The Sociatry Project

[Adam Blatner]

Hi Eric, thoughts about trying to diagnose the planet, as an act of sociatry: 

I have many, many diagnoses, from the prevalence of foolishness to the as-yet-untapped potential of a number of good ideas and techniques.
       A recent response, though, works from Whitehead's dictum that we should try to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of co-morbid diagnoses---if we dare to even play with that term, to presume to exercise our weak skills waay beyond our knowledge.  Co-morbid means that there can be more than one diagnosis, like a patient with diabetes AND a sprained ankle AND an anxiety reaction because he missed a crucial meeting. 

     I want to suggest that not only is our world suffering from an information explosion, but also there has been an explosion of new types of information, new categories and domains of knowledge. There has been a re-cognition of the value of considering many categories we had marginalized, dimly recognized as existing, but generally discounted. The needs and opinions of the less educated, less articulate, the feelings of infants and animals, the viewpoints of people who had generally been considered to be opponents, primitive, too elitist, too common, or others---i.e., "them" versus "us."  Psychic phenomena, mystical phenomena, dreams, visions, imagination, play, the insights of children, poets, etc.--- are becoming more respectable in our postmodern discourse.

       The more we open to these domains the more we begin to become sensitive to phenomena that hadn't even been considered valid or relevant. What I'm getting at is that mere number crunching by computers won't do it. I'm suggesting that we've moved beyond the point of ever, ever, being able to encompass the whole world, its problems in a myriad of domains, in any theory, in any single person's mind. This is a change from a time 50 years or less ago---maybe even today for some folks---when people believed that really getting an answer, even a very extensive answer, was possible.

I would suggest that this is a kind of "grasping," of trying to get what cannot be gotten. Such as "fairness" in life. It is a childish residue, supported by the culture implying that it is indeed attainable. 

      The alternative isn't simply copping out and giving up. There are yet significant challenges that can be recognized and addressed in more local or limited domains. Indeed, such efforts may be better pursuit if misleading and grandiose general efforts are relinquished.

        warmly, adam  
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: E L 
  To: list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 12:00 PM
  Subject: The Sociatry Project


  i.b.m.2, some social adam

  Thanks for your support, i.b.2! I'm shopping. I am looking for nominations from people qualified to say what the diagnosis of the planet could be. (I've asked: "Did Moreno diagnose the planet?") It is for the new fall project, "The Sociatry Project," at Harvard. For details see ASGPP forum under: "Sociatry." 

  To quote i.b.Adam I, "hee, hee." Why the quote? I have no idea.

  Eric J. Lindblom PhD Harvard University (h2o)


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