Complexity and social Evolution

[Thunderbird]

One description of a good scientific theory is that of a model or tool that generates information.

If a scientific model provides solutions to problems not yet solved by present models, its probably a good model, when these solutions provide information that you never expected, or could not have predicted it usually means its a really good theory.

 

The theory of evolution is one of these really good models, and has held up to the test of time......so far.

 

But consider the following; are these current models shedding any practical light on problems and challenges to the common man ? or, for that matter mankind in general? Are these models providing practical applications to help our species survive in changing times ?Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were intended only to objectively observe the evolutionary process, without taking into account that we are still subject to some sort evolutionary process.. From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people.

 

 

Evolution and the study of evolution can no longer be solely objective activities.

Both are the acquisition and utilization of information from the world around us. The question must now be ask; How does this information from the past help us as a species to survive, And dare I say, evolve further?

 

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

 

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

 

Caveat: These models are not mine, and certainly are not new to science, they are currently being utilized in virtually in every scientific field, and even in evolutionary biology, although the ID movement is attempting to misappropriate these models as a religious wedge within the academic community. We cannot let this happen. If you believe this cannot happen, you need to wake up.

[REASON]

But consider the following; are these current models shedding any practical light on problems and challenges to the common man ? or, for that matter mankind in general? Are these models providing practical applications to help our species survive in changing times ?Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were intended only to objectively observe the evolutionary process, without taking into account that we are still subject to some sort evolutionary process. From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people.

 

I don't agree that they should. Why is it necessary in the understanding of biological evolutionary processes to integrate social relevance and problem solving for the common man?

 

This sounds somewhat like the ideas surrounding Social Darwinism. Is that your intention?

 

 

Evolution and the study of evolution can no longer be solely objective activities. Both are the acquisition and utilization of information from the world around us. The question must now be ask; How does this information from the past help us as a species to survive, And dare I say, evolve further?

 

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

 

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

 

I think you need to elaborate on this a bit. It has a real Social Engineering flavor to it. Am I misunderstanding? What are you getting at?

[Buffy]

To be self-referential, scientific advance is usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

 

Its certainly a good idea to keep an open mind for the revolutionary changes, but insisting that you must throw out the "old ideas" to see the new ones is just as short-sighted as not being open minded.

 

Now as Reason points out, what you seem to be talking about is Social Darwinism, which is actually generally discredited not only because its been used largely to justify racism and class warfare, but simply because the analogies become strained: there are no discrete entities to reproduce even if the morphologically identifiable features appear to evolve.

 

If you're looking for a theory of how societies and social structures evolve, I'd say its wide open with *no* accepted theories, so there's no "old order" to overturn.

 

Trying to create such a conflict in my view, simply makes your task much more complicated!

 

Is that how you're going to apply complexity? :)

 

America is addicted to wars of distraction, :eek_big:

Buffy

[Thunderbird]

To be self-referential, scientific advance is usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

 

Its certainly a good idea to keep an open mind for the revolutionary changes, but insisting that you must throw out the "old ideas" to see the new ones is just as short-sighted as not being open minded.

 

 

Buffy

 

Read the post. No where did I say Thow out, rather Update.

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

[Thunderbird]

 

This sounds somewhat like the ideas surrounding Social Darwinism. Is that your intention?

 

 

 

Social Darwinism ? This thread is about complexity. read the post.

 

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

 

This statement is in opposition to Social Darwinism. Hello.:)

[Thunderbird]

To be self-referential, scientific advance is usually evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

 

Its certainly a good idea to keep an open mind for the revolutionary changes, but insisting that you must throw out the "old ideas" to see the new ones is just as short-sighted as not being open minded.

 

Now as Reason points out, :):sheepjump:what you seem to be talking about is Social Darwinism, which is actually generally discredited not only because its been used largely to justify racism and class warfare, but simply because the analogies become strained: there are no discrete entities to reproduce even if the morphologically identifiable features appear to evolve.

 

 

 

 

Mankind’s enviable fate will not depend on any scientific or institutional intelligentsia that we can invent, but will succumb to the eventual Tao, or way, inherent within information itself.

 

This is the essence of emerging self organizing systems. I am seaking about creativity as opposed to control.It is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

[REASON]

You know T-Bird, Your little immature sheep references aren't going to garner you any respect around here. It's childish. :) It doesn't bother me because it only ends up being a way in which you make yourself look foolish.

