set of relationships was documented, as seen in Table 3: U. S. National Health Priorities.

Table 3: U. S. National Health Priorities

Public Health Private Health
Principal Prevent onset of Deal with disease condition
objective disease that present themselves
Responsibility Public-centered Private initiative,
network, public service commercial competition

Table 2 outlines asymmetries in objective and responsibility that have brought counterproductive results
in the United States. This is poor policy: Private incentives exist under conditions of disease more so
than in the absence of disease. There much of what most people would refer to as profit; in North
America and in the industrialized countries, private health, even “not-for-profit” health, is awash in

77
money. The magnitude of the problem is magnified by a stunning imbalance in terms of budgets: private
health receives twenty times as much funding as does public health in spite of evidence that results
would be favorable in a more balanced environment:

Although identifying the pathways between investment and health outcomes requires
further research, several trends appear important. More than 95 percent of U.S. federal
and state health spending is directed toward personal health care and biomedical
research; only 1–2 percent is directed toward prevention. These governmental funding
priorities, consistent for decades, do not reflect scientific understandings of population
health. There is strong evidence that access to medical care is a less important
determinant of health than behavior and environment, which are responsible for more
than 70 percent of avoidable deaths. This history of investment skewed toward personal
health care offers a political strategy that is unlikely to achieve a maximum impact on
the public’s health.191

The other form of imbalance relates to total expenditures for health in the United States, which are
more than twice as high as the next highest industrialized countries on an individual basis, which are on
average much higher than the rest of the world. The U.S. response is that this reflects much higher order
of interventions and surgeries that are not available elsewhere, which of course, it does. The record
shows, however, that expenses are highly-skewed toward old age and late stage interventions, which
are highly controversial and serve a mixed purpose from a public health perspective.192 Such patterns
are consistent with the prevalent policy environment that focuses on disease as opposed to health.

6.6 RISKS AND REAL RISKS

There is much discussion of risk in both health communities but there is little clarification as to what
health risk is. There is a vague sense that health risk entails the need to pay for unpleasant surprises
when they occur.193 The question is whether people are going to successfully guess right; It is not that
there is a concerted public or private effort under way to find out what underlying conditions are – from
the deep perspective of individual health. The thought process is very Keynesian, and not in a good way.
So, if you are a male in a certain age group you are part of a cohort that has a certain percentage
likelihood of contracting or developing a certain disease (keeping in mind that chronic diseases are
created by our bodies, which act as incubators or factories in this way). Looking at a mortality table or
disease table, a practitioner or analyst would total up the diseases and total up the probabilities and
assign a risk factor for you. Based on that, typically they would act or they would not act. There is a huge
incentive to act, especially if the aggregate probabilities look good.

In all likelihood, it is impossible for you contract the diseases in question. If “the factory is not open” and
the processes are not in effect, the diseases will not occur. We are not talking about magic here. On the

191
Gostin, L. O., Boufford, J. I., and Martinez, R. M. 2004. The future of the public's health: Vision, values, and
strategies. Health Affairs, 23(4): 98.
192
Schoenman, J. A. 2002. The concentration of health care spending. Washington, DC: National Institute for
Health Care Management.
193
Ubokudom, S. E. 2012. United States health care policymaking: Ideological, social, and cultural differences and
major influences. New York: Springer Science + Business Media, 21, 95; IOM Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven
Health Care, 2010, 8-12.

78
other hand, you may absolutely have one or all of the heinous conditions under way. Already, we can
see that there is more than one risk factor. There is the risk that you have or will have the conditions. If
you don’t bother to actually find out, the mortality tables are there to carry out the math problem for an
educated guess. We can see this risk now, the risk that you – or the health system – does or does not go
to the effort to find out. What is this risk? What are the odds that this will happen? For the most part, in
the current environment, they are very high. Whoever has? There is no guessing game once you go to
the effort to look – but there still are risks. Some have gathered the data, but still do not know. Once
data is collected, there is the question of whether it is expertly reviewed. What are the chances in this
case? Very little, given the kind of deep, comprehensive review we consider herein. Dual control and
fluidity call on all of the best knowledge available. No one can do that alone, without fluidity.

This is the kind of thought process under consideration. What are the real, credible risks? Table 4:
Health Risks Associated with Data & Interpretation provides additional guidance as to this frame of
reference. With all due respect, we have to note that the risks in question are very, very high. This
begins with the data collection item, number one in Table 4. Adequate data collection – systematic and
comprehensive – is virtually nonexistent in a public health context. Where large-scale data collection
may occur in the private environment, it suffers from a narrow range of interpretation, as a full-scale
system of dual control and fluidity does not exist. Lack of dual control and fluidity is a major reason for
both runaway health costs and mitigated results.

