Subject: Re: New philosophy from Heenan case studies: religion, CIA, leadership.
From: johnhe@heenan.ironbark.id.au (John Heenan)
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 08:40:51 GMT
After posting I noticed parts that failed to convey what I intended.
This followup makes, I hope, the necessary alterations.
Yes folks, Heenan the bold is on the ramapage through the newsgroups
again with his new philosophy. There were many stupid and pathetic
responses to the first announcement of the new philosophy with
virtually no discussion of value. In view of the abusive idiocy of US
and Austrlian responses, I take pride in using these countries as part
of my case studies in a way that is less than flattering. The US
president makes it into my case studies, as does mention of Saddam
Hussein!
Some more newsgroups are added in for this distribution.
What follows below is a text version of additions to web pages on the
new philosophy. There are two case studies (one on religion, the
other on the CIA), some questions are posed about leadership and an
extract is taken from an e-journal for the Chinese community.
2.2 Two case studies
2.2.1 Religion and science
2.2.2 CIA organisational culture
2.3 The plague of ineffective leadership
2.4 Extracts from CCF concerned with academia
Below these is some general text taken from the web pages indicated
below. If you do not have a browser that supports frmaes then you can
add /1.html to each of the web addresses to go straight to an unframed
presentation. The shadow site may give problems due to upgrade work
in place.
John
--
John Heenan http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ohn/philosophy
mirror site: http://shadow.apana.org.au/~johnhe
Email: johnhe@shadow.apana.org.au (or if bouncing: sad@eagles.bbs.net.au)
TRUTH AND IMAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE HUMAN CONDITION
2.2.1 Religion and science
Following is a copy of an unpublished letter sent to the Editor of the
Australian Newspaper. In an article entitled 'Realms of God and
science meet halfway' a reference is made to a supposed scientific
study, reported in a medical journal, when names of patients in an
intensive care unit were split into two groups, with one group of
names passed passed to local churches where congregations prayed for
patients daily. Guess what, the study reported fewer complications,
fewer drugs needed and shorter discharge times for the those prayed
for. None of the patients were supposed to know which grpup they were
in. Now when I was at college, my statistics lecturer gave the class
great amusement by taking articles at random in medical journals and
pointing out faults in the statistical methodology of every article.
Now I cannot comment on the methdology without seeing the article.
Apart from the methodology, even if the patients did not know they
were being prayed for, others in the congreagation being local, would
have had connections that may have let patient visitors know
'something was going on' and so affect the psychology of the patient.
OK you can now read on...
To: ausletr@newscorp.com.au
Subject: Science and Religion: what new contact?
30 October 1996
To: The Editor
'The Australian'
The article on page 39 of 'The Australian' of 30 October by Peter
Stanford on science and religion lacked what could be termed a
'scientific perspective'. The perceived cultural battle between
science and religion can be narrowed down to a real battle of
conflicting mehodologies.
Religious phenomena do deserve to be treated with respect and
sensitivity by science, even when the phenomena is fraudelent, due to
the intesely personal nature of religious belief. People have
suffered at the hands of both religion and science. It can be argued
both science and religion have been used to manipulate people by those
with real goals other than the stated cause of religion or science.
Peter states:
"Sir Karl Popper, the philosopher, was fond of remarking that science
offers no truths, only approaches"
Peter then immediately falsely states:
"This leaves little room for what might be termed the eternal question
marks: suffering, human inhumanity, crimes that defy all rational
explantion. Here religion comes into its own and science has little
to offer."
Science accepts the world as it is and would in no way accept
suffering or inhumanity as beyond rational explanation, however cruel
this might seem. However many religions offer a notion of a supreme
being with immense powers and qualities of goodness. Yet to these
religions it is acceptable that such a power for good allows
suffering. The Roman Catholic church has rather perverse and
unsatisfactorty logic for its explanation: its God allows free
will. Rather odd for such a controlling organisation to place such
value on the concept of 'free will'!
To bring a proper scientific perspective to religion, religion must be
prepared to accept a methodology that says, if we find phenomana that
cannot be currently explained and you postulate an explanation with
certain properties (such as those of its God), then those properties
must not be any more than necessary to explain the phenomena (I
suppose the 'razor' principle of medieaval philosopher Occam can be
considered to be relevant here: if you have a choice of explanations,
choose the simplest). If prayers work, as the article appears to
claim, then postulating an all powerful caring supreme being, 'God',
is an extreme explanation that goes beyond what is warrented for
explanation. It also introduces inconsistencies, such as that of
allowing sufferring. Phenomena may not nesessarily work according to
the way those who believe in the phenomena think it may work.
