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Manifesto For Deep Democracy:

Transforming Bureaucratic Society

Bernard Phillips and David Christner

PART I                INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1            Bureaucracy Versus Evolution

PART II              THE BUREAUCRATIC SOCIETY

Chapter 2            Bureaucratic Organizations

Chapter 3            The Bureaucratic Worldview

PART III             THE EVOLUTIONARY SOCIETY

Chapter 4            Evolutionary Organizations

Chapter 5            The Evolutionary Worldview

PART IV             TRANSFORMING SOCIETY

Chapter 6            Moving Toward an Evolutionary Worldview

Chapter 7            Moving Toward Deep Democracy

Part I  Introduction

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour

Rains from the sky, a meteoric shower

          Of facts. . . .

They lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun, but there exists no loom

          To weave it into fabric.

                   Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter 1    Bureaucracy Versus Evolution

            For the first time in history we humans are experiencing a wide range of increasing problems that threaten us with extinction, if not today or tomorrow then the day after tomorrow.  We have finally begun to recognize, for example, growing environmental problems such as climate change, but that recognition has not yet reversed our tide of increasingly polluting the atmosphere.  We are becoming aware--partly because of 9/11--of groups that seek to slaughter civilian populations in order to achieve their aims, yet we fail to understand how to diminish such escalating threats.  We are being subjected to ever greater danger from the spread of deadly weapons of mass destruction, and our technology continues to improve their destructiveness.  We are also being confronted by problems that are much less visible but no less threatening, such as the worldwide increasing gap between the rich and the poor along with the spread of pessimism, hopelessness and fear for the future of the human race. Yet all of these dangers do no more than illustrate the "ill" that we are experiencing in our "dark hour."

            However, Edna St. Vincent Millay does not yield to despair.  Rather, she offers us a path leading out of our desperate situation at this time in history.  She believes that our "meteoric shower of facts" is providing "wisdom enough to leech us of our ill."  And she implies that we must learn to integrate those "uncombined" facts. just as a loom weaves yarn into fabric.  Our shower of facts rains down on us from many sources, such as the publications of physical, biological and social scientists, newspapers and magazines, television and radio, film, novels, plays, and our personal relationships.  Following Millay, we must somehow create a "loom" that weaves these facts together.  Of course, we have politicians and pundits of all kinds who claim that they have in fact achieved this goal.  Yet the range of knowledge on which they rest their cases is infinitesimal in comparison to the shower of facts that has been accumulating over the years.  Generally they mean well in their efforts, yet those efforts fail to follow the path laid out by Millay.

            The closest thing to Millay's loom that we have as yet constructed is the scientific method.  The beginning of that method is much the same as her posing a problem and then moving toward a solution, just as a pendulum swings back and forth.  Awareness of and commitment to a problem swings the pendulum to the left, and that swing provides the momentum required for a swing to the right, where progress toward understanding and solving the problem are to be found.  This problem-posing and problem-solving orientation--that was fundamental for technological developments throughout human history--was reinforced by several other factors at the end of the Middle Ages.  For example, the  re-discovery of ancient knowledge during Europe's Renaissance coupled with the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century enabled scholars to learn more easily from the studies of others.  The result was a scientific method with a pendulum that swings ever further to the left as well as to the right, with no limit to the complexity of problems posed and no limit to the degree to which problems are solved.  And that method has in turn yielded the scientific and technological revolutions that have changed the face of the globe over the past five centuries and are continuing to do so.

            However, as the senior author indicated in the Introduction to Armageddon or Evolution?  The Scientific Method and Escalating World Problems (Paradigm, 2008), those revolutions have strayed from the path implied by Millay:

Back in 1711 Alexander Pope wrote in An Essay on Criticism that "A little learning is a dangerous thing."  We might see our understanding of physical and biological phenomena coupled with our extremely limited understanding of human behavior as illustrating what Pope called "a little learning."  Human phenomena are far more complex than physical and even biological phenomena.  We can thus understand the efforts of physical and biological scientists to avoid that complexity in the interest of advancing their understanding of simpler phenomena.  We might, then, see such one-sided learning as a fundamental basis for the dangerous world that we are now experiencing.  Our knowledge has yielded the AK-47 that schoolchildren might use on their classmates.  But it has failed to yield the understanding that would prevent such weapons from being employed. Our "little learning" has yielded a thing-oriented materialistic civilization, since that is what physical technologies can produce.  But it has failed to yield the understanding called for by our democratic ideals.  For democracy to work we require an education in the complexities of modern problems so that society as a whole can make intelligent political decisions.  Yet our limited knowledge of human behavior stands in the way of fulfilling those ideals.

            Instead of following scientific ideals that call for opening up to the full range of knowledge that is relevant to a given problem, physical and biological scientists have chosen "to avoid that complexity in the interest of advancing their understanding of simpler phenomena."  Yet social scientists have also chosen to follow this same departure from Millay's implied path leading to the "fabric" that we desperately need.  For example, there are no less than 46 distinct Sections of the American Sociological Association, with Section members who communicate only rarely with those in other Sections.  Still further, there are some 400 specialized articles within the five-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology (Borgatta and Montgomery, eds., 2000), with limited numbers of cross-references from one topic to the others.  This problem of specialization with limited communication across specialized fields in sociology can be found equally in the other social sciences:  in psychology, anthropology, political science, economics and history.

            It was in the preface to Armageddon or Evolution? that the senior author attempted to explain these departures from scientific ideals as linked to the fundamental structure of contemporary societies:

            Yet such specialization with limited communication throughout the sciences and throughout medicine is no more than an example of the fundamental structure of contemporary societies, and this helps us to understand why scientists behave as they do:  despite their scientific ideals they remain victims of their experiences from one moment to the next as members of society.  Organizations throughout the world--as we have learned from the social sciences--are "bureaucratic."  This means that they are both highly specialized and hierarchical or "stratified."  And this also means that communication across specialized areas as well as up and down those hierarchies is quite limited.  A most dramatic example in recent times was the failure of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA--all part of the same U.S. government--to communicate with one another effectively about the potential for the 9/11 plot before it happened, with an excellent chance that the 9/11 catastrophe would have never happened had they done so.  A far less dramatic example is my own recent experience with water collecting on the new roof of my townhouse condominium on Longboat Key, Florida.  The roofing company CEO along with my condo association manager insisted that it was the "industry standard" to allow water to collect there, since the membrane on the roof is thick enough and sufficiently resistant to prevent any leakage into my ceilings.  Yet those individuals were behaving much the same as specialists throughout the world, focusing only on the narrow problem of water penetrating the roof.  They failed to consider three other problems that are of no concern to such specialists:  the development and spread of mold from standing water, the importance of avoiding standing water so as to eliminate breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and the fact that such standing water poses a safety problem for anyone going up on the roof to initiate repairs.

            It appears, then, to be nothing less than a bureaucratic way of life throughout the contemporary world that lies at the heart of escalating problems.  On the one hand, that way of life is powerful enough to trump the broad ideals of the scientific method, whether in the physical, biological or social sciences.  And as a result scientists remain unable to penetrate very far into the complex problems that they face at this time in history.  On the other hand, we remain unable to fulfill our democratic ideals calling for a public that is fully educated to the complexities that they face so that they are able to make intelligent choices.  The subtitle and title of this book point in these directions.  On the one hand, we must somehow learn to transform our bureaucratic way of life.  And on the other hand, we must learn to give meaning to our democratic ideals.

            Those ideals--which are by no means limited to Americans--were expressed in the American Declaration of Independence:  "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."  They were also expressed by Lincoln in his Gettysburg address:  "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."  We can trace the origins of these ideals far back in history, such as to the development of democracy in ancient Greece or to the Judeo-Christian tradition that views human beings as having been created in the image of God.  Yet how can we, following this book's subtitle, actually presume to transform bureaucracy, a way of life practiced by all of us?  Granting its fundamental conflict with the egalitarian and educational ideals of democracy, is it reasonable to believe that our very way of life can be changed?  Are we, then, doomed to passively await the end of all that we humans have achieved?