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 Table 4: Health Risks Associated with Data & Interpretation
Risk type Description Private health effect Public health effect Finance/econ effect
Incomplete data Insufficient data Insufficient data collected Escalating risk of serious High-impact funding not
collected for evaluation for evaluation from root undiagnosed disease with likely; Unlikely to catch
from root causes to causes to Newtonian age; disease continues on diseases before they
Newtonian observations course; no warning of embed themselves; costs
observations impending problems uncontrolled
Good faith Data available but not Wasted time & effort & Opportunity cost of Inappropriate &
understood due to lack false hopes; decreased misapplied activity; desired unnecessary payment;
misinterpretation
of knowledge or legitimacy of health results will not occur; funds not available for
of data experience; Deming's program; unreliable data underlying problems will other purposes; limited
famous “best efforts” of stores surface later, after a period of results; door open for
ignorant people festering & becoming worse corruption
Bad faith Inappropriate & Missed opportunities & Health environment becomes Desired financial benefits
unnecessary payment; likelihood of increasingly corrupt, will not be achieved;
misinterpretation
funds not available for inappropriate costs; politicized, and deal-driven; funds are not available
or avoidance of other purposes; limited customer/patient not scientific & social integrity of for more legitimate use;
data results; door open for gain desired benefit; data the health system & corruption encouraged
corruption stores become corrupted community becomes
& unreliable compromised
Intervention not Assuming that a proper Providers perform poorly If not corrected, poor health With fluidity/dual control
& timely diagnosis is with lack of accountability culture; difficulty in educating system, good providers
properly carried
arrived at, the if not tracked and and recruiting good talent; can be rewarded;
out intervention itself is not corrected; low deal with political and social otherwise waste &
carried out properly; expectations developed effects of cover-up encourage wrong parties;
poor selection & in- and corruption lingering costs with
service encouraged minimal benefits
Poor therapy Ineffective or Full recovery unlikely; People on disability; burden Funds are wasted in
inappropriate care & need for repeat on health and rehabilitation ineffectual effort; High,
guidance
therapy program is put procedures; low opinion systems generally; low socio- persistent rehabilitation
together of effectiveness of health political position of health costs; high occupational
services system medicine costs & low
productivity
Poor lifestyle Health opportunity lost; Lost opportunity to Negative outcomes & high High long-term care &
possible disease improve lifestyle costs due to increased chronic disease costs;
guidance
outcome; inability to incidence of chronic disease higher likelihood of
effectively promote & catastrophic illness costs;
provide desirable lost economic
solutions opportunity in provide
products and services
Communication Needed message is not Data collection & Hoped-for gains not achieved; Funding misapplied;
appropriately given evaluation lost; poor possible corruption and socio- feedback mechanism
error
when needed outcomes & opportunity political damage if not compromised; possible
costs; data quality corrected lack of controls
compromised
Finance error Payment made where it Possibly encourage Possibly encourage Financial system becomes
shouldn't have been or corruption/demonstrate corruption/demonstrate back increasingly inept &
it wasn't available back door; encourage door; encourage sloppy suspect; controls more
where it would have sloppy processes processes difficult to maintain
done good

The question is whether life can go on while the big questions are being sorted out. This is to say
whether life can go on while the details are being sorted out. What is justifiable, credible knowledge and
what is not? Ultimately, this is the point of TOE-H – to eliminate the barriers to resolution of any and all
health issues by bring together health expertise and authorities, particularly in health finance, and
establish an environment that is both authoritative and adaptable.

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7 HISTORY AND PROCESS-PRODUCT
It can be said that mankind does not suffer from a dystopian past. It is difficult to pierce through the
thousands of years that mark our distant past, our deep heritage, but there are some things that can be
stated with confidence. There has been acculturation. Cooperation has seen us through, although there
have been various and contradictory ways that this has been achieved. The development of individual
capacity for thought and work has been astounding. It has further manifested itself in group behavior.
This has brought outcomes that have extended beyond capabilities of individual persons, working alone.

Modernists – particularly the economic developmentists – have not given traditional societies their
due.194 Traditional societies were and are incredible, amazing, and adaptable, allowing our ancestors to
enjoy nature’s bounties, establishing practices that have lasted for thousands of years.195 Many continue
to exist, on the margins of our modern, mostly urban age. As we look to the future, we need to be
inclusive and respectful of such successes. Indeed, we continue to depend on them; many aspects of
this, as documented by Korzybski and Bateman, are inscribed in our habits, our behaviors, and customs
is ways that we little comprehend. Korzybski quotes James Robinson:

Man’s abject dependence on the past gives rise to the continuity of history. Our
convictions, opinions, prejudices, intellectual tastes; our knowledge, or methods of
learning and of applying for information we owe, with slight exception, to the past –
often to the remote past. History is an expression of memory, and like memory it alone
can explain the present and in this lies its most unmistakable value.196

We can see now how a lack of respect and a lack of knowledge of social aspects, or even of economic
and technological facets of these many cultures, has dampened our current prospects. In spite of
myriads of advances in science and technology, we are not aware and are not adaptive on the scale of
our ancestors. As indicated by van der Pijl:

The transition to agriculture was obviously tortuous and often hard to accept. The
human instinctual apparatus is not pre-programmed for observing seasonal patterns of
precipitation and cycles of growth, or for maintaining an infrastructure of food
protection and irrigation. Neither will a continuity by nature be mentally equipped to
store some of its foodstuffs as reserves, and have the discipline to gear to a lower intake
to overcome scarcity and reserve and some form of rank society is required to enforce
them.197

So we must improvise, but we can learn from the past. Fortunately, much of what we need to know is
built into life’s patterns by means of tradition and culture. Unfortunately, with regard to deep
knowledge of this, the rush to modernity “threw many babies out with the bath water”, as we have

194
van der Pijl, 2007, 164-214.
195
Braudel, F. 1987/1993. A history of civilizations. New York: Penguin Books.
196
Robinson, J. H. 1919. An outline of the history of the Western European mind. New York: The New School for
Social Research.
197
van der Pijl, 2007, 34.