 

Now I was not accusing your concept (or whosever it is) as being Social Darwinism, I was asking if that's what you were getting at? Social Evolution and Social Darwinism at first don't sound all that different. A simple no with clarification as to why I am misunderstanding will suffice in an adult conversation. I didn't find your premise clear, and it appears Buffy didn't either. In fact, I still don't know what you're getting at. :eek_big:

 

Normally, I would enjoy discussing something like this with you since I function better in a philosophy setting. But what's the point? If I want to talk to children, I'll just talk to my kids.

[Buffy]

Read the post. No where did I say Thow out, rather Update.

Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were...

Unless you're using a different meaning of the word "paradigm" this does indeed imply throwing the whole theory out. But to echo what Reason just said: regardless of whether the paradigm of Social Darwinism actually is accepted or not and whether we need to not "hold on to the outdated paradigm"--which I simply argue is unnecessary because there is no "accepted" paradigm--you might just want to get on with describing what you're talking about!

 

Does complexity have impacts on systems of any kind? Sure! Are social structures subject to Complexity? Sure!

 

The question is what is the point you're trying to make?

 

A man who dreads trials and difficulties cannot become a revolutionary, :)

Buffy

[HydrogenBond]

Science evolution and social evolution moves in the direction of complexity until it is able to evolve into simplicity. For example, when PC's first appeared there we literally dozens of producers each with their own operating systems and hardware. The real progression came when this was simplified with Microsoft and Apple making compatibility easier. Even the world wide web or WWW, was in anticipation of many webs. But it too got thinned down to WWW so now, one doesn't even has to type that. The first railroads began with each competitor having a different gauge rail making transitions very complicated This to was simplified to one gauge allowing the RR to more quickly evolve.

 

If you look at nature, chlorophyl is responsible for photosynthesis. Nature may have tested many prototypes but settled on simplicity. From this simplicity there was a new round of complexity. The complexity, in turn, reaches a crisis point, requiring a new simplification as a platform for further complexity.

 

If you look in practical terms, complexity looks more impressive, but it is harder to create simplicity than complexity. With complexity one shifts the idea to only a narrow range of people who can follow it. With simplicity a wider range of humans can participate allowing more innovation. Complexity is impressive looking, but simplicity is just plain impressive.

[CraigD]

One description of a good scientific theory is that of a model or tool that generates information.

…

But consider the following; are these current models shedding any practical light on problems and challenges to the common man ? or, for that matter mankind in general? Are these models providing practical applications to help our species survive in changing times ?

In most of the areas applicable to which evolutionary biology is applicable – environmental and therapeutic medicine, agriculture, etc. - I believe so.

 

Though it’s more fun to be able to express novel, original ideas, I feel compelled here to state an old, unoriginal one: Science has proven far more effective in providing problems to engineering problems than social ones. I agree with a sentiment attributed to Korzybski: if governments were half as good at building treaties as engineers were at building bridges, the world would be a paradise.

 

Can we afford to hold on to outdated paradigms that were intended only to objectively observe the evolutionary process, without taking into account that we are still subject to some sort evolutionary process.. From this point of view, the traditional Darwinian models, although correct, are in fact outdated, in that they do not provide or translate into a social relevancy concurrent to the needs of common people.

I’ve a hunch where Thunderbird is going with this. Correct me, please, if I’m badly off track.

 

In the simplest terms I can put it, in the form of a question: can scientific methods be applied to social problems?

 

This is essentially the question asked around 1919 by Korzybski. His answer, was the discipline of General Semantics, an essentially reductionistic, description-based approach – though I badly oversimplify, and don’t properly understand the discipline – based on the idea that all social problems are due to imprecision in the language, or notation, used to describe them. It’s not unreasonable to extrapolate that this approach underlies the arguably utopian (and arguably dystopian) fictional future society described Lois Lowry’s 1994 Newbery Medal winning novel, “The Giver”.

 

After 90 years of remaining a fairly obscure and generally poorly understood discipline, though, I’m skeptical that GS, or any approach based on language will transform civilization – but, as I’ve already admitted to the belief that my forte in speculating about such things, mathematical formalism, is of limited utility, my skepticism is not, I think, of much consequence.

Evolution and the study of evolution can no longer be solely objective activities.

