Some Personal Observations Regarding the CopySouth Workshop:

Trivandrum, Kerala, December 2008. Trevor Batten,  Manila  January 2009



SECTION 4.  Transcending Doctrine:

 1.0  Designing Systems of Social Organisation:

Bottom-up, Top-down, Hierarchical or Autonomous?

As the world gets increasingly interconnected there seems to be a (neo-conservative) tendency in the global system towards the development of:

The develpment of globally "connected" (network) society reduces the number of possible local alternative systems -simply because everything and everybody gets "plugged-in" to the single interconnected system that determines everybody's position in relation to the contribution they make towards the preservation of the single system.

Internal paradoxes and contradictions do appear to offer alternatives -but because everything is interconnected and interdependant, the range of actual choice is extremely limited.

What kind of other social systems might be possible? Are there viable alternatives which might function externally to the current system -or could/should they function as local "nodes" within a single larger (unified) global system?

Should there be limitations placed on (local) interference from global (and/or national) political or commercial systems



Cultural Identities:
(defining and interfacing alternative systems)


Defining the Parameters of Change:


Developing Alternative Economies:


Prey and Preditors -or Symbiotic interactions?
  • How should economics relate to culture (and culture to economics)?
    • (how do material and immaterial interact?)
      • How does the future relate to the past (in cultural terms)?
      • How does cultural developement relate to to (traditional and modern) technological development?


Is the economy simply concerned with production and distribution -or also with generation and control?
(Second law of thermodynamics?)

Do free market mechanisms actually exist?
Do freemarket mechanisms actually work?
Should the market system be corrected, renovated -or completely replaced (by what)?


Do "economies" have to be based on "money" or are other systems possible?

Is a "Practical Utopia" possible?
How can one imagine and give form to things that do not exist?

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2.0  Some Epistemological conceptualisations and Questions:

Nature as an inspirational source for human invention
(and a model for cultural expression?)

Invention as a "social dialogue" (for the benifit of society?)
-Where does the concept of "property" (IP) come from?
-Whales use Sonar (world wide communication network  now threatened by human noise pollution)
-Feelings of territory in animals (nesting and mating habits -preservation of their young)
-Invention of machines, tools and labour by animals
-Can humans accept their similarity and debt to animals?
(some animals have some "skills" but have they developed an integrated system?)
-What is the nature of "humanity" & "human nature"?
-Human mental evolution and the "layered ecology" of the information processing system
-Combining our lower "Crocodile Brain" with our "Higher (moral) Brain"
-Models of self?
-Models of Environment?
-Models of language?
-Implementation of "models" to practical advantage in the survival game
-Social and Cultural Systems
Ontological, Epistemological and Organisational
Nomads and Farmers
dynamic exchange (bees)
-or territorial development (bevers)
Parasites, Preditors, Prey or Symbiosis ?


Questioning the Nature of Change:

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3.0  Developing More Alternative Models:

Some Positive Models for Change?







Trevor Batten,  Manila  January 2009