progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
"that you think printing influenced the course s the universities taught and the role of the
university, altogether?”
"No, sir, " said McLuhan, "it did not influence; printing determined both, indeed, printing
determined henceforth what was going to be considered knowledge.”
This concept later evolved into the medium being the message. In our context it is the
fact that both Kuhn and McLuhan recognized, albeit in differing fields and in differing
ways, that fundamental changes in technology and technique, call it paradigm or the
medium, will change the world view, also the message. In fact the world view and its
implementation in a governing architecture will also determine what henceforth is to be
considered the law! That is applying McLuhan to this process, if we take the change in
architecture to a change in the medium, then the message, the "law", is then morphed to
what the underpinnings of the controlling group has of their world view.
Thus, architecture is the combination of three parts;
(i) the common elements, namely the entities which will comprise the structure we desire
to build. This may be the electorate directly, each and every person, a selected in-group,
property holders only, the exclusion of a selected out-group, such as women or slaves,
(ii) the underlying effectors; these are the governing tools available to the group
governing;
(iii) the world view; the way the world works for those governing based upon a set of
explicit or implicit paradigms, or examples, of what the world is like.
We have a conceptualization of architecture as the amalgam of these three elements. We
shall develop this construct more fully as we proceed.
The concept of a world view is an overlying concept that goes to the heart of the
arguments made in this paper. To better understand what it implies, we further examine
several common views and analyze the implications of each. If we view our world as
hierarchical, then the political structure may very well reflect that view. If we view our
world as a conflict between good and bad, a Zorosateristic world, then we may establish
bulwarks against the evil, namely a strong central government against the Trusts. The
world view is what we bring to the table and around which we negotiate and try to
establish terms for Governing. The very observations that we make about our
environment and the needs of the users of that government which we put in place will be
reflected against that view.
As an external observer, we at best can deconstruct the view and using the abilities of the
hermenutic observer, determine the intent of the builder of the networks 192 .
192 See Gadamer's interpretation as discussed by Winograd and Flores, pp 27-30. Also see the historical context of the
hermenutic approach in the sciences as discussed by Greene in Depew and Weber, pp 9-10
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