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seen. Bateman laments the loss of the sacred in modern affairs. This is a loss of respect for the
knowledge that got us here, that is, the knowledge that got us to the pre-modern era. The processes
that created our humanness were miraculous, to say the least. We do not understand them. There were
traditions in this that were embedded in religion. We see that religion, as in other human affairs,
involves a collection of processes, carried out by adherents for the most part, that were known to
achieve certain outcomes. These are process-products, as were previously considered.

Famously, Einstein revised his understanding of general relativity to account for an important aspect of
cycles: they are never the same the second time around and thereafter. This is true even if the processes
in question are firmly established. Data can change markedly, not only affecting outcomes, but future
structure of the processes themselves. Einstein observed a tortious effect, a bending of spacetime. This
is just one aspect of the call for a dynamic approach, a process approach to be sure, but one that is
adaptable to changing conditions, even of the subtlest nature. If there is no understanding of a process
relationship, there is little or no useful knowledge to be had. There is no understanding of cyclical
patterns, resulting in a crisis atmosphere.

As can be seen in Figure 14: Positioning time-binding within the Minkowsky spacetime model, a critical
juncture exists in the present, when knowledge can be bound through application, making it a part of
practice, a part of society. This means that the behaviors in question will become patterned, a part of
the social and political activities of people and of organizations. These may not even be purposefully
carried out or even noticed. As indicated by Korzybski, abstraction will have been involved in the
process; this is not an example of instinct. Someone will have to have thought of the action in the
abstract, tested it out, found it to be beneficial and desirable, and promoted it successfully into general
usage. This is a matter of being human as opposed to being a part of the animal kingdom or of nature in
general.

Figure 14: Positioning time-binding within the Minkowsky spacetime model

We refer to the people who engage in such activities as “time-bind-ers”, those who learn to benefit and
who commit society to general usage, which will have required a variety of activities. Some means of
vetting knowledge will have been needed. Was the best knowledge bound? Sanity will have required
some means of encouraging, if not ensuring this. Socially, how was this brought about? Technically?

82
Were these stable over time – think of the famous “software upgrades” of recent decades that
mercilessly destroy ideas and structures embedded in older software versions, data, and now-
incompatible extensions and connections. See Figure 15: Knowledge that overcomes untold hurdles
before being time-bound for an example of these.

Figure 15: Knowledge that overcomes untold hurdles before being time-bound

Once bound, knowledge is available for future use, particularly for subsequent generations of people.
For descriptive purposed, we refer to these as “time-bind-ees”. This is the point of time-binding, that
subsequent generations can be brought up with the benefits of the knowledge in question as a part of
cultural patterns that may make up either part or all of society. There may be technology involved.
There may or may not be explicit knowledge of these. See Figure 16: Subsequent generations as
“knowledge bind-ees” to see this development.

Figure 16: Subsequent generations as “knowledge bind-ees”

83
Many things can happen that would result in the lack of time-binding or in temporal regression from
knowledge-based activity. Perhaps the knowledge in question is forgotten. Perhaps it is thought to no
longer apply. It is possible that technologies or resources underlying use of the knowledge becomes
unavailable. See Figure 17: Possible impediments to effective, longstanding time-binding.

Figure 17: Possible impediments to effective, longstanding time-binding

Knowledge embedded in books on library shelves – or in electronic documents, but embedded in human
processes, individuals and institutions – doesn’t serve the general good. The institutions of society have
much to do in the identification, education, and sponsorship of knowledge in their time. This can be
seen in Figure 18: Need to explicitly identify and bind knowledge. The challenge is beyond the capacity of
individuals. If there is an infrastructure that empowers experts and removes barriers from their way,
they can exert significant influence in their areas of work. This, of course, must take place in an
environment of open scientific discourse, challenge, and interaction. This speaks for a meritocratic
environment, one that is committed to a dynamic equilibrium such as Bohm describes.

The question of empowerment, of knowledge fluidity, enjoys an analog in the world of serious, classical
music. Because of environments that allowed for exceptional work on the part of musical geniuses,
mankind enjoys the benefit of creative works dating back hundreds of years. This is at times considered
a weakness of contemporary musical composition, which it may be. Clearly, it is the case that this is an
example of time-binding over an extended period on a very large scale. It can be done. Equally
impressive is that enough of the music composition and performance model has been stable to allow for
modern performance of such music. This is not to say there are not valid “original instrument”
movements to perform classic compositions using technologies available when the compositions were
written, but these represent demonstrations of subtle differences – mostly in tonality and texture.
Compare such longevity with the constant flow of computer updates in contemporary systems. Not only
are they destructive to functionality in the short-term, they often completely render good knowledge
work mute, thoughtlessly and ruthlessly.

