The Ideology Box
The box with a judgment lens through which many people interpret and see the world. New ideas are seen as a risk to be “analyzed,” judged, and condemned loudly.
People cannot agree on the most basic premises about any government organization as long as those organizations make decisions that benefit their ideology.
People can no longer see us, all of us, as one nation. We are now a nation of principally two types of people that cannot communicate and be understood by the other.
Two groups, totally different and unapproachable.
These groups stand with an ideological demarcation line between them, throw moral rocks at each other, and compete to see who can VOTE the next worse government. It is like a riot of words and actions, regardless of clear criteria.
About three years ago, I was verbally attacked at the post office by a middle-aged lady while waiting for box mail to be delivered at a window. My last reply in a normal conversation we were having touched a political nerve. It only took a few words to be psychoanalyzed, put in a neatly labeled ideology box, then the rant began.
Her beliefs were black and white, and I was about everything wrong (politically) in America. What can be said that would create a conversation on the subject? It reminded me of the tumultuous crowds adoring Hitler and walking the streets of Germany breaking windows within sight of the police. People were looking for a savior of any shape or form.
The last two papers, “Our Separatist Nation, and “We Have Lost Our Common Thread,” discuss how ideologists make decisions. Somehow, we can’t separate ourselves from that. None look what those rabid differences are doing to our Nation right now!!
There are no new eyes for a better future. That future has been decided, and everybody else is wrong! Some experts in the thought-control process go through Rube Goldberg-type complications to explain the logic that does not make sense. Like explanations of the economy: “Trying to Make It a Legitimate ‘science,’ Economists Achieved the Opposite.”
There are no new eyes for a better future. That future has been decided, and everybody else is wrong! Who knows about the future if we are not willing for it to happen? We are judging people before it happens and as it happens. Most ignore the actions being taken today. If we are sympathetic, silence, if the actions seen or heard are wrong, or explain them with convoluted ideas but they agree with our thinking, it becomes something to announce to the world.
In trying to understand that attack, I studied many sources in the last few years. One of the easiest to understand was Russell Ackoff, who, in his description of “how to replace confusion with conceptual order,” said:
Identifying and defining the hierarchy of mental content, which, in order of increasing value, are: data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
An ounce of information is worth a pound of data.
An ounce of knowledge is worth a pound of information.
An ounce of understanding is worth a pound of knowledge.
Data are symbols that represent the properties of objects and events. Information is processed data. The processing is directed at increasing its usefulness. Ackoff, “Information is contained in descriptions, answers to questions that begin with such words as who, what, when, where, and how many.”
Knowledge is conveyed by instructions, answers to how-to questions.
Understanding is conveyed by explanations, answers to why questions.
The fundamental understanding of the definitions is an important detail that goes over almost everybody’s head: “Information, knowledge, and understanding enable us to increase efficiency, not effectiveness.”
Woodrow Wilson’s angst to add the Administrative branch of government was, as explained by him, to “increase the efficiency” of the government, thus bringing it to the “Speed” of the “Modern World” (during his time frame). THAT is knowledgeably wrong.
Ackoff: “The efficiency of behavior or an act is measured relative to an objective by determining either the number of resources required to obtain that objective with a specified probability, or the probability of obtaining that objective with a specified number of resources.” Either way, it is a value (data), not an end in itself.
Ackoff: “The value of the objective pursued is not relevant in determining efficiency, but it is relevant in determining effectiveness.
Effectiveness is evaluated efficiency. It is efficiency multiplied by value, efficiency for a valued outcome.
Effectiveness = Efficiency x Valued Outcome. Thus, if the “Value of the Outcome” is ZERO, even if the efficiency is at 100%, its effectiveness is ZERO.
Intelligence is the ability to increase efficiency;
wisdom is the ability to increase effectiveness.”
Woodrow Wilson failed to understand this KEY difference, and WE (the people) have been stuck with that decision for over 100 years!
NOBODY IN GOVERNMENT UNDERSTANDS THE DIFFERENCE!
The sad news is that it all starts with Education.
Ackoff: “Most of the time spent in school is devoted to transmitting information and ways of obtaining it. Less time is devoted to the transmission of knowledge and ways of obtaining it (this is analytic thinking). Virtually no time is spent in transmitting understanding or ways of obtaining it (this is synthetic thinking). Furthermore, the distinction between data, information, and so on up to wisdom is seldom made in the educational process, leaving students unaware of their ignorance. They not only don’t know, but they also don’t know what they don’t know.”
It says “All Universities” in the country are “Technical Schools.” They convey “data and information.” Like going to welding school, stenographer, or any other “vocational” school. The difference is that Universities CHARGE A LOT MORE MONEY.
The big difference between efficiency and effectiveness — “The Value,” that which differentiates WISDOM from the list of understanding, knowledge, information, and data is reflected in another vital differentiation —
Development and Growth.
Growth does NOT require an increase in value; Development does. ANOTHER vital difference that most everyone does not understand.
To be effective, WE require Development, and an increase in wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and information.
Ackoff warned us, though. He said: “You can grow without development and, You can develop without growth.
For example, a Cemetery grows but develops nothing; on the other hand, Einstein continued to develop way past he stopped growing. The government only grows, like a cemetery; it develops nothing.”
We are witnesses to the failure of the LBJ Programs. We still have the same issues his programs were supposed to fix. He created more branches in the Administrative branch that became “Tombstones” in the cemetery that Woodrow Wilson invented. Today, the BULK of those branches live to “justify their being there. They are the definition of “self-eating watermelons.”
Today’s government is proof positive that it is not capable of ANY WISDOM. Wisdom deals with VALUES. Here Ackoff gets to what we as a nation are not exercising:
Ackoff — “Wisdom deals with values. It involves the exercise of judgment. Evaluations of efficiency are all based on a logic that, in principle, can be programmed into a computer and automated. These evaluative principles are impersonal. We can speak of the efficiency of an action independent of the actor. Not so for effectiveness. A judgment of the value of an action is never independent of the judge, and seldom is the same for two judges.”
That “judgment” we have, creates the ideology we follow. This judgment needs to be thought of logically for the eventual outcome WE are looking for.