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Explorers Foundation ••• home page

Glyphs ••• list of fragments of Freeorder

Investments ••• a table of all investments

This is vortex explorersfoundation.org/freeorder.html — a vortex is a region of Explorers Foundation research and investment — new or changed indicated by 🔹

11Aug24: New section on the meaning of explorers & freeorder

31Dec23: Added section: “Questions about freeorder”

06Dec23: Alan Macfarlane on F. W. Maitland: Fellowship and Trust

27Oct23: Quest and freeorder (added to discussion of definition)

25Oct23: Canonical definition of freeorder

21Oct23: Professor AI Hayek: Conversation about freeorder

01Aug23: “Weavers of Freeorder” placed at top of this page

04Apr23: note on James C. Bennett and the concept of “network commonwealth”

28Jun22: emergence of freeorder, ocean of Freeorder

17Oct21: shift of expectations fundamental to emergence of Freeorder.

07Oct21: A note to a fellow explorer of freeorder

19Dec20: added paragraphs to “The emergence of Freeorder …” … some reorganization

15Oct20: message to my fellow winemakers; freeorder makes Freeorder

08Sep20: comment on the word unnecessary

13Aug20: 60 seconds at the Impact 17+1 conference

25Jun20: a bit of reorganizing and rewriting

22Mar20: Importance of naming

14Oct19: Freeorder through freeorder

21Jun19: Modified “What is to be done?”

18May19: What is to be done? - in 112 words

18Mar19: A treasury of interviews ••• with F. A. Hayek

The word explorers names persons with strong imagination, curiosity, and wonder, who with focused persistence learn from and engage with what they love.

freeorder is the vision and concept guiding Explorers Foundation. It welds together free & order with the intention that they be understood to be compatible, not in opposition.

freeorder expresses the idea that orders arising from freedom work best for all of us intent on using our fullest powers of imagination, reason, and action to pursue happiness and service to people and things we love.

The exact use of the word freeorder:

freeorder is balance among designed and spontaneous orders that serves quest.

The conjecture implied by the definition is that Hayek's insight into kinds of order is useful in thought and productive in action, and will remain so as the world of Freeorder evolves.

Reference: Ch. 2, "Cosmos and Taxis", Law, Legislation and Liberty by F. A. Hayek

The word quest indicates an aesthetics guided pattern of explorations. The romantic implications of the word are fundamental.

The emergence of freeorder, within each of us and among us depends on balances of romantic idealism and critical rationalism.

Freeorder generators are liberal (in the original and future meaning) in that they are for the freedom of every individual to imagine, think, act, and collaborate; and they are conservative to the extent that what is to be conserved is exactly the same freedom.

This requires saying "no" to many visible good things, and by doing so protecting more important invisible things.

Examples of the use of the word freeorder

• freeorder is good for explorers, within each of us and among us.

• freeorder improves error correction.

• freeorder is approached by a kind of balance seeking.

• freeorder names something good for explorers, within each of us and among us.

• freeorder (process) —> Freeorder (social result).

• freeorder is order spontaneously emergent from the imaginations

and actions of free people.

The canonical definition unites Hayek’s concepts with the notion of quest:

freeorder is balance among designed and spontaneous orders that serves quest.

And, not specifically Hayekian:

freeorder is what works for explorers, within each of us, and among us.

freeorder: is a name for “Order spontaneously emergent from the imaginations

and actions of free people.”

A critical point: all action depends on expectation. Awareness of freeorder changes expectations.

freeorder —> Freeorder : asserts that pursuit of quest enhancing balances among designed and spontaneous orders, a pursuit iterated at everylevel, everywhere, everytime, will progressively approach better states, as judged by the standard of quest.

Answers to questions about best balance are judged by a standard that is profoundly individualistic, rooted in characteristics that are essential ground for anything we would care to call civilization. The word freeorder assumes a lot — perhaps enough to put collectivists on the defensive.

Freeorder, in upper case, indicates reality to come; freeorder, in italics, indicates the vision/concept/process by which the real comes to be.

(the above flow applies internally, as epistemological, psychological, and aesthetic processes,

and externally (within organizations, cultures, and civilizations)

The word may also be used in many grammatical forms, even as an exhortation: freeorder!

The (above) request for a “canonical definition of freeorder” foundered on uncertainty about the use of the word quest. That may be repaired by this definition:

Quest is used to name a growing pattern of explorations, within an individual, an organization, or a culture, which with passage of time, and partially without conscious direction, combine into a story someone is pleased to own and sustain.

This standard of judgement allows questions in the form of: In this case what is the best balance among the designed and spontaneous orders which it is within our power to change? and what do we need to do to shift the balance in that direction?

Such questions open paths of inquiry leading to great thinkers, artists, and practitioners, among whom are many important to the understanding of freeorder.

A closely related definition of quest occurs here — https://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/342.html — in which quest is linked with a kind of expectation called resonance.