While an argument can be made that the study of anything is ideally an objective activity, I don’t believe participation in evolution has never, for any animal at any time, been other than subjective. Like any animal, we humans are completely immersed in the process evolutionary biology studies. Contrary to common belief, evidence and analysis suggest that we humans are evolving rapidly, as such processes are measured. With the understanding of the molecular basis of genetics gained essentially all in the past half century, and the rapidly improving discipline of bioinformatics, we may be poised on a period of dramatically accelerated evolution, due to our ability to influence evolution in way other than the ancient, semi-unintentional techniques of selective breeding and species eradication. I can only guess, with hardly any certainty, how much or how little this may influence human and other species evolution in the evolutionary biological eyeblink of the next century.

Are these current models of “survival of the fittest” the best possible paradigms for life in the 21st century ? Are they providing sufficient information needed in creating a world that utilizes the highest of human potentiality? A paradigm where we are all invited to participate.

I’m skeptical that new systems of belief among humans – be they religions, worldviews, scientific paradigms, or mash-ups of all these and others – will be of more significance in the coming centuries than they have been in the past.

 

Human history over the past 5,000 or so years has been one of many different dominant worldviews, differing dramatically in ways that humans believe, emotionally and intellectually, to be of vital significance, but the outcome has consistently been an increase in the human population, in part due to simple zoology – we humans are large, versatile apes, capable of thriving in and dominating a wide range of ecological niches – and in other large part due to technology - primarily agriculture and agriculture-related. I’m making an unscientific guess in doing so, but strongly suspect that, no matter how perilous and uncertain the future looks to us now, this trend will continue.

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

I believe these concepts and disciplines not only will, but already have, profoundly influenced the Darwinian theory of evolution and its models. Although they are not always apparent and popular and specialized scientific literature, complexity and chaos theory permeate the thinking behind conventional science, especially the life sciences.

 

However, as I noted above, I’m skeptical – with the exception of two areas - that these ideas will alter human and animal evolution more dramatically than the once new ideas of the past did in their time. The two areas:

• Bioinformatics and molecular biology - These related disciplines have the potential for humans – or at least information systems created by humans – to completely understand biology, much as we can say we have essentially completely understand ideal gases for more than a century. As I’ve previously said, the impact that such an understanding could have on biological nature exceeds my ability to confidently speculate.
  
• Space travel – Although the engineering challenges are daunting, if human beings are no longer confined to our current single world, the future is, to me, very uncertain.
  

Caveat: These models are not mine, and certainly are not new to science, they are currently being utilized in virtually in every scientific field, and even in evolutionary biology, although the ID movement is attempting to misappropriate these models as a religious wedge within the academic community. We cannot let this happen. If you believe this cannot happen, you need to wake up.

I agree.

 

On the former, all I can add is a tentative recommendation for Kevin Kelly’s “Out of Control” (available online) – tentative, because in places, Kelly’s wide-ranging and little checked style wanders into the realm of the simply, obviously wrong, and it’s very long and at times dense.

 

On the latter subject, ID, it appears that, fortunately, the majority of the US and the world do also.

[Thunderbird]

Science evolution and social evolution moves in the direction of complexity until it is able to evolve into simplicity. For example, when PC's first appeared there we literally dozens of producers each with their own operating systems and hardware. The real progression came when this was simplified with Microsoft and Apple making compatibility easier. Even the world wide web or WWW, was in anticipation of many webs. But it too got thinned down to WWW so now, one doesn't even has to type that. The first railroads began with each competitor having a different gauge rail making transitions very complicated This to was simplified to one gauge allowing the RR to more quickly evolve.

 

If you look at nature, chlorophyl is responsible for photosynthesis. Nature may have tested many prototypes but settled on simplicity. From this simplicity there was a new round of complexity. The complexity, in turn, reaches a crisis point, requiring a new simplification as a platform for further complexity.

 

If you look in practical terms, complexity looks more impressive, but it is harder to create simplicity than complexity. With complexity one shifts the idea to only a narrow range of people who can follow it. With simplicity a wider range of humans can participate allowing more innovation. Complexity is impressive looking, but simplicity is just plain impressive.

 

The complexity this thread is about has to do the study of complex systems, not as a word meaning the the opposite of simplicity.