            This book is testimony to our conviction that we do have an alternative, granting that we require great understanding, deep commitment and urgent actions on the part of a great many of us in order to move in that direction.  Most important, we believe that all of us humans have infinite potential for conscious evolution.  However, we have been held back by a way of life that has splintered each of us into a great many pieces, just as the discipline of sociology has been splintered into some four hundred pieces.  As a result, following William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming":

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

We interpret "the best" to be those who--like Vice-President Al Gore--have broad knowledge yet generally lack emotional force.  As for the worst--and we can all fill in the blanks--they have a narrow orientation and express themselves powerfully.  Yet it is indeed possible for the best--like Sir Winston Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt--to come across with passionate intensity, granting its rarity.

            As we hope to spell out partly in this chapter and more fully in the chapters to follow, we have as yet learned to make use of only a tiny proportion of the infinite potential that language gives all of us.  And the same is true of the potential of the scientific method.  For we have failed to follow--to more than a very limited extent--the ideals of that method in any of the sciences.  The pendulum metaphor for the scientific method supports our potential for evolution with no limit whatsoever.  And if we indeed learn to succeed in transforming our bureaucratic society, not only will we learn to confront our escalating problems ever more effectively.  We will also move toward what might be called "deep democracy," a way of life in which every one of us is moving toward fulfilling his or her infinite capacities as a human being. As Jane Addams wrote in Democracy and Social Ethics, "The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy."

            John Dewey gave us a preliminary sketch of such a society in his Reconstruction in Philosophy:

Government, business, art, religion, all social institutions have a meaning, a purpose.  That purpose is to set free and to develop the capacities of human individuals without respect to race, sex, class or economic status.  And this is all one with saying that the test of their value is the extent to which they educate every individual into the full stature of his possibility.  Democracy has many meanings, but if it has a moral meaning, it is found in resolving that the supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribution they make to the all-around growth of every member of society (1919/1948: 183-186).

Dewey's vision of democracy is a far cry from the present domination of a materialistic orientation and a consumption-driven approach to life.  Using his test for the moral meaning of democracy, every single institution of contemporary society is failing us.

            In the remainder of this chapter we will present a framework that will guide the analyses to be made throughout the book.  That framework builds on the recent work of the senior author together with the work of a number of members of the Sociological Imagination Group. It is a group that he formed at the beginning of this century and that is named after a publication of his mentor at Columbia University, C. Wright Mills.  That book, The Sociological Imagination (Mills,1959), was named by the members of the International Sociological Association as the second most influential book for sociologists published throughout the entire 20th century.  The website of the Sociological Imagination Group--www.sociological-imagination.org--contains excerpts from the group's publications along with announcements of its annual meetings concurrent with the meetings of the American Sociological Association.  A paper we have written that appears on the website, "The Evolutionary Manifesto," ends with two recommendations: that readers work toward the ideal of "deep democracy," and that they learn to use "the scientific method in everyday life."  We hope that this book will provide some guidance toward those ends.  More specifically, we are not in the business of recruiting readers who see merit in these ideas into joining some group with its own priorities while abandoning their own directions.  Rather, we hope that those readers will become committed to reading the books we and others in the Sociological Imagination Group have published over the past seven years.  We believe that they can help them to develop intellectually, emotionally, and in the effectiveness of their actions.  By so doing, they can succeed in moving all of us toward deep democracy before the window of opportunity for doing so closes down on all of us.

The Bureaucratic Society

            Bureaucracies have been defined by social scientists as groups with an extensive hierarchy and division of labor that are deliberately set up to solve problems.  Modern bureaucracies have been instrumental in making use of scientific knowledge and in the development of the modern world.  They have clear advantages over ancient or feudal bureaucracies in their ability to make use of such knowledge.  Yet the highly specialized nature of that knowledge coupled with an emphasis on hierarchy limits the abilities of modern bureaucratic organizations to solve problems, given that problems--especially fundamental problems--almost invariably require a much broader orientation.  The example in the foregoing section of the failure of the CIA, the FBI and the NSA to pool their information about threats to the U.S. prior to 9/11 illustrates the limitations of bureaucracy, limitations that have never been resolved.  My example of the roofers who allowed standing water on my new condominium roof--without considering problems of mold, mosquitoes and danger for anyone repairing the roof--is another case in point. 

            Still further, modern bureaucracies generally are quite rigid in their focus on specialization and hierarchy, and they remain unable to deal with rapid changes. A fundamental change that has accompanied the scientific and technological revolutions over the last five centuries is what has been called a "revolution of rising expectations" or aspirations.  We have  all learned to want more out of life, both materially and non-materially, just as I became concerned about mold, mosquitoes, and the danger of repairing my roof. That revolution of rising expectations has increasingly emphasized the importance of equality, yet bureaucracies with their focus on hierarchy have fostered a world with an increasing gap between the rich and the poor.  We can see that gap between the poverty of populations in the Middle East and the comparative wealth of the West, and we can also see it within every country in the world. Granting the usefulness of bureaucracies in the past, given their ability to make use of scientific knowledge, in the present they create a large gap between what we have learned to want and what we are actually able to get, namely, an aspirations-fulfillment gap.  And as our aspirations or expectations continue to rise in the modern world--such as for ever more equality for minority groups--bureaucracies create an ever greater gap.  This is what the senior author has called an "invisible crisis," as outlined in The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society (2007).

            This modern aspirations-fulfillment gap is also illustrated by the bureaucratic nature of scientific organizations like the American Sociological Association.  The ability of sociologists and scientists in general to follow the scientific ideal of integrating their knowledge as a basis for understanding how to solve our pressing problems is sharply limited by their bureaucratic organizations.  As a result, there is an increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap within the institution of science between the ideals of the scientific method and the practices of scientists.  And when bureaucracies make use of scientific knowledge, as in the case of the efforts of the U.S. government to confront terrorism prior to 9/11, the knowledge they obtain generally is inadequate, as illustrated by the failure of the U. S. government to anticipate what happened on 9/11.  We had a failure of two bureaucratic institutions:  the scientific institution and the political institution.  As for the full range of modern problems, governmental institutions almost invariably fail to make use of the vast amount of social science knowledge that has been accumulated, granting that such knowledge is available only in bits and pieces.  For example, the report of the 9/11 commission investigating those attacks cited no body of knowledge from the social sciences.  The result has been a huge gap between our commitment to the importance of security and our practices that leave us vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

            To understand more fully the nature of the escalating aspirations-fulfillment gap throughout the contemporary world, we might go back in history and examine a selection from The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society (Phillips and Johnston, 2007):

Daniel Lerner, a political scientist, initiated an international study half a  century ago to learn about the transition from preindustrial to contemporary society (Lerner, 1958: especially 23–25). That study unearthed a very  broad problem linked to the modernization process. . .  As part of that study Tosun B., an interviewer  who lived in Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, embarked on a two-hour drive  on the dirt road connecting Ankara with the small village of Balgat. . .Tosun asked the chief how satisfied he was with  life. The chief replied: “What could be asked more? God has brought me to this mature age without much pain, has given me sons and daughters,  has put me at the head of my village, and has given me strength of brain  and body at this age. Thanks be to Him.”

The only non-farming person in Balgat was the village grocer. His  response was markedly different from that of the chief: I have told you I want better things. I would have liked to have a bigger grocery shop in the city, have a nice house there, dress nice civilian  clothes. . . . I am born a grocer and probably die that way. I have not the  possibility in myself to get the things I want. They only bother me. The grocer had made many trips to Ankara, with visits to shops and movie houses. He had seen in a film the shop that he wanted, with “round boxes, clean and all the same dressed, like soldiers in a great parade.” Yet the villagers of Balgat looked down on this shopkeeper, who was not a farmer  like them. They also saw him as rejecting the worth of his own community,  and even the supreme authority of Allah.