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 Figure 18: Need to explicitly identify and bind knowledge

Just over a century ago, Korzybski wrote of a need for mankind to grow from child to adult status. In
this, he demonstrated a breathtaking level of faith in his fellows. What could stimulate such confidence?
How was it that he was not exhibiting insanity – as many clearly considered that he was? It is possible
that they were otherwise hoping that he was insane, if for no reason other than to justify their own
pessimism. Having learned to cope with existing conditions – even to profit from them, if even in
narrowly-contrived ways – they may simply wish to keep what they have in lieu of needing to adjust to
conditions that they may not understand or know how to exploit.

This brings to attention the military question. This is to say that the success of projects such as we
describe may lead to unwanted consequences in the minds of some – real or imagined. This is to say,
the legitimacy of such actions notwithstanding, such initiatives may lead to outcomes that would not be
pleasing to some, who may thus look to military action, or something of the kind, to stop them. We
would view this as an aberration of the second cycle herein, sociality in general. This is to say that forced
action would mitigate against informed, consensual processes with rational groundings. Military action
of an uncivil nature, the assessment of such, is what stimulated Korzybski’s work in the first place. Van
der Pijl describes a current scenario in which agents of the Lockean heartland are not inclined to fade
away quietly in the night.198

These fight battles based on ephemeral conditions, propositions that were unbalanced and untoward
centuries ago when they were misinterpreted and force into the public arena in the first place. The
Lockean proposition was wrong. Civilization, culture, and society are more important than the economy
and the aggregation of money-generating properties. The original – and abiding – concept of Anglo
preeminence is wrong. There is no world culture, a presumed phenomenon which is in fact an Anglo-

198
van der Pijl, K. 2014. The discipline of Western supremacy: Modes of foreign relations and political economy, Vol.
III. London: Pluto Press.

85
Euro-centered culture with all else in its wake. There are dozens of cultures, hundreds, if not more.199
Many of these are very alive and very dynamic.200 Along with communities of expertise, knowledge and
social responsibility, these need to be identified and supported and their legitimacy needs to be
enhanced – dual control and fluidity being key elements of such efforts.201 Some of these cultures,
societies, and associations are sound and whole, but others are barely holding together, in part due to
intrusions by the predominant core-periphery model, of which they will always be on the outside
looking in. Those traditional societies retain many of the features of mankind’s progression that have
brought us to where we are. In this, we are the time-bind-ees, although we have much catching up to
take advantage of that blessing. As can be seen in Figure 19: The challenge of reclaiming lost knowledge
and sociality, physics at the base and sociality as a priority will help to introduce the balance we need to
go forward.

Figure 19: The challenge of reclaiming lost knowledge and sociality

Where all else fails, warfare was an abiding phenomenon in the past and will surely be a thing of the
future. We recommend, where conflict is under consideration, an important proviso. If there is to be
war, let it be based on this proposition: That there be process.202 This is to say that there be an
infrastructure put into place to organize and support time-binding.203 As the musicians never would – or

199
Davidson, N. 2015. We cannot escape history: States and revolutions. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 189-202.
200
Urry, J. 2009. Mobilities and social theory. In B. S. Turner (Ed.). 2009, The new Blackwell companion to social
theory. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 477-495.
201
Loya, T. A., and Boli, J. 1999. Standardization in the world polity: Technical rationality over power. In J. Boli and
G. M. Thomas (Eds.). 1999. Constructing world culture: International governmental organizations since 1875.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 169-197.
202
Tingey, K. B., and Manicki, M. 2015. Rational war: The fabric of society, dual control and legitimacy, and the big
zipper. Logan, UT/Warsaw, Poland: CIMH Global and 2020 Program for Global Health.
203
Koppell, J. G. S. 2010. World rule: Accountability, legitimacy, and the design of global governance. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

86
could – subsist in the future without their method of notation and the overwhelming, precious grand
library of great musical works, mankind suffers without similar structure. Process isn’t sufficient, as it
can be corrupted. Process is necessary, however. There is no other way.

Time-binding being the key, perspective is of fundamental importance. Success should bring confidence,
but confidence is warranted before victory can be declared. Mary Catherine Bateson makes reference to
this kind of perspective:

If it is true that the unit of survival is the organism plus its environment, a sensitivity to
the environment is the highest of survival skills and not a dangerous distraction. We
must live in a wider space and a longer stretch of time. In thinking about survival, we
must think of sustaining life across generations rather than accepting the short-term
purposes of politicians and accountants. 204

Our original proposition is that the Theory of Everything can be of inestimable benefit to society, even as
it is a work in progress. Operationalizing it is a desirable objective, as it is possible. This is a task of
measurable proportions – it does not require endless or infinite energy and attention. Dual control as
such is a dynamic condition, but it can be achieved – dynamically. Pessimism should be confidently and
enjoyably dispelled by listening to your music of choice. Live performance by a good ensemble in
particular is instructive and satisfying. Their canon of scientific material supporting the conquest of
sound is not complete, but it is conclusive. Our ability to fill out the rest of the spectrum is simply a
matter of spacetime.