 

Systems theory

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Systems theory is an interdisciplinary field of science and the study of the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science. More specificially, it is a framework by which one can analyze and/or describe any group of objects that work in concert to produce some result. This could be a single organism, any organization or society, or any electro-mechanical or informational artifact. Systems theory as a technical and general academic area of study predominantly refers to the science of systems that resulted from Bertalanffy's General System Theory (GST), among others, in initiating what became a project of systems research and practice. It was Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who developed interdisciplinary perspectives in systems theory (such as positive and negative feedback in the social sciences).

 

Contents [hide]

1 Overview

2 History

3 Developments in system theories

3.1 General systems research and systems inquiry

3.2 Cybernetics

3.3 Complex adaptive systems

4 Applications of system theories

4.1 Living systems theory

4.2 Organizational theory

4.3 Software and computing

4.4 Sociology and Sociocybernetics

4.5 System dynamics

4.6 Systems engineering

4.7 Systemic psychology

 

 

[Thunderbird]

Reason;Now I was not accusing your concept (or whosever it is) as being Social Darwinism, I was asking if that's what you were getting at? Social Evolution and Social Darwinism at first don't sound all that different. A simple no with clarification as to why I am misunderstanding will suffice in an adult conversation. I didn't find your premise clear, and it appears Buffy didn't either. In fact, I still don't know what you're getting at.

 

 

 

 

There is plenty of info on the net and books on this subject, or you could try asking a question about complex systems.

 

The irony about the sheep jump is that I am making a point about the negitive side of group think.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't find your premise clear, and it appears Buffy didn't either.:) In fact, I still don't know what you're getting at. ;)

 

 

FIRST POST

I believe the science of emergence, systems theory, and complexity, can provide a much needed pragmatism to Darwinian models that will,.. by there nature, promote and assist mankind in a self-organizing global society.

[Eclogite]

Now if you will give some concrete examples of this very general thesis you may find that your confused audience can better appreciate your thoughts.

As CraigD has pointed out, complexity and emergence are already influencing concepts around evolutionary mechanisms. I am puzzled by why you feel Darwinian theory is lacking in pragmatism. Considering a great part of Origin of Species dealt with the very practical issues of selective animal breeding. What could be more pragmatic than that?

 

Perhaps you meant that the Modern Synthesis was lacking in pragmatism. Again, I am not clear what you would mean by this. Certainly an arguable weakness is a clear, quantitative position on how variation arises. Here I would agree that complexity and chaos and emergent properties may all have a role to play.

 

But is this what you intend? Unless you give some concrete (pragmatic) examples it will be difficult to follow your intent.

[Thunderbird]

Now if you will give some concrete examples of this very general thesis you may find that your confused audience can better appreciate your thoughts.

As CraigD has pointed out, complexity and emergence are already influencing concepts around evolutionary mechanisms. I am puzzled by why you feel Darwinian theory is lacking in pragmatism. Considering a great part of Origin of Species dealt with the very practical issues of selective animal breeding. What could be more pragmatic than that?

 

Perhaps you meant that the Modern Synthesis was lacking in pragmatism. Again, I am not clear what you would mean by this. Certainly an arguable weakness is a clear, quantitative position on how variation arises. Here I would agree that complexity and chaos and emergent properties may all have a role to play.

 

But is this what you intend? Unless you give some concrete (pragmatic) examples it will be difficult to follow your intent.

 

 

 

 

 

Besides being a professional artist, my occupation is to help ex-offenders to reintegrate back into the community after prison. Below is an article I posted in the social science forum. The current system has a high recidivism rate. In a system view prison has actually become a strong basin of attraction that many individuals have a difficult time to escape. Public policy has taken the view that crimes committed by the few can be addressed by simply removing those individuals from the public. This policy however has back fired by creating a basin of attraction for the mentally ill, and non violent drug users Consequently this basin of attraction creates what it set out to cure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to a report by the Public Safety Performance Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America’s Prison Population 2007-2011, by 2011 one in every 178 U.S. residents will live in prison. By 2011, America will have more than 1.7 million men and women in prison, an increase of more than 192,000 from 2006. That increase could cost taxpayers as much as $27.5 billion over the next five years beyond what they currently spend on prisons.

 

As federal and state prisons release record numbers of ex-offenders each year, the communities into which these prisoners are released are unprepared to sustain the economic and social burden of this huge reentry population. As a consequence, reentering ex-offenders lack the support needed to reintegrate back into the community as productive law abiding citizens.