A conversation about the word freeorder has been produced with the help of an AI.

F. A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty is concluded with a Postscript: "Why I Am Not a Conservative”, in which he attempts to find a word to accurately name his philosophy. He is not satisfied by the words he considers. The word freeorder may provide a solution.

An artificial intelligence emulating Professor Hayek agrees, and explains why:

free to indicate not bound by authority resistant or impervious to questioning

Such authorities may be found both in the external world and in our own minds.

What tools help underthrow harmful internal authorities?

order to indicate the basis for expectations.

To seek and name states that are exploration serving balances among designed and spontaneous orders.

To seek and name actions that seek, find, and establish such balances.

It might be supposed that freeorder is a synonym for spontaneous order. It is not.

If that were so there would be no need for the word.

freeorder is made of three essentials:

Quest (individual and shared)

Designed order (intention)

Spontaneous order (self-assembly, autopoiesis)

Above all, freeorder, is balance that must be sought, tao, endlessly …

The quality of balance is judged by service to quest.

Comment on the Soviet economy

The nightmare of the Soviet economy was a composite order, one with a vast excess of designed order and defect of spontaneous order. The market (black, some say) could only marginally compensate for the horrifically destructive command enforced designs. The absurdity of the outcomes could be best understood in proportion to the distance of the observer from the misery entailed by those outcomes. First comes the loss of well-being, and perhaps of life itself; only then are surviving observers able to ironically describe the difference between official declarations, propaganda, and justifications, from the actual effect on individuals. See Utopia in Power, by Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nekrich.

See the note about composite orders, above, under the diagram.

Diagram of kinds of order — modification needed

Since freeorder is only a small portion of composite orders, the middle section of the lower horizontal bar should be relabeled “composite orders” and a narrow verticle bar should be colored so it stands out and be labeled freeorder.

The shift will be this: for most people, the expected source of goods will become unpredictable emergent networks of agreements among producers who are only lightly exploited by command based authorities that in earlier times were believed to be the primary guarantors of flows of goods. Rarely achieved exits from social orders dominated by predators will become easier to find and will become permanent. Expectations will shift from designed, known, and established orders and will move in the direction of seemingly chaotic, unpredictable, creative orders.

It is the business of ∮forge (integrated freeorder generators) to catalyze that shift.

The wave that sweeps away authoritarian culture will be a Romantic one. It will not be fundamentally rational or logical. Freeorder names a Romantic movement, in which logic is an indispensable servant of art, never forsaken, never dominant. The songs that rise in all of us will make a wind to sweep authoritarian opposition to oblivion.

A bridge, long started, now to be completed.

I stand on a rough dangerous shore. Here.

Across a wide strait is another place. There.

I dream of crossing.

Here, I make a small sunlit island. My There.

On all sides wrapped with fog and darkness.

I will cross to a new There.

From all sides flooded with light.

My friends, each of you makes that light.

We stand on rough dangerous shores. Here.

Across a wide strait is another place. There.

We dream of crossing.

Here, we make small sunlit islands. Our There.

On all sides wrapped with fog and darkness.

We will cross to a new There.

From all sides flooded with light.

