Arbeidets sanne verdi

Det mest verdifulle et samfunn har, er arbeid, sa statsråden (Grete Faremo) som viste til at Norge er blant de landene med høyest produktivitet pr. ansatt. - O.A. 14. mars, 2011

Selvsagt, arbeid er det mest verdifulle vi har, men verdien av arbeid kan ikke måles i produktivitet, den sanne verdien av arbeid kan kun måles i helhet (jeg liker det engelske ordet "wholeness" mye bedre, eller det nynorske "heilskap"). 

Statsråden er naturligvis fanget i et maskin-mekanistisk verdensbilde, blindet av modernistisk ideologi og økonomiske dogmer som setter likhetstegn mellom vekst og velferd. Dette er den absolutte motsats av et taoistisk verdensbilde, slik dette fortolkes av Christopher Alexander:

Living process is by nature morphogenetic. That means a living process acts, in every facet, as a whole, and in all its aspects, is aimed at creating POSITIV SPACE, is aimed at making form coherent. A living process is oriented in its entirety, towards the creation of wholes.

The present-day piecemeal and fragmented processes of our society, are not oriented towards creating wholes. They are highly organized, yes. But they are not oriented, in their substance, towards the creation of living wholes. They are oriented coherently, but towards making money, or creating power…other matters entirely.

How then can this too-rigidly coherent machine gradually be changed? Is it possible for a merely piecemeal process, grafted into the existing fragmented system, to change it gradually towards a morphogenetic process, much more like the idealized living process I have defined earlier? If that is so, then we may face even more difficult hurdles, before we can succeed.

Once again, we are led to the realization that a piecemeal modification of society, along with the simple lines envisaged in chapter 18, will not be powerful enough to work. It will not work because the force and integration of present life-destroying process is so massive, and so thoroughly organized. What we became used to in the 20th century as the process of development, prevented people from acting according to their feelings, still to this day prevents people from acting according to their feelings, still to this day prevents people from shaping the environment in a way that is appropriate according to the global nature of the whole – and prevents the successful evolution, as unfolding would suggest, of buildings and landscape.

Thus the 20th-century process interrupts the process of paying attention to wholeness, the unfolding of wholeness, and the process of shaping the surface of the Earth correctly. At the same time it also robs people from the simple joy of acting appropriately, in a way that is fulfilling.

The connection between the two – the rise of developers and the loss of feeling – is not accidental. It may seem ridiculous to say that the world will be improved – in its organization – if people are able to act, at every scale, according to their feeling. But it is the WHOLE that is being damaged by the loss of feeling. By not allowing people to act according to the global feeling of the situation, that means that each of the prevailing processes – whether they have to do with development, or land purchase, or transportation planning, or banking, or speculation, or construction-contract administration – they all, in their present form, have the capacity to damage feeling and therefore to fly in the face of the interests of the global whole.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the fact that the process which exist – which we now take for granted – in many cases virtually outlaw living process, make living process fundamentally and practically impossible, impossible even to imagine, since the ground rules of the processes we know today have driven them out so far. - The Process of Creating Life, by Christopher Alexander, page 524 – 525

And the fundamental answer is, that there is a fundamental law about the creation of complexity, which is visible and obvious to everyone – yet this law is, to all intents and purposes, ignored in 99 % of the daily fabrication process of society. The law states simply as this: ALL the well-ordered complex systems we know in the world, all those anyway that we review as highly successful, are GENERATED structures, not fabricated structures. - The Process of Creating Life, by Christopher Alexander, page 180

Faktum er at arbeid kun har en verdi hvis det heler verden, for bare slik kan vi selv heles. Kun arbeid som utføres på lag med naturen kan hele verden og slik gi mennesket egenverdi gjennom sitt arbeid. Dessverre bryter vi denne fundamentale naturloven i 99 prosent av alt hva vi foretar oss, og slik gjør vi arbeid til det minst verdifulle et samfunn har, og dermed også livet.

