about this areaThe Overview area contains articles and essays that address the fundamental characteristics and underpinnings of Human Capital Sustainability (HCS).
These articles and essays are contributed by members of the HCS editorial team. To respond to the ideas presented in an article, click the Respond link at the bottom of that article. |
philosophical foundationPaul Kordis, September 2008 Whereas an interest in one's philosophical foundation seems these days to surrender to sound bites, simple rhetoric, and ideology, it is still an imperative when discussing human capital sustainability. Therefore, I shall divide the issue into three axes, each with diametric opposites at either end. These axes are love - greed, connection - isolation, and life - death, and are illustrated in the figure below:
From an historical perspective these axes seem to have always been in play. For example, when the universe first came into being, the big bang, it expanded for a short while and then almost immediately began to run down, that is, to succumb to the force of entropy. But just recently in the history of the universe life emerged on planet Earth, the little bang, and against all odds, even against the force of entropy, life began to run up, to escape to higher and higher orders of complexity, processing and organization. Life was then and continues now to be syntropic, that is, anti-entropic. Individual life forms may die, but life as a whole continues in an upward spiral of greater function and complexity. (From this perspective, for example, it would be erroneous to argue whether or not life begins at birth because life began eons ago and should continue unbroken into the future. Some even argue that the purpose of the universe is to foster life and its advancement, the strong anthropic principle. Therefore, the beginning of life was when life began and the only end of life would be the utter end of life everywhere.) Once life was up and running genetic evolution eventually led to memetic evolution in the form of intelligence and communication, and ultimately humanity's genes and memes gave rise to phemes, or wisdom. Over the course of history humanity has done a marvelous job of transferring its genes and a fair-to-middling job of transferring memes, but it has really botched the job of transferring and disseminating phemes. However, this is a subject for another section. For now suffice it to say that love, connection, and life appear to be essential ingredients of syntropy whereas death, isolation, and greed fall within the critical mix of entropy. This is not to say that one group is always good and the other always bad, or that one always represents syntropy and the other entropy. But for the most part these key ingredients define entropy and syntropy most of the time. Therefore, the essential philosophical foundation for human capital sustainability, at least on these pages, will be grounded in the primary aspects of syntropy, i.e. love, life, and connection. Other similar ethics will certainly come into play, but these are the syntropic triad upon which they will be built. In aggregate, unfortunately, America appears to be leaping into the gaping chasm of entropy, having strolled towards it for at least forty years and sprinted towards it for the past eight. This must change absolutely. Respond to this article. Next article: What is Human Capital Sustainability? |
founderPaul L. Kordis, PhD advisorsJames H. Banning, PhD Gary Geroy, PhD Ed Goodman, P.E., MSCE Bruce Hall, PhD M.L. Johnson, EdD, PhD David T. Moran, PhD Beverly Title, PhD
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