Inventing Christian America
This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.  It explains how to overcome them when necessary. 

Power& tradition holding back progress
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
  • A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
  • Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence. 
  • A program approach can ensure strategic alignment. 
Be responsive to market dynamics
This page uses the example of HP's printer organization freeing itself from its organizational constraints to sell a printer targeted at the IBM pc user. 
The constraints are described. 
The techniques to overcome them are implied. 
Overcome reactionaries
This web frame explores very significant example real world complex adaptive systems (CAS).  It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.  By understanding these summaries you can better frame the interdependencies of important events such as war in Iraq, new iPhone releases or a cancer diagnosis and see how they are impacting you. 

Example systems frame
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and manage.  He provides examples of how this feature of these systems can have disastrous consequences for their human managers.  Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental strategic toolkit.  To prepare to more effectively manage CAS, Dorner recommends use of:
  • Effective iterative planning and
  • Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he reviews.   
Complexity catastrophes
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to date and explains how the two systems can coexist most effectively. 
Adaptive ecology
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and energy goals. 
US vds alignment
Inventing Christian America
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become highly corrupt. 

Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the transformation:
  • Junk bonds, 
  • Derivative deregulation, 
  • CMOs, ABS and analyst fraud,
  • Financial network deregulation,
  • Financial network consolidation, 
  • Short term incentives
Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the situation to build a global bubble, which Wall Street leveraged.  The bursting of the bubble: managed by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve; was advantageous to some. 

Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated financial services industry is damaging to the American economy.  And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics.   He sees the result being a rigged system. 

Ferguson offers his proposals for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Once the constraints are removed from CAS amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows.  And it is often relatively damaging not to participate.  Corruption and parasitism can become entrenched. 

Financial WMD
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic alignment of the American justice system.  The result he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected.  Even as it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to extract profits and leave the victim deflated. 

Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the: activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes, prisons and deportation network.  The scenarios are: Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions.

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  The alignment of the justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to win. 

Aligned justice
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, actually operated.  Powell was Blair's only chief of staff. 
Mechanics of power
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and libertarianism. 
Libertarianism
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs. 

He promotes strategies that help OKR success: Focus, Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance reviews, and provides illustrative success stories. 

Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's view that employees are adaptive and will respond to what they see being measured.  He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Doerr's architecture is tailored for the startups KPCB invests in.  It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all CAS.  Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the association to planning. 

Startup PDCA
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take hold.  While the French revolution had many driving forces including famine and oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured that thoughtful leaders were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the crisis. 
Voltaire's disruptive network
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges during the enlightenment. 
It was a poem encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a humanist book hunter. 
Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and reemergence.  He argues that the rediscovery was the foundation of the modern world. 
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms are discussed. 

Constraining happiness
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of web services to explore Ada Lovelace's ideas about thinking machines and poetic science.  He highlights the value of computer augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to fulfill the process. 
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and collaboration are discussed. 

Arts technology & intelligence
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on the hard problem of consciousness.  During the journey he describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the potential and challenges of associative neural networks. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling evolved conscious animals.  It will be seen that Haikonen's neural architecture, Smiley's Copycat architecture and molecular biology's intracellular architecture leverage the same associative properties. 

Associatively integrated robots
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior developments that have been successfully implemented.  Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS). 
Developing ideas
A government sanctioned monopoly supported the construction of a superorganism American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T).  Within this Bell Labs was at the center of three networks:
  1. The evolving global scientific network. 
  2. The Bell telephone network.  And
  3. The military industrial network deploying 'fire and missile control' systems. 
Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation engine. 
They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent opposition and enable the creation and growth of new ideas. 
Once the monopoly was dismantled, AT&T disrupted. 
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are discussed. 

Strategic innovation
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of BREXIT is summarized.  His ideas are then framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory and reviewed. 


BREXIT
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are monopolists that trade workers for technology.  Monopolies that he argues should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle class. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS).  While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts with relevant CAS history and theory. 

Monopoly job killers
The IPO of Netscape is defined as the key emergent event of the New Economy by Michael Mandel.  Following the summary of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. 
New economy
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy.  It was enabled by the experience of Keynes and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard, the necessity of improving the situation between the wars and the opportunity created by the catastrophe of the Second World War. 

He describes how it was planned and developed.  How it emerged from the summit.  And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy. 

Like all plans there are mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as best it could. 

And then Conway describes the period after Bretton Woods collapsed.  He explains what followed and also compares the relative performance of the various periods before during and after Bretton Woods. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory.  Conway's book illustrates the rule making and infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier.  He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and against the development and deployment of the system.  And The Summit provides a key piece of the history of our global economic CAS. 

Bretton woods
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008 housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential mortgage value delivery system (VDS) by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla.  But they show the VDS was full of amplifiers and control points.  With no one incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst.  Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. 
Housing amplifiers
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives system.  Das describes the components of the value delivery system and the key transactions.  He demonstrates how the system interacted with emerging economies expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the induced bubbles burst.  Following Das's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. 
Derivative systems
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as creditors are willing to continue lending.  They illustrate different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the eighteenth century administrations of England and France. 