The all of us makes that light.

~~~

In Hayek’s “Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative," to his The Constitution of Liberty, he seeks a word to name kinds of work in support of liberty. Hayek failed to find a word or phrase of adequate breadth and evocative power. I propose freeorder. It names a vision and concept sufficiently deep to bind together kinds of order with the word, quest, signifying personal and shared adventures that are expected to be the foundations for good lives.

An ∮forge (integrating forge) is a type of forge that resembles a think tank merged with an venture capital firm: philosophy, art, network building, and investment all creatively confused with each other. Each ∮forge may be imagined as a tree in a forest of freeorder eventually to cover the world.

Each bit of freeorder (vision/concept) catalyzes a tiny slice of Freeorder (reality). When integrated, the result is a sum in reality not in words, that we call Freeorder, an ever moving state of persons and world generated by the best we have to offer, always elusive, but ever worth finding.

∮forge is an abbreviation of “integrating freeorder generator,” an institutional form essential to the full emergence of Freeorder, in various ways, among all the world’s cultures, resulting in a “concert of civilizations,” a phrase used by James C. Bennett ••• in his The Anglosphere Challenge. In that book, published in 2004, Bennett introduces the concept of the “network commonwelath”.

What’s good for explorers within each of us and among us.

A balance among designed and spontaneous orders that serves quest, venture, and error discovery.

About the conjecture implied by the second definition

The conjecture implied by the second definition is that Hayek’s insights into kinds of order are useful in thought and productive in action and will remain so as the world of liberty evolves.

The word quest indicates “an aesthetics guided pattern of explorations.” The romantic implications of the word are fundamental. The emergence of freeorder, within each of us and among us depends on a fierce balance of romantic idealism and ruthless rationality. This sounds like a description of Beethoven’s music, doesn’t it? See “Beethoven's Soundtrack to the Birth of Modernity” •••, by Jeffrey A. Tucker, who sees the symphony as a microscopic image of social order.

The path to the comprehension of freeorder as in internal condition may best be found by emulating, or “indwelling”, as Michael Polanyi would say in Personal Knowledge, master explorers. The knowledge acquired thereby is more tacit than logically encoded, and often is more kinetic than visual or auditory.

For the social manifestations of freeorder see Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises, and most of the work of F. A. Hayek.

For interesting applications of the concept (although not named) see Good Profit, by Charles G. Koch, and Team of Teams, by General Stanley McChrystal.

An essential starting point: Chapter 2, “Cosmos and Taxis,” of Law, Legislation and Liberty, by F. A. Hayek, in which kinds of order are explained.

F. A. Hayek, in Volume I, Chapter Two, "Cosmos and Taxis", of Law, Legislation and Liberty (University of Chicago, 1973), suggests this definition of the word "order":

"By 'order' we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct."

"Taxis", as in "taxidermy" the deliberate ordering of the skin of animals. Cosmos = Greek for "natural order"; Taxis = Greek for "designed order."

This is a brilliant chapter and the origin of my work on freeorder.

Hayek's brilliance manifested itself in seeing that there is a third kind of order, sort of between "natural" and "designed". Those orders are "the results of human action but not of human design" and so have been called both "natural" and "designed" leading to endless confusion and discussions that are never resolved.

In such discussions the word freeorder is helpful.

This way of thinking about order becomes especially interesting when linked to the idea of optimizing quest, "an aesthetics governed pattern of explorations". Hayek did not do that, but it could be said to be implied in his work. I have made it explicit.

The word "governed" here means "highly influenced by," not "determined in entirety."

Note 4/2/20: Prelude to Mathematics, W. W. Sawyer: his discussion of “pattern”, compare with Hayek’s use of “order” and my use of “pattern”.

Freeorder names the next stage of social evolution, extending classical and modern liberalism, socialism, and capitalism, incorporating good elements from each. It takes property and negative rights from classical liberalism; compassion from liberalism and from the best of socialism; understanding of market process and the power of voluntary networks from capitalism. Freeorder leaves behind accumulated tyrannical aspects of earlier social ideals, mistakes slowly established as a result of foolish attempts to manifest good intentions through means reliant on coercion of the unwilling.

Think of Freeorder as a state of affairs suited to fearless and complete expression of strengths typical of explorers, such as curiosity, wonder, and capacity for strong questioning and venture.

Think of freeorder (balances among designed and spontaneous orders that support exploration) as a turbulent flow of states emergent from discovery processes through which Freeorder evolves.

Alan Macfarlane” on FELLOWSHIP AND TRUST — https://alanmacfarlane.com/TEXTS/FELLOW.pdf (the entire document)

 

In his consideration of the balance of liberty, equality and wealth through time, Maitland had effectively demolished one side of the famous nineteenth century dichotomy which was the basis of most thought on the evolution of societies. He had shown that not all civilizations had started in a world where individuals were embedded within the community, where contract was entirely subordinate to status, and where hierarchy and patriarchy were universal. Yet his magnificent achievement would be incomplete if he were to be unable to re-construct the other end of the famous supposed transformation. He needed to re-think the nature of the modern world as supposedly constituted by contract, individualism and absolute equality.

 