Public awareness and support are of key importance in finding solutions to this dual problem of growing prison populations and recidivism, public safety being the ultimate goal. In the last decade or so, the solution to the high crime rate has been stiffer sentencing and therefore has created an increase not only in prison populations, but a larger ex-offender population coming out of prison back into the community.

Men and woman ex-offenders returning to our community may find it very difficult to reintegrate as productive citizens. Relationships prior to incarceration may have been lost during their time away. Job skills development, people skills, and educational opportunities may atrophy, or be put on hold while inside.

Private sector and government policies may also result in disenfranchising the ex-offender from basic services, such as employment, educational benefits, public housing and government food programs. While the goal is pubic safety, the end result is a cyclical regeneration of large populations of individuals that find themselves disconnected and disoriented.

 

By focusing public policy only on the first half of the process; funneling of the offender into prisons though law enforcement and the courts, and not considering the second part; successful reentry into the community, the problems are or not only put on hold, but are magnified.

 

This problem stems from social policies that do not consider the way systems interconnect. The following is how the problem is being addressed though the lens of complexity.

 

A complexity perspective on work with offenders and victims of crime

 

 

A Complexity Theory perspective on working with offenders and victims provides an alternative framework that may uncover new insights into the better way of working in the criminal justice area. An effective complex adaptive system has strong autonomy and efficient connectivity. If any member of a community violates the autonomy or connectivity of another, a crime is committed. Work with offenders and victims focuses on restoring the autonomy and connectivity of those involved and the whole community, better enabling the dynamics of self-organisation to re-emerge. Offenders are seen as developing schemas supported by cognitive distortions that allow them to bypass the barriers that keep most of us from offending.

 

This paper examines the work of the Community Probation Service in New Zealand, which uses a Cognitive Behavioural approach, and the present pilot of the Restorative Justice system, bringing offender and victim together in a mediated forum, from a Complexity perspective.

 

Introduction

 

Human beings, like all complex adaptive systems (Stacey, 1996), require effective autonomy and connectivity to operate optimally. A crime is committed whenever a person's autonomy is violated or their connectivity with others is significantly disrupted. Work with offenders and victims focuses on repairing the autonomy and connectivity of the offender and victim, to again become an integral part of their community.

 

This paper assumes the best results in working with offenders and victims are achieved when the dynamics of self-organisation are supported. However, two points must be noted. Since we can never be certain of the outcome of any particular behaviour in complex systems, at times, behaviours which seem to support self-organisation will work against it, and seemingly destructive behaviours will unexpectedly result in positive outcomes. Secondly, autonomy and connectivity do not operate independently. They are dynamically interlinked and influence each other. Enhancing connectivity can impact of the autonomy of the individual agents and vice versa.

 

Keeping this in mind, however, some broad principles can be developed, which are consistent with those used in practice, providing a theoretical basis for work with offenders and victims.

 

Autonomy and connectivity in complex adaptive systems

 

If there is insufficient connectivity in a system, individual agents become isolated and the entire system is less able to self organise. If there is insufficient autonomy, the lack of diversity stifles the system, also impairing its ability to self-organise.

Each agent in a complex adaptive system has a boundary. This might be a physical boundary as in a cell. Cells, like all dissipative systems, require a flow of energy through them to survive. The cell boundary must, be semi-permeable allowing an interchange of chemicals and organisms with the outside environment or there can be no connectivity.

 

Other complex adaptive systems have immaterial boundaries, such as our sense of identity. Rather than chemicals and organisms, there is a flow of experiences, each of which must be incorporated into the person’s sense of identity or rejected as harmful. Just as the cell will sometimes fail to detect a harmful organism, a person can unwisely incorporate harmful experiences into their sense of identity. Such invasions tend to give a short-term advantage to the invader, while being harmful for the person invaded and the community they live in. Such an invasion is a crime.

 

Privacy is a key means of protecting our autonomy. If every part of ourselves is open to influence by other agents, we are no longer autonomous. We maintain areas of privacy at all fractal levels within ourselves. We have private body parts, private thoughts, private diaries, private rooms in our house or workplace, and private military installations. To significantly invade these places is a crime.

 

The fractal nature of human beings means we have systems within systems, each with their own boundary, to be maintained. Violations of that autonomy can include a person’s physical body, their possessions, bank account, and even their reputation.

Schemas

 

Human beings have a need for a sense of meaning, security, and control or we feel anxiety. One way we meet these needs and avoid anxiety is by forming schemas (Stacey, 1994) (King, 1999). A schema is an internally coherent collection of beliefs and values that a person uses to give meaning and consistency to their interactions with the outside world. The schema acts as an attractor of beliefs and values consistent with the mode of functioning of the individual.