The US embodies two different political and economic systems which approach the national debt differently:
  • Taxes to support a sinking fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in: Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social programs; Starting with Hamilton, Lincoln & Chase, Wilson, FDR;
  • Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison, Reagan, George W. Bush (Gingrich); 
Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US government does.  They argue that the conflicting sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in the middle' with a future problem.  And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the future.  

They conclude the question is still political.  They hope it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed explanations.  They ask who is willing to push all the coming risk onto individuals. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery system, key CAS features are highlighted. 

National debt
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second industrial revolution were the foundation for American economic growth.  Gordon shows how flows of people into difficult rural America built a population base which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets, Clothes in department stores; that supported increasing productivity and standard of living.  The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities; terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow the economy. 

Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of:
  • Communications and advertising
  • Credit and finance
  • Public health and the health care network 
  • Health insurance
  • Education
  • Social and welfare services

Counter intuitively the constraints introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2 provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970 creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post war America. 

Subsequently the rate of growth was limited until the shift of women into the workplace and the full networking of voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were muted by the narrow reach of the technologies. 

The development of Big Data, Robots, and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth, but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of the middle class. 

Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 

American growth
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of money based on the attractive features of precious metals.  He compares the potential for government edicts to create money but sees them as lacking. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts.  Government backed promissory notes are analogous to:
  • Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy transaction intermediates and
  • Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in supporting survival and replication in the currently accessible niches. 

Emergence of money
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth?  To do this he replaces traditional economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an economy is a system in equilibrium, with complexity economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex adaptive system (CAS). 

He introduces Sugerscape to illustrate an economic CAS model in action.  And then he explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics, Agents, Networks, Emergence, and Evolution. 

Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to the economy to build wealth.  He explains how design spaces map strategies to instances of physical and social technologies.  And he identifies the interactors and selection mechanism of economic evolution. 

This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition of wealth. 

In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance, & Politics & Policy. 

Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we leverage. 

Economic complexity
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and their trade over time.  He describes the rise of a first global commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land and labor to work it including slaves. 

He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of the VDS and the power of the control points.  This VDS was quickly copied.  The increased capacity of the industrialized cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to operate the machines.  Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages and the ways found to mobilize industrial labor. 

Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected.  Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all prior structures collapsed as they interconnected.  So when the US civil war blocked access to the major production nodes in the American Deep South the CAS began adapting. 

Beckert describes the global reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways of life in the global countryside.  This colonial expansion further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation states.  Beckert explains how other countries responded by copying the colonial strategies and creating the opportunities for future armed conflict among the original colonialists and the new upstarts. 

Completing the adaptive shifts Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in the colonized global south and how over time they joined the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing nodes and creating the current global CAS dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers, spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each other on cost. 

Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.  The transformation of disconnected peasant farmers, pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over time: of military force, global transportation and communication networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows, models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and evolved amplifiers.  The emergent system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of extended phenotypic alignment. 

Globalization from cotton
The complexity and problems of the US Health network is described in terms of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 

The network:
  • Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the conflict between two opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net or low tax without.  The emergence of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the network.  
    • The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous levels of: salt, sugar, cigarettes, guns, light, cell phones, opioids, costly education, global travel, antibacterials, formula, foods including endocrine disrupters;
    • Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress, amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of walking, microbiome collapse;
  • Is incented to focus on localized competition generating massive & costly duplication of services within physician based health care operations instead of proven public health strategies.  This process drives increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope for each new technological breakthrough. 
  • Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation and indirection of service development, provision, reimbursement and payment. 
  • Is impacted by the different political strategies for managing the increasing cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees.  
  • Is presented with acute and chronic problems to respond to.  As currently setup the network is tuned to handle acute problems.  The interactions with patients tend to be transactional. 
  • Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure which is:
    • Costly and inefficient
    • Structured around yearly contracts which undermine long-term health goals and strategies.  
  • Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has entrenched commercial EHR products deep within the hospital systems. 
Health care
Deaton describes the wellbeing of people around the world today.  He explains the powerful benefit of public health strategies and the effect of growth in material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of aid. 

Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  The situation he describes is complex including powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The biosphere, Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Health care. 

Improving wellbeing
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations of the major problems afflicting US health care as of 2006. 
Problems of US health care
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC.  After an overview of the business, they describe how a calamity unfolding around them supported building a vision of a better US health care network.  And they explain:
  • How they planned out the transformation,
  • Leveraging an effective governance structure,
  • Using a strategy to gain buy in,
  • Enabling reengineering at the clinician patient interface. 
  • Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic & hot spot care; to help the patients and help the physicians.  
  • Geisinger's leverage of biologics.  
  • Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience.  
  • Where Geisinger is headed next. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them.  We frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. 

E2E insured quality care
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader and son who know that the current health care network interacts with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that caused his father's death.  But he is confident that these problem perceptions can be changed.  Once that occurs he asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated, collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their patients.  The supporting technology infrastructure will be made highly interoperable.  All that will reduce medical errors and make care more cost effective. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them.  We frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory including synergistic examples of these systems in operation.  The health care network is built out of emergent human agents.  All agents must model the signals they perceive to represent and respond to them.  Pinker explains how this occurs.  Sapolsky explains why fear and hierarchy are so significant.  He includes details of Josh Green's research on morality and death.  Charles Ferguson highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives. 

