culture

Culture and Postmodernism

storytelling — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:00:34 -0600

Postmodernism is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th and early 21st century life. These features include phenomena such as globalisation, consumerism, branding, the fragmentation of authority, and the knowledge economy. An important characteristic of postmodernism is that we now have myriad different symbols and metaphors through which we can view the world – these include politics, religion, consumerism, science, art etc... Anything that cannot be physically sensed, such as social justice or one's concept of God, must be referred to by metaphor and symbol. The result is that meaningful communication about issues such as families, politics, sexuality, crime & violence without the use of shared metaphors and symbols is impossible. Some common metaphors in use today include:

Religion and God
Science & Evolution
Romance and sexuality
Capitalism
Racism, supremacy and exclusivity
Psychology and "new age"
Power, entitlement, dominance and submission
Artistic and aesthetic worth
Traditional political categories (Left, Right, Centre, Independent etc.)
Wealth, poverty, disability and security
Philosophy

Your views and beliefs about the world most likely centre around some of these metaphors. For example, if you see the world in terms of cause-effect and experimentation, you are oriented toward science. If you experience the world as a place of wonder and beauty, you will be oriented towards art and aesthetic.

People who share metaphors can communicate effectively and work together constructively. People who do not share common metaphors experience communication difficulties and find it extremely difficult to see each other with anything beyond fear and hostility. Due to this lack of communication between groups, most discussions around important issues quickly degenerate due to the absence of real understanding.

Fireside Chat

About Paradigms and Change

storytelling — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:54:21 -0600

A paradigm is a self-consistent set of ideas and beliefs which acts as a filter, influencing how we perceive and make sense of the world. The way in which we often structure our organisations is based on the model of a Egyptian pyramid and is an example of a paradigm. Other examples of paradigms include – how to make bread, what a bed looks like, the characteristics of a chair that lend the idea of “chairness”, the general features of a ship or an aircraft and so on. The term was first used by Thomas Kuhn in “the structure of scientific revolutions” (1962) to describe the the impact of change within the ruling theory of science when fundamental assumptions changed. Kuhn argued that the history of science is not a linear and continuous assimilation of facts but rather a number of revolutions in which new paradigms or new ways of seeing the world, entirely replace the old. Some of his conclusions include:

No matter how flawed, no paradigm can shift until there is a new paradigm to replace it.
Most paradigms shift when enough of the people who supported the old paradigm die.
Paradigms shift because their internal contradictions become unsustainable. This implies that one way to shift paradigms is to reinforce the internal contradictions. An important reason why Apartheid crumbled, for example, is that it became increasingly unprofitable.
Paradigms also shift as a result of the introduction of new metaphors. Kuhn suggested that the most consequential characteristic of a scientific revolution is “central change of model, metaphor, or analogy - a change in one’s sense of what is similar to what, and of what is different.” This usually occurs when different disciplines intersect and there is a “cross-pollination” of metaphor sets leading to a new way of “seeing” the world.
A paradigm is a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way a community organises itself. (Fritjof Capra 1997:6)
A paradigm at the heart of a culture can influence perception and meaning: if we believe that there is a culture of entitlement, we will hear and remember words that support that frame. In addition, the prevailing paradigm encourages certain types of behaviour. If everyone believes there is a blame culture, it is likely that people will behave in blaming ways. In this way, the paradigm becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, a sort of filter which helps make life manageable and gives us a sense of stability in a changing world.

However, it is not the existence of paradigms which can cause difficulties but their stability. Even when a paradigm is no longer useful it will tend to cling on, continuing to filter perceptions. Like culture, paradigms emerge from the interactions between the individuals within the community. They become apparent when they are named and characterised. And when enough people language their reality frequently, it has the quality of becoming “real”.

The term “paradigm shift” has found uses in a number of other contexts including a radical change in personal beliefs, a change in complex systems or organisations and replacing the former way of thinking with a radically different way of thinking.

Fireside Chat

Memetics, Memeplexes, Culture and HIV

storytelling — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:36:02 -0600

Virology has provided our culture with many useful insights and the term 'viral' and the viral metaphor spring up in the form of computer viruses, viral marketing, memetics and memeplexes. Human beings are by nature metaphorical beings and understand complex concepts through metaphor and analogy. In other words, we understand something in terms of something else.