Tosun asked both men what they would do as president of Turkey.  The chief would attempt to obtain “help of money and seed for some of  our farmers.” As for the grocer, his answer was not limited to helping the  villagers of Balgat: “I would make roads for the villagers to come to towns  to see the world and would not let them stay in their holes all their life.”  Yet another difference between the two men’s responses to Tosun had  to do with this question: “If you could not live in Turkey where would  you want to live?” The chief’s response was “Nowhere. I was born here,  grew old here, and hope God will permit me to die here.” Yet the grocer  could imagine himself living outside of Turkey, as shown by this response:  “America, because I have heard that it is a nice country and with possibilities to be rich even for the simplest persons.” 

          This contrast between the grocer and the chief of Balgat illustrates the revolution of rising expectations along with the aspirations-fulfillment gap throughout our modern bureaucratic world. Metaphorically, we might see the aspirations-fulfillment gap as the gap between the earth we stand on and the sky above, for our aspirations continue to move up yet we remain largely unable to move up toward them. The grocer had learned to want "better things" as a result of his frequent trips to Ankara: "a bigger grocery shop in the city, have a nice house there, dress nice civilian  clothes." Along with such material things, he had also learned to want non-material things, just as there is the modern desire for equality:  "I would make roads for the villagers to come to towns  to see the world and would not let them stay in their holes all their life.”  These new aspirations differed markedly from those of the chief, who illustrates the limited aspirations throughout preindustrial society: "What could be asked more?"  This contrast between the grocer's aspirations and the aspirations of the chief is further illustrated by the grocer's interest in going to America and the chief's wish to die in Turkey.  The grocer, then, illustrates the aspirations-fulfillment gap to be found throughout modern society.  And this gap is continuing to increase, as illustrated in the above paragraphs describing our bureaucratic political, scientific and economic institutions.  The result is nothing less than an "invisible crisis" throughout contemporary societies.

            This example of the grocer and the chief of Balgat helps us to focus on the less visible aspects of a bureaucratic way of life:  the modern individual's bureaucratic mentality along with the widely shared bureaucratic mentality throughout contemporary society.  Our emphasis so far has been on bureaucratic organizations with their patterns of specialization and hierarchy.  That emphasis is carried forward within the discipline of sociology.  By shifting our focus here to include the individual's bureaucratic mentality, we are pointing in the direction of psychology.  And when we also shift to the bureaucratic mentality that is widely shared, we move toward anthropology with its emphasis on culture.  We did take psychology into account to some extent in the Introduction with our comparison of Gore with Churchill and Roosevelt.  And we did touch on anthropology in our brief examination of democratic ideals that are widely shared.  Yet our emphasis was on specialization and hierarchy, the more visible aspects of a bureaucratic way of life.  It was an emphasis tailored to the way most of us presently understand the nature of bureaucracy.

            What, then, is the nature of our bureaucratic mentality or--to use the concept that the senior author has stressed in a number of books (Phillips, 2001; Phillips, Kincaid and Scheff, eds.,  2002; Phillips and Johnston, 2007; Phillips, ed., 2007; Phillips, 2008; Knottnerus and Phillips, eds., 2008), our bureaucratic "worldview"?  He defines worldview as the individual's persisting image of reality or metaphysical stance.  On the one hand, it is an idea that is very concrete, just as one's "view" suggests our perception of phenomena from one moment to the next.  On the other hand, it is an idea that is extremely general or abstract, for metaphysics is that branch of philosophy that has to do with the fundamental nature of reality.  Using the idea of "bureaucratic worldview" we are able to introduce the more invisible aspects of bureaucracy that are emphasized by both psychology and anthropology, for a worldview can be both an individual matter as well as an idea that is widely shared, that is, an aspect of the culture of society.  Our intention here is not to ignore the more visible, specialized and hierarchical aspects of a bureaucratic way of life that are emphasized within sociology. Rather it is to include them together with the idea of bureaucratic worldview, and thus include the focus of all three disciplines, by contrast with a bureaucratic separation of them that loses out on understanding contemporary society.  In this way we shall move toward an introduction to the framework that will guide this book as a whole: a framework that succeeds in contrasting a bureaucratic way of life with an evolutionary way of life, with the latter pointing us toward the ideal of "deep democracy."

            Our brief analysis of the grocer suggests that his bureaucratic worldview or mentality will require him to repress his emotions, given the gap between what he wants or aspires to and what he can actually achieve.  Without such repression he would find  himself in a continuing state of depression, for he would be continually conscious of his helplessnesss in achieving his goals, a state that points directly toward suicide.  And it is an increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap--linked to the revolution of rising expectations as well as to an increasing pattern of emotional repression--that is one of the fundamental characteristics of modern society.  Our quote from Yeats in our introductory remarks suggests this with the line, "the best lack all conviction."  As for "the worst," who "are full of passionate intensity," they can achieve such emotional intensity with respect to some particular goal only at the expense of repressing what they have learned from their culture about the importance of a wide range of other goals.  It is that very repression--such as of democratic ideals or the ideals of the scientific method--that allows Yeats to categorize them as "the worst."

            "Emotional repression"--by contrast with emotional expression--is, then, a key aspect of our bureaucratic worldview. It is an idea that has much in common with Sigmund Freud's analysis of the conflicts that we bury within our unconscious minds. To explore further aspects of our worldview it is most useful to consider non-Western ideas that do not see the human being in the piecemeal ways of contemporary sociology, psychology and anthropology.  Instead, we require a holistic understanding of the individual and society in addition to the piecemeal approach of Western society.  Eastern thought is generally far more integrative.  For example, we can turn to the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff, a Russian scholar of the early twentieth century who was much influenced by Eastern thought and who emphasized the shattered nature of the individual.  One of his pupils, P. D. Ouspensky, published verbatim records of Gurdjieff's oral teachings from 1922 to 1946:

If we begin to study ourselves we first of all come up against one word which we use more than any other and that is the word "I".  We say "I am doing", "I am sitting", "I feel", "I like", "I dislike" and so on.  This is our chief illusion, for the principal mistake we make about ourselves is that we consider ourselves one. . .when in reality we are divided into hundreds and hundreds of different "I"s.  At one moment when I say "I", one part of me is speaking, and at another moment when I say "I", it is quite another "I" speaking. . . .You see, when we begin to observe emotions particularly, but really all other functions as well, we find that. . .we become too absorbed in things, too lost in things, particularly when the slightest emotional element appears.  This is called identification.  We identify with things. . .The idea of identification exists in Indian writings and the Buddhists speak of attachment and non-attachment. . . .

We are really asleep.  We only imagine that we are awake.  So when we try to remember ourselves it means only one thing--we try to awake.  And we do awake for a second but then we fall asleep again. . . .This group I met in Moscow used oriental metaphors and parables, and one of the things they liked to speak about was prison--that man is in prison. . .But even before he can formulate this desire, that he wants to escape, he must become aware that he is in prison (Ouspensky, 1957/1971: 2-5, 12-13).

            Gurdjieff's analysis of us bureaucratic individuals in the modern world makes very good sense when we take seriously the nature of our bureaucratic organizations.  For if specialization with very limited communication across specialties is the name of the game throughout all of our experiences with these organizations--which are everywhere--then it is most reasonable to believe that each of us has learned to mirror such specialization within the structure of our own personalities.  The idea that we have a unified "I", following Gurdjieff, is "our chief illusion."  Instead of developing an orientation that points inward at least to some extent, we appear to be dominated by what we might call "outward perception," just as Gurdjieff argues that we be become "lost in things" and "identify with things or what Buddhists refer to as "attachment" to things.

