the system of ferney: a fable

TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE 8,91-100 (1975)

The System of Ferney: A Fable

ELAINE MCCOY

91

ABSTRACT

This paper is an allegorical essay which attempts to provide a critical perspective on systems

analysis. It employs both the language and rationale of systems analysis within the structure of the

fable. More specifically, it uses the schematic representation of The World Model (found in the

Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth) as the political and social divisions of the Ferney System. The

integrating tool for technological assessment within this metaphorical system is the Delphi Method of

Futures Research. Expert opinion-consensus serves as the chief mode of governance. The actual history of Ferney, within the fable, is a loop feedback process.

It came to pass in the iteration A.D. 4891 (after Delphi) that the actors at Ferney were

We the Actors@)’ of Ferney,@‘) . m order to Maintain a most perfect

Metasystem, establish Functional Boundary Maintainance,cc) insure System Equilibrium,cd) provide for the Common Compliance, promote the General Convergence,(e) and secure the Functions of Multistable Permutations and Innovations(f) to ourselves and to our Genetic Prog- eny, do formulate and synthesize this Metaconcept(g) for the Delphi Panelsch) at Ferney.(‘)

beset with a most dysfunctional phenomenon. It was not that they were in any way dissatisfied with their environmental set, for their system environment’ was a highly developed one,3 nor did they suffer from any of the identity crisis which we find in the historical tapes. Rather, there existed in Ferney a phenomenon unrecorded until this

ELAINE MCCOY is a candidate for the Doctor of Arts in the Department of Government at Lehigh

University. Her academic interests are political science, particularly political theory, as it pertains to

culture in a technological society. ’ See Appendix A for explanations of superior letters.

2 Fred Riggs, “Systems Theory: Structural Analysis,” as quoted in Michael Haas and Henry Kariel (ed.), Approaches to the Study of PoliticalScience, Chandler Publishing Co., Scranton, Pa., 1970, pp.

194-232: “System Environment ” is defined by Riggs as the “order of interaction” with two main

subcategories. They are: 1) context: or elements of the same order in analysis i.e.: politics and

government; and 2) setting: with such components as physical, cultural and role types.

At Ferney the main emphasis is on the second of the two subcategories, with a special emphasis on the human environment or “role” type of component.

’ Ibid: “Development” versus “aggrandizement” m Riggs’ scheme is defined as the “increasing

capacity of a system to influence its setting.” Since the imperative of any system is its own maintenance, until the crisis, the role behavior of the

actors at Ferney did not allow for any dissatisfaction that could be thought of as significant. Also it is

assumed that the metasystem would have system dominance over the personal system or life of the actors and such warning signals, or emotions, as dissatisfaction, fear, or aggression, would be kept at an

insignificant level through genetic engineering (and programming as socialization) in much the same

way that what Marxists call alienation, can reduce human protest to chaotic and poorly articulated

class conflict. (see Bertell Ollman) @American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc., 1975

92 ELAINE MCCOY

time-a confidence-crisis. In spite of the many years of analysis, and, indeed, of the cultural inundation of Structural-functional methodology,4 the people lost their WILL to DYNAMICS.’ Their confidence was absolute. They exhibited not the most marginal deviance, and those of us who had been programmed to analyze the phenomenon suspect that they harbored an absolute lack of doubt, a condition treated only in esoteric philosophy before now.

In an attempt to analyze the crisis facing our system the Experts commissioned an ad-hoc panel to visit the various sectors of the system. Our mission was to gather information pertaining to those sectors most effected by the crisis; to detect the manner in which the condition spread throughout the loop system; and to recommend dissolution of those loops, and perhaps entire sectors, from which the crisis seemed to be emanating. Finally, and most difficult, for the first time we were requested to suggest methods by which pattern divergence might be introduced and nurtured in the various remaining sectors. The chief requisite to all of this remained, of course, the maintenance of a system balance, but the skepticism of my group as to the methodological appropriateness of such a task left us untooled.