Bad medical models
US healthcare is ripe for disruption.  Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that technologies are emerging which will support low cost business models that will undermine the current network.  Applying complex adaptive system (CAS) theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist these progressive forces. 
Disrupting health care
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent improvement in quality in medicine by organizing to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists. 

With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates the effects of complexity and how to organize to cope with it. 

Following the short review RSS additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within the network of US health care, contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping his various examples and reviewing facets of complex failures. 
Complexity checklists
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on 1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects' lives significantly affected their longevity.  Looking broadly across each subject's: Personality, Education, Parental impacts, Energy levels, Partnering, Careers, Religion, Social networks, Gender, Impact from war and trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways, which each individual could be seen to select and travel along.  Some paths led to the traveler having a long life.  Others were problematic.  The models imply that the US approach to health and wellness should focus more on supporting the development and selection of beneficial pathways. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory.  The pathways are most applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support necessary to make and leverage choices they make.  Striving to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network, starved of resources. 

Promoting longevity
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping with aging and death.  He introduces the lack of focus on aging and death in traditional medicine.  And goes on to show how technology has amplified this stress point.  He illustrates the traditional possibility of the independent self, living fully while aging with the support of the extended family.  Central planning responded to the technological and societal changes with poorly designed infrastructure and funding.  But Gawande then contrasts the power of bottom up innovations created by experts responding to their own family situations and belief systems. 

Gawande then explores in depth the challenges that unfold currently as we age and become infirm.  He notes that the world is following the US path.  As such it will have to understand the dilemma of integrating medical treatment and hospice strategies.  He notes that all parties involved need courage to cope. 

He proposes medicine must aim to assure well being.  At that point all doctors will practice palliative care. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death, evolution, cooperation and adaptations to new technologies are discussed. 

Agent death
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles mosquitoes and Plasmodium.  250 - 500 million people are infected each year with malaria and one million die. 
Malaria
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution of medical science. 
Medical science events
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of design.  They show how this can limit the interdependencies that generate complexity within systems.  They do this through a focus on modularity. 
Modular designed systems
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer company IBM. 
Compartmented systems
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer software design. 
Object based systems
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for creating modular software.  He concludes that abstract data types and inheritence make object orientation a superior methodology for software construction.  Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy to the use of objects. 
Software construction
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved dramatically.  W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred.
Tools
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the World. He highlights:
  • A list of preconditions resulting in
  • Additional niche capture & more free time 
  • Building a network to interconnect memes processes & tools which
  • Enabling inter-generational transfers
  • Innovations that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil fuels

Memetic trading networks
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the economy.  They argue it has generated exponential growth.  This has been due to innovation.  It has created a huge bounty of additional wealth.  But the wealth is spread unevenly across society.  They look at the short and long term implications of the innovation bounty and spread and the possible future of technology. 

Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. 

Brilliant technologies
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles.  He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers.  Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative Khan:
  • Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method. 
  • Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity.  The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework.  Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics. 
  • Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time,  In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning. 
  • Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs. 
  • Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education;
  • Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network? 

Education versus guilds
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The Triple Package is summarized.  Their ideas are then framed by CAS theory and reviewed. 


What drives success
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining the empires and their neighbors' interactions.  Turchin shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles.  After the summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is used to augment Turchins findings. 
Warrior groups
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael Pollan explores their relative merits.  The application of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory highlights the value of evolutionary testing of the food chain. 
Natural systems
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can take hold.  Various social insects have developed strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable available niches.  Like humans they invest in specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped competitors. 
Insect superorganisms
Computational theory of the mind and evolutionary psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its relationship to the brain.  Humans captured a cognitive niche by natural selection 'building out' specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs we call the mind. 

He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from psychology regarding: The visual system - an example of natural selections solutions to the sensory challenges of inverse modeling of our environment; Intensions - where he highlights the challenges of hunter gatherers - making sense of the objects they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other people.  He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war. 

These conclusions allow him to understand the development and maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor, Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved amplifiers: Globalization, Cliodynamics, The green revolution and resource bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints.  The implications are discussed. 

Computationally adapted mind
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology.  The rich network of adaptive flows he outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for scientific research on behavior. 

Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured to successfully enter niches we now occupy. 

CAS behavior
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries.  Now it is finally being characterized scientifically.  That required a transformation of approach. 
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access. 
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous psychological dogma.  Instead his use of subjective assessments opened the window to contrast totally unconscious brain activity with those including consciousness. 
He describes the research methods.  He explains the contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to specific neural activity. 
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal workspace' to position all the experimental details into a whole. 
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and treatment of real world mental illnesses. 
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent consciousness research are outlined. 
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and operation introduce constraints which are discussed. 

Conscious access
Reading and writing present a conundrum.  The reader's brain contains neural networks tuned to reading.  With imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters? What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean?  Dehaene explains the importance of education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia.  But he notes the reading networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved.  And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing reading and culture. 

He explains the cultural engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that enable and constrain reading and culture. 

Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural complex adaptive system (CAS) are related.  We review his explanations in CAS terms and use his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge. 

Evolved reading
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions.  In particular he explains how:
  • Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that allow
  • Life changing real-time decisions to be made, and how
  • Schematic structures provide encodings of computable control structures which operate through and on incomputable, schematically encoded, physically active structures and operationally associated production functions. 
Receptor indirection
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the accumulation of small advantageous changes. 
Accumulating small changes
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and the emergence of agents. 
Autonomous emergence
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can induce emergent phenomena which can do real work.  He shows how these phenomena are sustained.  The mechanism enables the development of Darwinian competition. 
Constraint based phenomena
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Inventing Christian America

Summary
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
.  Their successful strategy used the credibility of conservative religious leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
to:

Following our summary of his arguments RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Strategy is the art of the possible.  But it also depends on persistence. 

One Nation Under God
In Kevin Kruse's book 'One Nation Under God' he describes the inception and iterative execution of corporate America's strategic plans to undermine Franklin Roosevelt's (FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
  • New Deal strategies including:
    • SSA
    • FFDCA 
    • IRC
  • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
  • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
) New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
.

Kruse highlights Eisenhower's 1952 "great crusade for freedom" campaign, developed with advice and religious references from Billy Graham, as a
This page discusses the impact of random events which once they occur encourage a particular direction forward for a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
frozen accident, leveraging a national
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles.  He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers.  Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative Khan:
  • Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method. 
  • Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity.  The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework.  Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics. 
  • Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time,  In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning. 
  • Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs. 
  • Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education;
  • Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network? 

re-education infrastructure that helped America learn to believe it had always been religious.  Kruse challenges the resulting present day assumption of a close relationship between religion and politics.  He asserts that the historical record shows the founding fathers' preference for a wall of separation between church and state.  Since this is no longer the popular notion of the constitutional relationship Kruse asks 'why is there a difference?'  He concludes there were two key influences:
  1. The onset of the cold war, and
  2. A republican faith based response to FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
    • New Deal strategies including:
      • SSA
      • FFDCA 
      • IRC
    • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
    • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
    's New Deal.  This was a corporate strategy initiated by the NAM is the National Association of Manufacturers.   and the USCC is the United States Chamber of Commerce .  They appealed to evangelicals through 'free enterprise' and 'Christian libertarianism.'  The message was popularized by Abraham Vereide, Billy Graham, Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan.  But it was
    This page discusses the benefits of bringing agents and resources to the dynamically best connected region of a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
    centralized     by Eisenhower with:
Eisenhower's popular election with his public acts of faith was catalytic, an infrastructure amplifier.  .  Eisenhower came from a deeply religious family.  He responded from a basic belief in god.  He was baptized while in office.  He was the first President to attend a national prayer breakfast and to open his cabinet meetings with prayers.  In 1953 he declared the US is the United States of America.   government was based on biblical principles.  In 1954 Congress solidified the claim adding 'under God' to the pledge of allegiance. 

The 1950s were the first age of religious consensus which enabled a new idea 'public religiosity'. 

Freedom under God

After the 1929 crash, Great Depression and New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
it became necessary for a new generation of Republicans to rehabilitate their party.  With little public credibility for the previous strategy based on G.M. and DuPont funding for the 1934 American Liberty League and its call for:
the leadership aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
including: J. E. Hoover and corporate executives of General Motors (G.M.), General Electric (G.E.), Standard Oil (S.O.), Mutual Life (M.L.), Sears Roebuck; meeting at NAM is the National Association of Manufacturers.   in Dec. 1940 agreed to an indirect strategy proposed by NAM president Prentis - Free Enterprise Gospel supported by public relations through: films, radio, advertising, mail, press releases; driven by NAM. 

Reverend James Fifield provided the theological framework - he argued the New Deal violated the 10 commandments:
  • Stealing the rich's property
  • New Deal is a false idol
  • Christianity was to save individuals (capitalism) not the socialist welfare state.  
Fifield's First Congregational Church of Los Angeles promoted:
  • Christian libertarianism 'under God'. 
  • Business success as God's blessing. 
  • That the New Deal violated the constitution and ideas of the founding fathers. 
Spiritual Mobilization
In 1938 First Congregational Church took control of Spiritual Mobilization, founded in 1935. 
Spiritual Mobilization produced pamphlets, backed by Herbert Hoover, critical of FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
  • New Deal strategies including:
    • SSA
    • FFDCA 
    • IRC
  • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
  • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
 calling on the clergy to reject the New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
.  After FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
  • New Deal strategies including:
    • SSA
    • FFDCA 
    • IRC
  • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
  • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
 overreached  - attempting to restructure and stuff the supreme court, and taking the economy is the study of trade between humans.  Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system.  Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics.  Marx developed an alternative static approach.  Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics.  Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.   into recession; Fifield gained more powerful backing. 

