Blog Posts and Writings Tagged: Society

Humans or animals acting collectively according to custom or established rules

Blog 15. The B Team Has Plan B for Profits, People, and the Earth

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Frustrated by change?

As Blog 1 discussed, society is changing faster every year, with the rate of change driven by the accumulation of prior changes.  My frustrated colleagues issue complaints like this:

  • The print and broadcast news media are becoming slanted because they are controlled by a few companies with political agendas.
  • Commercial TV now fills 30% of its time with advertising.
  • The news is no longer investigative journalism, but panders to spectacular events and personality displays.
  • Politicians focus on making the other side look bad rather than solving problems.
  • Blame and fear instead of facts and analysis recently dominate government.
  • CEOs make tens of millions while outsourcing jobs.
  • As soon as they are elected, congressmen invest half their time in fund-raising and politicking for the next election.
  • Big businesses like oil and corporate farming get subsidies.

Continue reading →

Blog 13. Models and modeling

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What’s modeling?

A model is an abstraction, a physical abstraction of an object or a conceptual abstraction of a situation.  An architect might use a cardboard physical model to illustrate a proposed building.  Conceptual models can represent complex systems like population dynamics, economics, or schooling fish.  By “complex systems” I mean the things described in Blog 2 and Blog 3, situations with many independent agents governed by nonlinear rules of interaction among the agents and their surroundings.  A conceptual model often takes the form of a set of equations with which the system can be simulated by computer, thereby becoming a “computer model.”  Note I said simulated by computer, not solved by computer.   Continue reading →

Blog 12. Why a violent America?

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 In Blog 4 I asked whether this country is governed by reality or by ideology.  I used the Iraq wars, banking, and gun violence as examples.   That example of gun violence raises a larger question.

 Big Question:

Does the continuing public debate on guns overlook violence itself as an underlying cultural characteristic, an unwritten rule of interaction in a complex  social system? Continue reading →

Blog 11. Science, Society, and Belief

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Science

Science is a method for establishing truth based on observation, experiment, measurement, and syllogistic logic. As the physicist Richard Feynman said, science is a method of organizing your information so as to avoid being fooled. Science offers a reliable way of knowing about the physical world.  It can establish facts, but not human values. Is that why much of today’s society—or at least today’s politics—seems to be anti-science?

Continue reading →

Blog 7. Briefcase-carrying bureaucrats

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A friend wrote, “…I have soured on what can really be done. The EPA and the state Environment Department are easily bought out… .”  Sounds like a rabid tree-hugging environmentalist.  Actually, I think he votes with the conservative cause.

Citizens are everywhere discouraged, feeling that their governmental agencies and the people in those agencies lack integrity. “Briefcase-carrying bureaucrats” Continue reading →

Blog 4. Governing by reality

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Reality or ideology?

Why is it that laws, regulations, and governmental policies are rarely formed according to the reality of the situation?  Rather, a person, interest group, or party creates political pressure and financial rewards for a particular action.  Is that why each action creates another problem?  Certainly, each new law, regulation or policy creates new interactions among the actors in a complex system—and that’s more complexity. (See Blog 3.)  I’m not a Libertarian; I don’t advocate erasure of most laws solely as a matter of principle.  However, I do advocate looking before leaping, assessing real causes before applying ideal solutions.  Let’s consider three diverse examples. Continue reading →

Holy Wars

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HOLY WARS and SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

PREAMBLE

These days, the term “holy war” brings to mind the conflict between Islamic terrorists and western cultures. Although the so-called Islamic Jihad is not the topic of this essay, there are some parallels between Islamic activism and American social movements.  Those social movements are the topic, but first we need to distinguish those movements from the Islamic Jihad.  I will paraphrase a description of the Jihad as given by James Turner Johnson, an academic scholar who has written several books on Islam and the west. Continue reading →