----- Original Message -----
From: Steven Bissell <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 7:26 AM
Subject: Re: Hayek
> Gus, one question. Is Hayek using the term "self organizing" in the Adam
> Smith sense or in the "Autopoesis" sense. The first I'm sort of dubious
> about, the second I tend to reject outright.
>
Organisms are 'self-organizing' ...or autopoetic. Ecosystems are not
'self-organizing' (except in a limited way - hence the autecology of species
relfected in the individual organism). Those systems which can be destroyed
from without or made from without are heteropoetic or allopoetic. To claim
that any human instutition can be 'autopoetic' is to make an error in
judgement,therefore. There are no institutions (family, corporation, nation,
etc.) which cannot be destroyed from without or changed fundamentally by a
conceptual 'other'. This is why I think that it is confusing to envision a
system as being 'self-organizing' beyond the organism. To say therefore that
"central planning" is wrong or right is really putting the proverbial cart
before the horse. Planning is considered essential to organizational
behaviour whether it is the kind of planning that created the "Manhattan
Project" or the worlds' largest industrial project which is the Alberta Tar
Sands (Syncrude).
I think when 'politics' is mixed with ecology, then the result is some
interesting metaphors, but politics is a form of 'prudence' which rests
therefore on the individual conscience.
Who really made the "Manhattan Project" which employed 200,000 persons? It
was not simply the US and Canada (the U235 cam from Canadian mines), but
rather the Ruskies who created a perceived need by representatives in
government of the 'allopoetic' and 'heteropoetic' nature of the political
ecosystem. The ideological basis of the other is irrelevant...there simply
has to be some 'difference' based on political borders and boundaries (which
in my opinion are illusory). For instance USSR had 'central planning' and so
did the US (otherwise how could either nation create nuclear bombs - enough
to destroy life on earth 1000 times)?
Military prep. requires central planning (unless you have legal local
militias).
chao
John Foster
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