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COMER Columns
Articles published in "Economic Reform"
the Journal of the 'Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform'COMER Column #2 Vol. 12, No. 10, Oct. 2000.
A Systems View of Human Values
The issues of globalisation and its supposed inevitability - "there is no alternative " (TINA) - are much discussed these days. While "globalisation" of some kind may indeed be in the cards, whether it must be under the conditions of corporate values and culture is still a key question. In addressing these issues it is necessary to go to root causes and examine fundamental priorities. The deep questions around universal values and "One World" have been part of civilisation for a long time and merit some revisiting.
In a recent paper ("Re- embedding the Economy into Society and Society into the Biosphere". COMER Aug/00), William Krehm noted the vital importance of adopting an adequate frame of reference, a comprehensive systems model in terms of which we might understand and steer policy in these turbulent times. This column is intended as a contribution to such a project, offered in the hope of stimulating critical discussion and increased awareness of methods which offer improved prospects. To understand complex problems we need not only reliable information but also a systems context enabling us to evaluate priorities.
Although the primary focus of COMER is on economic concerns, it is clear that there is need to cast as wide a net as may be necessary to identify and illuminate all relevant subsystems. It is vital to set the context properly before homing in on particulars of presumed special significance. The premise here is that the modes and consequences of economic exchange follow in fact from human needs and values, not the reverse. Our focus will be on human benefits as ends, and economic arrangements as means to such enduring human ends.
There is always more to life than can be described, more than we can know, more than science has discerned to date. Human awareness is grounded on the personal experience of each of us, and what we can discuss is selected even more narrowly, abstracted as it is through language. Such conditions limit what can be articulated, and provide grounds for a proper humility in the face of what the philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers called the Encompassing - the fundamentals of existence itself, to which we can point and appeal but the ranges of which remain beyond any conceivable systems of knowledge. A lively sense of this uncertainty is essential if we would be realistic about our limitations and our need for adequate methods. This sense of indeterminacy also has its counterparts in modern physics. (Of course, the realisation of these imponderables does not give any licence to ascribe any particular character or reality to such metaphysical surmises, or to fill in with imagination what we cannot know.)
The key question is: How can we best go about evaluating experience and making responsible choices, both for right aims (effectiveness) and by right means (efficiency). Most of us are well aware of the importance of reliable information in order to clarify goals, and the need for feedback to steer behaviour. In ordinary life we are only partly aware of all the influences which shape our views and of the extent to which the real complexities outrun our limited abilities.
If they are to be effective, our methods and instruments must be adapted to all the limitations present. For example, (an application of the Principle of Requisite Variety) if a picture requires a grid of 100 x 100 or 10,000 picture elements (pixels) to resolve its essential features, a grid of 6 x 6, or 10 x 10, will be inadequate. Human short term memory has many similar limitations. For example, many people can hold in mind up to seven items at a time, and some can hold more, but without giving thought to methods (e.g. systematic groupings, theoretical constructs) even the most brilliant cannot reliably envision and master truly complex relationships.
Our purpose here is not to describe all the possibilities and constraints involved in systems sciences but to point to the needs and opportunities which may await such methods in an economics embedded in a human society where complications abound.To address some of these deeper questions it is necessary to articulate problems within an existential framework, to relate concepts to the experiences from which they derive. What has been criticised as over-reliance on rationality (e.g. by John Ralston Saul, in Voltaire's Bastards) has often been mere self-serving sophistry, a misuse of reason. We can recognise perversions of rationality by observing their social effects. "By their fruits ye shall know them". At any rate an argument against reason based upon reason is not totally convincing.
Moreover, social context may shape what we accept as reasonable. For example, research reports indicate that income disparities continue to increase - the rich becoming richer and poor even poorer. The impression is left by some of these reports that in the search for causal factors no conclusions can be drawn. This is not reasonable. It is more likely that research results which challenge those who profit under present arrangements may not be seen as acceptable in terms of values of our corporate culture. The important conclusion may be that criteria by which judgments are made at any level must be open to evaluation in the light of the larger context of human needs and aims.
A variety of approaches and methods are included in concepts of "systems sciences". Few writers are expert across this whole range, and the present author is no exception. So our purposes are modest: to consider the potential contribution of a systematic perspective on the real world - a view which also takes the observer into account as an influence on what is being observed. Unless we are aware of the limitations of our instruments - including oursleves, our perceptions and methods - we cannot have justified confidence in results and conclusions.
A variety of questions involving social organisation are in need of illumination in terms of their systemic structures. These include the nature and role of values, not as remote and equivocal ideals but as organising aims and purposes. Economic activities involve values to the extent that they contribute to human well-being, but not as functions determined by assumed requirements of closed systems for stable equilibria. If vagueness and double dealing are to be minimised, values must be clear as to meaning in action. It is especially vital to clarify such values as freedom (i.e. options for choice); the various roles of information; efficiency in support of effective values; management of complexity; transparency (openness); and other topics.
In subsequent columns our plan is to consider various aspects of systems approaches as these form a coherent package of ideas, which may in turn help us understand that totality which shapes our lives - an Economy serving a Society which depends for its life on Earth and its Biosphere.