In the last few years of his life, Maitland sketched out a plan for how this re-thinking might be done. He died without implementing the scheme in detail. But we can see in his hints the way in which he finally reconciled those great contradictions which he had wrestled with in his youthful fellowship dissertation on liberty and equality, namely how Adam Smith's 'self love' and 'social love' could be harmonized, and how Tocqueville's problem of how to reconcile equality with liberty could be achieved. Maitland did this through an exploration of what he came to believe was the greatest of all English legal contributions to the world, the Trust. This was an institution born by accident, not from Roman law, but which became the third great principle of social organization in the world, standing on the same level as Status and Contract. It was the Trust and the trust which it engendered which provided the foundations for modern liberty, wealth and equality.

This is from: Alan Macfarlane, The Making of the Modern World: Visions from the West and East (Palgrave, London, 2002)

Someone said: “Whatever is without name tends to non-existence.”

A new word invites an investigation; it can name a new thing to think about.

If a word is to be found to name the successor to socialism it must not be only simple in essence but also profound in implication; it must lead to depths of new thought. That freeorder accomplishes this may be inferred from chapter 2, “Cosmos and Taxis” of Law, Legislation, and Liberty: A Restatement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy ••• by F. A. Hayek ••• (Cafe Hayek)

A ship bearing goods, meant for us, is at sea. This ship must have a port. The word freeorder makes one. In hungry minds, the vision and concept of freeorder holds space for ideas of liberty, venture, and limits — all intended to find a home with us. Books once thought to speak only of worn ideas, seen in the context of freeorder, will convey the essence of renewal. A single small word will open gates of renaissance.

The word freeorder, as if carried on a wind, will cross borders, will stir dreams.

The principal speaker was from a major software firm, SAP, and their previous speaker was an economist from a major Chinese university, who was affiliated with Alibaba, a large Chinese company competitive with Amazon. Strange waters for me, a libertarian, surprised to be invited to participate.

All panelists were asked: What does “impact” mean to you?

I said: For me, “impact’ means to encounter with significant effect. All important is intent. What kind of change is sought? My intent is to catalyze life quests that seek collective good, as emergent, by design, from such deep respect for each person that altering their behavior by command is not to be considered. The result, when most of us bear this in mind, will be a flourishing Open Network, a long hoped for good home for all of humanity. Open Network depends on understanding quest serving balances among designed and spontaneous orders. Such balances are called freeorders, in which structure emerges from liberty. My work is building an enterprise that serves as a freeorder generator.

The strategy underlying the above:

• Say something that fits the orientation of Impact 17+1: lead with “collective”.

• Immediately suggest that collective good rests on the freedom of individuals.

• Provide a name, Open Network, for a desirable outcome (Soros, and Popper, use the word “open”).

• Lay a lasting thought-bomb with a trail of bread crumbs leading to Hayek.

• Provide a word, freeorder, to name a point-of-view that will displace collectivism.

07Oct21: A note to a fellow explorer of freeorder

A conjecture:

To assure every person a high potential to make of their life a subjectively rewarding quest it is beneficial to think carefully about balances among spontaneous and designed orders, everywhere and in everything.

***

freeorder may be sought outside of us, among us; and inside of us, within each of us.

Knowing freeorder, enterprisers design ventures, understanding them to be forever immersed in a chaos of market profits and losses, of continuouos reallocations of capital.

Knowing freeorder, thinkers design networks of words to make sense of the world, understanding them to be forever immersed in a cosmos of unbounded poetry and challenge.

Enterprisers and thinkers find that their plans and theories may be refuted by logic or experience, at any time, demanding and inspiring the discovery of fresh conjectures.

A multitude of unended quests, astonishingly, weave themselves into ever changing Freeorder.

🔹 The freeorder project is on the scale of a giant suspension bridge, requiring massive investment, far too much to be provided by a single or concentrated source. Fortunately, The single bridge is actually a fractal illusion, a synergy of thousands of bridges, in sum conveying a vision of the possible. Each component bridge of this bridge of bridges will require a substantial investment, but each single investment will be many times smaller than the total required, and therefore possible to imagine.

Our problem is to say enough to create a massive movement, a power not subject to the pathologies that trapped early democrats, then socialists, now progressives and populists. Freeorder can become a world moving power, perhaps for the first time one that does not concentrate pathologies in its leaders.

Vital to the catalysis of freeorder emergence is to not say or do too much. In every move toward freeorder the key is limits: this means the application of the principle of freeorder to the means intended to produce freeorder. Commitment to limits sustains requisite variety of creative impulse and correction, an abstractly coherent chaos of successes and failures.

In business, the application of principles of freeorder is illustrated by Charles G. Koch’s Good Profit, in war by General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams, and in civilization building by Andrew Carnegie’s libraries.

A treasury of interviews ••• with F. A. Hayek, by Axel Leijonhufvud, Leo Rosten, James Buchanan, Armen Alchian, Robert Bork, Tom Hazlett, Bob Chitester, Earlene Craver, Jack High. vFreeorder

Explorers Foundation and its part in freeorder network is one bridge among many, most not even begun. None of the bridge builders will know more than a small number of their fellow builders.

