From The Gardens of Democracy. Eric Liu. 2011. Kindle online sample. Section 2.
Our goal in these pages is to push past the one-dimensional, left-right choices of contemporary politics—between more government or less, selfishness and altruism, suffocating collectivism and market fundamentalism—and find orthogonal [right angle] approaches to our challenges.
The focus of this book is THE GREAT CHALLENGES OF THIS AGE, TO RETHINK HOW WE AS CITIZENS CREATE CHANGE, HOW THE ECONOMY TRULY WORKS, AND WHAT GOVERNMENT FUNDAMENTALLY IS FOR.
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The great challenge of this age is to change how we see, and by so doing, improve our ability to adapt.
AT EVERY STAGE IN HISTORY, PEOPLE OPERATE WITHIN A CONSTRUCTED FRAME OF IDEAS, METAPHORS, AND NARRATIVES—and this story frame defines how people think of themselves, what they think is possible in life, and how they think the world works.
To put it more pointedly, there is not now and has never been some abstracted social reality “out there.”
At every moment in each epoch, in ways influenced by culture, science, and technology, people construct a social reality that validates some truths and distorts others.
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These frames define what we think of as good for us, how we pursue our individual and collective self-interest.
It defines what a society thinks is possible.
But these frames are not fixed.
EVERY SO OFTEN, THE IDEA SET SHIFTS RADICALLY, and with it our notion of what is good for us.
We are in the midst of such a shift right now.
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A set of quiet scientific revolutions now demands we see in terms of systems and enables us to make sense of them.
What kinds of systems make up our economy, our society, and the ecologies that sustain us?
How are the elements in these systems connected?
And finally, HOW DO THE AGENTS (PEOPLE) WITHIN THESE SYSTEMS BEHAVE?
These are the kinds of questions we are far better able to answer today than we were half a century ago.
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Science—which we mean broadly to include physical discoveries, insights into behavior, awareness of patterns of experience—tells us today that the world is a complex adaptive system, not a linear equilibrium system that the elements within it are networked, not atomized.
Humans operate in this system as emotional reciprocal approximators, not rational self-regarding calculators.
Taken together, THESE INSIGHTS SUGGEST A NEW NARRATIVE ABOUT HOW STRONG SOCIETIES EMERGE, ADAPT, AND THRIVE.
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Why does this matter?
Why should anyone besides students of science or intellectual history care?
Because IN EVERY AGE, THOSE WHO DEFINE THE METAPHORS DEFINE THE TERMS OF POLITICS.
In its time, Darwin’s theory of evolution was corrupted into a powerful ideology of Social Darwinism, which treated the weak and marginalized as presumptively unfit for survival and government aid.
Later, Taylorism and “scientific management” led government leaders to believe they could engineer their way to desired social outcomes.
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In our own time, the belief markets follow the equilibrium dynamics of physics has had its own awful results.
Consider policymakers did not foresee or forestall the crash of 2008 because their dominant economic model had, as Alan Greenspan later admitted, “a flaw”—namely, IN 2008 POLICYMAKERS DIDN’T CONTEMPLATE HUMAN IRRATIONALITY.
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THIS IS NOT JUST ABOUT ECONOMICS OR POLITICS, IT’S ABOUT IMAGINATION AND OUR ABILITY TO DEVELOP NEW WAYS OF CONCEIVING OF THINGS.
It is about our ability to adapt and evolve in the face of changing circumstances and the consequences of our actions.
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History shows civilizations tend eventually to get stuck in the patterns that had brought them success.
CIVILIZATIONS CAN EITHER STAY STUCK AND DECAY, OR GET UNSTUCK AND THRIVE.
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We posit in these pages this country has for too long been stuck in a mode of seeing and thinking called Machinebrain.
WE ARGUE THE TIME HAS COME FOR A NEW MODE OF PUBLIC IMAGINATION we call Gardenbrain.
Machinebrain sees the world and democracy as a series of mechanisms—clocks and gears, perpetual motion machines, balances and counterbalances.
Machinebrain requires you to conceive of the economy as perfectly efficient and automatically self-correcting.
