WAR ON PEACE

 It is said that peace is intermission between two epochs of war. Thus war is the true nature of humans in their struggle for survival and growth. Wise men also say that war is the last option of diplomatic maneuvering. Often truce or cease fire is a result of warring factions getting tired or  run out of resources.

   Whatever be the cause for  triggering current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, justifiable or not, the modern Tsar cum Stalin of Russia has entangled himself in two conflicting states, namely, returning glory to Russia and facing wrath of civilized world community. Assuming that in the next few days/weeks, he even succeeds in meeting one or more of his limited following goals, namely, 1 Show the military might of Russia and thus help promote sales of its armaments, 2 subordinate Ukraine, and,  3  prevent NATO from encircling  Russian with nuclear warheads, he has  lost the moral stature in the eyes of the world community having adopted unethical means to achieve these ends

  If, however, the real purpose behind this  costly exercise was to force the world community to de stabilize the present Hegemony of western powers led by  United States of America, it would fail miserably. This is so because, along with those perpetuating unjust World Order. Russia too would be grouped with them and lose the opportunity of taking lead in establishing new World Order.  How can the world community of nations feel secure with the permanent members of Security council accused of practicing unfair means when it comes to their own case. In any case the very purpose of establishing ta new World Order would stand defeated

    As for the consequences to Russia already economically weak, the after math of this war would take several decades for Russia to regain the status of economic superpower. Not to talk of tarnished image that of a terrorist nation like present Afghanistan and other outfits like Al Qaida or ISIS, it could take half a Century.

 In retrospect, war on peace does not lead to viable solution.

Year 2022 is the year to review our life styles and do some out-of--box thinking.So I have decided to return to my Google bloggg 'Out of Mind'

DESIGNING GOOD GOVERNANCE

                                               

1.       Paradigm of Governance

There is need to draw attention on certain false assumptions associated with the role, responsibilities and accountability of a government in any country. Most republics whether democratic or socialist/Communist have a written constitution approved by their supreme assembly /parliament and acts as a guiding principle. In their enthusiasm to serve the nation, or, perhaps to harness votes, political parties pledge far more in their manifesto than they can deliver. They are well aware of this and yet are willing to gamble in the elections. Consequently, non fulfillment of the promises both the opposition parties and public bodies often resort to legal option to seek redress to their grievances. The perceptional flaw is on both sides; the party in power tends to think as if they own the nation and are responsible for everything happening in the country.  Likewise, people also wrongly assume that government in power is accountable for everything happening in the country. Both are wrong. Government is elected to perform certain basic functions as stated in the constitution. However, it must be borne in mind that the government only acts as a catalyst in most activities performed by individuals and organizations in the country and are only accountable to specific activities performed by the government

2         Myths about Good Governance

It is a misnomer to think that that any socio economic political systems, unlike mechanical or electronic that can be 100 per cent regulated (not to talk of controlled).This is simply because they are behavioral systems neither fully observable nor controllable, and so, are too complex in nature to be predicted. It would therefore be wrong on the part of political party in power and people in general to assume that their expectations would be fulfilled in total.

     3.  Science of Complexity

   Management Cybernetic, utilizing the invariant laws of change, namely, the Law of Requisite Variety and the Law of Recursion, manages complexity in systems. A system is said to be complex when:  (a) it has a large number of elements that together identify the system are inter connected in multiple ways,(b) Consists of multi level hierarchies, and,(c) Has very large variety, where variety is the measure of complexity(possible number of different states the system can take).

     4. Conceptual Design Model

A conceptual design model provides visual map of the internal structure of a system where representative elements of the system are causally inter related  such that the influence of input variables can be observed in the output variables of the system. The multi level hierarchies that are vertically inter connected through elements, help in attenuating or proliferating the variety of information between hierarchies, just the same way as a simple system increases or decreases its variety vis-à-vis its environment. Construction of such a design model greatly helps the policy maker/regulator to get a clear perception of the complex system, such as a nation.

           Good governance is thus only achievable when the above stated pre requisites have been met with. Effective governance requires that not only policy goals have been explicitly stated along with specific policy instruments identified but decision rules (that give numbers to parameters and range decision bandwidth. Also when the impacts on the system have not only be measured and fed back to the regulatory sub system for it to respond by making necessary policy changes. This feed- back mechanism would have some lag time but should be kept as close to the real time, since longer time lags imply changes in the state of the system and so the regulation would be less effective if not ineffective.

Logic Psychology do loop

Conventionally we treat Logic and Psychology as different knowledge desciplines but in practice they feed each other. The psychology of reasoning and the rationale of psychology expalin the inter relationship. Logic evolved to establish scientific thinking to understand the reality. And psychology to explain the limitations of reasoning and that perception plays a much important role in our thinking. But then we can alays rationalise our faulty reaoning by stating 'to err is human'Likewise,we can state that there cannot be any meaningful perception unless it verfied or supported by our reasoning.

DESIGNING THE MIND

William H. Calvin's "How the Brain Works" and 'CEREBRAL CODE' are indeed fascinating works and provide a sound basis for further research in this area. To my mind,knowing how human brain works, it is all the more important that we also do thinking on how it should work? That is,design models of optimal( both for efficient viable) brain usage.
I am willing to do my bit but would welcome any one volunteering to help design a Cybernetic model of human mind

INDIVIDUAL Vs ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

Old saying-two brains are better than one(provoded they think in parallel). So ,hunam organizations are more efficient than an individual. But from learning systems point of view,the latter may not be always in advantage.For example,in the individual all the past experience is stored somewhere or the other in his/her brain and and can be recalled at will within  no time.In contrast,in human organizations organizational experiences are not all documented and in part are with different individuals working with it.If some of them leave,those exepeinces go along with them.Consequently,organizations may not be able to respond to all new situations effectively.

THINKNG ACROSS BOXES

We usually think within a Box.With effort learn to think out of the Box. A next logical step would be to think across the Boxes. While one Box refers to on set of assumptions and structural relationships between the elements,and the other Box does so for another set of assumpptions and relationships,by drawing parallel between the two, one may come out with new knowledge about either or both boxes.