freeorder is not a synonym for “results of human action but not of human design.” See the work of F. A. Hayek on the differences between designed and spontaneous order, especially chapter 2, “Taxis and Cosmos”, of Law, Legislation and Liberty. Confusion of freeorder with spontaneous order indicates failure to comprehend the importance of design and requisite hierarchy.

The phrase requisite hierarchy is from the work of Elliott Jaques as transmitted to us by Bill Casey, of Executive Leadership Group •••.

“Elliott Jaques Levels With You” (article ••• in strategy+business) : “The controversial Canadian theorist claims he can create the perfect organization. Has he found the key to management — or merely a justification for bureaucracy?”

Bill Casey also recommends: “In Praise of Heirarchy,” Harvard Business Review, Reprint 90107. (we’ll look for a link)

“Hierarchy has not had its day. The problem is not to find an alternative to a system that once worked well but no longer does; the problem is to make it work efficiently for the first time in its 3,0000-year history.” —above article

freeorder, definitions

• What’s good for explorers, within each of us, and among us;

• A balance among designed and spontaneous orders that support quest, i.e. patterns of aesthetics governed explorations that support joyful life;

• A balance among designed and spontaneous orders that serves discovery processes and error correction.

freeorder is italicized (almost everywhere) to emphasize that it is the fundamental generative concept of all forges.

The word freeorder is versatile, examples of use: <to be completed>

Origin of freeorder

Uses of freeorder

As a noun it indicates an ideal destination. Where are we going? Freeorder.

As a verb it indicates the process whereby we get there. How will we get there? freeorder.

freeorder depends on limits - examples:

Anglosphere: a shared sense of the law of the land limited the powers of sovereigns and released the forces of market initiative resulting in a spontaneous order of great complexity and effect, with a strong tendency toward Freeorder.

Software architecture: the concept of object orientation brought freeorder to software design by relaxing requirements for top-down control of everything.

freeordering can name an ongoing process: Charles G. Koch spent decades freeordering Koch Industries, incurring many failures along the path. The story is told in his book, Good Profit.

Alfred P. Sloan freeordered General Motors (increased design & decreased unproductive spontaneous order). Steve Jobs did something similar on his return to Apple.

General Stanley McChrystal freeordered his special forces command (decreased design & increased spontaneous order). See his book, Team of Teams.

It may be used as an exhortation. freeorder! Meaning: restructure the balance of orders within yourself and in your organizations and culture so as to serve adventure, i.e. persistent fruitful questioning and responsive action.

It may be used as a kind of affirmation, greeting, or benediction. freeorder!

In social systems vocabulary, “democracy” and “socialism” poorly describe a world fit for explorers.

Democracy: majorities gradually learn to eat minorities.

Socialism: all forms of violently enforced collectivism lead to a uniformity that obliterates individuality and decreases the use of knowledge.

Within each of us, freeorder maintains and expresses a complex balance between rationality and inspiration.

Weavers of Freeorder

The Edge

We stand together at the edge of something great. I call it the emergence of freeorder, the collaborative making of a world magnificently fit for explorers, and the development among ourselves of a people magnificently fit to live in such a world. Such emergent collaboration depends on limits, differences, factions, lack of agreement, competition for resources of vision, mind, spirit, and matter. This is a kind of collaboration beyond design, beyond possible agreement, founded on the deepest possible respect for the incomprehensible, inevitable, divergence of individual patterns of exploration. There is a unity beyond all imaginable unities that only our respect for differences and limits can make possible. Millions of individuals each differently probing the edge of chaos leave behind us a reef of unforeseen substance and beauty. Our work is preservation of the sea that makes such unplanned emergence possible. -ls

Hanmer says, “I call it simply ‘The Emergence’. When someone asks “of what?” I say, “of freeorder.” “Sometimes that begins a good conversation.”

Object Oriented Programming and the Objective C Language, NeXT Software, Inc., 1993-95)

This book may be read as a general manual on the craft of object oriented composition, and as such it applies to social systems, and especially to economics as understood by the Austrian School.

On Amazon •••

The complete book as a pdf •••

See also, Smaltalk-80, Adele Goldberg. This is one of the great foundation stones of the object-oriented approach.

The Language of Freeorder: A pattern language for the devlopment, sustenance, and evolution of civilization. A book that should be written.

freeorder should be distinguished from spontaneous order. It is best understood as a network of balances among designed and spontaneous orders that supports quest.

The reason for this elaboration of words is explained this way: things not named tend to non-existence. Clear symbols on our banners will reduce confusion and support an unfaltering advance.

The word freeorder is an attempt to bind the final desired result (lives lived in expectation of flow) to recognition of its source — individuals, each employing their full creativity and rationality, exchanging freely with one another, giving rise to an extended order that makes it conceivable, even reasonable, for individuals, taken at random, to harbor ideas of personal quest and pursue them in action. This is an historical virtue, partically emergent through accident, and sometimes won at great cost, that even at greater cost must be preserved and made universal.

Limits adopted in pursuit of freeorder create open space without needless obstruction, and thus support emergence.

In systems exemplifying freeorder, unpredictable & incomputable factors are encouraged and accommodated, then disciplined by reason and test. See the work of Karl R. Popper, especially Conjectures and Refutations, and also, Brian Magee’s account of Popper’s ideas, in Philosophy and the Real World.