By 1942 First Congregational had huge congregations including the wealthy is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker.  It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche.    and powerful: 

Once the war finished J. Howard Pew, of Sun Oil joined the campaign.  He brought skills in strategic action which he applied to Spiritual Mobilization.   And Alfred Haake, Rutgers's economics chair and key influence at GM pushed for the campaign to change tactics.  He argued the campaign was too obviously manipulative.  Instead by making the clergy active participants, Spiritual Mobilization would gain more traction.  Haake argued to help the clergy to discover that their callings were threatened by the New Deal.  And they responded with many requesting copies of Herbert Hoover's anti New Deal notes and Hayek's
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and libertarianism. 
Road to Serfdom.  They joined Spiritual Mobilization as representatives, increasing their commitment.  The change worked.  12,000 minister representatives, of mixed denominations including Jews, generated traction, which catalyzed more, un-attributable, investment from business.  G.M., DuPont, Cyanamid and L.A. Chamber of Commerce provided funds and fund raising. 

When the left attacked Fifield the right added more funding.  And by 1948 they could build on the initial fears of the cold war and Truman's reelection and potential socialized:
A series of radio broadcasts were built around the implicit theme of 'creeping socialism'.  They were structured as public service announcements ensuring free air time. 
A monthly magazine Faith and Freedom featured Leonard Read, Ludwig von Mises, and Henry Hazlitt of the American Enterprise Institute but positioned itself as for ministers by ministers.  It solicited sermons but filtered out the liberal responses as immoral provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
.  Articles were consistently libertarian with a focus on Freedom under God, all advancing conservatism but they varied in style and sophistication. 

The preamble of the declaration of independence helped reframe by omission the founding fathers arguments on more government and the rule of law.  Suitably tailored the argument was read by Gregory Peck.  The committee to proclaim liberty sponsored adverts featuring the declaration.  The committee included luminaries from:
The committee asked clergy to provide instances based on the theme "freedom Under God".  J Walter Thompson, the advertising experts promoted radio broadcasts of sermons to be delivered on Independence Sunday.  C. B. DeMille produced the program featuring Hollywood stars: Jimmy Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, Bing Crosby; The nation started to think of itself as "under god."

The great crusade
On 23 Sep. 1949 the US is the United States of America.   learned that the Soviet Union had atomic weapons.  This adds weight to Billy Graham's position that communism is a religion and God is against communism.  Major news groups started to educate the US populous that the US must get religious.  Graham moves from obscurity to a national figure.  250,000 attend Graham's Los Angeles revival.  The Billy Graham Evangelical Association helped popularize public prayer and it spread the message of Spiritual Mobilization more subtly and effectively.  

Kruse explains that the roots of the religious revival go back to the 1930s activities of James Fifield.  In 1949 religious revival was amplified by:

Government under god
President Elect Eisenhower argued "Our form of government has no sense unless it is grounded in a deeply-felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."  The right leveraged Eisenhower's flexibility and included Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism.  Eisenhower viewed religion as uniting and linking to the past.  So he was keen to increase belief within America. 

Eisenhower had long supported the Freedom Foundation with its vision of free enterprise making America great.  The foundation's president was advertising executive Don Belding who was an ally of James Fifield.  They promoted Faith & Freedom's Christian Libertarianism. 
Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover had together composed the charter for the foundation in 1948.  The charter linked:
The creed became part of the Eisenhower presidential campaign.  Boy scouts took the joint message to voter's door steps.  Eisenhower made it a concrete fixture in the federal government.  Libertarianism was consequently propping up government. 

Eisenhower stressed inclusion and re-iterated yearly support for the American Legion's 'Back to God' movement.  NBC supported free transmission of the 'Back to God' televised specials.  Jewish, protestant and catholic clerics were included.  Eisenhower and Vice president Nixon were featured speakers.  Nixon promoted fighting moral provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
collapse. 

Eisenhower supported fellow Kansan, New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
hating Senator Carson who developed the national prayer breakfast with support from Conrad Hilton.  Eisenhower enjoyed it and also attended in subsequent years building a new tradition. 

Eisenhower helped institutionalize religion through his administration.  He required prayers at Cabinet.  The Cabinet then pushed Government under God to their agencies. 

Eisenhower was an enthusiastic supporter of the National Association of Evangelical's manifesto.  Its "Statement of Seven Divine Freedoms" was intended to replace FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
  • New Deal strategies including:
    • SSA
    • FFDCA 
    • IRC
  • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
  • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
's four freedoms were articulated by President Franklin Delano Roosvelt.  They are:
  1. Freedom of speech and expression
  2. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way
  3. Freedom from want ... everywhere in the world
  4. Freedom from fear ... everywhere in the world
.  Once again the republican movement was focused on destroying the New Deal rather than any foreign threat. 

But Eisenhower resisted Republican attacks on the welfare state. 

Pledging Allegiance
Northern ministers concluded the civil war occured because of the Godlessness of the Constitution.  The National Reform Association proposed Christian amendments to the Constitution.  The Eisenhower administration assisted Senator Charles Sumner's Christian amendment.  But admitting the original constitution was not religious was inconsistant with the administration's general position.  It had argued that America was a Christian Nation as shown by history.  They cited court room oaths of 'so help me God'.  Eugene Rostow's ceremonial deism allow the courts to ignore challenges to their use. 

The pledge of allegiance was composed in 1892 but only became 'the pledge' after world war two in Dec. 1945 act of Congress made it official. 