It is also not acceptable to explain phenomena with other phenomena
that itself cannot be explained or dealt with scientifically. For
example, to say existence is explained by God is unsatisfactory as
this not explain God's existence.
It was not stated that Karl Popper would regard religion as a poor
science. No matter what happens, religion will 'explain it away'. To
Popper, a good scientific theory is one that will offer predictions
that can lead to the downfall of the theory, letting other theories
arise in its place. Could you ever imagine a religion being willing
to accept its downfall?
Feel good sentiments of a 'contact' between science and religion must
not be allowed to stand in the way of what has made science so
successful: its capacity to ruthlessly expose and overthrow the most
cherished beliefs as hollow mockeries of the truth. Religion will
never accept such practices itself. Science has difficulties
combining its practices with the sensitivity required to deal with
issues of an intensely personal nature, such as in religion.
Ironically, given the stand of religion on vice, maybe religion is
science's 'red light' area!
John Heenan
*************************************************************************
2.2.2 CIA organisational culture
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) appears to have has its main
charter the evaluation of security risk to the US.
In recent years we have seen
1. The total failure of the CIA to predict the political collapse of
the USSR.
2. The total failure of the CIA's internal security procedures in
preventing Ames from passing on information to the former USSR.
3. The reinforecement that working for the CIA is the 'kiss of death'
and futher loss of credibility for the CIA with the failures of the
CIA in Kurdistan in 1996 to those in resistance to Saddam Hussein.
Here we have an organisation where reality is without question totally
at variance with image it strives to maintain. What is the real
organisational culture that opearates to make the CIA so ineffective
and how does this so poison poison the effective running of this
organisation? Are there lessons that can be applied eleswhere? We
know what the perceived purpose of the CIA is from a US national
objective. But from the perspective of the CIA itself, is there a
culture that mighr be in operation that has a different purpose but is
cloaked under another one? What is the most important objective for
an organisation from its own perspective? It is to maintain its role
as an important organisation and maintain its budget. I can now draw
parallels from psychology. It has long being recognised and accepted
that individuals act and perceive under influences in their
subconscious they are not aware of and find ways of rationalising
courses of action they are uncomfortable with. There is of course
reason to believe complex organisations, which require the actions of
individuals, run with a real culture they are not aware of.
Additioanlly individuals are promoted within for reasons other than
unknown real ones, who will not break out of the required mold, as it
stengthens the organisation for its own purposes as indicated above.
Clearly independent thought can be a real danger!
Now what would strengthen the position of the CIA as an organisation?
Well the answer is instability! By the CIA not being aware of the
imminent collapse of the USSR, a higly unstable situation of
uncertaintity was created. By the CIA's culture unknowingly allowing
a situation to arise whereby Ames was not caught, it maintained
instability and increased threat to the US. By flopping in Kurdistan
the CIA has increased the threat arising from Saddam Hussein and the
consequent threat to stable world oil supply.
What about closer to home in Australia? There have been odd rumours
about the destabilising influence of the CIA in Australia. There are
rumours that ASIO in Austrlia (Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation) were told by the CIA not to pass on information to the
Australian Prime Minister Goff Whitlam in the 1970s on the supposed
grounds he was a security risk! It is rumoured ASIO complied and so
committed treachery against its own country at the invitiation of a
foreign power. Now the Australian Prime Minister holds power of a
nature on a par with the US president. The Whitlam government
collapsed in 1975 in a way that had a huge destabilising effect on
Austrlia. The Governor General of Australia, John Kerr, had the
unusal power of being to dismiss the government and the ACTU union
leader Bob Hawke was regarded to have had the power to call a general
stike. The legitimate Whitlam government was dismissed in 1975 over
the matter of a house of senate impasse. No general stike was called.
There has been speculation over what influences John Kerr and Bob
Hawke were under. Both John Kerr and Bob Hawke (later a Prime
Minister of Australia) were invited in the past to speak at tours in
the US on union matters. These speaking tours were sponsored by the
CIA, it is thought, as a means of influencing unions by influencing
speakers and granting prestige to the speakers through participation,
in such a way the speakers will rise in their own union organisations.
CIA involvement in unions in South America is thought to be very
strong. Are such speaking tours used to build contacts? The then
Ambassador to Australia was unusually a career public servant who had
been posted as ambassador to four or five countries, all of whom had
coups. I have heard a story that a CIA operative was supposed to have
become a spy for the Soviets over the involvement of the CIA in this
highly destabilising action in Australia and that he was placed in leg
irons that were only removed provivded he did not talk to the media.