204
Bateson, M. C. 1989. Composing a life. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 234. Cited in Kodish, S. P., and
Kodish, B. I. 2011. Drive yourself sane: Using the uncommon sense of general semantics, 3rd ed. Pasadena, CA:
Extensional Press, 187.

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8 APPENDIX – HUMAN PROSPERITY MODEL
Human Prosperity Model
Kenneth B. Tingey, PhD
15 October, 2015

Versions of this paper were submitted in 2015 to the journals Nature and Science. The editor of Nature
declined publication on grounds that he judged the contents to be appropriate for a specialized journal.
The editor of Science declined publication as well with the comment that “we do not publish this kind of
work” without further elaboration.

Further submissions of the paper were not made at that time, nor have they been made since.

8.1 TITLE: HUMAN PROSPERITY MODEL

8.2 AUTHOR/AFFILIATION
Kenneth. B. Tingey1*

1
Profundities LLC, Logan, Utah, USA
*Correspondence to: ken.tingey@outlook.com

8.3 ABSTRACT
Human prosperity depends on rational application of knowledge. Knowledge is acquired by
constantly driving to understand root causes of natural processes, continuously reducing
probabilistic gaps in the understanding of observed phenomena. Technology extends our reach,
but with mixed results, extending the effects of knowledge-driven actions in beneficial and
harmful ways. There is a need to mitigate technology-mediated effects that do not correspond
with the best available knowledge, encouraging those that do. A dependable prosperity model
could reinforce the systematic identification of activities that confound outcomes from outdated
presumptions, misunderstandings, or purposeful inattention and replace them with optimal
actions. The Human Prosperity Model serves as a functional union of physics and mathematics,
using passive and process-oriented taxonomy models to define and adjudicate technology-
mediated human activity. The universal nature of the model allows for application of knowledge
across the electromagnetic spectrum, allowing for barrier-free integration with electromagnetic
devices, infrastructure, individuals, and institutions.

8.4 ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY

Casting knowledge as processes, experts can activate what they know within the electromagnetic
spectrum, supplanting confusion and waste.

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8.5 MAIN TEXT
The Human Prosperity Model supports valid knowledge forms and encourages sponsorship of
experts in the arrangement and use of such knowledge in primary electromagnetic forms.
Prosperity is defined as follows:
Pr osp  H * ( P  Q)*( ExB)
Equation components:
Prosp = Prosperity and longevity of society, of the human race
H (capital eta) = the capability of applying knowledge
Δ(P→Q) = knowledge of implication in a changing environment, knowledge of natural
phenomena, including root causes of physical and social phenomena
The entire H * Δ(P→Q) aspect to the model, know-how in a changing environment
(E x B) = The electromagnetic spectrum as per Maxwell's equations. These served as
mathematical proofs of the work of Faraday (1) that underscores the entire electromechanical
production function of modern economy and society, from machines to appliances. This is the
foundation for our understanding of physics apart from gravitation and nuclear phenomena,
including chemistry and biology.
The Human Prosperity Model provides an improved framework for understanding
industrial production and world-aggregated national product. It can also be seen to provide
rationale for improved social conditions and reduction of risks associated with human activity.
The model addresses knowledge as a complex and nuanced construct. Unless knowledge is
expertly expressed through electromagnetic means to adjudicate interactions between energy and
matter, it conveys mixed value to society. This includes benefits, but also risks of several
varieties.

8.6 ISSUES WITH REGARD TO KNOWLEDGE

The 20th century discovery of the integrated nature of all phenomena via frequencies and waves
is a seminal achievement of science. Although physicists continue to struggle with a unification
theory of all of natural phenomena, they have confidently provided a sound foundation for our
general use, electrodynamics (electromagnetics) being an area of particular success. By
positioning knowledge in the electromagnetic realm, society can leverage it directly in all forms
of public and private media. Making use of perpetual storage and computational functionality for
recall, reprocessing, and communication, representations of such knowledge can be made
available anywhere on Earth, ultimately throughout the universe. The critical factor here is in the
embedding of knowledge-empowered, process-oriented capabilities into the electromagnetic
spectrum in ways that can be used. This allows for dispersion and use, potentially at light speed,
more particularly at network speed.
A refinement of the equation, KU represents useful knowledge. Usefulness is represented
by predictable functionality in the context in question based on acceptable human values:
KU = Useful knowledge = H * (P→Q)

