ON
THROWING ME OUT
Part
One
Do
you wonder who will dispose of you?
Will
you participate?
I
am in the basement wrestling
What
goes? Can some of this be kept a little
longer?
Bagging my history
One bag, one shelf at a time
Nearly out of sorts
Nearly
out of me
Here’s
a book on The Sexual Life of Savages
Maybe
if it had more illustrations
Out
it goes
With
what seems like a million more
Textbooks,
Handbooks, Proceedings, Classics
Those
items you can find in a good library
But I’m overdue
Sins of accumulation
Time to pay the fine
Not
much remains relevant for very long
Some
of these books were willed to me
By
retiring colleagues,
And
represented a continuation of the profession
But
I fear their disappointment
Their
books did link careers
And
now, into a bin
Others, more basic,
Taught me critical thinking
And logical skills
The
books most useful to me were time-bound
They
solved problems or provided inspiration
At
important points as my career evolved
From
economics and sociology
Toward
human ecology
They
were focused on time
How
poignant
Part
Two: My Academic legacy: tossable?
Feel
free to skip to Part Three
As
a sociologist working with human ecologists
One
of my early missions was to understand
The
relationship between
Social
and nonsocial systems
And,
as it worked out,
The
concept of time was central
The
term we used in sociology, “interact”
Would
not work with nonsocial phenomena
Our
maple tree and I cannot “take the role of each other”
But
I discovered “transaction”
A
concept developed
In
the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism
Referring
to how we take the presence of things into
Account
and the ensuing
Augmenting
or redirecting of our behavior
In
a (continuous) transactive cyclical process
Not
conducive to a one-way
Cause
and effect approach
Thus,
the key dimension of time
I
learned to see how social systems
Such
as families
Continuously
travel through space/time from one micro-ecosystem to another
Drawing
from and returning to
The
macro-ecosystem the elements needed to function
Artifacts,
places, personal traits
Moving
from home to automobile
To
a workplace or a trout river in the woods
I
developed a MODEL of how the parts
Of
ecosystems function and transact through space/time
Leaving
their effects on the macro-ecosystem
A
second mission of mine was to understand how such transactions transform the
things we use
My
background in economics suggested “production and consumption,”
But
there were issues with
Where
production stopped and consumption began
Consider
the long process of producing, marketing and eating a meal
Where
does the production (incrementing of utility/usefulness) stop
And
its decrementing (consumption) begin?
I
found a beautiful way (to me) to interrelate
The
intentionality of economics
Why we use things
In our attempts to be productive
And
the sociology of consequences
How the effects of our actions are
Often unforeseen but functional
Including what ends up getting consumed
Here
is my link between sociology, economics and ecology
The
more we do, over time,
To
transform resources into useful products
Manufacturing,
transporting, trading, adapting to personal tastes
Concentrates
their utility
Into
increasingly narrower regions of social space
And
disperses their loss of utility to a broadening range for others
Cutting
trees, choosing to make pulp and not lumber
And
eventually making a ream of paper that ends up in my personal office
Precludes
the potential uses of the trees by others along the way
To
me this provided a new (social) way to think of “waste”
What
gets “consumed” in “productive” processes
Working
with ecologists helped me appreciate “waste”
And
our challenge to manage it
To
analyze waste management,
I
described similar transformations as above
But
with reverse effects
By
transferring waste’s disutility (nuisance value)
To
fewer specialized others
Garbage haulers, for example
Gets
it out of my way, and the community’s
Gradually
reducing its onus and opening up potential options for broader regions of
social space
A
garbage dump transformed into a solar power field
Truly
elegant, if you ask me
“Progress”
is not monotonic, but cyclical
Production
and consumption
Occur
simultaneously, but for different people
In
a long, continuous cyclical process
It
was my attempt at developing THEORY
Of
course, time was central to it
These
process issues led to the desire to describe
The
states of systems along the way
For
example, the health of a person or family system
In
the pursuit of this I was influenced by
Kurt
Godel’s discussion of consistency and completeness in logical systems*
Yes. There is a practical reason to study logic.
Godel
concluded that
Systems
cannot be both consistent and complete at the same time
For
Godel it was about self-reference in logic
But,
for me, it suggested that
The
novelty needed for systems to adapt and grow
Clashes
with the need
To
maintain the consistency to function as a unit
The
challenge of life, if you will
And
this seemed pretty basic and useful
To
resolve the decision challenges
(Consistency?
Completeness?)
I
was helped by Alan Turing’s work on what he called “Decidability” in computing
systems*
To
evaluate system outputs and make decisions one requires external referents
Systems
cannot evaluate their own products
He
described writing a computer program that would stop when encountering an error
And
the issue of it’s continuing to run . . . for how long?
The
system cannot decide on its own.
This
seemed to me to be an essential part of how
Human
ecological systems make decisions over a lifespan
And
the challenge of, e.g. evaluating our children
We
rely on neighbors, teachers, coaches, and employers
A
whole new SYSTEM OF CATEGORIES
Completeness,
Consistency and Decidability
To
describe system states and
To
challenge us with some realistic but uncomfortable competing tasks
Which,
also, interestingly, can be thought of as the source of the tension needed
To
keep a system moving, …, through space/time
Thank
you for letting me refresh my thoughts
But,
for me, this is part of what I will leave behind
At
least for those interested in
Conceptual
frameworks, i.e.,
Systems
of categories
(naming the things that are important to us),
Models (how to understand how
they fit and function together)
And
theories (how we explain, predict
And
attempt to control our systems)
I
credit Fred Bates and others for this
Three-way
approach to conceptual systems
I
credit colleagues in a family health research project*
For
the opportunity to develop some of these ideas
A
reference below* includes citations to all the references used here
Part
Three: Getting back to the question at
hand
What
is being left behind?
What
to do with all the books that supported me
If
I don’t do the tossing, someone who doesn’t know these books must
There
is some satisfaction
In
personally being in control of the toss
Of
course, at some point, someone else must take charge
Of
throwing the rest of me out
One
role at a time
Those
who can, do
Those
of us with declining abilities, must accede
Maybe
help others to appreciate and learn what we see as important
I
have not read all of these books
So,
part of what I am throwing out are unmet aspirations
Something
sobering to accept
And,
guess what. I discovered that a lot of my
old books smell pretty bad
Getting
them out of the basement and into some fresh air makes that apparent
And my aromas?
Now or eventually
Who will air me out?
It
takes energy to follow through with this sort
Bending
over at age 86
Filling
sacks
Carrying
them, and me, up from the basement to the car
Take
a break
Refresh
that old cup of coffee
Or
is it martini time?
Write
a few more of these lines
Then
head back downstairs
Give
the sort another shot
Give
someone else another shot
What
Phoenix will arise from recycling me?
New
opportunities
Will
you assume the role of the “the oldest member?”
Will
you develop memories?
Will
you turn from care giver to care sharer?
I
have been blessed with both
DRK
7/21/23
2/12/24
*Keefe,
Dennis R. 2017 Revised Edition. Time
in Human Ecological Conceptual Systems:
Transactions, Transformations and Tension. Author Publication.