freeorder names a principle. Freeorder names the world that results, or would result, from general application of the principle. Openworld names the same world, but indicates its existence without regard for the way it comes to be or how it is sustained. Practically speaking, the words are usually interchangeable without problem. Everyone gets the basic idea.

Experiment: listen Beethoven’s opera Fidelio while reading the libretto, and imagine that Beethoven meant every note. This opera was meant to be an inspiration to fighters for liberty. In the same spirit, the word freeorder, is offered: to speak, write, and sing, to convey at once a sense of destination and the unending adventure of getting there.

Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography.

See above: “To forge builders and weavers of freeorder”

http://www.philsalin.com/hth/hth.html: High-Tech Hayekians, by Don Lavoie, 1990 — the history of the beginning of a lot of interesting things relating to freeorder. —added April 2, 2017.

Books somehow bearing on the concept and development of freeorder.

Law, Legislation and Liberty, by F. A. Hayek, especially see chapter 2, “Cosmos and Taxis”.

Good Profit, by Charles G. Koch

Team of Teams, Stanley McChrystal

The bibliography of books pertaining (somehow) to freeorder will become large. -12/3/16

September 2, 2014: Confusion caused by the lack of a concept and a word for it has pervaded all discussion of social systems.

The following is confusing. To understand the source of the confusion, refer to the diagram above.

Two true statements: 1) freeorder is neither natural nor manmade; 2) freeorder is both natural and manmade.

Statement 1 is true if you accept the definitions given in the diagram, but only one at a time, and regard them as contradictory.

Statement 2 is true if you accept both definitions as true simultaneously.

Either of these options leads eventually to lack of coherence.

A false statement: freeorder is either natural or manmade.

This statement is false because freeorder is a kind of mixed, or composite, order which is the result of human action but not of human design.

By one definition, freeorder is natural; by another, manmade.

There are deliberately shared orders, and accidentally shared orders, consciously shared orders and unconsciously shared orders.

The word freeorder names the essential idea, vision, and objective of Explorers Foundation, Inc., and has been the founding principal of my company, Pattern Research, Inc., and of the Office for Open Network, Denver (1975-2000).

We need to reduce to extreme simplicity language uniting the shared principles of freeorder, as pertaining to internal and external orders.

There are many systems comprised of both spontaneous and designed orders. Most of those do not effectively serve quest. [See commenct on composite orders]

the concept of freeorder encapsulates principles that are applicable both within our minds and to external things and systems. It is the generality of these principles that makes them useful. Ultimately it is fragments of internal freeorder that underly the emergence of external freeorder.

Praxeological Foundations of epistemology and economics

Lost in Platonic word clouds where meanings seem to shift without warning . then found Korzybski’s Science and Sanity . became determined to know how I personally used every word that appeared in my philosophic discourse - and that came to mean that I must know how that word somehow had roots in things that for me, in my direct experience, were not words. If unable to do this, it seemed to me that I was living in clouds of words, floating above the earth, while all action took place on the ground, pushing and pulling things that were not words, whether outside of me, or inside as images, strings of words, or mysterious generative sources. So, to spin up a good theory within a cloud of words unattached to the non-word world, and then use the verbal conclusion as sufficient grounds to change things that are not words. This is what I did not want to do.

After I have rejected all explanations of my situation then how do I decide what to do? Standing in a void, and yet, to take a step must have ground to support a foot. How find such a place when can easily nullify, i.e. either fail to comprehend or refute, every grounding proposed?

How is it possible to have a foundation for life, thought, action, while at the same time, in principle, rejecting all certain foundations (as we would if good students of Karl Popper)? [This is the essential question addressed by W. W. Bartely III (see Rafe Champion’s site).

Susanne K. Langer started with biology and worked her way up to conclusions about epistemology. Most philosophy seems to move in the opposite direction.

Given the praxeological use of the words “ends” and “means” it must be that nothing but an end can ever justify a means. So, always, the ends justify the means. Tricky word there, “justify”. Must be used to somehow assert that something is valued sufficiently to make it a basis for action.

freeorder politics (politics of “no”)

Have done a lot of work on this lately (2016). See glyph 563 (Parties of No Party) for a starting point.

First described in a letter (never sent) to Harry Browne when he was running for President of U.S.)

Internal freeorder

space clearing . power of no . and willingness to consider all . word clouds . binding of words to not-words . Austrian School’s use of introspection and application of words (binding) to things not-words found within our own internal states . allowing for internal emergence of the unexpected . allowance for multiple contradictory systems of explanation and presentation . the throne room of the mind, from which almost everything is excluded, even many things that would seem to be very helpful if they could only present the proper credentials at the door.

External & Internal freeorder: common principles

the power of limits . without limits no grounds for emergence of freeorder . emergence of the unexpected . surprise ... boundaries . conditions establishing boundaries

Not saying too much, not controlling too much ... deliberate, considered, abstention from controlling things that are within our power to control, so as to permit the existence of open space within which the unexpected may appear. This abstention bears fruit within us, outside of us, and among us. It is an application of our awareness of our own limitations whereby we harvest the riches resulting from respect for ignorance. Karl Popper wrote an essay with a remarkable title: “Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance.”