 

Since a human being is fractal in nature, the schema that supports it must be fractal. If a person has a schema that justifies violence, then violence will generally be expressed in some way at all fractal levels. If the underlying belief is changed, the behaviour is generally changed at all fractal levels.

 

A well-balanced person with a strong sense of autonomy and vibrant connectivity will have strong, effective schemas. They will have beliefs that support them and their communities. A person whose sense of autonomy and connectivity is not well balanced will form distorted and maladaptive schemas (Young, 2003) that may lead to behaviours, which violate the autonomy and connectivity of others.

 

Whenever a person’s schema is challenged, anxiety arises. Stacey (1996) talks of anxiety containment, whereby a person uses a variety of strategies to alleviate feelings of anxiety. We often choose destructive and addictive strategies to contain our anxiety rather than dealing with the its cause.

The offender

 

An offender has chosen to violate the autonomy of other agents within their community. This takes a complex adaptive system further from self-organising. Under normal circumstances such a violation would engender feelings of guilt or shame, motivating the agent to stop and avoid violating others.

 

An offender’s schema, however, allows those feelings to be overridden. They may be swayed by short-term gains, such as money, a rush of emotion, or gaining the esteem of peers. Cognitive distortions are used to contain the anxiety generated by the conflict between the person’s internal code of conduct and their actions. One classification of these distortions is:

 

1. Deny It didn’t happen at all. I wasn't even there at the time.

2. Blame He made me do it. If you knew your job, I wouldn't be here now.

3. Minimse It didn’t hit him, it was just a push. It's not as if he was unconscious

4. Justify Well, he hit me first? They can afford it, besides they'll get insurance.

These alter the agent's perception of the events surrounding the offence, making their actions more acceptable to themselves and others. This reduces the anxiety and maintains their existing schema.

 

Through habitual use, the offending schema has been canalized on the phase space of the individual. The attachment to the schema must be destabilised tipping the offender towards the edge of chaos, so a bifurcation can allow the emergence of new non-offending schema.

 

Motivational interviewing is a technique that challenges the pro-criminal schema by highlighting the cognitive distortions and incongruities of the discourse and feeds them back to the offender. This destabilises the schema and pushes the person from their local optimum on the phase space towards the edge of chaos. The offender is supported to build a new optimum on the phase space, set on a foundation within the bounds of an attractor acceptable to the community. The worker forms a “bridge” on the phase space between the two optima to facilitate the movement from one to the other (Lucas & Milov, 1997).

 

 

Figure 1: The Cycle of Change

Adapted from the work of Prochaska and DiClemente

 

 

 

Wider interactions

 

The actions of an individual committing a crime against another impacts on the whole community just as each agent affects a whole system. Some people will be friends, family or acquaintances of those involved in the offence. All community members will feel less safe. Property may be damaged and policing and justice are significant costs to a community. Unless the violation is resolved, the whole community suffers and connectivity reduces.

 

The relapse cycle

 

Joseph Prochaska and Richard Di Clemente (Prochaska & Di Clemente,1994) developed The Cycle of Change from their work on alcohol and drugs, which they found to be applicable generally in work with offenders. The model is presented as a revolving wheel with individuals being at one of six stages on the cycle. There are bifurcation points around the cycle which provide the opportunity to either move forward on the cycle, regress backwards, or leave the cycle of offending all together.

The stages of the cycle are:

 

1. Pre contemplation: This person has little or no awareness of their problem and no investment in making any changes.

 

2. Contemplation: They now realise they have a problem, but do not have the skills or motivation to make any changes by themselves.

 

3. Determination: These people have made up their minds to make changes, but still have significant negative habit patterns to overcome. They can easily regress to earlier stages in the cycle.

 

4. Action Stage: Here people have committed themselves to the process of change. They have less likelihood of a return to offending, but the threat remains. They must cope with the realities of making changes, such as ridicule or rejection by their peers, and loss of (illegal) income.

 

5. Maintenance: These people have progressed and learned the skills they need to avoid re-offending, but in sufficiently adverse situations may still struggle to remain offence free.