There have been stories that foreign policy statements in Australia has
been written by the CIA and used almost verbatim (for example additional
references mentioning the British added by Australia)
OK so the possible involvement of the CIA is unproven and highly
speculative. At any rate what we have established is that the CIA has
an organisational culture that has pathetically failed its real stated
purpose in many crucial cases, leading to the reasonableness of a
thesis that is not proveable, that the CIA's organisational culture
actually promotes instability rather than stability to its podssible
advantage. We can use this possibility as a good example of the
differences between image and reality and how valuable it is, from an
organisational point of view to have employees who can maintain image
to the contrary, and can smooth over the cracks and problems that
arises from this while denying their reality (the real work of
management?). This leads into the next section on the ineffective
leadership plague.
*************************************************************************
2.3 The plague of ineffective leadership
Although the 'cold war' is over, the immediate day to day world is
appearing to become less stable, more threatening and less secure for
many ordinary people in traditionally secure populations in Western
countries. This is forced upon by high rates of change such as in
current work place reforms. Recently an Australian 'quality'
newspaper had a highly provocative front page banner 'Revolt against
the poor'. The article blamed current workplace uncertainty for
resentment against those not experiencing their problems. It may be
fair to state that in Australia there is much anexiety leading people
to lash out unreasonably at favourite hate groups. It is indicative
of instability.
Many domestic problems remain chronic in the US and have developed in
Russia which leadership appears incapable of dealing with.
Why do complex structures, such as the US political system and the UN,
appear to produce such ineffective leaders who appear to be marvellous
at making feel good statements, but in practice pawn off those less
advantaged with patronising intentions but no real changes, such as
those in their own country or countries the UN acts for. The quality
of leadership available for US citizens to choose from in their recent
presidental election appeared dismal. Reelected US president Bill
Clinton will be visiting Austrlia soon (November 19, 1996). It is
rumoured he has sickly sweet speeches to make Austrlaia feel wonderful
about its 'relationship' with the US. It will make it difficult for
possible treacherous weaklings in ASIO and the Australian Foreign
Affairs to stand up against destabilising foreign interference by the
US as possibly occurred as indicated in previous section. Perhaps
Australia is being returned for recent 'favours' or 'co-opeartion'.
This section makes the thesis that the real selection criteria for
being allowed to emerge as leadership material in complex organisation
is unknown conformity to an invisible culture that, at all costs,
smooths over the bumps and faults that deny an organisation from
functioning according to the image it wants to portray, while hiding
the reality. Again there are parallels in psychology (denial). There
is a good case that this is the first and last lesson of what
management really does and what the real criteria are for management
material. Please note an essential part of the image of an
organisation is that its organisational hierarchy and methods are
perceived to be sound, whatever the reality. Please also note that
those most effective at voicing the faults of organisations (those at
the bottom of the hierarchy) have no real voice.
In western economies we are witnessing a growing divergence between
rich and poor with what appears to be a noticeable emergence of a
dicothomy between those who own means of production and those who sell
their labour. A high unemoplyment rate favours such a dicothomy,
despite the terrible waste of human resources, cost in human misery
and threat felt by those afraid of losing their job (who work harder
and longer). Obtaining a 'decent education' is no longer a guarantee
of a 'way out or up'. Unless that education is one that will
reinforce 'image over reality' (see my Decleration of war against
universities) and comments in section on extracts from contributions
to the Chinese community.
Economists, leaders and newspapers seem to miss some crucial points
evident to people with sense.
1. The rate of production of goods and services in economies is
on an ever increasing upward spiral.
2. The distribtion of the goods and services arising is becoming
more and more unequal.
Yet contemporary culture refuses to allow these obvious truths to
become voiced. To voice them taints or labels one as a reactionary
communist or left wing ideologue, which is really stupid.
The standard solution is said to be better education. However more
prevalent basic education leads to higher productivity of goods and
services for an owner of means of production. It also leads to more
exposure to a culture that is favourable to business production, even if
it appears otherwise. We are often told how many uneducated people have
become rich. The 'books' demonstrate nothing of real substance. What we
have see is the power of a culture where image and marketing have held the
real keys. But image and marketing is the triumph of style over
substance.
