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Closed Systems: Preserving the "Norm"
Single individuals don't create a society-wide climate where dialogue has no place. That's the desire of the Control Paradigm, and it uses an effective device for doing it. The Control Paradigm designs social structures to function as closed systems. The rules, policies and structures of closed systems have one purpose - to exclude input - outside, non-controllable factors - that could initiate system change. The first response to any problem is to "return things to the way they were". Closed social systems are not intentionally "evil" - they are simply designed to maintain the status quo.
Maintaining a pre-determined order is their mandate, which closed systems carry out through strict rules of control. As long as new energies can be either neutralized or made to conform, things continue on as before. The lines of power are preserved, and control is assumed.
Controlling the Variables - The People
Closed systems work to offset variables. That's how they maintain equilibrium. In closed social systems, personal differences are the variables, and roles are the way to offset them. For example, because nothing is more variable in marriages than spouses, or in families than children, in schools than teachers and students, i businesses than employees, in religions than spiritual seekers, or in society than citizens, closed social systems devise countless techniques for steering us back to role-governed equilibrium, called "family harmony",
"family values", "school discipline", "business as usual", "religious devotion", or "social order". The most effective technique for doing this gets people to internalize roles and act them out without question. People are manipulated to meld with the roles, until they are the roles.
Given that dialogue is really about thinking and questioning, it is no wonder that its not generally welcome in closed social systems. It undermines a powerful tool of control: a control device that reduces our "unpredictable" nature to predictable boxes and persuades us that the boxes are who we are and that "we are nothing" without them.
The Control Paradigms Claim to Legitimacy
The aim of closed social systems isn't to shut us down, although that's the effect. Closed systems may behave like the evil Empire in Star Wars, but those "in charge" honestly believe that "society would collapse" without their order-reinforcing, power-concentrating, control-preserving responses. That is why dictatorships often follow social upheaval; the "chaos" of transition is used to justify closed-system methods. The greater the apparent "chaos", the more "absolute rule" can be "justified". Current closed social systems welcome, and may even create
an appearance of "chaos", because according to their belief is "validates" their "authority", and that "crack-down" methods "must be necessary".
Closed Social Systems Don't Work for Human Society
Responding to the need for balance in society doesn't work using closed-system thought patterns, because the systems:
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Maintain a toxic order: First, if the system equilibrium is already toxic, it gets reinforced. Bad "norms" are simply perpetuated, since closed systems "run on automatic". They don't have the power of discernment. They don't evaluate systems in light of personal needs, human evolution or planetary health. Their one mandate is to "preserve the established order", even if that "order" is toxic for the people and planet.
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Put systems above people: Achieving "social order" through closed-system methods put systems above people - system needs over personal needs. Systems come first. That's the message we hear in social systems, namely, preserving systems is more important than nurturing people. Closed systems say to people, "You are part of us, therefore we own you. Who you are is incidental. You must perform the roles we assign you in the ways we require. We won't allow you to deviate. If you changed, we'd have to change, and that we won't allow. Our 'social order' would collapse". Putting the rigid
structure of social systems first costs all of us. People get "chewed up" by systems. The idea of "sacrificing ourselves for the greater good" may be a laudable idea if the greater is good. But, what if it isn't?
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Control is Abuse: Closed social systems don't work because they keep order through control - force, punishment, and other power-over methods of enforcement. But, can social harmony be forced? Is top-down control the way to achieve "social order"? Threats and intimidation cannot be the fabric of healthy social systems. They do too much violence to our inner lives, costing us our freedom. How healthy can our social system be if the people are psychological wreaks? When we are deprived of out essential powers as free, creative beings, our social systems reflect our emptiness.
When do we get in return for "submission"? Not security. Being one-down in a control hierarchy isn't a secure place. When people get deprived of freedom and security while at the same time they are bound by control systems, they behave like caged animals. Intelligent beings don't do well in cages.
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The Nature of Reality isn't closed: Another reason closed social systems don't bring social order is that reality itself isn't a closed system. The old scientific belief systems such as closed-entropy energy systems, also used to reinforce closed-system social control patterns, are rapidly becoming transparently false as scientific research has shown over the last few decades. No matter how much closed systems try to control variables and shut out change, reality won't be shut out. We can't make our social units into "islands of no-change", because the greater reality (the context on which our systems
depend) is dynamic. Reality is ever-shifting. It sweeps through our systems and impels change whether the system controllers like it or not. Two shining examples of closed systems, the Soviet Union and Communist China, tried to create "perfectly controlled, closed societies". It didn't work. Their determination to establish closed-system control exacted a terrible price from their people. Individuality, freedom and creativity "had to be crushed". That's the reason closed social systems don't work.
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The Spiritual Evolution of Society Won't Be Put Off: Human beings are every bit as dynamic as reality because we are made up of reality, and we are constantly evolving in response to it. In contrast to Westernized control-oriented systems, including the systems "exported" to China, ancient Asian spiritual traditions defined humans as profoundly open systems, involved in constant self-transformation. Just as social systems can't ultimately ignore the dynamics of reality, so too they cannot ultimately ignore our dynamics. No matter how hard closed systems try to fit us into "boxed", we don't fit. The
more systems negate this quality, the more we react as if we're under siege. Our personal reality as beings-in-progress fights back, whether through conflict, addiction, social action ,recovery, spiritual awakening - or some combination thereof. Nor is this bad news. If social systems could make us into static units of conformity, what sort of societies would we create?
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The Awareness Gap: Another reason closed social systems don't work as a model for social order is that closed systems operate blind to the people in them. Social order is not built on an awareness of what people think and feel, but on ignoring human needs and imposing system demands. That is why closed systems are typically out-of-touch with the real thoughts, feelings, and abilities of their members: they shut the door on this information. It's not deemed "relevant" to "maintaining order".
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Too many tragedies, too little order: In the end, closed-system control doesn't work because it creates more tragedies than order. Dysfunctional patterns destroy. For example, the general approach to "health care" is a business. If health is a business, which demands its existence in perpetuity, than there can by definition be no health in society. The pattern also involves "killing disease" while at the same time ignoring what it takes to create health. National ill-health is just one example of closed-system tragedies. The Western political systems are another example.
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