Whoever came up with our 21st century political color code was obviously ignorant of history and our own political culture. Red has long been the color of revolution and left-wing politics, from the French Revolution in 1798 to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the 20th century, while the color blue (as in “blue bloods”) has traditionally been associated with conservatism and right-wing politics. Red is also associated with anger and aggression (“seeing red”), or at least excitement and passion, while blue suggests coolness, calmness and reserve. Advertisers routinely play on these color associations. If that’s not enough, how can we forget that little girls are traditionally dressed in pink while boys are dressed in (manly) blue. (I can still hear in my mind the “red-baiting” Senator Joe McCarthy attacking “Commie pinkos.”)
So what to make of the Republican Party’s recent partiality for red. Maybe it isn’t the Republicans’ idea after all but a machination of the media, which needs a colorful way to display the election-night results on your television screen (not a concern before color television). The problem is, in the coming election year the results may be one-sided and the election-night map could be almost monochromatic, unless some media color-consultant comes up with a brainstorm like changing blue states to pale blue to suggest only a tentative, temporary change so that the remaining red states will stand out like beacons of hope to the red-eyed party faithful. Watch for it on the Fox news channel on election night!
Thought for the day: The “green” parties that champion environmental causes in various countries have certainly found their rightful place on the color chart. Green also suggests life, and fertility and the presence of water, so our partiality to it probably has very deep evolutionary roots. Unfortunately, in politics symbolism is important but not enough.
An Introduction
In his path-breaking book, Beyond Reductionism (1969), the famed novelist and polymath Arthur Koestler remarked that "true innovation occurs when things are put together for the first time that had been separate." He was talking about synergy, of course, a phenomenon that is still greatly underrated and vastly more important even than Koestler imagined. I call it "nature's magic."
Synergy is in fact one of the great governing principles of the natural world; it ranks right up there with such heavyweight concepts as gravity, energy, information and entropy as one of the keys to understanding how the world works. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe; it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth; it played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind; it is vital to the workings of every modern society; and it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends on it. Indeed, every day, in a thousand different ways, our lives are shaped, and re-shaped, by synergy.
All of these grandiose-sounding claims are discussed in detail, with many hundreds of examples, in three of my books: The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), Nature's Magic (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Holistic Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as in many of my articles for professional journals. Some of these publications are available at my website: http://www.complexsystems.org/
The purpose of this blog is to provide a continuing update on synergy and an opportunity for some dialogue on this important and still underappreciated phenomenon, along with commentaries on various topics - political, economic, and social -- from a synergy-monger's perspective. The tag-lines for each entry, with a "thought for the day," are the unregulated firecrackers that go off in my mind from time to time.
Peter Corning pacorning@complexsystems.org
__________________________________________________
Synergy is in fact one of the great governing principles of the natural world; it ranks right up there with such heavyweight concepts as gravity, energy, information and entropy as one of the keys to understanding how the world works. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe; it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth; it played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind; it is vital to the workings of every modern society; and it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends on it. Indeed, every day, in a thousand different ways, our lives are shaped, and re-shaped, by synergy.
All of these grandiose-sounding claims are discussed in detail, with many hundreds of examples, in three of my books: The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), Nature's Magic (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Holistic Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as in many of my articles for professional journals. Some of these publications are available at my website: http://www.complexsystems.org/
The purpose of this blog is to provide a continuing update on synergy and an opportunity for some dialogue on this important and still underappreciated phenomenon, along with commentaries on various topics - political, economic, and social -- from a synergy-monger's perspective. The tag-lines for each entry, with a "thought for the day," are the unregulated firecrackers that go off in my mind from time to time.
Peter Corning pacorning@complexsystems.org
__________________________________________________
Thursday, November 29, 2007
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