by Chogan Swan
As Systems Engineering grew, its practitioners realized that the methods applied to LOTS of different situations. Some of them didn’t even need to be actual physical systems. :-O
Enter the Imaginary Engineer. (Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra—Strauss… Alex North remix)
The first notable success of the Imaginary Engineer came about ten years after the scrapping of the SF Bay project. Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula MS, landed a big contract with the Navy (USN) in 1970. As work progressed, change orders from the USN began to take a toll on Ingall’s workforce. The USN was willing to pay for the additional work, but not the additional cost due to burnout, exiting employees and new hiring training of more Ingall’s workforce.
Ingalls used computer simulation to demonstrate the true cost of the change orders. The USN was not convinced and demanded changes in the model. The changes—when put in place—showed the cost as being even higher.
This convincing demonstration produced an amicable settlement. Ingalls estimation of the dollar value of the simulation to the company was between 170 and 350 million dollars. (Sterman, 2000, pp. 55-66)
So that is step two—the rise of the Imaginary Engineer.
Okay, I also admit that I didn’t come up with the name of my superhero either. When I was finishing my Masters in Industrial Engineering (IE) that’s what the physical engineers (PE) called us.
Step Three:
Isn’t it great that science gives us tools to evaluate and quantify these kinds of tricky questions? I’ll just bet the government is working on incorporating these kinds of tools into their decisions. What a bright future we have ahead!
Sigh.
I fear step three will be a bit more of a challenge.
When I left graduate school with an MBA and a Masters in Imaginary Engineering, I was excited about the opportunities to help improve working conditions, increase job productivity, satisfaction and build models that would help wise executives make good decisions for the good of the company and all stakeholders.
My five years of servitude with Company X as a glorified data monkey were a sad, rude awakening. What I struggled with—at all times—was executive demand for reports that supported their self-interest.
I was expected to:
· Fudge reports
· Build performance models that measured the wrong things, bringing no actual efficiencies
· Produce analytics for sales props to show how savvy Co. X was (now) at learning from their mistakes and keep clients worth ¼ billion $ a year in revenue from leaving
· Make bullet point lists
The political culture of self-interest controlled all. If you’ve never realized this culture is endemic, pervasive, and rampant in every institution of our society: Finance, Government/Political, Business, Legal… you are living in a dream.
The only way the science of System Dynamics inform the public and influence public policy to stop disastrous plans like…
(Insert your favorite boondoggle here… possible examples might be Bailing out Finance Corporate Greed or Expecting Universal Healthcare to successfully co-exist with Corporate Insurance given penalties for not enrolling. See how I picked one from both sides of the political circus?)
…is to do it with a completely transparent, Wiki-style, non-profit, grass-roots model. The collective effort to put something like this in place would be enormous.
IF we attempted this, we would find:
· A major benefit would be just defining the problems in a way where everyone could contribute
· Stakeholder buy-in
· Big-picture viewpoint
· The models would not be perfect
· The process of improving them would build community understanding of the civic system
· The powers that be would not like it
If you are still with me at the end of this journey of three steps, you can see that I’ve actually brought you to the beginning of a road—a road no one can walk alone.
I confess, I’m not sure people will join me on this road.
Huge rifts—fomented by demagogues from all points of view—divide us as a nation here on Spaceship Earth. I’m convinced we need this sort of multi-partisan, grass-roots watchdog if we are to thrive. If we don’t find paths that satisfy more than one side of our society at a time, we are doomed.
Call to action:
I hope archeologists of an alien race never find this post and shake their appendages in sorrow that it went ignored.
However, I’ve taken this as far as I am going to alone. I’m going to ask you to consider taking at least one more step on this road. Here are some choices:
· Do more research and think about this
· Google some of the ideas and links I’ve mentioned
· See below for the Bay Model video
· Share this blog post
· Buy (or borrow on KU or KOLL) my book, Sentients in the Maze read it, review it (I hope you can get past the racy parts)
· I’ll take this as a vote to ‘fund my movement’ and keep going myself
· Follow and share my Chogan Swan Facebook page and engage in discussing these ideas, because this will only work if the idea goes viral
· Find another path that will accomplish the same goal
Whichever road you take, I hope it is a happy one for you.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a revolution where nobody had to die?
Chogan Swan
For a trip to the SF Bay Model, if the link to the right isn’t working, just do a search for “Bay Model Stopping a Disastrous Plan with Science”.
Sterman, J. D. (2000). Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. Irwin McGraw-Hill.
Author's Dedication & Afterword:
I hope this story becomes a force for growth in your life. To me, the world seems super-saturated with longing for justice, responsibility and connectedness. I hope, for you, that this can be a grain of crystal dropped into the mix of life that creates a lattice of truth and a path forward.
Though I’ve always been a firm believer that a book should speak for itself, I want to offer a few lines of dedication to the mentor I never had the chance to meet.
Octavia E. Butler was for me a true hero who overcame huge obstacles on her path as a writer and became an inspiration to people all over the world. She taught me many things through her work, and I can only hope this story honors the principles that she embodied in her writing.