When travelling through the loops and byloops of the system we could find not the slightest patterns of divergence. Even within the vast network of boundary maintenance posts, where, in the past, one could at least find some ambitious social science student plotting the creation of a system imbalance, there was no action. Even the presbyteros of the ancient religion of the Order of Compulsive Introspection (those followers of the Significant Descartes, who were allowed to indulge Newtonian Fantasy) had abandoned

their heresy and were preparing to receive Functional Instructions. Yet even more incalculable was the activity in the Penal Sector-the DRSCM (Death

Rate from Social Crimes Multiplier Sector). It had been, in the past, that one could find some actor in this negative loop sector who was unwilling to meet the functional requirements of his criminal sentence for anti-structural crimes against the System. But

the confidence-crisis had reached even here. The actors were meeting their flow-pattern

4 Cyril Roseman, Charles G. Mao and F. B. Collinge, Dimensions of Political Analysis, Prentice-

Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966, p. 301: “In the structural-functional approach, the term ‘structure’

refers to any patterned set of human actions that can be identified in terms of an agent or group of

actors (called the structure) whose actions provide the defining characteristics. . . In this sociological

form of analysis a ‘function’ is the effect that a structure has upon other structures or, in rare cases,

upon itself.”

At Ferney structural-functionalism has replaced liberalism (out of which it grew and which

ultimate goals it still proclaims) of the previous capitalist economies, and while State Capitalism is the

dominant economic system at Ferney, the profit motive has been evolved into the “dynamic

increment” (my term) motive. Just as power and money were dependent variables in the more

primitive capitalist system, dynamics and the token transfer-exchange-flow network are dependent variables in Ferney.

’ One of the early critics who Lived in the later part of the Age of Conceptual Enlightenment was the infamous Frederick Neatkey, a former keypunch operator who while meticulous in his perfor-

mance as a programer came to show extreme dysfunctional behavior. He was transferred to the

Quality of Life Sector where he produced his infamous tapes: Thus Spake Jdrgen Randers, The Genealogy of Assessment, and The Will to Dynamics.

Although his taping was aimed at system dissolution, the Experts managed to integrate his theory

of the Superactor into the Metacomputation of the system and enhance their own ideal of Super-cog dynamism. However, his Calculus-Is-Dead assertion always remained a threat to system maintenance,

and as is noted in the latter part of this report, contributed to the final inertia of the system.

A SYSTEM OF FERNEY: A FABLE 93

with the utmost cooperation. How many would have saved their lives through a stay of negative-prerogative, had this condition been interpreted as a symbol of reintegration, can only remain a matter of horrible speculation. And so it became obvious that the usual pockets of divergent-dissidence were now fostering a convergence mentality which the founders of the System could never have anticipated.

So it was throughout the System. Our intuitive forecasting informed us of some of the problems. For example, without a vigorous Functional Dynamics cfd) the market place could never survive, without fd the feedback loop system would stagnate. How could the myth of free competition and achievement be maintained? What would happen to the mandarin system of Elite Training? Where would our Experts come from in the next iteration?

But it was not intuition alone, which guided our research. Already some of the more farsighted computers were evaluating the significance of monetary devaluation as an effort to recover the wealth and health to which we have long been accustomed. Indeed, some sectors had by this time devaluated not only their s-c-t (sector transfer tokens) but their H-T-T (Human Transfer Tokens) as well. The devaluation of these tokens, we realized, was not merely a tampering with the market place of ideas. It threatened to upset the very fiber of interdisciplinary cooptation. The intellectual coinage of the s-c-t has long been regarded as control for overspecialization. But if every actor at Ferney had access to s-c-t, sector trading would destroy even the semblance of independent research. The generation of new symbols, the very stuff of the System, was at stake. The situation

at Ferney was approaching a critical stagnation much more rapidly than we had supposed it would. In light of this we abandoned our first-order approximations6 and sought to analyze the order of interaction’ through a partial-system’ perspective with the Quality of Life Sector as our primary model.