            All of this suggests that a key aspect of our bureaucratic worldview or mentality is "outward perception," by contrast with what might be called "inward-outward perception."  How we perceive the world is crucial in shaping our behavior, since we perceive phenomena from one moment to the next with our five senses of vision, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting.  Perception goes together very well with the other aspect of that worldview sketched above:  "emotional repression," by contrast with what we might call "emotional expression."  For example, the grocer developed his increased aspirations and his aspirations-fulfillment gap--with its resulting emotional repression--through his perceptions of Ankara during his frequent trips there.  This bureaucratic worldview, with its orientation to "head" and "heart," combines with Gurdjieff's view of "hand":  we humans are "asleep" or "in prison."  Thus, we are unable to act effectively to solve our problems, and we remain passive in the face of increasing problems.  That passivity translates into conformity to our hierarchical and specialized activities linked to bureaucratic organizations and a bureaucratic way of life.

            These metaphors of "head," "heart" and "hand" are most useful in suggesting the overriding importance of employing intellect, emotions and action in our everyday behavior, just as the individual requires head, heart and hand in order to survive.  "The Wizard of Oz"--the classic film with Judy Garland--illustrates these metaphors.  Ray Bolger played the Scarecrow, whose head was filled with straw;  Jack Haley was the Tin Woodsman, who had no heart; and Bert Lahr played the Cowardly Lion, who had no hand to act in the face of danger.  Yet it was Dorothy, combining her intellect, emotions and ability to act decisively, who was able to vanquish the Wicked Witch of the West.  Instead of her three friends who looked to the Wizard of Oz--Frank Morgan--to solve their problems, she uses the power of her own two feet to find her way back to her beloved Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in Kansas.

            It was these metaphors of "head," "heart" and "hand" that helped the senior author develop a framework for integrating the vast amount of available knowledge that bears on the individual, society and the momentary situation, as published in The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society (2007) and Armageddon or Evolution? (2008).  Just as the individual's behavior includes these three elements, so are these same elements widely shared by individuals throughout society.  And the individual also makes use of these three elements within every momentary scene that he or she experiences.  Thus, by taking into account "head," "heart" and "hand," we move away from the isolation of our knowledge of human behavior into bits and pieces that is so characteristic of a bureaucratic society and move toward an evolutionary society.

The Evolutionary Society

            We turn to Gurdjieff once again for insight into an "evolutionary society":

The chief idea of this system was that we do not use even a small part of our powers and our forces.  We have in us, so to speak, a very big and very fine organization, only we do not know how to use it.  In this group they employed certain oriental metaphors, and they told me that we have in us a large house full of beautiful furniture, with a library and many other rooms, but we live in the basement and the kitchen and cannot get out of them. . . .

The human being is a very complicated machine and has to be studied as a machine.  We realize that in order to control any kind of machine, such as a motor car or a railway engine, we should first have to learn.  We cannot control these machines instinctively, but for some reason we think that ordinary instinct is sufficient to control the human machine, although it is so much more complicated.  This is one of the first wrong assumptions:  we do not realize that we have to learn, that control is a question of knowledge and skill (Ouspensky, 1957/1971: 9).

            Apparently, our bureaucratic worldview shatters the individual with its "outward perception" and "emotional repression."  And apparently this worldview helps to shape--and is also shaped by--our patterns of stratification, yielding our bureaucratic way of life.  Yet all of this contrasts with what Gurdjieff--and the authors--believe is the individual's incredible potential for development or conscious evolution with respect to perception, emotion and action, or "head," "heart" and "hand."  More specifically, granting the enormous power of our present bureaucratic way of life, is it possible to move--one step at a time--toward an evolutionary way of life, provided that we develop a vision that enables us to perceive such an alternative?  Our vision of democracy points in this direction.  And so does Martin Luther King's vision of racial equality that he voiced at the Civil Rights March in Washington on August 28th, 1963:  "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."  Yet beyond the ideal of equality we also require a direction for following the ideals of the scientific method, for our present bureaucratic science has combined with bureaucratic technology to shape the world we live in.  Is it possible to develop not only a vision of equality but also a vision of an evolutionary rather than a bureaucratic science?  At the beginning of this chapter we introduced an image of a pendulum as a metaphor for a scientific method that can integrate what Edna St. Vincent Millay called our "meteoric shower of facts."  It is an evolutionary metaphor in that we see it as swinging in ever-widening arcs:  from perception and commitment to a problem on the left ("head" and "heart") to progress on that problem ("hand").  Is it indeed possible for us to develop such a "loom" that can help us to weave those facts into "fabric"?  Can we integrate not only the knowledge buried within sociology's four hundred specialized topics but also the full range of our knowledge?  Can we also learn to use the resulting "fabric" to confront ever more effectively our invisible no less than our visible problems, such as our escalating aspirations-fulfillment gap?  And can we even move beyond our present problems to a world of continuing human evolution that presently we are unable to imagine?

            By contrast with our present-day bureaucratic science, C. Wright Mills--referred to at the end of our introductory remarks--developed the beginnings of such a loom in his The Sociological Imagination:

The sociological imagination . . .is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination  of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of  the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from  considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is  the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self—and to see the  relations between the two (1959: 7).

            Mills is known primarily as an activist,  But his vision of the scientific method not only reaches out broadly throughout the social sciences but also reaches out to the humanities, as illustrated by his references to "imagination" and "contemporary poetry."  As a result, he points us toward an approach to the sciences that follows the scientific ideal of opening up to the full range of knowledge that is relevant to a given problem.  This is a breadth of perspective that is essential if indeed we are to penetrate the incredible complexity of human behavior.  As for using the resulting "fabric" to confront our "dark hour," as an activist Mills attempted to put to work our understanding of society and the individual through his many books and magazine articles.  His audience was by no means limited to the academic world.  For example, his books included The Power Elite (1956) and The Causes of World War Three (1958).  And he is still very highly regarded by contemporary sociologists throughout the world, as illustrated by the ranking of his The Sociological Imagination--a concept that remains a fundamental ideal among sociologists--as the second most influential book among sociologists published throughout the twentieth century.

            It was the somewhat more recent work of Alvin Gouldner, who carried forward Mills' movement away from a bureaucratic scientific method with his ideas about "background assumptions," "reflexive sociology" and the "extraordinary language" of social science:

Background assumptions. . . .are beliefs about  the world that are so general that they may, in principle, be applied to  any subject matter without restriction. . . Being primitive presuppositions about  the world and everything in it, they serve to provide the most general of  orientations, which enable unfamiliar experiences to be made meaningful  . . . .

What sociologists now most require from a Reflexive Sociology, however,  is not just one more specialization, not just another topic for panel meetings at professional conventions. . . . The historical mission of a Reflexive  Sociology as I conceive it, however, would be to transform the sociologist,  to penetrate deeply into his daily life and work, enriching them with new  sensitivities, and to raise the sociologist’s self-awareness to a new historical  level.

The pursuit of . . . understanding, however, cannot promise that men  as we now find them, with their everyday language and understanding, will always be capable of further understanding and of liberating  themselves.  At decisive points the ordinary language and conventional  understandings fail and must be transcended. It is essentially the task  of the social sciences, more generally, to create new and “extraordinary”  languages, to help men learn to speak them, and to mediate between  the defi cient understandings of ordinary language and the different and  liberating perspectives of the extraordinary languages of social theory (1970: 29, 487; 1972: 16).

               Gouldner not only points away from bureaucratic science but also points away from a bureaucratic worldview and a bureaucratic way of life.  "Background assumptions" are nothing less than what philosophers have called "metaphysics," namely, our fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality.  As for a "Reflexive Sociology," Gouldner sees this as a way to "transform the sociologist" and to "raise the sociologist's self-awareness to a new historical level."  And Gouldner envisages the importance of communicating to people in general the "extraordinary language" of social science.  He is arguing--along with us authors--not just for movement away from bureaucratic social science but also for movement away from a bureaucratic society.  And his focus on the importance of language invokes the most powerful tool that humans have developed.  It is our learning to reach out to the full potential that language and the scientific method give us that appears to offer us humans our best chance for confronting our escalating problems.