Here, I will only mention two of the things I learned from her.
Two principles:
The first principle from her writing is that people aren’t all good or all bad. Now this may seem obvious, but you can go many miles in literature before you see someone portray this with the beauty and compassion that she did. It made me want to understand people more deeply and be true to that understanding towards myself.
The second principle is not to shy away from our physical bodies. Neither the pleasures nor the pains they bring us are meaningless. Both are fit subjects for exploration, because we learn from them. We can learn of compassion when we suffer. We can learn of connectedness when we allow ourselves to embrace intimate pleasure.
This book—this story—has been boiling inside of me for years. In part, it’s a political statement—not a statement about one party over another, but a statement about how humans do politics, business and other things.
I'm writing this author's note on the day after the most divisive, partisan and poisonous presidential election in the history of the US—so far.
I just saw the results of a poll that said that over 40% of US Americans are AFRAID of the policies of their political opponents. That's a scary situation by itself. What I am asking you to consider is that maybe BOTH sides are right 9and wrong)... because each platform is exclusive to one set of values, needs and lifestyle. If either platform continues without being balanced by the needs of those who are alien to that platform, it will continue to divide and eventually implode.
That is not the goal of democracy, and—with the tools we have available in the 21st Century—it doesn’t need to be. I fervently hope this forward to the story becomes outdated soon.
It's a story that has imbedded inside it a real and practical way that people can come together and decide how to live in symbiosis with each other both in policy and in person. It will take a lot of work.
We are stranded on a planet of sentient beings who are aliens to each other. This story is about learning to embrace the aliens we live with and next door and in the next house of worship and in the next worldview and in the next country one border away—because in this world every country is only one stop away. However, to embrace the alien, you must first learn to embrace the alien part of yourself.
In order to survive as a nation we will need to learn how to be united but diverse. We've never really tried to do that without using guns yet.
Parts of this story will probably made you uncomfortable. I want them to. Embracing others who are alien is uncomfortable, and I hope the physical and emotional metaphor portraying that fact challenges us. It's about learning to live together with aliens, no matter where they come from. It's about symbiosis, not sex, though that is part of who we are as well. You can call it sex as a metaphor if that helps—consider the Song of Songs as a comparison.
I hope this story makes you think and—most of all—helps you to embrace the aliens around you.
Chogan Swan
Appendix of Original, Uncut Chapters
Chapter 3 (Original) — Brave New World
Tiana released the compound into Jonah’s mouth that would put him into a deep sleep. He would need rest for tomorrow. She put her head back on his chest and listened to his heart beating slow and strong. He seemed to have a good heart. Somehow, he had sensed how to comfort her when shock had awakened the ancient horrors. The question was, would he be worth committing to?
She reached up to his face where an age-spot dotted a high cheekbone and gently erased it. Her fingers drifted to his neck and the throb of his jugular; she sent her filaments into the bloodstream, drawing off a drop and analyzing the components. His cholesterol level needed adjusting. Tiana smiled, anticipating the taste, and decided to go ahead while he slept. It wasn’t taxing work, and she too needed energy for the upcoming repair work.
Sometimes when she was upset, it helped to dive into her work.
A candle and wooden matches lay on the bureau dresser by the bed. She untangled herself and crawled over him to light the candle, and soon the soft glow filled the room. Books stacked here too, ideas crouching in ambuscade on the shelves and fireplace mantel. A standing-height desk held a laptop computer. Pictures of Jonah and his children graced the walls. They looked happy, three boys, one girl, doing sports, theater, portraits… no pictures of a wife, probably not a widower then.
Tiana turned to Jonah and pulled back the sheet to look at his body again.
Without hair covering his skin, he looked like a sculpture. Edward had never agreed to depilation; she’d never had any of his body hair. Her finger filaments tingled, recalling the sparking sensation of receiving the proteins and keratins from Jonah—hundreds and hundreds in a storm of sparks feeding into her energy reserves. Tiana ran her hand over his chest. Jonah stirred, vocalizing in sleepy reaction to the caress.
Tiana examined his feet and toes. For a man, he took good care of his nails, but…. With a few alterations, the splits and damage to his toenails disappeared. After that, she rubbed her filaments over his feet, removing dead skin. Not much nourishment, but the raw material would help; she removed it down to new skin and continued to his scalp. His hair was thin on top, so she stimulated his scalp to increase hair follicle generation. If he wanted it changed back, it would be an easy reversal, and she’d get the hair first. Tiana grinned. She did enjoy new hair; it was like dessert without health issues.
After a moment of preparation, Tiana put together a pheromone stew—guaranteed to arouse—and licked Jonah’s lips with the concoction. For this procedure, she needed intimate contact and Jonah sexually aroused. Though he wouldn’t wake, he might have some interesting dreams. She continued releasing the pheromone cocktail under his nose, licking his lips while she reached down between his legs where he was already firm. His length and girth were larger than usual for humans. She circled it with her fingers and compared it to her hand; his shaft was twenty-one centimeters long and six centimeters in diameter. Evidently, he hadn’t peaked during her first examination.