Random notes on freeorder

The objective here is to eventually connect all these dots into a coherent introduction to the word freeorder, it’s reason for being and the variety of its uses. But for the moment I’m just going to dump some things here.

A discussion with Solidus1, Dec 21, 2013:

leifsmith • A new vision and understanding of who we have been, what we are, and what we can become is emerging at many seemingly disconnected points throughout the culture of America and the rest of the Anglosphere. I have found that the word, “freeorder,” efficiently sums up the idea that beneficial order comes together more out of freedom than out of compulsion. I plan to listen to this interview expecting that it will offer insight into the emerging world of freeorder. We need a dramatic and energetic phase shift in culture, and the ideas of Bennett and Lotus, in “America 3.0,” may help bring it about. Solidus1 Yes, “freeorder” does some it up, nicely. What I see as beacons of light in a darkening world. Someday, perhaps, you will consider a post on “freeorder”. It is a world changing verb. leifsmith noun too ... Solidus1 An interrogative? Do you ‘freeorder’? leifsmith Yes, by applying error limiting tools to my own mental processes, thus freeing space for the appearance of the new and unexpected. A mind stuffed with things that won’t stand up to ruthless criticism is unlikely to remain creative. Same goes for an economy - so, as Mises said, a free market not only provides opportunity for profit, it also supports the potential for loss, and they are of at least equal importance. There is a parallel between the internal and external limits that allow freeorder to emerge.

Freeorder serves to more finely divide the capacity for and distribution of error ... provide a framework within which reasonable discussion may have a greater chance of success ... as the idea, the emotionally stirring vision, of a world communist society provided the framework for many government building programs that would not have succeeded outside of the framework provided by that vision ... to see the provision of governance services as a market in which all participants have the greatest possible choice ... large array of exit possibilities for each person or collaborative group ... a freeorder perspective for seeing what can be and should be done.

Fascination with boundaries that diminish accumulation of the useless and harmful, in thought and in venture.

James C. Bennett, his work & freeorder

Bennett’s work is the best practical implementation of a widely comprehensible freeorder generating strategy I have found. Promoting it is profoundly central to my work. Jim’s work provides a practical field in which the core and very abstract concept of freeorder may stand. Each supports the other, for the philosophers, the core illuminates the field, and for the capitalists, the field makes the core visible and shows why it is worthy of investment. The world will not go well until important capitalists are philosophers and important philosophers are capitalists. Hat tip to Plato, who almost got it right, if only you turn what he said on its head. Boot tip to Marx.

Note to Mike Lotus, Dec 1, 2013:

America 3.0 is an important contribution to the emergence of freeorder. Vision, intelligence, and capital can catalyze an astonishingly rapid phase change in culture. The pieces are falling in place. One central idea of Explorers Foundation is to find observers who note these pieces, and to listen to them and attempt to comprehend the entire emerging pattern of patterns. You and Jim are two of the best. The pursuit of freeorder is an open source undertaking for the entire human race. If we succeed we may survive.

Complex Adaptive Systems

Complexity theory elucidates freeorder: What’s good for explorers; a balance among designed and spontaneous orders that serves quest.   freeorder is a single word, made by welding together free and order. Explorers Foundation uses freeorder to express our conviction that orders arising from freedom work best for people intent on using their full powers of imagination, reason, and action in pursuit of their own happiness, and in service to people and things they love.   I got the concept from F. A. Hayek’s chapter, “Cosmos and Taxis,” in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty - in that book and elsewhere Hayek traces the origins of the recognition of spontaneous order in human affairs, noting the key features of civilization that are the product of human action but not of human design.

http://www.jarche.com/2014/01/understanding-complexity/ — found by Lisa Kimball •••

Glossary - words used in talking about freeorder

forge : freeorder generator

order : a distribution of things that allows us to form an at least somewhat reliable expectation. (see Hayek, LLL) - the entire definition, as worded by Hayek is a marvel of insight and utility. It will be included here sometime soon. 1/16/17 18:22

F. A. Hayek, in Volume I, Chapter Two, "Cosmos and Taxis", of Law, Legislation and Liberty (University of Chicago, 1973), suggests this definition of the word "order":

"By 'order' we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct."

"Taxis", as in "taxidermy" the deliberate ordering of the skin of animals. Cosmos = Greek for "natural order"; Taxis = Greek for "designed order."

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Law, Legislation, and Liberty, F. A. Hayek (especially chapter 2)

The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler

Science & Sanity, Alfred Korzybski

Human Action, Ludwig von Mises

Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi

Conjectures and Refutations, Karl Popper

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Other Sources

Philosophy and the Real World, Brian Magee (on Karl Popper)

The Laws of Form, G. Spencer Brown

Without Miracles, Gary Cziko

This book contains a rich bibliography of it’s own.

Feeling and Form, Susanne K. Langer

Examples of words created to fill a need

Origin of the words neuron and synapse:

There was a time when physiologists found themselves writing, over and over, “nerve cell,” and “the point at which the nerve impulse is transmitted from one nerve cell to another.” Sir Charles Sherrington, the Oxford Professor of Physiology, author of The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, 1904, introduced the words neuron, and synapse, resulting in useful compression and increased power of evocation. It was as if Sherrington had found cars capable of high speeds, slowed by a ridged and pitted road, and then had paved the road, enabling those speeds. -The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle, by Eric Lax, Henry Holt & Company, 2005, pg. 37.

Origin of the Japanese word, kyoso -from Alan Macfarlane’s “Yukichi Fukuzawa and the Making of the Modern World”:

“A key incident was when Fukuzawa started to read the educational course published by William and Robert Chambers. There was a volume explaining in a simple way the principles of western economics. Fukuzawa described how ‘I was reading Chamber’s book on economics. When I spoke of the book to a certain high official in the treasury bureau one day, he became much interested and wanted me to show him a translation.’5 So Fukuzawa began to translate the work into Japanese, a translation which formed a part of the second volume of his Conditions of the West. As he did so he ran into an illuminating difficulty in translating the central premise of western economic systems. ‘I began translating it (it comprised some twenty chapters) when I came upon the word ‘competition’ for which there was no equivalent in Japanese, and I was obliged to use an invention of my own, kyoso, literally, ‘race-fight’.” See: http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/TEXTS/FUKUZAWA_final.pdf -pg. 65

🔹 Michael Yon’s “egg”: a simple and accurate example:

‘Imagine having no word for egg. "Those things that come out of chickens and snakes and snails that break open and become new chickens and snakes and snails." Imagine saying that description 10,000 times in your life and not just inventing a word for it.’

This was published on his Patreon pages, as: “Anthroinsula: Do you know the word for...? For years, I have searched for a word to describe something I see around the world, but have not found the descriptor”

The German for “egg”, based on Michael’s description would be: Thosethingsthat comeoutofchickensandsnakesandsnailsthatbreakopenandbecomenewchickensandsnakesandsnails. It’s good to have a “.” (period) when it’s the last thing between a sentence and a disaster.

Why the word freeorder is needed

If we don’t name our ideal we will not find the path toward it. There are currently in the English language no words that express the same concept as freeorder. The word is needed.

Fragments

Use of and interpretations of the word freeorder:

Freeorder names both a destination, and a process through which the path to that destination is continually improved. The word, freeorder, can be used in the same way “democracy” and “communism” name ideals to which one may be committed. The power of a word expressing a shared ideal should not be underestimated. Such a word can unify the ununifiable, it can bring together in a single abstract space things that otherwise would be seen to have only insignificant relation to one another. Consider the enormous variety of front groups sponsored by the communists, and often funded covertly by the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The word “communism” summed up the highest ideals of many of the best people in the United States. See The God that Failed, Richard Crossman, editor, for personal accounts from a number of these people who I’m calling “best” of their experience with communism. Pay special attention to the motives that caused them to call themselves “communists.”

The United States of America and Freeorder

Freeorder is a particular kind of emergent order, produced, in part, by ventures designed for emergence. An example of such a venture is the United States of America, arising from an extraordinarily limited design called the Constitution, a document which by brilliant foresight prohibits most actions that would curtail beneficial emergence.

The United States was designed as a freeorder; a nation made to permit emergence. The fundamental documents are boundary condition stabilizers, deliberately limiting the organizing powers of the central government so as not to interfere with the emergence of the unexpected, the unintended confluences of deliberate acts, the never imaginable consequences of the stirring and mixing of the dreams, invention and initiative of millions of free people.

Millions of uncoordinated actions supporting the emergence of freeorder will sum to an irresistible tide.

People whose work is relevant to the concept and practice of freeorder (evolving list, from which many currently contributing have so far been omitted). -12/3/16

Fréderick Bastiat, Peter Bauer, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Bernard, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, James C. Bennett, George Boole, John Bright, G. Spencer Brown, Andrew Carnegie, Frank Chodorov, Walter P. Chrysler, Richard Cobden, Robert Conquest, Gary Cziko, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard A. Epstein, Euclid, Adele Goldberg, Adele Goldberg, Emma Goldman, F. A. Hayek, Paul Hindemith, David Hume, Margaret C. Jacob, Jane Jacobs, William James, Yasuhiko Kimura, Paul Johnson, Israel Kirzner, Arthur Koestler, Alfred Korzybski, Peter Kropotkin, Susanne K. Langer, Rose Wilder Lane, C. S. Lewis, Spencer MacCallum, Alan Macfarlane, Ludwig von Mises, Albert J. Nock, Henry Petroski, Michael Polanyi, Karl R. Popper, Ayn Rand, Murray N. Rothbard, Mary McDermott Shideler, Adam Smith, Lysander Spooner, Henry David Thoreau, J. R. R. Tolkien, Benjamin Tucker, Francisco Varela, Claudio Véliz, Stephen Wolfram.

Goldberg, Adele

Smalltalk-80 ••• (Amazon) — an introduction to the concept of object orientation in software.

Kropotkin, Peter

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph

A single quotation: It is liberty that is the mother, not the daughter, of order. -Pierre Joseph Proudhon. The exact wording and source of this quotation? Proudhon’s writings contain much that foresees freeorder, and as much that would prevent its emergence. Benjamin Tucker (individualist anarchist) used some of Proudhon’s ideas in his own work. Of course, I understood the mother/daughter relationship from the work of Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard, but Proudhon put it in a simple and memorable way.