However, trying to understand a virus in terms of a virus throws the thinker into ever more greatly convoluted loops of logic. To think about HIV, what we need is a good metaphor for HIV - what is it 'like'? What organisms or systems do we know of that do the things HIV does? Could the emergent properties of billions of human beings transacting with each other be doing to our planet what HIV does to our bodies?

A particularly useful area for those working with HIV is the field of memetics and memplexes. The term meme (pronounced like dream) was coined by Biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" As examples of memes, he suggested “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches”.

Memes are habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information that is copied from person to person. Memes, like genes, are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with variation and selection. Because only some of the variants survive, memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods, and they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again and agin. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted meme complexes, or memeplexes.

The word “meme” is now found in the Oxford English Dictionary where it is defined “meme (mi:m), n. Biol. (shortened from mimeme ... that which is imitated, after GENE n.) “An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation”.

According to memetics, our minds and cultures are designed by natural selection acting on memes, just as organisms are designed by natural selection acting on genes. A central question for memetics is therefore ‘why has this meme survived?’. Some succeed because they are genuinely useful to us, while others use a variety of tricks to get themselves copied. From the point of view of the “selfish memes” all that matters is replication, regardless of the effect on either us or our genes.

Some memes are almost entirely exploitative, or viral, in nature (chain letters and e-mail viruses). These consist of a “copy-me” instruction backed up with threats and promises. Religions have a similar structure and this is why Dawkins refers to them as "viruses of the mind" Many religions threaten hell and damnation, promise heaven or salvation, and insist that their followers pass on their beliefs to others. This ensures the survival of the memeplex. Other viral memes include alternative therapies, new age fads and cults, children’s games, urban legends and popular songs, all of which can spread like infections.

At the other end of the spectrum memes survive because of their value to us. The most valuable of memeplexes include all of the arts and sports, transport and communications systems, political and monetary systems, literature and science. Memetics has been used to provide new explanations of human evolution, including theories of altruism, the origins of language and consciousness, and the evolution of the human brain. The Internet can be seen as a vast realm of memes, growing rapidly by the process of memetic evolution and not under human control. The field of memetics is new and controversial, with many critics, and difficulties to be resolved.

Steve Banhegyi

Fireside Chat

Of cultures and operating systems

storytelling — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:42:57 -0600

Without an operating system, computer hardware is inanimate and about as capable as a brick. In the early days, the operating system was considered to be an integral part of the computer until a brilliant move by Bill Gates when the hardware was separated from the operating system with MS.DOS Version 1.0. From this point, the operating system became glamorous, glitzy and branded as a consumer product - and had to be paid for separately to the hardware.

I use 3 operating systems - MS.Windows XPPro , Ubuntu 9,04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and Windows Mobile 6.0 on my HTC palmtop. I first started using Linux about 4 years ago. Up 'till then I used Microsoft exclusively apart from my experiences with some of the more exotic operating systems of the early 1980s which included the Commodore PET (with 16Kb RAM!), the Sinclair ZX-81, an o/s for designing integrated circuits called Gaelic and even an O/S called Gerbil.

In using different operating systems, I've noticed that each operating system causes me to interact quite differently with the hardware - an altogether different user experience. On Windows, there are particular rituals that are missing on Linux; I have to do defrags and chkdsks, run virus checker updates (I pay for virus checkers and anti-spyware) and and fiddle with swap files from time to time. I spend much more time on ubuntu now day-to-day and it has always been exceptionally reliable and stable. There are also thousands of software titles available for instant installation and download from Astronomy all the way to Managing a Zoo (I live in a house with teenagers!)

The point is that an operating system has many interesting parallels to culture - a culture inhibits certain behavours whilst stimulating others and in the same way certain programs can run within a particular operating system whilst others cannot. Your apple or Linux software won't run on Windows. A culture can also put you into certain patterns of being and behaving of which you can become completely unconscious - where things can become so commonplace and everyday that they become 'the way we do things around here' - they have become a paradigm.

Fireside Chat