Tiana positioned herself over him and lowered onto him, but she hadn’t considered her new body having a narrower bagua than the previous one. She had to stop, come back out and build up more lubrication, spreading the fluid inside her until she was dripping. Then she lowered herself again, working her way down his shaft, twisting to force him in a bit at a time.
When he was all the way in, she gingerly moved up and down to grow accustomed to the intrusion. The motion brought his erection even harder, making it swell at the base. The added pressure made her vocalize hoarsely, but she kept moving, stretching against the unaccustomed intrusion, until he moved smoothly and the strain on her bagua wasn’t as distracting, adapting to it.
Tiana raised herself again until only the tip of his glans was inside her then positioned the tip of her inner shaft at his opening and lowered herself onto and into him, sliding them both toward an interlocking embrace when her mons melded with the ridge of his pubic bone like yin and yang.
As she worked her way down, the squeezing walls of her bagua compressed him, forming discrete but interrelated pressures: pressure out from his girth and pressure in on her shaft. It took almost ten minutes more before she could settle onto him—passing her shaft through his—then beyond. Her filaments spread out and connected to the target areas.
At last.
What she’d expected to be an easy task had turned long and difficult. Tiana was glad she’d done it while Jonah slept. Nothing erodes a patient’s confidence faster than the doctor having difficulty with a procedure.
She finished connecting to the nerve clusters along his lower spinal column.
In her mouth, she built up the enzymes that would reverse the buildup of cholesterol in his circulatory system. She licked his neck, preparing his skin for a painless penetration then went into his vein with a precise, nip and sealed it with her lips. A trickle of blood entered her mouth. Just enough to monitor how much monomolecular cholesterol entered his bloodstream. Too much at once would cause trouble.
She slid a finger into the seal at his neck and dipped her filaments into the jugular, seining for cholesterol and other opportunities to benefit them both. She also stripped out toxins she had no use for. He couldn't discard them, but she could.
Modern society was generating a lot of them.
She kept rocking where their hips connected to keep his system moving at optimum velocity. Three hours later, she disconnected her filaments and mouth from his vein, healing it as she left, withdrawing her inner shaft from him at a gentle pace. Then she rode him, pumping with her oh-so-tender bagua until he erupted, leaving a glow of warmth inside where she subsumed the fuel he’d given her.
She lay down and cuddled up to him, nudging his head into a position that would stop the gentle snore he had started after the orgasm. It would be dawn in a few hours, and she could use a nap. She smiled, replete, and set herself to wake at first light. Her cares and fears seemed a little farther away now. She hadn’t lied; it hadn’t been sexual. After all, it was only a simple fluid exchange, certainly nothing procreative involved. She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.
~~~{Jonah}~~~
Jonah was walking underwater. He knew it was a dream. He was glad because otherwise he would be drowning. It was warm and light filtered down through schools of shining fish. A school of tiny silver ones enveloped him, sending delicious tingling sparks down his back and legs before spinning around his hips and leaving tracks of pleasure. They moved to his chest a
nd under his arms. He wished they’d spent more time lower down.
At his wish, the fish moved lower. Jonah looked down to see that the fish were now fingers tracing their way down his body. The fingers belonged to a mermaid with dark red and chocolate stripes. She smiled at him then lowered her mouth to his sex, and the pulse of pleasure rolled over him.
I hope I remember this when I wake up.
The dream transported him from the seabed to a jungle. A dark-striped cat sat on his chest and meowed at him. The meowing seemed to have meaning. Something was tickling his ear. He reached up to bat it away, and the cat said, “Jonah, aren’t you ever going to wake up?”
The striped cat turned into a striped girl, kneeling on top of him and resting her forearms on his chest.
Did he know her? Was he still dreaming?
She kissed him, sliding her tongue into his mouth.
“Tiana?”
“Good work, Jonah! Never start the morning by calling the girl in bed with you the wrong name.” She grinned, showing small slightly pointed teeth gleaming white in her chocolate and cherry striped face. “It’s eight AM; time to rise and shine.”
“Coffee. I smell coffee.”
“Yeah, I figured out how to use your coffee machine. It turned out pretty well, but I was looking online, and I want an espresso machine. I want to try making a green hornet.” She sat up and leaned over to reach the coffee mug on his dresser. As she moved, sunlight streamed in the window and scattered across her breasts and the muscles on her abdomen. She sipped from the cup, still sitting on his legs, as he propped up on an elbow.
“Did you make enough for me?”
She laughed, “This is yours. I just didn’t want you to spill it when I gave it to you. You know your desktop computer is hopelessly out of date, right?”
Jonah hesitated. “Do you mean because it’s a desktop or because it’s an out-of-date desktop?”
“Yes.” She nodded for punctuation. “Or should I say, ‘duh’?”