Although it had been somewhat late in our history that the need for a self-generating diversity showed itself, we thought we had solved the problem. The Roman Club studies from antiquity provided the Ferney Planners with a tentative map by which to introduce a sector which would meet the requirement of perpetual-balance divergence.

The Quality of Life Sector was engineered and ingeniously integrated multiplier effects as a dynamics provision. In the QL we had established a sector which seemed to have had the energy to create constant phenomenal innovation which the actors could ponder;

b Morton A. Kaplan, Systems Theory, as quoted in James C. Charlesworth, Ed., Contemporary Political Analysis, The Free Press, New York, 1967, p. 150: “First order approximations” are: those

approximations employed in macrotheory which employ specific parameter values which imply specific variation.

The problem of crisis at Ferney required a radical departure from the usual analysis which assumed

a system in equilibrium. This is much the same problem that was faced by the planners of antiquity

when it was required that they abandon the optimism and belief in “Progress” (an ancient term:

religious in nature; assuming a so-called “guiding-hand” impetus to insure the so-called betterment of

the human condition), as well as Market expansion.

7 Riggs, pp. 194-232.

See Footnote 2, as a redefinition of System Environment. a Ibid., pp. 194-232.

A “partial system perspective” is a perspective which has as its focus how the system is influenced

by its context rather than vis versa (p. 232).

Because the crisis at Ferney manifested itself not in the technical breakdown of the system, but in

the increasing lack of interface between motivation and implementation, the QL, as the source of structured antithesis, was the chosen sector model.

94 ELAINE MCCOY

create new rituals from; form language around (within the Academe of Lingoism’); devise play-forms about; in short, exercise their innate need for symbolization” within. We were quite satisfied with the degree of functionalism we achieved in the QL franchise. We had created a sector whose imperative was the creation and expansion of multiple

realities” and which was able to extend the N-dimensionall quality of human social dynamics. This sector could always be counted on to provide an eufunctionalr3 amount

of Future Images. The QLH (quality of life from hunger), the QLPW (quality of life from

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, as quoted in A Collection of Essays, Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1946, pp. 156-171.

In his essay Orwell traces the decline of the English language to political and economic causes and

shows how the condition is self-perpetuating, mainly as a “defence of the indefensible” (p. 167). He

suggests five rules which I have attempted to pervert:

“(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign word, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” (p. 170)

The Academe of Lingoism at Ferney of which we are all students, of course, presented a mirror

image of these rules, just as our System strives to be a mirror image of what the preantiquities called

Reality. Following the precepts layed down in the philosophical cornerstones of our System:

Empiricism, Behavioralism and Rational Humanism, we feel confident that we have achieved a not unsophisticated level of Lingo.

I0 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,

1963, p. 42: ‘Symbolization is pre-rationative, but not pre-rational. It is the starting point of all

intellection in the human sense, and is more general than thinking, fancying or taking action. For the

brain is not merely a great transmitter, a super-switchboard; it is better likened to a great trans-

former.”

As is obvious, Langer was one of the shining solar nebulae of the Academe, and it is to her that we

owe the mathematical precision of our System’s experience-interpretation, at Ferney.

” Michael Haas, International Relations Theory, as quoted in Approaches to the Study of Political Science (Michael Haas and Henry Kariel Eds.), p. 465.

“The multiple realities” thesis postulates that social phenomena can be grasped with a variety of

the social sciences in principle has more dimensions than time and space, which have served so

admirably to bound theoretical speculation, in the natural sciences.

I2 Ibid., p. 465. While the N-dimensional quality of social dynamics was only a theoretical abstraction in the

thought of antiquity, we at Ferney have managed through both technological and social engineering to institutionalize it. Take for example our nongravitational sector where the actor’s response to this

setting innovation is marvelous to study. The concept of space is little known to these actors and this

has tended to multiply the time dimension as well. They have abandoned the notion of causality

altogether. A most interesting effect is seen in terms of sexual mores. Not only is there a communal atmosphere exhibiting almost no pair-binding, but the actual physical dimension-(the total personal- system-integration-pro-genetic-generation) or progeneration function-is highly communal, with vari-

ous members of the team opting to serve as stabilizers and anchors to the free-floating would be lovers.

