Chapter Two – Systems 2 (systemic organisation and lateralisation)

Organising information is important (critical actually), because the way we organise information is essential in our decision making process. While we all use something called logic, or rationality, when making decisions, this is just a tool, like a hammer (and a hammer needs something to ham, er). The thing about logic is that the results we get are only as good (as valid) as the information we put into the tool. So if our organisation of information is not that good (by not that good it is meant ‘doesn’t fit well with reality’, or ‘is based on a lot of fantasy’), then the decisions we make will be similar (i.e. not that good – meaning our decision will not fit will with the reality of universal existence).

The human body/brain organises (processes) information by making connections between three basic elements (packets of information/glyphs) – sensory, emotional, and language. Our information processing system is really good at making these connections in usual situations – such as connecting the picture of a ball and the word ball underneath, matched with the sound ‘ball’ coming from a caregiver. This basic processing of the body/brain is of a form called categorical; as in the body/brain makes connections so as to place information into categories (cat and tree are living, ball is not). There is a theory of knowledge development known as the ‘building block’ theory; which holds the idea that we develop knowledge like building a wall, larger concepts/ideas are made up of smaller concept/ideas (i.e. before we can know about calculus we need to first know about addition and subtraction and work our way up the various mathematical ‘blocks’ of concepts/ideas).

While categorical thinking is an important evolutionary stage of life (of information processing), as we mature and experience more of existence we realise that the world has a very different structure. Categorical thinking can be thought of as a building block toward systemic thinking; once we have categorised enough of the individuals of the world (seen the boundaries), we begin to see the interactions/connections (the functions) of the greater systems made up of the individual parts. Remember that the way we organise information impacts the way we make decisions, so to organise our information in a way that better reflects our universal existence will help us make better decisions within this universal existence.

Categorical thinking attempts to view the world in terms of hierarchies (a top category, made up of smaller categories, which are made up of smaller categories – and so on until all information is placed into a discrete category/box). What this means for our decision making, is that categorical thinking leads to a top-down approach to create social structures (which is really good if you want a small group to control the many – such as in currency creation, or the flow of information, or even social decision making/government). The major fault of relying on a top-down approach to developing social systems, apart from the fact that this model does not fit well with reality (and so has many inherent problems), is the fact that it has (for thousands of years) been used as a tool for social control (of the many by the few).

Just as categorical organisation of information leads to social structures of a similar form (which we call top-down), systemic organisation of information leads to social structures of a similar form (which we call ‘lateralised’, or of a lateral form). Basically, top-down structures are organised so that the matter/energy (information) within them are passed from one central point out to the individuals which make up the system (such as a central power station, central media, or central politics). On the other hand, lateralised structures are organised so that the passing of matter/energy (information) is spread (laterally) between the individuals of the system (like the ‘green’ energy grid being developed in Germany, or the participatory democracy forms practiced by some political parties in their decision making, or the way the internet has changed the flow of/access to information within our species).

With the evolution of human mind, our ability to organise information in terms of systems, we have realised that a lateral approach to social structures (rather than a top-down approach) is far better. While we could list the many practical reasons why embracing lateralisation in social organisation/structures is better for our species than top-down modelling, the main reason is that lateralisation, being based on systemic thinking (organising information in terms of systems) more accurately represents the reality of our physical (and mental) existence. And as anyone who has studied logic will tell you, the quality of the information you are working with will determine the quality of the results you get – start with poor(ly organised) information, get poor results, start with more accurate information, get more accurate results – simple.