 

6. Lapse and Relapse: Those who cannot maintain the necessary changes lapse back into criminal behaviour and begin the whole cycle again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The role of the worker is to determine where on the relapse cycle the person is, and utilise motivational interviewing appropriate to that point on the cycle to encourage the self organisation of the schema towards the next stage of development around the wheel.

 

If he disruption to the existing schema is too severe, the person will withdraw from the process or move into deep chaos. A standpoint of unconditional positive regard (Pescitelli, 1996) is required for the person to feel supported through the process of change. A person may stay at one point on he wheel for a very long time, or quickly progress to leave the offending cycle all together after the maintenance phase. If they are not strong enough they will relapse into offending behaviour.

 

Power Law Distributions

 

Paul Ormerod (Ormerod, 2001, 2003) found power law distributions in the correspondences between the seriousness of offending and the number of offenders at each level. He concluded in his paper that because offenders’ behaviour fitted a power law distribution as distinct from those who had not yet offended, priority should be made for young people before they commit their first crime.

 

This conclusion is not supported by the standard approach to work with offenders, which prioritises work with the high-risk offenders. Although Paul Omerod’s conclusions may be correct according to the data he has collected, I believe there are two main reasons for focusing on high-risk offenders.

 

The first is that a small number of high-risk offenders cause the most harm to the community. Work with them is more likely to reduce the effects of crime on the community. This raises the question as to how a complex adaptive system returns to a power law distribution after a significant perturbation. In other words, does reducing the number of high risk offenders merely create opportunities for other lower high risk offenders in the community to replace them.

 

The main reason, however, is that there is no reliable method to determine which people who offend will actually go on to become high-risk offenders. The proportion who do is very small and the result of prioritising them would be a large input of resources into people who would never become high risk

Ways of working with offenders and victims

 

Cognitive Behaviour Theory is the generally accepted psychological theory which forms the framework for work with offenders (McGuire, 2000). It postulates that our behaviours are driven by our thoughts and feelings. Therefore, if we change our thoughts and feelings, we change our behaviours.

 

Before a particular intervention is chosen three main factors are considered (Andrew & Bonta., 2003):

 

1. Risk. Interventions are primarily aimed at high-risk offender, so assessing the level of risk is crucial.

 

2. Needs. There must be an assessment of the criminogenic (crime producing) needs of the offender. Examples are violence propensity, alcohol and drugs, and offence related sexual arousal.

 

3. Responsivity. There is a need to assess the likelihood that the person can respond to an intervention. Barriers to responsivity include intellectual incapacity, alcohol or drug use, and poor motivation.

 

1 One to one interviewing

 

Tipping points are sometimes evident in work with offenders. If agents are progressively withdrawn from a complex adaptive system, it continues to function surprisingly well for a long time because a multitude of alternative pathways can be utilised in order to continue functioning. However, a point is suddenly reached where there are not enough alternative pathways operating for the system to maintain itself and the degeneration is very rapid.

 

This principle can explain why a seemingly small comment at a critical point in the life of an offender, can precipitate a major breakdown in the schema of a person. It is important that after the schema is broken down, it is reconstituted with a more effective schema or the old schema manages to reform or an even less effective schema at a lower optimum on the phase space predominates.

 

2 Programmes

 

The Community Probation Service in New Zealand runs two cognitive-skills based small group programmes, the Criminogenic Programme and the Straight Thinking Programme. The dynamics of group work differs significantly from one-to-one work. While in both cases the schema of the participants is disrupted towards a far from equilibrium position, the more complex dynamics of groups allows opens more possibilities to encourage self-organisation of the schema. Participants will often challenge each other, which is generally more effective than from a facilitator. On the other hand, the risks of the emergence of destructive dynamics and catastrophes are greater. Negative ideas can very shift the entire group rather than just one individual.

Agreed ground rules are very useful in maintaining the connectivity of the group. They help to ensure that the behaviour of the participants remains within the bounds of the attractor and do not move to a destructive location on the fitness landscape. Rules such as no violence or abusive language help to preserve the autonomy of participants, while rules such as honesty and listening foster connectivity.

 

Restorative Justice

 

The traditional retribution based justice system sees the offender and victim as protagonist and antagonist. A complexity perspective allows a more realistic view of the two as dynamically complementary elements capable of co-evolving to new emergent levels of interaction (Lucas & Milov, 1997).

 

In the traditional court system, the victim has little part to play unless they are used as a witness in a trial. The state has largely taken over the role so the victim has no way of finding their resolution directly. Without being able to positively interact, both offender and victim are left in limbo, unable to bifurcate towards a point of emotional healing.