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 KU constitutes a matching of expertise, of how to carry out predictable actions in the
context in question, as defined by Δ(P→Q). KM, misapplied knowledge, exists where
predictable functionality is found, but with effects contrary to acceptable human values.
KM = Misapplied knowledge = -H * (P→Q)
KM may also represent cases where knowledge exists, but the expertise to use it is not
identified and sponsored. As KM becomes smaller, it ceases to be relevant. Δ has been removed
based on a presumption that if the knowledge is misapplied, it doesn't so much matter that it is or
isn't changing. KI involves areas in which the science has not been identified, regardless of any
possible expertise as to applying knowledge generally.
KI = Areas where knowledge is incomplete or incorrect = H * (-P→Q)
Expertise is not automatically transferable from one subject area to another. As KI
becomes smaller, it eventually merges into KU. Δ has been removed here based on a
presumption that if the knowledge is misapplied, it matters less from a conceptual standpoint.
The modified prosperity equation is as follows:

Pr osp  ( KU  KM  KI ) *( ExB)

8.7 RISKS
There is risk that knowledge will be either misapplied or misunderstood, yet sponsored into the
electromagnetic realm, making it generally available for use with perverse outcomes. Such
sociopolitical risk is identified below:
SPrisk = Sociopolitical risk = KM+KI
Geophysical risk, GPrisk, exists in two forms, that which presents itself naturally, referred
to here as natural geophysical risk, NGPrisk, and such risks exacerbated by SPrisk, shown as
NGPrisk * SPrisk:
GPrisk = NGPrisk + NGPrisk * SPrisk
Cognitive failure contributes to GPrisk. This factor reduces prospects for Prosp. The
equation needs to reflect this in such a way as to accommodate valid data in this regard.
Human survival, if not prosperity, depends on a continuing state of affairs in the cosmos.
Estimating this is a matter of considerable scientific interest. Cosmic risk, Crisk , can be
calculated as (1000-n)/1000, where n = number of years beginning with 1,000 decrementing
annually to zero when a thousand year limit is reached as estimated by Stephen Hawking (2).
This assumes a straight line of risk over the period with respect to the cosmos. Such risks include
direct and indirect effects of cosmic phenomena. Such effects could occur immediately outside
of Earth's atmosphere, in the solar system including the sun and the other planets, asteroids,
comets, stars, and galaxies. Risks do exist, including the ultimately probability that Earth will be
compromised. As can be seen below, NGPrisk and Crisk need to be factored in based on a
defensible relationship with Prosp.
Prosp = (KU-KM-KI)-NGPrisk-Crisk * (E x B)

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8.8 GAINS FROM IMPROVED USE OF KNOWLEDGE
H incorporates many avenues of knowledge by means of its electromagnetic groundings.
Portions of the electromagnetic spectrum has experienced significant progress. One of these is
the range of electromagnetic frequencies that correspond with audible waves, convertible to
sounds. Although much is known about sound in musical and other contexts, there are
exceptions. Salutary sounds are created by instruments and devices of many kinds, but damaging
sounds continue to exist in industrial and public settings. Even in cases where KU is established,
KM and KI continue to be present. Damaging or obnoxious sounds are often created in public,
often in lower socioeconomic circles, as indiscriminate forms of impropriety, possibly
retaliatory, or demonstrations of lack of regard for the interests and feelings of others. These
represent social issues and concerns to be true. With progress, perhaps young men would choose
to impress the rest with an articulate French horn concerto in lieu of an ear-splitting motorcycle
squeal or pain-inducing muscle car growl, examples of KM as opposed to KI.
In Additional Considerations, energy equivalence is used as a means of evaluating the
state of our knowledge. Using a single raisin as an example, we see that we have much to learn.
By current commercial standards, our knowledge-based performance falls fall short of energetic
potential of such an item, likely of others as well. The question arises as to how far current
performance levels fall short of current knowledge such as it is even potentially beyond current
commercial activity. For whatever reason, it is possible that such barriers exist. Where present, it
is hoped that H's use will be encouraged and that it will become prevalent over such limiting
factors.
The question surfaces as to how H can be encouraged and positioned within (E x B). This
can be accomplished by means of five concepts that serve to characterize and position H within
(E x B). The five concepts also support Boolean gateways, requirements of computability as
considered by Gödel, Church, and Turing, and issues of automation and general use as
emphasized by Turing and others. They also account for needed adjustments where quantum
mechanics applies, including the need to accommodate different views of context. With
parsimony and clarity as underlying imperatives, the five concepts allow for automatic
usefulness as knowledge-driven content it deployed in the electromagnetic realm. This is
benefited by technology standards, which support pervasive and immediate usefulness of
knowledge.

8.9 GENERATIVE TAXONOMIES AND KNOWLEDGE USE

There is an important distinction between generative taxonomies and conventional taxonomies.
Traditional taxonomies are built by arranging knowledge elements according to logical outlines
and groups. Such groupings are housed in documents, tables, figures and other static collections
of elements. Figure 18, Taxonomy operator demonstrates a proposed operator representing the
static taxonomy development process. The knowledge domain in question is shown in the
classification system above the operator.