I3 Riggs, p. 199. “Eufunction” is a term proposed by Marion Levy, in order to differentiate between the term as

used in mathematics (that is, function) and the term as used in systems theory. Riggs writes: “In

mathematics it refers to a correlation between two variables, and in system theory, to a relevant

relation between parts. In this sense the function of a structure may be to change the system, just as

much as is its function to maintain it.”

At Ferney the eufunction was only allowed in the QL; all other sectors remained programmed to


proxy war), the QLGM (quality of life from genetic mutation), the QLC (quality of life from crowding), provided the most dynamic permutations in their interaction with other

such ratio-sectors as the QLA (quality of life from abundance), the QLAA (quality of life from academic abstraction), the QLHMS (quality of life from human motivational science-spoken of in some heretical loops as qualms), to mention but a fragment.

But now this crucial sector, where, in the past, controlled deviance and provoked antithetical behavior provided a dynamic impetus, was invaded with cc (confidence- crisis). Convergence was only just starting but soon we could forecast that we would lose our spread and without that we could contrive no future. I suspect that our fear of stagnation was much like the fear of overshoot which the enlightened of antiquity bespoke. And no empty fear it was. Now we were faced with a similar threat-system stagnation.

Since the early days when we had formalized assessment, per se, as our only social technology. l4 We provided for sy stem dominance l5 of that technology over the prior

technology of physical artifact.16 However, it now appears that we came to rely

overmuch on the contrivance of future alternatives. Indeed we may have created a loop-pattern over which we had little control in the final analysis. We had become the victims of our own metabstraction. We at last were faced with perfection and the human in us faltered. We tried to reverse the process when we first learned of its significance. But all the simulation, brainstorming, causal modeling, contextual mapping, gaming, and scenerio17 implementation could not stay Perfection. We learned too late that although an Actor can create perfection, it is a far more taxing procedure to maintain functional deviance.

In setting about to activate the Government Delphi Panels as a last ditch effort, we delivered our recommendations of total boundary dissolution to the Experts. We hoped that the Experts might come up with a -process for generating future alternatives, using boundary dissolution as a means of avoiding total system dissolution. We were ready to

implement the slightest consensus to which they arrived (see Appendix B). Our Cross- Impact teams were standing ready at the local government terminals.

Alas the only two alternatives which the Panels could achieve final reestimative consensus upon were the two prongs of the age old paradox: natural System dissolution, with its exponential growth of instability, or deliberate System Dissolution, which

regard system maintenance as the prerequisite to all other sector functions. The eufunctional Future

Images, before their input to the central computer, were modified to provide only the necessary

deviation to provide for system dynamism without going beyond system maintenance.

I4 Joseph F. Coates, Technology Assessment, The Fururisr (Dec. 1971).

This article prompted thoughts of the logical extreme of assessment as a technology in and of itself.

Is Kaplan, see Appendix A, Note 1.

I6 Coates, see Appendix A, Note 14.

This term may be interchanged with “hard technology.”

I’ John McHale, The Changing Patterns of Futures Research in the USA, Futures 5(No. 3),

257-272 (1973).

As types of Futures research. ‘* This slogan was the call to intellectual arms of the early Liberals. John Stuart Mill and Jeremy

Bentham take credit as the architects of the Liberal Philosophy. Bentham proposed the idea of an

abstract calculus by which to apply the Pain-Pleasure Principle in defining the Greatest Good and so might be thought of as the forerunner of those contemporary philosophers who seek to apply

mathematical systems of symbolic logic to the enterprise of human beings.

96 ELAINE MCCOY

although a more rational and humane process, was unlikely in light of our ideological commitment to System Maintenance. Boundary dissolution was not even considered, we later learned. And so now, even as I record, the Meta-flow pattern is in acute dissolution, and aberational ad dysfunctional multi-unstable patterns are emerging in every sector in the system. The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number ‘* is no longer our hallmark and the Calculus-IS-Dead phenomenon leaves us empty-headed.