 

The Restorative Justice model (Zehr,1990) brings together the offender, the victim and their support people to guide them through a process allowing the violation to be acknowledged and healed, and restoring the offender and victim back into their community. Tribal based justice systems, such as that of the New Zealand Maori exhibit many similarities to the Restorative Justice model (Consedine, 1999)

Naturally, a restorative justice conference will not always be appropriate. Often either the offender or victim does not wish to participate, or safety issues may make proceeding unwise. Restorative Justice must remain alongside the traditional justice system. It has, however proven itself to be extremely effective and enabled significant healing between offender and victim, even in crimes such as a rape-murder (Szmania, 2004).

 

Conclusion

 

Complexity theory offers a different perspective on work with offenders, which acknowledges that the complex and unpredictability of the dynamics of working with offenders and victims. Working to positively enhance the autonomy and connectivity of the offender, the victim, and the community, can help heal the damage created by the crime. It can also better provide the offender with the tools necessary to bifurcate away from a maladaptive schema towards one which encourages caring and support for themselves, their family, and the wider community.

[CraigD]

Chapter 19: POSTDARWINISM of Kevin Kelly’s 1994 book “Out of Control” (mentioned in my previous post), in which Kelly possibly coins the term “postdarwinism”, quotes Lyn Margulis’s description of classical Darwinian Evolution as “totally wrong”.

 

Margulis is a very serious biologists. When she attacked Darwinian evolution, she wasn't attacking a specific theory of evolution, but something more subtle, the overarching attitude instilled and approaches arising from an organizing interpretation of them. (As Kelly notes) Margulis has proposed some wild theories that eventually became widely accepted (eg: the symbiotic origin of nucleated cells), and (though Kelly doesn’t acknowledge it in OoC) some that even she no longer accepts as serious biology (eg: the Gaia hypothesis), but she's certainly, IMHO, someone worth listening to.

 

Personally, I find that much of what I consider “orthodox” Darwinian evolution theory is, from the perspective of someone who’s been professionally involved with it since the 1960s, “postdarwinian”. True “classical Darwinism” is, for me, a historic relic. Somewhere in this slew of terms more descriptive of interpretation, paradigms, and approaches than of formal theory is the idea of “neodarwinism”, which Kelly describes in the linked OoC chapter.

 

There is, I think, a lot of controversy and miscommunication due to a lack of understanding by people with otherwise good understandings of biochemistry, people with good understanding of sociological and philosophical theories, and even the rare folk with good understandings of both, of the history of Darwinian ideas and their acceptance and rejection by various people and groups of people. On one hand, many perceive the progression of ideas from 1859 to the present as orderly and revolution-free. On the other, many perceive the progression to have been not only orderly, but stagnant. One group believes “the revolution” never happened, the other that it hasn’t happened yet.

 

I believe the revolution happened, was successful, and is today’s orthodoxy. Of course, many of the details are still being argued – the extent to and mechanism by which retroviral insertions into somatic and germ nuclear DNA regulate cells and evolution, for instance – but the attitude that such processes, and even stranger ones, can be of importance, appears to me ingrained in scientific thinking. Microbiologists still have opinions – on average, in my experience, much more conservative opinions than amateurs and enthusiasts like me – but I’ve seen lots of cases where the “I don’t think so” ideas of a few years ago are the research proposals of today.

 

In summary, and response to what I perceive as this thread’s original post’s call to action: when starting a revolution, it’s important to be sure the revolution has not already started. Scientific revolutions are, to a great extent, insider events that require considerable effort for outsiders to follow as spectators. Assisting in this effort is a large part of what hypography is about.

[CraigD]

Besides being a professional artist, my occupation is to help ex-offenders to reintegrate back into the community after prison. Below is an article I posted in the social science forum. …

Shouldn’t this post appear in that thread, 14171, rather than this one? With zero replies in 13 days, the APP thread could surely stand a bump, and it’s hard to see its relevance in this one.

[Thunderbird]

Shouldn’t this post appear in that thread, 14171, rather than this one? With zero replies in 13 days, the APP thread could surely stand a bump, and it’s hard to see its relevance in this one.

 

I believe from this post your not keeping up with the thread, it pertains to answering Eclogite request of concrete examples of how complexity can be applied to social evolution.