Figure 20, Taxonomy operator

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 In the example, the three universal English language systems DDC, LCC, and CC
represent the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Library of Congress Classification, and the
Colon Classification systems. The call number for that subject or other classifier is to appear
below the taxonomy in question. The full notation for the static taxonomy, or knowledge
construct, is thus Δ( P→Q). This represents the expansion of the single knowledge construct,
the hypothetical syllogism, using the taxonomy operand.
The prosperity equation with this taxonomy model, representing expansion of all knowledge into
static taxonomic form, is outlined as follows:
Prosp = (H * Δ ( P→Q))
The representation of “all knowledge” at the base of the taxonomy operand based on the
LCC classification system is problematic. The operand would preferably reference knowledge
using more grounded criteria. Use of the electromagnetic spectrum as a knowledge map would
be a good option, given the pervasive nature of electromagnetic fields in nature. Accommodation
for the other three forces of nature would not be difficult to achieve. Under such a scenario, the
frequencies in question (or wavelengths) could be presented as outlined in Figure 19, Extension
of taxonomy operator. This allows for fractional frequencies, typically measured per second as
well as very large ones as well as direct current, with no oscillations. Based on current
knowledge, n is not likely to be higher than 24, which would extend beyond current knowledge
of gamma rays and other ultra-high energy cosmic frequencies. Not very much documentation
exists regarding m, very slow fractional frequencies, but their importance cannot be ruled out.

Figure 21, Extension of taxonomy operator

The generative taxonomy model extends the static construct, supporting active, process-
oriented knowledge forms. The purpose here is to promote a direct link between the knowledge
enterprise and its dissemination throughout society. These concepts support the context of
knowledge and the will of the expert, overlooked in typical systems treatments, but not by
Turing himself. He described programming as “an activity by which a digital computer is made
to do a man's will” (3). “Will”, in the presence of KM and KI, can substantially compromise H as
well as Prosp outcomes. It will serve as the operand for application for H in preparing knowledge
for inclusion in (E x B). The five generative taxonomy concepts are as follows:
1. Hypothetical syllogism. ( P→Q). This concept involves the organization of the subject
matter in question in a tree-based structure assuming a depth-first branch traversal to
ensure that context is documented and preserved. The first of the five concepts is tree-
based classification to be sure, but there will likely be needed adjustments to the content
when converting from traditional taxonomy models, at least in transition stages. This is
due in part to the fact that such knowledge can be organized using many static taxonomic
models. While prior taxonomic work may need only small adjustments, experience has
shown that possibilities for expert-driven design and the availability of generative
taxonomy resources often result in substantial taxonomy enhancements.

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2. Boolean logic selection criteria (4). All taxonomy/tree branches are not selected in all
cases. When navigating through classification trees, branches can be selected according
to Boolean principles:
1. AND (conjunction, selecting all options) denoted x•y, satisfies x•y = 1, otherwise;
2. Exclusive OR, allowing for one option only, denoted x˄y, otherwise;
3. Inclusive OR, allowing for more than one option, denoted x˅y, otherwise;
4. NOT (negation), denoted ¬x, satisfies ¬x = 0 if x = 1 and ¬x = 1 if x = 0.
3. Computational completeness (computability) (5) and recursion. These can be embodied
in generative taxonomy events, or branch commands, as below:
a1 = the first term in the sequence
alast = the last term in the sequence
n = the term number
d = the common difference = 1 [typically]
(a) yn = f(xn) [mathematical expression]
an = an + d
if an < alast, return to (a)
else finish
Kleene defines computational completeness as,
An effective method for calculating the values of a function is an algorithm.
Functions for which an effective method exists are sometimes called effectively
calculable.
Several independent efforts to give a formal characterization of effective
calculability led to a variety of proposed definitions (general recursion, Turing
machines, λ-calculus) that later were shown to be equivalent. The notion captured
by these definitions is known as recursive or effective computability.
The Church–Turing thesis states that the two notions coincide: any number-
theoretic function that is effectively calculable is recursively computable.

4. Establishing semantic meaning. A particular condition can be assigned one or more

meaningful symbols when an associated branch is selected.
This is an axiomatic statement x = x. This would incorporate any statement of
equivalence. Clearly, such a statement is impossible under non-aristotelian assumptions,
such as proposed by Korzybski. In this light, the equivalence is considered an abstraction.
This is the case throughout in the generative taxonomy model.
5. Using symbolic meaning. This is a restatement of concept 2, where the symbols or
numeric values are used to automatically select subsequent branches in the taxonomy as
they present themselves in the design, subject to Boolean logic. Selection of such
branches would then activate any computational or logical elements associated with those
branches and their child branches, following the established pattern. This aromaticity
conveys particular mechanistic features. This corresponds as well to Turing's statement:

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 It was stated, “a function is effectively calculable if its values can be found by some
purely mechanical process.” We may take this literally, understanding that by a
purely mechanical process one which could be carried out by a machine. The
development … leads to … an identification of computability with effective
calculability (6).
Application of the five concepts provides for the full generative functionality. As can be
seen in Figure 20, Generative taxonomy operator, the operator for this activity is as follows: .
The g in the model refers to this generative aspect, the application of the five concepts as
previously described.