“Ecrasons l’Infame”‘9

Epilogue”

We seek to show the arrogance of mind By Playing the Game of the reasoned Blind, Who stunned by the shape of their meager Thought Forget that Reality cannot be caught In a net of Abstraction both cold and vain, But must needs be lived in blood and Time.

Appendix A

AN EXPLICATION OF THE FERNEY PREAMBLE OF EFFICIENCY

Translate into People:

(a)Morton A. Kaplan, Systems Theory, as quoted in James C. Charlesworth (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis, The Free Press, New York, 1967, p. 150.

An Actor is an environment Component. In this case the situation of the fable is system-dominance so that the actor is defined

through the system: “. . . a system is system dominant to the extent that the behavior of

the system functions as a parametric given for the actors within it.”

(b)Andre Maurois, The Sage of Ferney, as quoted in Voltaire, Candide Bantam Books,

New York, 1959, trans., Lowell Bair, pp. I-15. Ferney was the estate in France where Voltaire lived for the last twenty years of his

life. It was here that Voltaire directed the battle of his friends the Encyclopediasts against the establishment. It was also here that Voltaire wrote Candide in order to ridicule the

optimism of Liebnitz.

Translate into “establish Justice”:

I9 Andre Maurois, The Sage of Ferney, as quoted in Voltaire, Candide, Bantam Books, New York, 1959, trans., Lowell Ban, p. 4.

He translates the Formula: “Ecrasons I’Znfame” to mean: “We must crush the vile thing.”

He goes on to explain that the vile thing is neither Religion or the Church, but Superstition.

It is ironic (and perhaps an irony that prompted Candide’s final words to be: “but we must cultivate our garden”) that this futuristic Place called Ferney, should hold before itself the very ideal that in its being it could only violate. The superstition of Replication of the world in terms of their

own system was as vile a thing as any age before them had ever known. ” ‘As defined: n: a speech often in verse addressed to the spectators by an actor at the end of a

play.


(c)Michael Haas, “International Relations Theory,” as quoted in Michael Haas and Henry Kariel (ed.), Approaches to the Study of Political Science, Chandler Publishing CO.,

Scranton, Pa., 1970, pp. 444-478. “Boundaries seek to separate phenomena from environment in justifying specific set of

rule assumptions.” (This precedes isolating appropriate variables and parameters for inquiry-a process it seems not unlike Constitutional Law which is the judicial forerunner of legal “rule assumptions.“).

See also Fred Riggs, Systems Theory: Structural Analysis, Approaches to the Stu& of Political Science (Haas and Kariel, Ed.), especially his discussion of the concern for boundary questions due to the open nature of social systems, pp. 194-232.

Translate into “insure Domestic Tranquility”;

(d)Kaplan, p. 153. Equilibrium here is defined as “Homeostatic” equilibrium, where there is a lack of

independent measure such as one would find in “Mechanical” equilibrium.

Translate into “provide for the common defence”;

(c)Selwyn Enzer, Wayne Boucher and Frederick D. Lazar, Futures Research as an Aid

to Government Planning in Canada: Four Workshop Demonstrations Institute for the Future, Middletown, Conn., 1971, R-22, p. 109.

Convergence is group consensus in Delphi terminology. The translation into common defence is used here because of the assumption that consensus building may formalize and institutionalize a defensive psychological mechanism particularly in times of crisis. The assumption is born out in Ferney’s history when basic ideologies are attacked, i.e., System Maintenance, and the inadequate response to that criticism.

Translate into “secure the Blessings of Liberty”;

(‘JIKaplan, pp. 150-153. “Multistable” is a type of socio-political system where: “multiple ultrastable systems

are functioning.” That is, there are self-correcting mechanisms within these systems which may interact simultaneously.

Haas, pp. 444-478. “Permutations and innovations” are used here in the sense of negative freedom, in

light of Haas’ argument that the “trichotomization” of Metatheory (1. individual, 2. soci- etal, 3. international), bounds the number of possible permutations and innovations in metatheory.

