ecojoy:

The Ecology of Joy

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Copyright ©1996-2004 David Devereaux-Weber

1. Introduction

I read The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan in 1969, and it had a profound effect on me.  I had just graduated from high school, and my part-time jobs during that time included delivering newspapers and working at a radio station. I saw first-hand  some of the effects of media.  At the radio station, I would get telephone calls from listeners wanting to know the weather forcast, or responding to music I had played.  They probably wouldn't have trusted a seventeen-year-old, but they trusted the institution of the radio station.

McLuhan's idea is that media (he uses a very inclusive definition of media, including media and technology) have a very large transformative effect on the cultures in which those media emerge.  This effect is independant of the content of the medium.

One of the shorcomings of McLuhan's media theory is that it did not address the cause or mechanism of the transformative effect on culture.

I read The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler  in 1995, and it also had a profound effect on me.  The idea of trying to find the commonalities of desirable and undesirable aspects of the cultures around us seems intuitively correct.  One of the problems I have with Partnership is that it is difficult to explain.  One of the things that seemes missing in Partnership theory  is any connection with McLuhan's ideas of the culturally transformative affects of media.  Another unfinished part of Partnership theory is determining the cause of the cultural transformation from early Partnership to dominator thinking.

I read The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain in 1999.  Shlain explores the transformation in culture over time, from early cultures who worshipped the Goddess to current cultures based on a male deity.  Shlain proposes that the cause of this transformation was the effects of the phonetic alphabet on people.

Partnership

A culture is a group of people, the links between them, and the information about history, customs and behavior that they share.  Partnership describes one way in which people form links with other people and the environment around them.

Cultures change, as people are born and people die, as cultures grow by migration, assimilation, or division.  Cultures are also transformed by the effects of tools, technology and media.  The culturally-transformative nature of media are due to changes in peoples'  low-level concepts like the form of links.  Before the phonetic alphabet and printing, people's concepts of links were heterarchical.  The phonetic alphabet and printing fostered and encouraged a change in peoples' concepts of links, from heterarchical to hierarchical.

Riane's work is very important.  She has found commonality in the many manifestations of dominator and Partnership behaviors, and has given us language with which to understand and communicate Partnership ideas. The Chalice and the Blade explores history, archeology, Women's Studies, and many other areas of cultural knowledge.

Sacred Pleasure explores Partnership theory further, noticing a connection between dominator thinking and re-defining pleasure as morally wrong.

One of the questions Riane's work does not cover is the reason for the change from Partnership to dominator cultures.  She uses the comparison of "linking, not ranking" to describe the difference between dominstor culture and Partnership culture, but does not develop the theory of link type (heterarchical or hierarchical) as fundamental to Partnership theory, or the idea that there is a connection between media and the types of interpersonal links which emerge in users of a particular media type.

Media and Culture: the Explorations of Marshall McLuhan

Information about Marshall McLuhan

• The Marshall McLuhan Center on Global Communications
• Marshall Mcluhan Video Archive
• at the University of Toronto
• Understanding McLuhan
• McLuhan Background and Links from the University of Chicago

Why a change in media often causes cultural turmoil.

Have you ever gone to the top of a tall building, like the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, the John Hancock Building, or the Sears Tower?  When you go out on an observation deck, some of the architectural features that we are used to are missing.  Some people are afraid to approach the outside of a building.

When media change, many of the cultural features we have been used to change, causing disorientation and fear.

McLuhan was one of the first to bring widespread attention to the effects of media on culture.  However, many find his work hard to understand.  He was not able to make clear why different media had such profiund effects on cuture.  Further, the ideas of Partnership and dominator linking and not yet been described, so his work could not benefit from those ideas.

Reconciling Media Studies and Partnership 1:

 Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Reconciling Media Studies and Partnership 2:

My Thoughts

My theory for the differential effects of print literacy on women and men is that men accepted the myth of the superiority of hierarchical linking more than women, and this was because of the difference in the experience of childbirth and child rearing between men and women.  Because only women give birth, and because only women's breasts can give milk, women experience the direct dependance link between mother and child.  For women, that experience is more powerful that the effects of print literacy on cultural linking.

My theory on the reason for the effects of media on culture is that media, in addition to the high-level content they convey, also carry low-level concepts like cultural linking.  These low-level concepts are not presented or discussed explicitly.  Instead, the effects come from a variety of causes, including the way the reader/listener/viewer processes the external stimulus which communications presents.  In addition, the concepts are presented indirectly through the content of the communication.  However, though these indirect paths are often invisible, they are extremely important, because they form the basis for our very concept of the world around us.

The Ecology of Joy

Even though joy or pleasure is such a powerful motivator, joy is not infinite.  Further, many people live in conditions that do not permit the experience of pleasure.  Part of the challenge of Partnership education is the husbandry of joy.  By clearing the barriers to joy experienced by our fellow humans, we improve the chances of their and our joyful experience of life.

(Please pardon the outline form.  I would like to gather these ideas for a while, then re-arrange and turn into some form that is easier to read.)