In 1952 Democratic representative Louis Rabaut promoted adding 'Under God' to the pledge.  It was accepted by Congress on Jun. 8th 1954.  It was made law by Eisenhower on Jun. 14th 1954. 

Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury is the department of the treasury.  it is a federal government executive department created by Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue.  The Secretary of the Treasury is a Cabinet officer.  To support funding of high cost investments: Disaster recovery, Wars, Famines; the treasury can issue debt instruments and manage the national debt. 
in 1864 lobbied for authorization from Congress  to add 'In God we trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions.  During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up. 
' to the coinage.  But Lincoln dismissed the idea.  Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and Postmaster general Summerfield agreed to add 'In God we trust' to the stamps.  It proved popular and accelerated the push to add the phrase on the money.  Representative Bennett sponsored 'In God we trust' on the dollar bill in 1956. 

Pitchmen for piety
In 1955 Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney and ABC television linked religion (Jewish, Protestant, Catholic) to Disney's new theme park.  Walt Disney was a Congregationalist who used Christianity as a guide. 

Back in 1941 a strike at Disney had shifted Walt from a supporter of FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
  • New Deal strategies including:
    • SSA
    • FFDCA 
    • IRC
  • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
  • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
 and the New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
to the right.  And then following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US Army commandeered the studio as a supply base.  After the war Disney was a staunch conservative. 

In 1958 Walt developed Liberty Street to celebrate 'one nation under God.'  After technical difficulties the street would wait until the development of Disney World in Florida. 

Kruse notes that political leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
and religious reformers were powerfully supported by Hollywood and Madison Avenue.  The film and advertising moguls had been constrained by New Deal F.T.C. regulation including checks on false claims.  They organized a 1941 conclave at Hot Springs Virginia, where global advertiser J. Walter Thompson's marketing star James Webb Young urged the industry to close ranks with corporate America and defend its interests as their own.  He noted that they had the power to control the channels of advertising communications.  They should create "public service" campaigns. 

It was agreed to develop the Advertising Council including advertisers and their corporate clients.  The council would promote:
  • Bond drives,
  • Material conservation campaigns
After the war ended the council continued with public services acts.  These were really public relations activities, selling the American people on free enterprise.  And they also helped Americans to resist becoming pawns of the master state.  Religion in American life (RAIL) was the council's most influential effort.  And it was aligned with Spiritual Mobilization.  J. Walter Thompson executed the campaign "Go to Church."  G.E.'s Wilson was chair of the RAIL campaign.  Union Carbide's Boggs coordinated with the Advertising Council.  Radio, Readers Digest, Sports Illustrated carried the message.  Social clubs and community organizations were supplied with templates of the execution plan to build on.  Church attendance through 1956 increased. 

Hollywood's DeMille was originally a socialist but disliked the New Deal effects so he worked with House Un-American Activities committee in 1945.  Good Americans, allied with James Fifield were contesting the religious high ground with liberals. 

Whose religious tradition?
Kruse writes about the Gideon's "line extension" from placing bibles in hotel and hospital rooms to supplying bibles to each serviceman during World War 2 and then New Testaments to 5th to 12th graders.  Targeting children of varied faiths was contentious raising issues relating to the separation of church and state.  Different state courts judgments on the practice disagreed.  Kruse explains that in contrast to Eisenhower's national but vague deism these acts by the Gideon's were local and specific.  New Jersey's State Supreme court, for example, condemned the Rutherford school board for allowing the Gideon's to distribute.  

Then in late 1951 the New York Board of Regents overseeing all public
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles.  He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers.  Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative Khan:
  • Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method. 
  • Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity.  The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework.  Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics. 
  • Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time,  In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning. 
  • Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs. 
  • Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education;
  • Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking. 

Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.  Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network? 

education in the state composed a school prayer, the "Regents' Prayer" they hoped would be read at public schools' daily flag ceremonies.  Many local authorities adopted the policy and prayer.  But the very generality of the prayer conflicted with the specific traditions of different communities.  The New York courts including the State Supreme Court accepted the Regents' Prayer as reflecting the long history of religion in the US.  However, in 1962 the US Supreme Court looked carefully at the "ceremonial deism" central to the case. 

The Supreme Court case aimed to clarify how the use of the prayer in school could be any different to the many other situations where religious artifacts were tolerated in public institutions.  Children can't choose.  In 1962 the majority of justices required the prayer be removed from schools but they accepted ceremonial deism.  But a minority of justices disagreed that this compromise was valid and so did the popular press.  Political leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
including Eisenhower, Hoover and some Southern Senators disagreed with the decision.  While religious leaders eventually concluded the decision was acceptable their congregations disagreed. 

Our so-called religious leaders
In Oct 1963 the Citizens Congressional Committee (CCC) sent a huge petition to Congress requesting a constitutional amendment permitting "devotional exercises" in public schools and opposing the 1962 Supreme Court decision. 

The executive secretary of the CCC was former advertising executive Charles Winegarner.  He promoted the committee as representing individuals from every Congressional district and every state.  But being a nephew of Gerald Smith, promotor of right wing causes, undermined his credibility.  Nevertheless, the prayer amendment had broad popular appeal and was seen as a means to overturn the Supreme Court's decision. 