               If Mills' The Sociological Imagination became the basis for the early focus of the Sociological Imagination Group on the scientific method, then Gouldner's publications provide a basis for the focus of later books--including this one--on worldviews as well as on how all of us can learn to use the scientific method in our everyday lives.  Early publications by the senior author--Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel (2001) and the jointly-edited volume, Toward a Sociological Imagination (Phillips, Kincaid and Scheff, eds., (2002)--did include attention to worldviews that shape everyone's behavior.  But their emphasis was on developing an approach to the scientific method that follows scientific ideals.  Later publications by him and his colleagues--The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society (Phillips and Johnston, 2007), Understanding Terrorism (Phillips, ed., 2007), Armageddon or Evolution? (Phillips, 2008), and Confronting Fundamental Social Problems (Knottnerus and Phillips, eds., 2008)--shifted to an emphasis on worldviews and using the scientific method in everyday life. Along with this change, there was a shift in the audience to which the newer books were addressed:  from sociologists to a broader academic audience, with this book finally pointing to an audience both outside of and inside of the academic world.  If indeed it has become essential to move away from a bureaucratic way of life in order to confront our escalating problems, then all of us must become involved in that transition.

              The concepts that we have emphasized--such as outward perception," "emotional repression" and "stratification"--illustrate Gouldner's idea of the "extraordinary language" of social science.  Such concepts can help us to integrate our "shower of facts" and achieve understanding of our complex personal and world problems. .  More specifically, they illustrate three fundamental elements of human behavior as seen metaphorically--"head" (intellect), "heart" (emotions), and "hand" (actions)--as discussed at the end of the previous section on the bureaucratic society. We also suggested there that those ideas are broad enough to help us integrate a wide range of knowledge from the social sciences, knowledge ranging over the individual, society and the momentary situation.  Concepts that we can pair with these--"inward-outward perception," "emotional expression" and "evolution"--point us away from a bureaucratic way of life and toward an evolutionary one.  These three pairs of concepts illustrate a path that all of us can take in order to make use of more of the potential that language offers us.

              Gouldner's "extraordinary language" also points us toward fuller use of language's potential in its orientation to gradational thought--or matters of degree--in addition to dichotomous or either-or thought, such as the contrast between emotional repression and emotional expression.  Once we point toward moving from a bureaucratic to an evolutionary worldview, the dichotomy between emotional repression and expression also points a gradational direction for moving from the former to the latter,  Ordinary language does indeed give us the basis for gradational thought, but its overarching emphasis is on dichotomy.  For every word we use divides the world in two:  whatever the word refers to, and everything else.  And we can also add a third potential of language that is overshadowed by our emphasis on dichotomy:  metaphorical or figurative thought, like "head," "heart" and "hand."  Just as we can learn to expand our dichotomous orientation so as to include gradational thought, so can we keep going so as to include metaphorical thought.  By so doing--assuming the social sciences emphasize dichotomy, the physical sciences gradation and the humanities (like poetry and literature) metaphor--then we will be opening up to a very wide range of knowledge.

              Whatever are the key ideas that point toward an evolutionary way of life, they must deal effectively with our existing large and increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap, that is, metaphorically, with the gap between earth and sky.  To this end, the most recent books cited above introduce the "East-West strategy" for solving problems in everyday life.  This is an effort to move beyond a focus on a scientific method that is limited to behavior within the academic world, focusing instead on how all of us can learn to use that method as we go about our lives.  To explain this approach, we might begin with a very brief sketch of Buddhism, as discussed in Armageddon or Evolution?:

Buddhist teaching is based on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path.  The first Noble Truth is the universal existence of "dukkha," which has to do with pain, sorrow and suffering, but more precisely suggests the lack of complete fulfillment of all human pursuits. There is, then, always an aspirations-fulfillment gap. Nothing is ever wholly satisfying, and this is true even for the most fortunate human beings. This is the problem which Gautama addressed, much like the focus of the scientific method on a problem. The law of causality--like the assumption of modern science, and like the Hindu law of karma--is the second Noble Truth:  everything that happens is caused.  If we remove the cause of dukkha, then dukkha will disappear.  As for the third Noble Truth, it is the renunciation of desire, 'thirst" or aspirations, the removal of passions which will inevitably be frustrated to some degree.  The fourth Noble Truth specifies the Eightfold Noble Path as the concrete direction for actually removing dukkha:  right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, a right livelihood, right efforts, right thoughts and right contemplation (Phillips, 2008: Chapter 2).

              Buddhist teaching thus confronts the aspirations-fulfillment gap by emphasizing the importance of lowering our aspirations or curbing our "attachment" or "thirst," by contrast with the continuing "revolution of rising expectations" that raises aspirations throughout contemporary society.  As a result, the aspirations-fulfillment gap will be narrowed, yielding less dukkha.  And this can be accomplished to the extent that the individual learns to use the Eightfold Noble Path, which brings to bear the full range of his or her behavior on this effort.

              Yet it is possible to combine this Buddhist orientation to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path with a Western orientation, resulting in an East-West strategy for problem-solving in everyday life or, more generally, resulting in movement toward using the scientific method in everyday life as well as toward an evolutionary way of life, as discussed in Armageddon or Evolution?:

The East-West strategy I've put forward is to lower one's aspirations in the short run so as to narrow the aspirations-fulfillment gap and, as a result, shift away from negative reinforcements and toward positive reinforcements, thus following a Buddhist orientation.  Given that narrowed gap, the individual can then learn, in the long run, to continue to raise both aspirations and their fulfillment, following a Western orientation. This orientation also follows the ideals of Confucius, who saw "the path of duty in what is near," while "men seek for it in what is remote" (Phillips, 2008: Chapter 11).

              We should note that a successful East-West strategy depends on learning to use a broad scientific method in everyday life.  For it is an ability to gain increasing understanding of our complex human problems by means of a broad scientific method that  the individual is in fact able to continually raise both aspirations and their fulfillment.  Thus, our present-day bureaucratic science--with its narrow specialization and patterns of social stratification--cannot be employed to this end, for it will continue to yield a widening aspirations-fulfillment gap.  This East-West strategy carries forward Gouldner's orientation to finding a direction for changing modern society in fundamental ways.  Metaphorically, we are looking to construct a stairway to the stars.  It is in the next and last section of this introductory chapter that we can move toward more insight into how such a change can occur.

Transforming Society

              Neither in this introductory section nor in the chapters to follow on transforming society should the reader expect more than some further hints on how we can move from a bureaucratic to an evolutionary way of life, given the mammoth problems that are involved.  Nevertheless, we can turn to the work of Thomas Kuhn, a historian of science whose The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) took the academic world by storm during the 1960s and remains most influential today.  Although his focus was on fundamental change within the sciences, Kuhn's broad analysis delivers nothing less than a general theory of basic change in society, granting that the process of change in society as a whole involves greater complexities than his theory can account for.  For an initial understanding of Kuhn's theory, we turn to an analysis in The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society:

In the chapter “Revolutions as Changes of  World View” he emphasizes  the importance of the scientist’s “world view” or paradigm for understanding fundamental change. This parallels our own emphasis on worldviews as basic to understanding whether or not social scientists follow the ideals of the scientific method. In both cases, we must learn to see scientific  research as resting on metaphysical assumptions. Following Kelly (chapter  2), those assumptions are superordinate to scientific theories, which are  subordinate. Following Gouldner (chapter 2), those “background assumptions” or metaphysical assumptions shape the scientist’s theories. When those superordinate, background or metaphysical assumptions change,  the result is much like the opening up of a new world. . . .