Issues and Examples of Cultural Transformation and Partnership

1. The way we use the concept of  morality is changing from right and wrong, good and bad, black & white to shades of grey.  The figure of speech black and white has it's origin in the black of ink and the white of paper used for writing and printing.
2. People under dominator influence sometimes use morality as a form of cultural or political extortion.  We hear about litmus tests of politial candidates and single-issue voters.  Examples of this include an emphasis on law and order,  the image of get tough on crime, and the issues of abortion and partial birth abortion..  If a candidate doesn't agree that getting tough on crime is important, they are accused of things like supporting the release of dangerous criminals from prison.
3. Another way of looking at this black-and-white morality is that it is like using a binary digit (zero or one) to represent the morality of an idea or action.  As Bill Gates would say, that is low bandwidth.  A single bit represents such a small number, and there are so many thoughts and behaviors.
4. People are sometimes categorized as goodguys or badguys.  This is another example of binary thinking.  In early movies and television programs, the western was a form of entertainment that demonstrated that there were badguys in the world, and that therefore dominator methods were necessary to protect goodguys (us).  This categorization continues today as we get tough on crime. It is necessary to have crime and badguys in order to justify dominator responses.
5. From language of war to language of Partnership.  Newspaper headlines often use the terms like battle and war when describing differences of opinion, and write of dominance or market dominance and winners and losers. These terms cast the issues in a win/lose light that often only exists in the writer's mind.
6. The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts is an incredible book about a person who discovered a way to start horses (he doesn't use the term break).  Roberts is dedicating his life to sharing this knowledge with the world.  This is a shining example of the Partnership way, and is also an example of the speed and ease of Partnership methods when compared to dominator methods.
7. Robert Pirsig explored cultural transformation using philosophy in his books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals.  In these works, he proposes a Metaphysics of Quality.
8. Natural Selection, Evolution, and Human Behavior.
1. Charles Darwin's theories pertain to the evolution of living creatures by variation and natural selection.  In the modern interpretation of this process, the information about all the traits of a plant or animal are encoded in genes.  Due to the mixing of genes from the parent organisms, and also due to errors in the gene copying process, the offspring have differences.  Some variations result in organisms which are not well suited for survival in their environment.  Other variations result in traits which are well suited for survival, and some may have adaptations which give them enhanced chances for survival.  The genes of the organisms which thrive and survive are passed on to subsequent offspring.  The genes of organisms which do not survive ae not passed on.  There is no indication that intelligent choice is involved in natural selection - creatures do not choose which traits are passed on, and creatures are not able to change their own physical traits.  I'd like to refer to that as biological evolution.
2. Some scientists and cultural observers posit a genetic or biological factor in human behavior.  We sometimes hear the term cultural evolution to describe changes in culture.  While there may be genetic factors in human behavior, there is great benefit in working with the theory that humans can choose their behaviors - that they have a free-will.  We also see medical and scientific evidence of differences in the behavior of women and men.  I am not convinced that gender-based behavior difference are genetically caused.  If learning activity creates distinct neuron growth, then differential learning as young children could cause differential neural patterns, resulting in physical differences in brains in men and women.
3. If a culture changes, it does so because the people, the links between them, or the information about history, customs and behavior that they share have changed.
4. Cultural evolution does NOT have to be survival of the fittest.  The fact that biological evolution proceeds by natural selection has no bearing on cultural evolution.  One of the differences between homo sapiens and other species is that we can change our behavior based on experience or logic.  We can apply intelligent choice to our behavior.  The view that helping others is somehow harmful to the process of evolution is founded on misunderstanding.
9. The concept of privacy came into existance after the inventions of the phonetic alphabet and the printing press.  As we make the transition from print-biased culture to McLuhan's global village, privacy will be reduced in order to provide information necessary for the common good.
10. We are changing from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control (thanks to Justice for this insight).
1. That means that attempts to legislate morality are unlikely to succeed.
2. It means changes to the family, and the way children are raised.
3. It means changes in organized religions.
4. It means that organizations will get the optimum performance from their volunteers or employees if those volunteers/employees determine their own course of action.  This also means that communication between leaders and employees  needs to be very good; that leaders need to have a clear understanding of motivation and leadership, and there needs to be a trust in the organization.
11. Information control
1. In his column in Byte Magazine, Jerry Pournelle said something like "By 2000, anyone with network access will be able to get the answer to any question that can be answered."  Then he went on to explain some of the potential negative consequences of information about things like information on how to make a bomb being widely available.
2. Information control & Secrecy (great quote: "Don't worry about keeping a good idea secret; if its a good idea, you'll have to cram it down their throats."  need to find the attribution for that...)...
3. Information control and censorship...
1. the Communications Decency Act...
2. sexually explicit material: erotica or pornography?
12. Intellectual Property (patents, trademarks...)...

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Another related example is the chain e-mail.  One of the problems in Internet e-mail is that it is possible to write an urgent message about a compeling issue that is hard to resist.  These messages announce a new virus, or a new government plan to tax e-mail, or like the "Mrs. Fields Cookies" message, is just so compelling that we forward it on to our friends or associates - our "buddy list".  Like MLM, the content is not what is important here.  The interesting thing is that the "buddy list" (For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a list of acquantences and originated with AOL Instant Messenger) is an example of heterarchical linking.
 

13. One of the problems of Partnership theory is how can we influence the world in the direction of Partnership?  It seems to me that the way is to use heterarchical linking and talk with those we know and interact with.  Because of air travel and electronic communications, our "circle of friends" now reaches around the world.