Figure 22, Generative taxonomy operator

H continues to represent the knowledge of how to apply knowledge. In the initial

survivability equation, the mathematical symbol “*” was used as a general purpose operand,
representing the application of knowledge to the taxonomies in question, P→Q. The new
generative taxonomy operand will now be used for that purpose.
A major benefit of the generative taxonomy model is that it represents knowledge forms
that are immediately useful. This is to say that knowledge so structured simply needs to be
positioned into the electromagnetic sphere, typically through computerization, to be useful. This
relationship is represented by the bucket fill operand . The bucket fill operand thus represents
the positioning of the knowledge in question within (E x B) for it to naturally take effect.

8.10 REVISED PROSPERITY MODEL

The full prosperity equation will be thus:
Prosp = (H Δ( P→Q)) (E x B)
Social and economic factors contribute to the net validity of H and the net value of KU-
KM-KI. Economic structures are largely based on employment equilibrium within authoritative
structures. These are largely driven by competitive factors, with a monetary scorecard. While
competitive, market-based models have proven themselves generally, they are not without fault.
They are problematic in that they may contribute to KM and KI, hampering efforts to optimize H
constructs and KU generally. Owing the natural existence and functionality of all energy and
matter to the electromagnetic spectrum, related anomalies can surely be resolved through a KU-
KM-KI optimization process.

8.11 ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

What is our progress with regard to prosperity, given the risks? Current levels of knowledge
considering energy can be evaluated using E= mc2, the basis for mass-energy equivalence (7, 8).
This formula can give an idea of current knowledge, prospects for prosperity, and our ability to
overcome risks as outlined. The equivalence formula makes reference to E as energy in the

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traditional manner rather than as the electrical component of (E x B) as otherwise used herein.
The formula E= mc2 is used with the traditional E for energy, not electrical fields, to reduce
rather than create confusion.
Using a single raisin as an example, the energy equivalence formula is thus used to
demonstrate latent energy that could be leveraged with higher levels of knowledge. This is an
example of current relationship between H and Δ(P→Q). In considering energetic potential in
the matter represented by a raisin, we refer to nuclear potential, the strong force in particular,
which overwhelms energy realization from the raisin based on current levels of knowledge. H at
present is modest, given the potential for energetic output of such a small, commonly-derived
item. The challenge is in improving H throughout the electromagnetic spectrum and throughout
all of the forces.
The electromagnetic spectrum of (E x B), our delivery system as it were, ranges from
direct current, with no frequency, to ranges to frequencies per second from 1024 and greater,
gamma rays produced by cosmic rays and higher. Cold matter, emanating gravitational pull, but
with no discernible electromagnetic activity, lies outside of this model. As differentiated from
direct current, with an oscillating frequency of 0, dark matter has a null electromagnetic
signature.
The energy of the raisin represents Δ(P→Q) and the knowledge of accessing and using
that energy is H. A single raisin is documented as weighing 13.608 grams. This represents mass,
or m. The speed of light squared is 8.99x1016. Multiplying the two reveals a product of 1.22x1015
joules, or 1.22 petajoules. One petajoule equals 277.7 million kWh, equal to 277.7 megawatt
hours. Based on the E= mc2 formula, the raisin represents energy potential of 339.6 megawatts of
electrical power. This is equivalent to 1.9 times the annual capacity of HOP Energy LLC of
Massachusetts, the second smallest retail electrical power marketer in the United States (9).
Conversely, a single raisin is rated to yield two calories of heat when consumed. Thus,
the potential energy as per E= mc2 over the caloric energy in joules yields 2.16x1015 times the
energy.

8.12 REFERENCES AND NOTES:

1. Faraday, M. 1832, January 1. Experimental Researches in Electricity, Series III-VIII and
XVI-XVII, Phil. Trans. R. Soc., 122, 125-162.
2. Matheny, J. G. 2007. Reducing the risk of human extinction. Risk Analysis 27, 1335-1344.
3. Turing, A. M. 2013. Excerpt from programmer’s handbook for the Manchester electronic
computer Mark II, in Alan Turing: His work and impact, S. Barry Cooper, & J. van Leeuwen
(Eds.). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
4. van den Daele, L. 1996. Cognitive development of the binary operations for standard and
non-standard logic. Perceptual and Motor Skills 83(3, Pt. 2), 1271-1288.
5. Gödel, K. 1931. On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems, in
Computability, Copeland, et al., Eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6. Turing, A. M. 1939. Systems of logic: Based on ordinals. Ph.D. thesis. Princeton University,
8.

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7. A. Einstein, Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig? Annalen der
Physik 18, 639–643 (1905).
8. S. Rainville, et al., World Year of Physics: A direct test of E=mc2, Nature 438, 1096-1097
(2005).
9. U.S. Energy Information Administration 2012 Retail Power Marketers Sales-Total (U.S.
Department of Energy, 2015) http://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/index.cfm.

8.13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Appreciation goes to Dell K. Allen who reviewed this article, for his contributions and
suggestions.

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