How can a culture has arisen which prevents these obvious truths from
being examined and acted upon in away that benefits the well being and
stability of ordinary citizens, whom are depended on as means of
production. Why does the culture allow economists to get away with
their abuse of reason? Unlike the case of the CIA where an unpoven
interesting thesis ahs been proposed, this is more difficult to
analyse. Let's say that this is a statment of a problem.
*************************************************************************
2.4 Extracts from CCF
The purpose of including this extract is two fold. The first purpose
is to provide another example of the difference between image and
reality. The Western media has painted the Chinese as capitialist
money mad backward communists who refuse to pay copyright dues, with
athletes who are drug cheats. The fact that this image has its
contradictions will hardley bother the hysterical. The extracts below
paint a picture completely at odds with this image. The second point
is that it provides evidence to reinforce how what can be interpretred
as subversive discipline (like physics and innovative technology) are
rewarded poorly whereas those disciplines that maintain power status
quo (finance and graduate management) are rewarded well. The value of
what is learnt in the finance and graduate disciplines might be
interpreted as laughable.
Following is an extract. There were many more than two contributors
and most of the material has been removed for space purposes.
==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+===
Wednesday, November 13, 1996
(Issue No. 9655)
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is an e-journal published on China-Net. CCF
is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese
community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the
views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and
suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
# of
Table of Contents Author | Lines
===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***==========
-- On Everyone's Mind --
Conversation: Academic job prospects and salaries ..... CCF Ed Board 266
===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***===========
[Copied advertisement deleted]
Upon reading the job ad posted, presumably, by a Chinese national (as it was
posted to CND), some CCF editors were moved to anger. The following
conversation ensued:
William Liu (an editor residing in Canada):
Here is my confession. A number of years ago, I suffered a "belief crisis"
in physics and, like that Huang Ming fellow, seriously contemplated a
doctoral program in business. I even took the GMAT and got lucky with a
stratospheric score. Had some invitations to apply from a number of "top
biz schools." But after reading a few textbooks on finance, I just laughed
at my stupidity. What "pediatric medicine" were they practicing?
And that's worth six-figure salaries? God bless America! I sat on my butt
and didn't send out any application. Case closed.
...
Perhaps I should make myself a bit more clear (and more controversial?). I
consider economics and business administrations very useful and serve
productive purposes. However, my ideal of the highest intellectual pursuit
hinges on the insistence that the matter is useless when being pursued. Just
as Van Gogh was infinitely more an artist than your interior designer,
although the latter offers much more utilitarian value. The reason I hold
such a view is that, in a temporal world, pursuit of immediate interests
tends not to generate lasting values. Perhaps I am wrong. But I think
evidence is on my side.
Greg Kemnitz (a CCF editor on the west coast):
IMO, the biggest favor the Nobel Committee could do China would be to
abolish the Nobel prizes in physics - there are far too many of China's
finest going into this most contemplative and frankly useless field, while
scorning those who work for a living. China needs far more B-school grads
and CS majors and fewer physicists and other "pure scientists" at this point
in history. I was just reading about massive labor shortages in China (!) in
all sorts of critical technological areas due to the overemphasis on pure
sciences and nonemphasis on engineering and technology. When I was there, it
was a real challenge to hire a decent database programmer, but we certainly
interviewed and turned away plenty with glittering academic backgrounds in
the pure sciences.
...
In a way, that's my point. China churns out plenty of "cheap" pure
scientists without being able to back up these scientists with the
infrastructure they need either to do their work at a high level or to
transfer their results in to technology. It is a "top-down" approach that
was based on the Soviet model, with the primary desire being to produce lots
of "generalists" who could work on military projects. Physicists tend to be
good generalists, but the problem is that technology organizations need
highly-trained people who don't have the learning curve that it takes to get
a generalist up to speed. Lots of the top programmers in the world are
physicists, but they took many years to learn their field, and programming
is becoming specialized enough nowadays that this happens more rarely than
it did in the early days of computer science.
Technological infrastructure is basically a pyramid, with enormous numbers of
technicians and engineers for each pure scientist, and efficient financial
and trading marketplaces to provide the funding to turn the ideas into
products or services. China has the top, but not much of a base. The top
also doesn't imply importance - without any part of the base, the pyramid
falls apart.
Science for science's sake is basically science as art, which has a purpose,
but is definitely one which is pretty high on the Maslow's hierarchy, well
beyond food, shelter, security, etc. You have to question whether a place
like China can afford "scientific artists" at this period of history.
...
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++
+ Executive Editor: Lei Xu +
+ Associate Editor: Greg Kemnitz +
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ For subscription: mail "Sub China-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" +
+ to
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