By the spring of 1964, 113 representatives and 27 senators introduced 146 amendments to restore prayer and bible practice to public schools.  Prominent members of the lay population were pro-amendment.  Representative Frank Becker introduced the amendment and was fully committed to getting it passed. 

Opponents of school prayer felt the proposals damaged the 1st amendment.  Representative Emanuel Celler, chair of the house judiciary committee, was a liberal Jew who opposed the proposed amendments.  He argued that "No matter how narrow such a proposal may be it is, nevertheless, an opening wedge toward elimination of one of our basic tenets, the separation of church & state." 

Celler stopped any amendment from exiting the committee.  Becker responded with a procedure to force the amendment forward -- a discharge petition is a House procedure which once it gains enough votes (51%) forces the majority leader to bring a bill to the floor for an up-and-down vote. 
-- as long as he could raise 213 representatives' signatures.  He received the backing of the American Legion, the Lions and other groups.  Constitutional Prayer Amendment Inc. was formed by Conrad Hilton, 13 Governors, Jackie Robinson, Cardinal Spelman, Bishop Pike and William Randolph Hearst to force the amendment out of the committee. 
Celler held hearings lasting six weeks to gain time to build support.  Over time Celler got the backing of church leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
who argued against the amendments:
  • Threat to the 1st amendment
  • Waters down the work of the churches. 
Religious publications: Christian Science Monitor, Christian Century; agreed with the church leaders against Becker. 
By week three of the hearings, popular opinion shifted across to align with the church leaders.  By week six, Celler concluded the Becker amendment will fail. 

Spiritual Mobilization responded to the killing of the Becker Amendment by forming a national lay committee of the National Council of Churches (NCC) which denounced the NCC for proclamations about "secular affairs." 

There was a similar strategy to get the Senate to pass an amendment.  Jim Eastland was in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was interested in proceeding.  But many Senators accepted the Supreme Court's arguments.  Everett Dirksen of Illinois took up the cause, arguing popular discontent with the Supreme Court decision was building.  His amendment was cosponsored by 47 other Senators.  And conservative entertainers promoted the amendment through Pat Boone's Project Prayer Program.

Senate hearings tested who represented the laity.  Was it the church leaders or politicians?  The Senate rejected the amendment.  But conservative clerics concluded their views were being undermined by liberals. 

Which side are you on?
Kruse notes how George Wallace's presidential campaign bumper stickers included:
  • Wallace for President
  • One Nation Under God
Wallace was leveraging Richard Nixon and Billy Graham's political strategy.  Nixon was convinced of the power of aligning with religion having been Eisenhower's vice president and seen Graham's work first hand.  He asserted that he lost the 1960 presidential race because Life did not publish Billy Graham's endorsement of him.  Graham assisted Nixon's 1968 run for president with an open endorsement.  They worked together to promote Nixon's campaign. 

When Nixon became President, Graham was made part of the White House team.  Graham focused on associating piety and patriotism with the Right.  Nixon and Graham's words were interchangeable. 

Nixon made a conscious calculated use of religion as a political instrument.  This pushed Americans apart reversing Eisenhower's inclusiveness. 

Nixon's inauguration was highly religious.  The Religious Observance Committee set the tone, driven by Judge Leedom the former leader aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group.  John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model. 
of Vereide's International Council for Christian Leadership.  It:
  • Called for religious observances in all churches and synagogues in the week before the inauguration. 
  • Distributed a 'conservative' collection of prayers and readings.  These:
    • Called on God, obedience and subservience to government
    • Complained about anti-war protestors
    • Focused on Law and Order
  • Made a full scale service (multi denominational) part of the inauguration program.  Other presidents had prayed in private. 
Billy Graham provided a long invocation declaring:
Nixon delivered a sermon:
  • Linked to Graham's prayer. 
  • Referencing God. 
J Willard Marriot was the inaugural committee chair. 

Nixon repeated Graham's themes a week later at the National Prayer Breakfast.  But Nixon revealed he was acting.  He commented to an aid "He'd simply fed the crowd some church stuff to keep them happy."  Some of the people were worried about all the pomp and uniforms. 

Nixon and Graham setup Sunday services at the White House: 
The White House noted the Sunday Services were the most popular activities they hosted.  They ran for Nixon's full Presidency.  Nixon used the services as a sanctuary and conservative rallying point as his expansion of the war into Cambodia increased the level of protests. 

The press responded negatively to the political nature of the prayer services.  The Washington Post challenged the sincerity of "White House Religion."

Religious leaders also started to criticize them.  Reinhold Niebuhr argued Nixon had broken the first article of the bill of rights. 

Nixon looked to hold a Pro-America Christian Rally for the Silent Majority on the 4th of July.  He leveraged a Billy Graham Crusade.  It was difficult, or illegal, to disrupt a religious service.  Graham pretended the rally was not political.  It was a huge success -- the largest public gathering that had been held in the state of Tennessee. It was very beneficial to Nixon. 

Graham followed the crusade with 'Honor America Day', a Nixon rally with Bob Hope in Washington D.C. looking back nostalgically at the 1950s.  Marriot did the fund raising leveraging contributions from J. Howard Pew, Patrick Frawley and major corporations.  The Nixon administration had their advance man Ronald Walker mobilize the Silent Majority.  It was good practice for the election campaign two years later. 