THE NETWORK EVOLVES

Let us try to imagine such a passionate new process in which all we members of society together generate a vessel for our lives. Let us try to imagine a widely available, worldwide process for the repair, construction, reconstruction (even including the necessary destruction) of the world, in all its breadth, put together in such a way that it allows each of the buildings of society to become a living structure, at every place, and at all the time.

What might this new world be like? What, in practice, would the system of society be like as the paradigm shifts, and living process give us the right to experience and consolidate our feelings and our passions? I believe four general features of the overall system of society will turn out to be fundamental:

1. All process having impact on the environment (any impact) will slowly need to be re-thought and reconstituted as morphogenetic sequences. We thus move away from the inchoate conglomeration of individual rules and process described in chapter 17-18, and start replacing them with processes that are explicitly morphogenetic. We begin to envisage a world in which every process – every rule, every human interaction, every purpose-filled act which touches the environment – has among it tasks the major task of creating coherent living form. And, slowly, this needs to be understood by everyone: By administrators, inventors, actors, users, builders, children. We begin living in a world in which the ongoing, continuous creation of living structure through processes aimed at shape becomes our conscious aim, in every part of daily life.

This means, concretely, that all the processes in common use will contain the fifteen structure-preserving transformations, will resemble, more nearly, the fundamental process defined in chapter 7, and will be composed of chains of application and iteration of the fundamental process defined in chapter 6-17. Over time, that will have the effect that among the billions of living wholes, worldwide, more and more are created daily, are everywhere being shaped, nourished, and healed.

2. The morphogenetic sequences at large in society slowly coalesce to form a more coherent system. Thousands of morphogenetic sequences will exist in people’s minds: Although these sequences may exist freely, and independently of one another, they will slowly become linked to one another, forming a continuous net of sequences, mutually calling on each other. In the future, the members of society – all of us together – will begin more and more to see, feel, think, and conceive these “shaping”-sequences as linked. This will have the result that a fluid over-arching process, created piecemeal by actions of thousands of millions of people, slowly begins taking care of the whole, and we understand how it does so. Within that whole, smaller processes will take care of some of the smaller centers, and we understand how they do so. And then, once again, still smaller processes will take care of the still smaller centers, which are needed to fill out and complete the positive space and the space between things. The system as a whole, although widely distributed and based on actions performed by millions of independent individuals will slowly take care of the whole Earth. Every part is touched. Every part is nourished by some person. Every person has some part to nourish.

3. Our shared focus shifts towards the task of improving these world-wide sequences through evolution. Continuous and deliberate action, improvement, and evolution of the generative sequences, becomes a widespread feature of discussion in many segments of society. At present, since sequences are largely hidden from view, or unconscious, there is little opportunity – little point, too – in discussion or debate about the relative merits of different sequences. But as morphogenetic sequences come more and more into view, and are used by more people, it becomes natural for people to consider making or modifying their own sequences, sharing and exchanging ideas, trying consciously to improve the sequences they know – and then, finally, people begin to see that it is part of their obligation to share the material they have, to deposit improved sequences in the common gene pool, so that others may gain benefit, also. Even the large-scale process embodied, for instance, in the concept of “development” can be summarized, in its essence, as a sequence of operations (a sequence that is, in this case, not a living one), and efforts made to improve it. Profound morphogenetic processes are also based in one way or another on sequences. Such sequences ALL have the important character that deeper aspects of structure are laid down first and that subsequent steps always follow smoothly. This, too, merits discussion, and will slowly become a matter of common awareness.

4. More generally, I believe, we shall all gradually come to feel a concrete and realistic obligation to make sure that every action taken, by anyone, in any place, always, heals the land. A widespread ethical change begins to appear. Healing the land is understood by more and more people: Throughout society, slowly, each person comes to recognize his or her fundamental obligation to make sure that in every act and every kind, each person does what he or she can to heal the land and to regenerate, shape, form, decorate, and improve the living Earth of which we are part. - The Process of Creating Life, by Christopher Alexander, page 547-548