002: The Red X Trap

 

We have learnt, in our cultural setting, to classify behavior into ‘means’ and ‘ends’ and if we go on defining ends as separate from means and apply the social sciences as crudely instrumental means, using the recipes of science to manipulate people, we shall arrive at a totalitarian rather than a democratic system of life.

—Margaret Mead

My purpose in writing these essays is to examine various maps—systems of metaphors for an unknowable territory—in order to suss out their usefulness as aids in navigation, which means decision making. I’m interested in how things work in terms of these systems, so along the way I’m going to be leaning heavily on the works of anthropologist Gregory Bateson, not the first but one of the better-known names in systems theory and cybernetics. My interest in Bateson is not completely unrelated to my interest in chicken wings. Let me digress:

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