This leads to “brute empiricism” with no replication of the subject.

(g)Haas, pp. 444-478. “Metaconcept” is a term used to define the two basic parts of structural-functional

analysis. The two basic metaconcepts are: (1) function: as a generic type of task to be performed to complete a cycle; and, (2) style: as, i.e., latent or manifest, effective or instrumental, diffuse or specific.

(h)Enzer, Boucher and Lazar, p. 109. The “Delphi Panel” is a panel of experts who employ a method described as: “a

controlled conference consisting of a sequenced program of interrogation interspersed

98 ELAINEMcCOY

with feedback, conducted anonymously through an intermediary . . . [and] . . . is typi- cally an open-ended process that follows a diverging-converging pattern.”

(i)The original Preamble to the Constitution of the United States is: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” An effort was made to translate the Preamble into systems jargon directly, keeping the order of the ideals in mind.

Appendix B

ANOUTLINEOFTHESYSTEMOFGOVERNMENT

The system of government at Ferney was a triumvirate. Each triumvir consisted of a Delphi Panel of Experts. They were divided into the following categories: Panel of Engineering Expertise, Panel of Social Science Expertise, and the Panel of Systems Analysis Expertise. The last Panel also acted as a coordinating and synthesizing body for the entire political system and codified its final reestimative laws in terms of Cross-Impact analysis. The tape replication of these Laws were kept in the Archives of Matrices and Schema, and were available to any actor who could pass the entrance examination which

would verify that his comprehension and attitude must certainly allow for proper evaluation of the data.

Tl le Triumvirate :

I. The Delphi Panel of Engineering Expertise: A. Its Justification:

Forecasting in terms of scientific and technological sector discretion, system and boundary maintenance

B. Its Function: The legislation of rules governing “hard technology” assessment

C. Its Structure: As in the other Panels, the recruitment technique was based on the Mandarin System of advancement. (1) Chairman: A Systems Design Representative; (2) The Genetic Engineer, whose seniority and general physical and intellectual

prowess greatly enhanced his professional credentials; (3) The Agricultural Engineer; (4) The World Resource Engineer; (5) The Pollution Engineer; (6) The Capital Engineer, who was also in charge of behavior modification and

mind-circuit processing.

II. The Panel of Social Science Expertise: A. Its Justification:

Forecasting in terms of psychological, sociological and Futurological flow

patterns.


B. Its Function: The legislation of rules governing “soft technology” assessment

C. Its Structure: (1) Chairman: A Systems Design Representative; (2) The Play Engineer: i.e., The Glass Bead Game (Herman Hesse) (3) The Job Engineer; (4) The Belief Systems Engineer, acting as a subordinate and interface officer

with the Capital Engineer. He was somewhat unique of all the other Experts, in that the criteria of his expertise was his ideological commitment to system maintenance in terms of the dynamic integer calculus, and his domino-theory-paranoia of subversive actorship as a threat to maintenance .

(5) The Education Engineer, usually the Chancellor of the Academe of Lingo- ism.

(6) The Ritual Engineer.

III. The Delphi Panel of Systems Analysis Expertise: A. Its Justification:

Self-evident: “La Raison D’Assessment. ”

B. Its Function: The legislation of rules governing all input-output functions of the government; all government structure modification; language modification; and procedure-to-rule modification. Also maintenance of the negative feedback-loop militia, and joint chiefs of

sector discretion. Also s-c-t and h-t-t Exchange (see page 00).

C. Its Structure: (1) The Elite Core of Experts: The genetic progeny of the ancient community

of scientists whose mutated intelligence (during the Age of Overshoot) provided the community with the only means of manipulating the vast network of Systems Computers, and whose early victory over computer

rebellion provided a legitimacy of rule. (2) The Systems Design team, as an interdisciplinary group of junior neo-

mutants who interfaced with the remaining Panels, and whose main job was to oversee the QL and modify pre-computed deviance.

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100 ELAINE MCCOY

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Received July 12, 19 74; revised Sept. 19, I9 74

the system of ferney: a fable

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