A change in a scientific paradigm opens up a great many other  changes. If the fundamental assumptions which underlie a science change,  then much of that science will change along with that paradigmatic change.  This breadth of scientific paradigms is equally a characteristic of our own  concept of worldview. Kuhn wrote about the “parallelism” between scientific revolutions and political revolutions, thus getting closer to our own  approach. For the idea of changes in a worldview includes both scientific  and political revolutions, and a great deal more. He saw political revolutions as “inaugurated by a growing sense. . .that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created” (1962: 91). Here, then, is a gap between views of what existing institutions should be doing and what in fact they are doing. Thus, both political and scientific revolutions are based on awareness of that gap, which has much in common with a first step of the scientific  method: awareness of a problem. Further, political revolutions require a basic change in society’s institutions, just as scientific revolutions require a new scientific paradigm to replace the old one. That change promises to  resolve the political problems that led to the political revolution, just as a  new scientific paradigm promises to resolve the problems within the old  scientific paradigm. This argument parallels our own idea that a change in worldview requires an alternative worldview which promises to solve  the problems of the old worldview (Phillips and Johnston, 2007: 65-66).

              Kuhn's usage of "paradigm" for fundamental assumptions or worldview has succeeded in capturing the attention of many social scientists.  Just as we have argued that worldviews are sufficiently powerful to trump scientific ideals, so does Kuhn argue that paradigms are the key to scientific revolutions.  Unless a new theory--such as Einstein's theory of relativity--tackles the hidden paradigm that lies behind and supports a given scientific theory, such as Newton's mechanistic theory, it has little chance of success.  In the same way, we have argued that it is a bureaucratic worldview or paradigm that lies behind and supports our present bureaucratic scientific method, preventing scientists from following scientific ideals.  And the remedy, we believe, requires an evolutionary worldview or paradigm in order to counteract the un-communicative specialization and stratification that characterizes present-day science.  Kuhn's achievement is, largely, to introduce the importance of one's metaphysical stance in order to understand scientific revolutions, an approach that reinforces Gouldner's emphasis on background assumptions and our own emphasis on worldviews.  Although contemporary scientists like to emphasize what can be most easily measured, apparently they have missed the boat in failing to take into account the overriding importance of these relatively invisible forces that are sufficiently powerful to shape fundamental changes throughout the sciences.  And such failures work to prevent them from living up to their own scientific ideals, yielding an invisible aspirations-fulfillment gap that threatens all of us at a time in history when we desperately need to understand and confront effectively our increasing problems.

              Following Kuhn's argument, all of this bears directly not only on the development of scientific revolutions but also on political revolutions and--by extension--on cultural revolutions like a change from a bureaucratic to an evolutionary worldview.  Such a process would directly parallel the process of scientific revolutions that Kuhn described, a process that follows our own analysis of the nature of the scientific method.  We begin with a worldview or metaphysical stance that is yielding fundamental problems, such as our increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap, our increasing visible problems, and the failure of scientists to follow scientific ideals.  To solve these problems we must go back to the largely invisible bureaucratic worldview and way of life that lies behind them, granting that the difficulties of doing so are even greater than Kuhn's assessment of the difficulties of focusing on scientific paradigms.  And to change our bureaucratic worldview we require an alternative worldview that promises to help us make progress on those problems.  In our own case it is an evolutionary worldview that promises to guide all of us to narrow our aspirations-fulfillment gap, to help us make progress on our visible problems, and to enable scientists to move toward their ideals.  Yet still more is required for such a profound cultural revolution.  Knowledge must be produced indicating that the new worldview can in fact fulfill its promises, just as research had to demonstrate that Einstein's fundamental assumptions were in fact supported by evidence.  Here, the Sociological Imagination Group has only just begun to develop such evidence.  For example, The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society (Phillips and Johnston, 2007) found "substantial evidence" in support of the hypothesis that "an interactive [evolutionary] worldview will be associated with a small gap between aspirations and their fulfillment" (235).  And the corollary to this hypothesis was equally supported by substantial evidence: that a stratified or bureaucratic worldview will be associated with a large gap between aspirations and their fulfillment.

              If we then proceed to build on Kuhn's argument and move toward transforming society from its bureaucratic way of life to an evolutionary way of life--attempting to build our stairway to the stars--this suggests a vision of what might be called "deep democracy."  Presently, we think of democracy as a pattern of human relationships that is tied solely to the political arena and that emphasizes egalitarian relationships only in a political context.  Yet that egalitarian ideal of democracy is shattered by the hierarchical focus of our bureaucratic worldview and way of life.  C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite was one of the first of a great many social science studies to emphasize the extent of social stratification within the political life of democracies, yielding a very large gap between its egalitarian ideals and what actually occurs.  By contrast, the ideal of deep democracy suggests the possibility of moving away from a bureaucratic way of life that subverts our democratic ideals, a path that appears to require nothing less than an evolutionary cultural paradigm or worldview.  Presently, the bureaucratic paradigm places all of us on a competitive see-saw in our relationships with others, where our only choices are to move up and push others down, or to move down and push others up.  By contrast, an evolutionary paradigm would place all of us in a wide stairway, where our movement upward would not threaten the upward movement of others but rather would encourage them about their own possibilities for upward movement.  And there need be no limit to how far our stairway might take us upward.  Such a vision of deep democracy and an evolutionary paradigm would not be limited to behavior within the context of the political institution. Rather, it would reach out to all institutions.

              To state the possibilities of deep democracy in another way, presently--because of our bureaucratic worldview--the fundamental way we relate to one another follows our see-saw metaphor.  An evolutionary worldview, by contrast, gives us another direction for human relationships because it opens up a possibility for the continuing development of our "head," "heart" and "hand."  A path is, thus, opened up for us to relate to others in an egalitarian way, since we are no longer limited by our worldview to see-saw behavior.  To state the matter differently, presently our bureaucratic worldview requires us to play zero-sum games, where one person's gain is another's loss.  Those games are played in a great many aspects of our lives, such as at work, at school, in competitive sports, in competitive television shows, in our board games and computer games, and even at home.  Yet it is indeed possible to move away from such zero-sum games and move toward multiple-sum games, as illustrated by interaction where both parties learn deeply and are changed for the better by the encounter.  This idea is captured by a concept of "deep dialogue" between two individuals, as developed by the senior author in Armageddon or Evolution?  (2008: chapter 11).  Such dialogue requires the individuals involved to open up to their own bureaucratic worldview in order to make genuine progress in confronting the problems that it has fostered in their own lives.  Our assumption here is that everyone's ability to achieve genuine learning and positive change from their everyday conversations or dialogues is sharply limited by a bureaucratic mentality or worldview that teaches us to hide our fundamental problems--such as our aspirations-fulfillment gap--from ourselves.  By contrast, "deep dialogue" can help us bring up to the surface such problems--following Freud's direction of raising unconscious conflicts up to the level of awareness--enabling us to make progress on them, such as learning to narrow that gap.

            Our vision of "deep democracy"--with its multiple-sum orientation, its evolutionary paradigm, its deep dialogue, its scientific method in everyday life, its usage of an "extraordinary language" and its East-West strategy--is no more than a vision at this point.  In order to follow Kuhn's formula for a cultural revolution that will somehow move us away from our bureaucratic worldview, we require nothing less than deep awareness and deep commitment to solving its deep and escalating visible and invisible problems, granted that we need a vision of deep democracy as well.  We can achieve that awareness and motivation provided that we see this task pragmatically:  we must take one step at a time, just as those in the grip of addiction--and we are indeed addicted to our bureaucratic way of life--must learn to take one day at a time.  Our scientific method calls on us to move far up and down language's levels of generality or abstraction--from our concrete day-to-day experiences far up to our worldview or metaphysical stance, and then down again--just as it calls on us to think and speak gradationally and metaphorically no less than dichotomously so as to open up to a very wide range of knowledge. To this end, the remainder of this section on transforming society will focus on a metaphor that  suggests how that transformation can in fact be accomplished one step at a time.  Similarly, the chapters to follow will focus on concrete materials that can help us to understand that same transformation from a bureaucratic to an evolutionary way of life with its accompanying vision of deep democracy.  Given the range and power of our bureaucratic experiences throughout our lives, these many examples to follow are no more than a beginning for anyone's effort to move toward that transformation.  Yet they can provide such a beginning, and that movement can enable the reader to swing that pendulum of the scientific method in ever widening arcs that increasingly motivate him or her to continue that journey indefinitely.