Machinebrain presupposes stability and predictability, and only grudgingly admits the need for correction.
Even the word commonly used for such correction—“regulation”—is mechanical in origin and regrettable in connotation.
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Gardenbrain sees the world and democracy as an entwined set of ecosystems—sinks and sources of trust and social capital, webs of economic growth, networks of behavioral contagion.
Gardenbrain forces you to conceive of the economy as man-made and effective only if well constructed and well cared-for.
Gardenbrain PRESUPPOSES INSTABILITY AND UNPREDICTABILITY, and thus expects a continuous need for seeding, feeding, and weeding ever-changing systems.
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To be a gardener is not to let nature take its course; it is to tend.
It is to ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR NURTURING THE GOOD GROWTH AND KILLING THE BAD.
Tending and regulating thus signify the same work, but tending frames the work as presumptively necessary and beneficial rather than as something to be suffered.
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Machinebrain treats people as cogs: votes to be collected by political machines, consumers to be manipulated by marketing machines, employees to be plugged into industrial machines.
It is a static mindset of control and fixity, and is the basis of most of our inherited institutions, from schools to corporations to prisons.
Gardenbrain SEES PEOPLE AS INTERDEPENDENT CREATORS OF A DYNAMIC WORLD.
Our emotions affect each other, our personal choices cascade into public patterns, which can be shaped but rarely controlled.
It is a dynamic mindset of influence and evolution, of direction without control, and is the basis of our future.
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Machinebrain allows you to rationalize atomized selfishness and a neglect of larger problems.
MACHINEBRAIN ACCEPTS SOCIAL ILLS LIKE POVERTY, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION, AND IGNORANCE AS THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME of an efficient marketplace.
It is fatalistic and reductionist [describing the complex in simple terms], treating change as an unnecessary and risky deviation from the norm.
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Gardenbrain recognizes such social ills and the shape of our society as the byproduct of man-made arrangements.
It is EVOLUTIONARY AND HOLISTIC, TREATING CHANGE AS THE NORM, ESSENTIAL AND FULL OF OPPORTUNITY.
It leads you to acknowledge human societies thrive only through active gardening.
Gardenbrain changes everything.
New understandings about how the world works—and the development of tools to represent such understandings—now undermine the ideologies of hyperindividual-ism on the right and reflexive statism on the left.
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SCIENCE IS COMING EVER CLOSER TO DEPICTING WHAT EACH OF US ALREADY UNDERSTANDS INTUITIVELY ABOUT HOW THE WORLD WORKS.
Most of us know in our gut—contrary to the political ethos of raw self-seeking—our family, friends, neighbors, and customers are bound by something other than raw calculation of interest.
We know in our gut—contrary to the axioms of market fundamentalism businesses and economies are not self-regulating machines.
We know in our gut as well—contrary to the promises of expert-led government—a society that relies on top-down problem-solving ends up being too slow and too non-adaptive to thrive.
(end of section 2)
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(own comments)
Section 1:
“On the right, we hear ideas even more historically irrelevant : laissez-faire economics and a “don’t tread on me” idea of citizenship.”
Republicans want everything-goes laissez-faire economics is a straw man argument.
Simply, when in doubt Dems want more taxation and government and Reps want less taxation and government.
Both sides have to fight to move the center point but Republicans have to fight harder because Democrats-desired big government is like a big body, fat cells demand nourishment and to multiply, take the comfortable couch “I’m okay – you’re okay” approach and Dems win.
Democrats get into politics because they love to, Republicans get into politics because they have to.
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Section 2:
“The great challenges of this age, to rethink how we as citizens create change, how the economy truly works, and what government fundamentally is for.”
“At every stage in history, people operate within a constructed frame of ideas, metaphors, and narratives.”
“Every so often, the idea set shifts radically, and with it our notion of what is good for us.”
“In every age, those who define the metaphors define the terms of politics.”
“This is not just about economics or politics, it’s about imagination and our ability to develop new ways of conceiving of things.”
“Civilizations can either stay stuck and decay, or get unstuck and thrive.”
All true.
(Byrds song Mind Gardens)
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