Concepts for the Managers
A unit of The Faunery
Based on a lecture by R.H. Giles, Jr. at the College of Architecture, University of Kentucky, September, 1971 at the invitation of Herbert Kramel.
I see you as the people who will create environments in which I must discover my full humanity.
Each of us is a function of my environment - the operating factors are energy, air moisture, stress, shapes, expanse, richness or poverty, diversity --and the limits of each of these. Eagles suggest one limit to my skies, the greater dodo limits my human effects of the past. I may clamber around within this multi-dimensional space. I am deciding ...where am I relative to where I can aspire to be?
We sense that there are too many people for the planet, yet we know the population is increasing. Too many has to be a relative expression. And we can see it as rleative to a high quality of life for us and our children...just a little way into the future. We dare not think too far into that future for it may be unthinkable. We are rushing to maximum numbers calculated as occurring in 2026. We sense that too many people is bad for people. In countries with education and improved socioeconomic conditions, the population has slowed. We cannot beg our way out of the population crisis. We must work our way out of this problem with incentives that make sense. In the meantime, I do not judge the morality of your intercourse, only your contraception, for it is socially irresponsible to have more than 2 children in the present environment of US natural resource consumption.
I'm not sure what we should call ourselves. Perhaps we are environmentalists, but that has gained unfortunate negative connotations. Perhaps we do not need to be called anything. What's in a name may be a question that need not be answered. I was told that Yaweh was the name for the diety, the real name was never spoken. It was a verbal approximation, no word could be the proper embodiment, of too great a concept. For it to be spoken and fail, then it would be an idol, a falsity. The word would be a gravne image.
As a teacher I was embarassed for I held it in high regard. I was always becomming one, never achieving. I think this can be the case for the future ecologist-environmentalist-entrepreneur. I am ... I am becomming...? This remains our challenge
We need to take two views simultaneously - micro and macro. We are in an ionic imbalance with these two, separate, but together. There is a spatial dimension, a dynamic state, like that of moisture in the nose ...is it within the body or outside? The decision depends on the instant the phenomenon is observed and the question asked.
Ecology is sterile, to static. We have to do something more than study relations of plants and animals to each other and their environment. We have to do something with the results of those studies. Users of knowledge will be our claim to fame, but we too will be caught in the paired dynamic, that of analysis and design, of learning and implementing. Lines making separation and gaining taxonomic power tend to deny the dynamics. We have to learn and get busy with what we have learned.
I dream if floating on a saltine cracker. We all lead a very tentative life, nearly a crisis. We need to gain controls and to manipulate the systems with which we work toawrd achieving specific, stated objectives. We need to cause change to occur. That change has to be directed and it needs to be significant. We know we will get change...it must be ours, in the desired direction, and significant ... greater than the natural odds. We can prevent changes from occurring. That's just a re-write of an objective. We must move past being the observer, the student. We must become recognized as the manipulators. To watch today is to have something happen to you. If you must be an observer, do not give the appearance of doing something. At least get out of the way!
Doing something (as above) means designing something and making it happen. A design is an act of articulating a set of manipulations to achieve a set of objectives. Environmental design is objectives oriented. The goal is to find a point (shown here at the center) within a set of conditions or constraints ( the brown lines)and move the system there. Constraints can be tightened (moving from a to A) or relaxed. Environmental pressures can often be conceived as tightening of conditions, reducing the life space, the opportunities avaialable for each of us to roam and discover, to find the optimum environment for us and our people.
The quest is often to break the limits, to open new areas, to relax the constraints, to see more clearly. Undersatnding the world as a system may be one way to help achieve that general objective. This is called taking a systems approach. Some call it organized commonsense with some special tools. It is probably more than that but that is good for starting.
The powerful words . inclusive and excluding other concepts are:
cycles and flows
homeostasis
entropy
feedback leading to homeostasis
the search for the driving independent variables
wholism
synergism
relations, not interactions
the parts to the system: objectives, inputs, processes, feedback, feedforward, and context
The call for the Rural Resource System Manager is to stay on a path of discovery with the intent of using discoveries and inputs of all types to improve conditions. The evidence for "improved conditions" is increased profits. Crass sounding, we have labored too long with slogans with negative connotations like " money talks" We need to get over this and be convincing in that ideas used must produce cost effective results, at least reasonble approximations. There will be many extra benefits derived and we need not belabor those. We manipulate purposive environments.They will be appreciated by others, at least in the future. The needs today are for practical use of knowledge that results in improved conditions measured (indexed, evidenced, baselined) in results that produce current (within 2-years) profits. The needs are for existential environmentalism.
Whole people must live in whole environments. When any environment is diminished (constraints move from a to A) people are diminished for they have lost opportunities to experience, sense, smell, to know. People can achieve environmental quality (defined by objectives and the constraint space). It must become clear that pollotion, for example, is limitiing. Do not tamper with my humanity! do not take constraints lightly. Do not take your role lightly. To manipulate the environemnt wisely is to assure for yourself and others that the environment is human fulfilling, a place where person may be transformed into human.
| Tolstoy...
It isn't sufficient to be stupid; one must be well-read also |
| Perhaps you will share ideas with me about some of the topic(s) above at RHGiles@RuralSystem.com. |
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Maybe we can work together |