            The metaphor that we shall use is the practice of karate, an example developed at the conclusion of Armageddon or Evolution in Chapter 11:

Gishin Funakoshi was the father of modern karate--one of the martial arts --on the island of Okinawa at the beginning of the twentieth century.  In 1922 he was invited to Tokyo by the Ministry of Education to demonstrate this new martial art, and he stayed on there in an effort to popularize it.  While teaching karate at universities, at police headquarters and in other places,  Funakoshi proceeded to study Zen Buddhism.  And as a result he developed further the spiritual or humanistic aspects of karate,  "Do" means "Way," as in "Bushido," or the Way of the Warrior," and "karate" means "Empty Hand." For those who follow karate-do --"the Way of the Empty Hand"--have no weapons other than their own bodies. The possession of weapons had been banned in Okinawa, and karate had been developed among warriors as a substitute for weapons and as a matter of self-defense.  Our purpose here is by no means to discuss the specific moves or "kamae" and "kata" associated with karate-do, but rather to illustrate the nature of praxis and of an evolutionary worldview from an Eastern perspective.  Our focus here will be on. . .[six] of The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate--retaining their original numbers--although all of them are closely related to  an evolutionary worldview.

            We can come to see karate-do, or the Way of the Empty Hand, as a metaphor for "evolution-do," or the way of evolution, that is, the practice of an evolutionary worldview in everyday life, by contrast with our present-day bureaucratic worldview.  Since karate is a martial art, it is easy to stereotype it as yet another species of violent behavior.  Yet Funakoshi's study of Zen Buddhism took him far away from such a direction.  Karate does indeed focus on fighting, but it is fighting solely in such a way as to follow principles of Buddhism.  In that way, Funakoshi's principles of karate--or karate-do--can help us to understand some of the concrete implications of Buddhism and, thus, help us to understand how to employ an East-West strategy in everyday life.  This is neither an Eastern strategy nor a Western strategy, but rather something that differs from both.  We hope that it combines the wisdom of the East with the wisdom of the West, yet leaves behind the limitations of both Eastern and Western thought. We begin with Funakoshi's first principle and then continue with 2, 3, 6, 4 and 9.

1.  Do not forget that Karate-do begins and ends with Rei. . . .Rei is often defined as "respect," but it actually means much more.  Rei encompasses both an attitude of respect for others and a sense of self-esteem.  When those who honor themselves transfer that feeling of esteem--that is, respect--to others, their action is nothing less than an expression of rei. . . .It should also be noted that although a person's deportment may be correct. without a sincere and reverent heart they do not possess true rei.  True rei is the outward expression of a respectful heart (Funakoshi and Nakasone, 2003: 19-20).

            Rei invokes Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of conflict, namely, satyagraha, that he used with great success in India's achievement of independence from Great Britain.  For example, he continually communicated his plans to Lord Irwin, the British Viceroy, met with him personally, treated him with respect and trust, and attempted to empathize with his situation.  When some of Gandhi's followers resorted to violence instead of following the satyagraha principle of non-violence, he began a fast-to-the-death that convinced them to follow that principle (Phillips and Johnston, 2007: 225-227).  Gandhi's approach thus illustrates not only Rei but also our own ideas of deep democracy, for he treated Lord Irwin as an equal rather than hierarchically or in a see-saw fashion.  And the result, finally, was that he gained the sympathy of the British public who then moved to follow their own democratic ideals by pressing to grant India independence.

2.  There is no first strike in karate.  "A sword must never be recklessly drawn" was the most important tenet of conduct in the daily life of a samurai.  It was essential for the honorable man of the day to bear things to the very limit of his ability before taking action. . . .This may be likened to the practice of hitting an attacker with the back ridge of a sword rather than with the cutting edge.  It is crucial to allow an opponent time to reconsider or regret his actions.

            We might view Funakoshi's second principle metaphorically by seeing it as contrasting the difference between negative campaigns in political elections (see-saw behavior) and campaigns that focus on ideas for solving society's problems (stairway behavior).  It is the latter that point in the direction of "deep dialogue" rather than the former, for they enable both the politicians and the public to address the different solutions posed by the candidates, yielding increased knowledge available for making progress on those problems.  Of course, "deep dialogue" moves much further than this, yet positive campaigns remain a step in that direction.

3. Karate stands on the side of justice. . . .Human beings are at their strongest when they believe they are right.  The strength that comes from the confidence of someone who knows he or she is right is expressed by the saying, "When I examine myself and see that I am in the right, then whether I am faced by one thousand or ten thousand opponents, I must press onward."  To avoid action when justice is at stake demonstrates a lack of courage (29-30).

            We might illustrate the third principle with respect to you, the reader of this book, On the one hand, if you fail to see substantial merit in these ideas, then any effort on your part to make use of them will also fail.  However, if you learn not only to believe that these ideas are sound but also to see them as capturing your own deepest democratic ideals--following, for example, the intense convictions of John Edwards' speeches about our "two Americas"--then you will also become deeply motivated to take decisive actions to move toward those ideals by making use of those ideas.  For you would have come to believe deeply in the potential importance of those ideas for actually making progress in moving toward your ideals.  As for how you would proceed, that would vary greatly from one individual to another, depending on your particular situation.

6. The mind must be set free. . . .our mind should be allowed to move about freely,  even if it seeks muddy recesses.  The lotus blossom is not sullied by the mud in which it grows. . . .To reign in the mind tightly takes away its freedom.  To keep our mind in close confines may be a necessary beginner's habit, but doing so for our entire life prevents us from rising to a new level, and will result in a life of unfulfilled potential (43, 45). 

            If we think of the scientific and industrial revolutions over the last five centuries, one fundamental result--given our enormous emphasis on the written word in all of our institutions and organizations--has been a "head trip" or an overriding emphasis on the intellect at the expense of the emotions, which we have increasingly learned to repress.  By contrast, Funakoshi's sixth principle calls on us not to tightly control the mind and use it to direct our bureaucratic activities.  Instead, Funakoshi implies that "head," "heart" and "hand" should all remain free to work together, leaving them able to adapt to the complexities of any given situation and any given problem.  This parallels the way biological evolution works, where species of organisms adapt to their environments over long periods of time, just as long-necked giraffes drive out short-necked giraffes when the environment makes foliage from short trees less available.  The result is that the mind is freed to rise "to a new level" instead of remaining locked into its previous level of understanding, which can lead to disaster if new problems require new solutions.  Present-day social scientists, following their bureaucratic approach to the scientific method       , generally prefer to separate these three aspects of human behavior, seeing intellectual "facts" as distinct from emotional "values," yet strong evidence indicates that the two are inextricably intertwined (Kincaid, Dupre and Wylie, eds., 2007).

4. First know yourself, then know others.. . .Karate practitioners must be completely aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, and never become dazzled or blinded by conceit or overconfidence.  Then they will be able to assess calmly and carefully the strengths and weaknesses of their adversaries, and create an ideal strategy (33-34).

            This fourth principle directly illustrates the East-West strategy for solving problems.  When one becomes aware of one's weaknesses as well as the strengths of one's opponent, one will move to lower aspirations in order to take into account the reality of one's immediate situation, following Buddha's orientation to lower aspirations so that they move close to one's ability to actually fulfill them. Then, when aspirations and fulfillment are close together, one can proceed to raise both of them--using a scientific method that fulfills scientific ideals--following the Western ideal of continuing progress.  This progressive movement also follows our image for the nature of the scientific method--a pendulum swinging in ever-widening arcs--along with an evolutionary worldview and way of life.

9. Karate is a lifelong pursuit.  There is no single point that marks the completion of karate training; there is always a higher level.  For this reason practitioners should continue training throughout their life               . . . .Walking this endless road, becoming better today than yesterday, and then better tomorrow than today--throughout one's life--is a true image of the Way of Karate. 

