(soon)
1/3/2004 1:34 PM
Comments to the group:
In looking through the Organization of International Schools web site, one notices the emphasis on creativity and in particular the arts. The BCNGroup has also seen that facilitating creative expression is related to our defined educational mission.
(We have almost given up on the term "knowledge science" because of the semantic connection to "knowledge management" makes an automatic deconstruction of the deeper purpose that we have had in mind. Knowledge Technology seems ok, through. Knowledge Theory may be seen to leave out the experimental sciences. So we continue on our search for proper branding that the National Project might use.)
Bill (Smith) likely feels this same sense of affinity to the Organization of International School's emphasis. His work on appreciative fields might play an important role in developing a rigorous academic curriculum that lays out the serious scholarship that needs to support a valid Theory of Knowledge. His interest in Karl Pribram's work is important for many reasons.
The Organization of International Schools may have this interest and the work that they have done should be studied as a model for the National Project that we are proposing:
http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/KSF/nationalProject.htm
My father is an artist from Taos and I have moved forward the idea of selling reproductions of his work from an e-commerce site - not as a business to make money (as the sole reason) but as a means to support artist expression by allowing images of artistic expression to be made available for the public viewing and for ordering high quality reproductions.
http://www.bcngroup.org/pruitt/ADR.htm
The value propositions are there (money can be reasonably made). The estimated market value of all A Kelly Pruitt original art work is in the many of tens of millions of dollars. (Yes his name is missing the "e".)
Again, we have the problem of how to start up such a business system, given that capital formation is now strongly controlled by a certain specific and narrowly focused "type" of person. The lines of influence and the means to control are concentrated in the hands of not only a small group - but a small group that is alike in its subversion of a moral foundation to business. (Yes, it is true that "they" will argue that "they" are uniquely qualified to be moral, and this - we humbly claim - is a sign that a memetic disorder is present.)
Capitalism (something good) can be like natural religion (also something good) hijacked by extremism. We have argued also that scientific reductionism is also an extremism that ignores objective evidence that the natural world is NOT a simple machine that can be modeled by mechanics (Hilbert mathematics and Newtonian physics.).
So please do not allow your self to misunderstand what we are actually saying. We are building a moral foundation to the notion of work and being paid for work - rather than being paid randomly or because you are more focused in your greed than anyone else.
The current system in the United States allows the massive theft of hundreds of thousands of retirement savings by a few people who pay themselves 100s of millions of dollars per year, and use the system to waste as much money as is necessary in order to extract this amount of personal wealth from the rest of us. This is somehow seen as "moral". And yet no one goes to prison, prisons now filled with young people who were totally lost within a dysfunctional economic environment where the only way to survive is to engage in drug marketing.
If we educated our children about general systems theory they we would be able to talk about this, and vote an administration, and congress, into office that understands what and why. (And we are not talking about one party or the other here - as both are corrupt in slightly different ways. We need a true election and a true revolution and this can only come able if the educational system is correct.)
We need action, even if it is only a small action from each person. We can do it, but we have to DO IT. This means vote based on moral judgment and informed thought.
The impoverished of all knowledge scientists is a fact, and this fact will likely be the cause of the great revolution in economic practice that we the American People must now take into our own hands (given that the lines of influence and the control of power is hijacked). The means is by voting in the next election. But the sustaining of an election result WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE if our society has no moral educators.
(Organizational Sciences would tell students of this danger if this danger was allowed to be taught in the American schools - which is it NOT.) So the curriculum included in the Knowledge Technology Toolkit for Kids (K-12) CD will develop a student's understanding of general systems theory and organizational science.
Could the Union Institute develop an advanced form of this CD first and then rapidly build a successful program around the Knowledge and Organizational Sciences? Yes.
Could the Organization of International Schools? Yes.
Could a patron of the Knowledge and Organizational Sciences help in developing this transitional process in a moral fashion? Yes.
Please talk about this and talk to others. We need to make some financial arrangement that supports the core group in such a fashion that we, the core group, are ourselves not pushed into any type of extreme. (I try very hard to be correct.) The discussion about our need, can not be part of a healthy process - if the financial situation collapses again as it did last year.
Our thought is that something like the Glass Bead Game concept will break through the barrier to market and that eventually the government and the people will come to understand that entrepreneurial spirit has developed a memetic disorder that has to be treated. Like the abuse behavior that is easily observed with the communities spending government IT funds (estimated to be around 200 Billon last year).
http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/FCCcomplaint.htm
also see:
http://www.bcngroup.org/procurementModel/as-is.htm
A type grass roots movement wants to occur, and the BCNGroup Community Bead Games could be a trigger for a national movement. (Nathan, this is why you really do need to complete the II SDK and somehow find two weeks to support the indexing and Orb creation for the beads at:
http://www.bcngroup.org/python3/home.htm )
BCNGroup membership is critically needed (and if each person who reads my messages was to join the BCNGroup and pay $75 this would be significant in terms of supporting Nathan's work for these two weeks.)
The denial that the entrepreneurial spirit is not functioning properly is NOT something that can be debated in public in the US today. But in Europe there is a different tradition and a greater sense of the need for a resistance to any type of fundamentalism. Commercialism without a moral constraint is linked to evils that are protected by our own extreme religious (Christain) fundamentalism, partially because these evils in some way lean to a justification of the religious extreme. Not being able to talk about this in public has lead to the crisis that we, the American People, now find ourselves in.
We can make the InOrb Investment Template available to a European person if this person understands how to make the international aspect of this work.
http://www.bcngroup.org/python3/ten.htm
Of course, what we as an American society must look for, and soon, is some way to make into law some protection against false advertising and advertising when a type of invasion of privacy is involved. (Such as the do not call list, or some control on the use of the air waves as a "free" channel to push unwanted advertising.) Advertising ruins the enjoyment of television and demeans the human spirit so that what is on television is not as morally healthy as it would be otherwise. (Organizational Sciences would tell students of this danger if this danger was allowed to be taught in the American schools.) But as it is "we" have very little intellectual protection and no legal protections against the advertising communities. Even being on the do not call list is simply ignored by the telemarketers who now add one more level of deception (this is not solicitation it is a poll) to the stack of deceptions. How can we have a moral society when deceit and lying has become a form of "entertainment".
I have raised a number of difficult issues. We feel that a solution is also being proposed in the BCNGroup Charter. The principle is that capitalism has to be used successfully to defeat shallow self interest that now wears the robe of capitalism. We have to control the ownership of most (as yet not discovered) knowledge technology patents so that this ownership takes only a small part, and not all, of the value that would come if our society makes it into the knowledge age. The mechanism is developed in the paper on the Knowledge Sharing Foundation:
http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/knowledgeSharingFoundation.htm
Peter Krieg is a knowledge scientist in Germany, and has contact with four or five other knowledge scientists. Perhaps his note might have an impact on Bill Smith and my discussion with The Union Institute on some sort of new program that would be developed and offered from the Union here in the States.
Peter,
Would you forward this note to your son or someone at the OIS who might contact my group about our offering some curricular material - some individuals who have something to teach about the Theory of Knowledge?