Epilogue
Ronald Reagan accepted the Republican presidential nomination ten years after the Honor America Day.  Billy Graham gave the invocation to a white, middle class, conservative crowd.  Reagan added to the script.  "Only a divine providence could have created the U.S.A."  He began the crusade with a silent prayer and then said "God bless America." 

Reagan's political hero had been FDR is President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He is notable for his contributions to the US CAS:
  • New Deal strategies including:
    • SSA
    • FFDCA 
    • IRC
  • Lend-lease which pushed the US and Japan into World War 2 and helped the US to become the world's predominant military power.  
  • Bretton Woods's agreement which economically constrained any politically driven collapse of the world economy after the war and helped the US to become the world's predominant economic power.  
 but he became captivated by Eisenhower and shifted to being a Republican.  Reagan leveraged Eisenhower themes.  Reagan/Bush called for a constitutional amendment to restore prayer in schools.  But it was blocked in Congress.  They wanted to win votes of the religious right associated with Jerry Falwell at all costs.  Religious conservatives rallied to Reagan. 

Reagan didn't attend church often but he never missed a National Prayer Breakfast.  He pushed to make them partisan.  They rallied about:
  • God being expelled from the class room. 
  • Bible reading
  • Abortion
  • School prayer
In his 1983 reelection Reagan aimed to energize the religious right.  Christian conservative publishers printed books about Regan being divinely ordained.  Reagan criticized the Supreme Court on on school prayer.  Reagan asserted "politics and morality provides rules for identifying right from wrong.  It develops in stages with children using play to work out rules of appropriate behavior.  Kohlberg's 1950s experiments using children led him to conclude moral judgement is a cognitive process that develops in three stages.  Sapolsky raises issues with the framework: Its a model, It does not apply to other cultures, Intuition & emotion are as significant as cognition, Moral reasoning doesn't predict moral actions; and notes the capacity of the frontal cortex to regulate emotions and behavior is far more predictive.  The marshmallow test, performed on three to six year olds, actually predicted their subsequent SAT scores at high school, social success and lack of aggression, and forty years on more PFC activation during a frontal task and a lower BMI!  Jonathan Haidt argues people's moral decisions are rationalizations rather than using reasoning. 
are inseparable." 

George H. W. Bush tried to follow Reagan's lead.  He was friendly with Billy Graham.  Graham started a crusade to support Bush.  Bush obtained the nomination but inherited a party tightly linked to the religious right. 

Bill Clinton was a proudly religious Southern Baptist linked to reverend Robert Schuller.  And Al. Gore was a Baptist too.  They forced Bush to retreat from his Reagan like position. 

George W. Bush was a born again Christian: 
In 2002 a Federal court disallowed -One Nation Under God- in a 2000 case Newdow v. Elk Grove Unified School District, but the Supreme Court dodged the issue arguing Newdow had no right to stand. 


This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory frame.  The theory is positioned relative to the natural sciences.  It catalogs the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems that are based on the interaction of emergent agents. 
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined.  Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented. 
CAS theory views strategy as the
This page discusses the mechanisms and effects of emergence underpinning any complex adaptive system (CAS).  Key research is reviewed. 
emergent process of
Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents.  This page discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system (CAS). 
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS.  The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents.  These software agents are aggregates. 
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined. 
agent's iteratively developing and persistently executing
Plans emerge in complex adaptive systems (CAS) to provide the instructions that agents use to perform actions.  The component architecture and structure of the plans is reviewed. 
schematic plans.  The schemata used by the corporate elite to respond to the New Deal was FDR's political platform to help the poor, support the economy and reform the banking system.  The architects included Henry Morgenthau, Harry Hopkins, and Frances Perkins.  It:
  • Included liberal legislation: Emergency Banking Relief Act, Banking Act, SSA, Securities Act, Securities Exchange Act, National Housing Act, NIRA, National Labor Relations Act, FLSA, RTAA, Wealth Tax Act;
  • Presidential executive orders,
  • Enhanced the role of federal government in promoting economic growth with programs supporting:
    • Reformed trade policy with the RTAA. 
    • Blocked deflation by limiting economic competition with the NRA. 
    • Rural standard of living through electrification with the REA and TVA.  
    • Reduced unemployment with the WPA and CCC.  
    • Made taxation progressive through the Wealth Tax Act, capturing private wealth and allowing income to flow to the emergent middle class. 
attack include:

Kruse documents the inception, growth and success of Corporate America's strategic invention of Judeo Christian America.  It serves as a powerful illustration of the impact of strategy on our lives. 




























































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This page looks at schematic structures and their uses.  It discusses a number of examples:
  • Schematic ideas are recombined in creativity. 
  • Similarly designers take ideas and rules about materials and components and combine them. 
  • Schematic Recipes help to standardize operations. 
  • Modular components are combined into strategies for use in business plans and business models. 

As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan. 

Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals. 
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings. 
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples. 
Strategy | Design |
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
  • A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
  • Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence. 
  • A program approach can ensure strategic alignment. 
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