C-247. Think architecture!

Think “architecture” because all the functionality we need cannot be found. We have to make some of it.

“Architecture” in the B-universe and in B-speak may do no more as a concept than point at different kinds of buildings and practices. However, in the Expansion, AT and On the Frontier of the World of Possibility, “architecture” combines three Expansion principles: Differentiate’s slice and splice, extension and CEM (contingent emergent materiality). And in the S-universe, as a theoretical construct, “Build” is an R-word that reaches from needed functionality to achieved functionality with countless molecular step opportunities for more CEM.

Architecture aspires. For that CEM “feeling.” We can see that even now in the ruins of former civilizations. Whether we look to the work of Christopher Wren or Frank Lloyd Wright or the Wright brothers, to build is to aspire. We can see this too in how we work to make a “home” of and in a house.

Unfortunately, a search for “behavioral architecture” on the Internet will yield only instances of buildings designed to accommodate behaviors. Like the Expansion in the “expanding universe,” needed step building of behavior is nowhere in sight.

That to which we do aspire, especially democracy, requires us to build steps to get there: From communication’s “bridges over gaps” to “We, the people” – i.e., to Community and Union. We can see this expressed in terms like “system,” “team,” “solution,” but the imperative AT, ON the Frontier of the Expansion is to Build.* Build S-universe molecular steps, not just B-ness and B-speak objects.**

We have been operating as if we were but a B-ness thing of nature among the other B-universe things of nature … in disregard of and not in Accord with the Nature of Things. In consequence, our problems have resisted solution. Especially the problem of behavior itself, Pbeh. Coming at them “from another direction” with the bigger picture of the Expansion and the S-universe (they say, “Build!”) promises a more positive approach and a more positive outcome.

Millions of starving human bodies have been saved via botanical architecture: the hybridization – i.e., splicing -- of rice (L. Yuan) and wheat (Borlaug). How many human steps have been lost and will be lost, for lack of behavioral architecture?***

It must be worth thinking about, that we have been trying to solve our problems with a less than complete Involve, and with a weak Grasp, of what matters – i.e., of all that is material, of consequence. Of what might, ought to be brought to bear on our problems. We build steps poorly; our knowledge and our lives suffer for that.

We rarely actually build steps. Too often we do not build at all, choosing among actions (aka behaviors)#, preferring decision making to problem solving … as if we knew enough already to settle, strategically, for decision making ... and acquiesce to imposed architecture such as the object-oriented, menu format of the computer age.

Or, we just “take steps” that are not architectural at all, Stone Age in being mettle ore at best and in need of the pragmatic precept to begin slicing … behaviors learned often laboriously, often imperfectly. Our mounting problems should advise us otherwise. Go to the S-universe, where Solve is. Take the R-transform to get there.

Move on? Move out to move on. Can we build with the technology we have? Tools? Yes. Procedures? No. For lack of behavioral foundation.

***

Behavioral architecture needs a theory FOR, on which to base the operating system we must develop to meet needed functionality##. We cannot afford to depend as much as we do on a control system approach that is only, at best, remedial of dysfunction after the fact. We need to be able, to be prepared, to make better steps. Fixing what went wrong is not good enough ... even assuming competence in that regard.

Behavioral architecture should summon forth consideration of foundation and infrastructure, of principle, of adequate Mind scaffolding for perspective, of mettle units to be alloyed in appropriate ratio or proportion.### “Architect” is the word that “ACTor” (C-246.12) was pointing to, in drawing a distinction between pre-script and post-script “acting.”

An S-universe Grasp of behavioral architecture, enabled by the Involve of the Expansion, can also help us interpret history, because much of what is now human history was once the “forward” behavioral challenge for incompletely informed “behavioral entities” AT, ON the Expansion’s frontier. A forward-going as dependent on steps to “find out” as to “find.”^

Behavioral architecture needs the help of a language (message architecture; see App. XX) that is also architecturally sound. B-speak is not; it is ramshackle and full of thoughtknots. As WISA re WITA, it confounds bodies and steps: as things. Then too there are the matters of the ambiguity of the singular and of the plural.

As we prepare AT, ON the Frontier to make steps, because the Nature of Things leaves us incompletely programed, communicative architecture must come to our aid in step building for forward progress.

***

Think architecture? Think technology then too. The term comes from the Greek word for “build.” Behavioral architecture? Procedural technology. But there is more to be said here. Technology has been infested with B-ness and B-speak. As, for example, in “science and technology” and “arts and crafts,” where it is accorded a secondary status.^^

As though the first requisites and imperatives, given the Nature of Things, were not a call for needed functionality … for functionality to be built, for all that is needed cannot be (fortuitously) found.

Build to build! Build foundation on whose base we can build new architectural efforts. Technology for technology. As in being prepared, procedurally, for a pandemic’s cascade of new problems needing new procedures. As professional fire fighters are when called into action. No barefooted mob with buckets -- some red, some blue -- to answer the call.

Technology for technology. As in our dependence on B-ness and B-speak technologies to make sense of the human condition. Some technologies work better than others. B-ness and B-speak have failed to completely and accurately register the materiality of the Expansion and the S-universe. Faulty infrastructure. Inadequate foundation for the steps we need to make.

***

* Many species besides humans have developed architectural ways. Birds, fishes and bees nest. Credit evolution for first families, but development has increased their number and variety.

**Art, science and technology practices contribute enormously to B-ness and B-speak projects. But to behavioral architecture? Hardly. We can’t keep up with the demands for control systems to manage behaviors (e.g., more laws, more police). To communicative architecture? We can’t keep up with the demands for control systems to manage communication (e.g., the Internet). Operating systems, which might reduce the need for control systems, are yet to be built. Arts, sciences and technologies as practiced fall short of the needed functionality for the next step(s) we might and ought to make and take. They need the theoretical (FOR) Involve of architecture and the Grasp of architectural hands.

*** Poetry does what it can, architecturally, for B-speak. But where is the opportunity for architecture re the Expansion and its second universe (the S-universe and mettle alloying) when B-ness sees only the 1-dimensional “expanding universe”? How crude is this? As crude, and cruel, as a bound foot or a bound head. As cruel, if not as crude, as humanity’s wars.

# i.e., mettle ore, not mettles. Behavior is Stone Age: too unsliced, too unspliced ... annoyingly “complex and compound,” lacking in architectural merit. Alloying mettles would be the sensible way to be more architectural in our step making. For which we need step science and step technology – even if we decide (!) to abide with labels like “behavioral science” and “behavioral architecture.” The S-universe (aka the World of Possibility) awaits us (and “we,” preferably).

## Needed functionality: what is called for (WICF); the behavioral solution, Sbeh; step strength via contingent emergent materiality (CEM) … all that the Nature of Things demands of us.

### Imbalanced ratios are rife, such as that of Learn/Know > 1++. The contingent emergent materiality, CEM, to which architecture aspires, is defeated by these imbalances.

^ This “find” distinction reflects the matter of the ambiguity of the singular in B-speak. “Find” can be a conceptual instance or a needed functionality. “Find out” makes clear the step (preferably the molecular step) S-universe extension ... and the reason we require theoretical constructs (e.g., mettles) rather than concepts in building a theory FOR.

^^ See C-214 (The new university). There technology is placed before, not just after, arts and sciences.


In light of the very useful Search feature now available, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.


(c) 2021 R. F. Carter
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