            If there is no limit to the possibilities of scientific progress, as suggested by the pendulum metaphor, then a lifelong pursuit of understanding will be rewarded by ever-increasing understanding if one learns to use the scientific method in one's everyday life.  We might also see this principle as involving Kuhn's analysis of the great obstacles to achieving scientific revolutions, for they require nothing less than becoming aware of one's fundamental or paradigmatic assumptions.  Of course, the problem of achieving a cultural revolution--or a change of one's worldview--is substantially greater, since those assumptions range widely over all aspects of one's life.  Such an almost impossible change calls for a lifetime commitment, taking into account the reality of this situation.

            This completes the general framework of ideas that we shall use throughout the book.  In the chapters to follow we shall present a wide variety of concrete situations that have been discussed in print, situations that describe both specific problems and specific efforts to solve them.  We shall use the general framework presented above to help us achieve both deeper understanding of those problems and a more effective basis for making progress on them.  And we shall also use those specific examples as metaphors that can help us to understand our general framework more fully, just as we have used Funakoshi's principles of karate-do as metaphors to increase our understanding of the ideas presented in this introductory chapter.  Yet all of these illustrations are no more than a beginning in our effort to address the full range of situations that each of us experiences as we proceed with the business of living.  However, we expect that these examples will help the reader gain deeper understanding of the general ideas presented in this chapter and provide evidence for their power to yield greater understanding of problems and an increased ability to solve them.

            As we conclude this chapter, the Iowa caucuses naming the Democratic and Republican nominees for President have just been concluded, and the message is very clear:  it is change that the electorate wants more than anything else, given their clear choices of Barack Obama  and Mike Huckabee.  Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" summarized the situation from a historical perspective.  Ever since the successes of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and beyond--including the movement for women's rights in the 1970s--problems have increased at the same time that solutions have been wanting.  This parallels our own argument that the gap between aspirations and their fulfillment has been increasing over the years, a situation that we tie closely to a bureaucratic worldview or cultural paradigm and a bureaucratic way of life in all of our institutions.  Matthews cited the quagmire of the war in Iraq, our inability to make progress toward universal health care, the failures of our educational institutions, an energy policy that leaves the United States vulnerable to the crises in the Middle East, little headway on global warming that threatens everyone on earth, and a political institution of Democrats and Republicans refusing to compromise with one another to solve such problems.  For Matthews, Obama and Huckabee--with Obama having written The Audacity of Hope and Huckabee coming from Hope, Arkansas--represent the voters' hope that these new faces will somehow succeed in changing the failing scene that we have all been experiencing for decades.

            Yet is it reasonable to believe that our new faces--granting their intense personal commitment to solving our problems, and granting that one of them will in fact become President of the United States--can actually do much to turn the tide of escalating problems throughout the world, given our analysis in the foregoing pages?  Franklin Delano Roosevelt back in 1932 did a great deal to end the Great Depression.  But he was aided by the nation coming together to invest in a war machine in order to protect itself from the Nazi movement toward world conquest, and we are now experiencing ever greater investment in that war machine together with ever increasing gaps between the rich and the poor throughout the world.  For all he achieved, bureaucracies have continued to become ever more powerful, and our successes with achieving increased equality for minority groups have also worked to increase the gap between their aspirations and their fulfillment, given their continuing revolution of rising expectations. Historically, we might also look back to the countercultural movement of the 1960s, when the Vietnam war coupled with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King not only yielded riots in many cities but also fostered a worldwide movement of young people and some older people toward a deeper kind of democracy. They generally and genuinely believed that it was possible to change the world simply by their own personal behavior--such as living in isolated groups attempting to practice a different way of life--with no effort to confront "the establishment," Unfortunately, the long-range result has been the failures of those groups either to change their own behavior in any fundamental way or to change our institutions toward a more democratic way of life, for stratification continues to rule all of our institutions.  We might also think of the "velvet revolutions" in 1989 throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, pointing away from extremely harsh stratification. Indeed, such stratification went so far as to involve tyranny--including widespread imprisonment and murder of those seen as enemies of the state--a situation far worse than any experienced in the United States.  Yet the long-range result of those revolutions--granting the escape from the extremes of tyranny and great increases in political democracy--has by no means altered the bureaucratic nature of the states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  And, we submit, the visible and invisible problems experienced by the peoples of those states are continuing to increase, given their bureaucratic way of life, just as we have maintained throughout this chapter.

            We are arguing here that neither the new faces named by the Iowa caucuses nor those in the velvet revolution nor those in the countercultural movement nor President Roosevelt can or did achieve fundamental changes in our institutions because they lack or lacked a direction for making full use of a broad scientific method as a basis for moving away from a bureaucratic way of life.  For that lack is coupled with many basic problems, as outlined in this chapter: an ever increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap as an illustration of relatively invisible problems, and the visible problems outlined in the first paragraph of this Manifesto as well as by Chris Matthews.  How can we expect to solve our social problems, which are far more complex than physical problems, if we continue to fail abysmally in integrating our present knowledge of human behavior and applying the resulting understanding to those problems?  How can we expect to confront, for example, the increasing worldwide gap between the rich and the poor in a world where the social sciences are largely ignored?  Can we afford to ignore any longer Edna St. Vincent Millay's argument in her poetry that in our "dark hour. . .there exists no loom to weave" our "meteoric shower of facts. . .into fabric"?  Can we also afford to ignore any longer Alexander Pope's advice that "A little learning is a dangerous thing," applying that advice to the knowledge achieved by the physical and biological sciences coupled with the bits and pieces of knowledge throughout the social sciences?

            Our argument was stated in a different way back in 1947 shortly after World War II by George Lundberg, a sociologist teaching at the University of Washington:

A leader, however admirable in ability and intentions, attempting to  administer centrally a large society today is somewhat in the position  of a pilot trying to fly the modern stratoliner without an instrument  board or charts. . .Only as a result of the development of the basic physical sciences can a large modern airplane either be built or flown. Only  through a  comparable development of the social sciences can a workable world order be either constructed or administered. The appalling  thing is the flimsy and inadequate information on the basis of which  even a conscientious executive of a large state is today obliged to act.   It comes down, then, to this: Shall we put our faith in science or  in something else? . . . If it is answered in the affirmative, then social  research institutions will make their appearance, which will rank with Massachusetts and California Institutes of Technology, Mellon  Institute, the research laboratories of Bell Telephone, General Electric and General Motors, not to mention several thousand others. . . .   Finally, a word should be said to those who find the methods of science  too slow. They want to know what we shall do while we wait for the  social sciences to develop. Well, we shall doubtless continue to suffer. . . .  We shall probably become much sicker before we consent to take the  only medicine which can help us (1947/1961: 142–143).

            Our own argument, fully accepting the words of George Lundberg, is that the "loom" that Edna St. Vincent Millay called for--in the form of a broad scientific method that we can learn to apply in our everyday lives with the aid of an East-West strategy to move toward an evolutionary way of life, deep democracy and deep dialogue--may already be at hand.  And, as a result, we may all be in a position at this time in history to weave our shower of facts into a fabric that we can then apply to our problems.  We hope that this book will motivate readers to check this out by considering our arguments in the light of their own experiences and--if they find those arguments to be reasonable--examining our website and previous publications to gain further insight into the "medicine" that we are prescribing. And if our arguments prove to be convincing, we are not looking for readers to abandon their own efforts to confront personal and world problems in their own diverse ways, for all of us are in different situations.  Rather, we hope that readers will test our ideas on their own problems.  Following Thomas Kuhn's analysis of scientific revolutions, we understand the incredible difficulties involved in changing our cultural paradigm or worldview from a bureaucratic to an evolutionary one.  We are attempting nothing less than building a stairway to the stars.  Yet we have faith in the infinite potential of us human beings. We are convinced that the urgent world problems that we are now facing demand that we learn to combine the hope that was so well illustrated by the Iowa caucuses with the potential of the social sciences to create the basis confronting those escalating problems ever more effectively.

References

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