The Telos of an Acorn is an Oak Tree

    One of the most life changing ideas I was exposed to during my undergraduate career, besides intellectual vertigo, was the philosophical notion of “telos.” Teleology, originally thought of by Socrates, is the idea that within every object lies an ultimate object or aim. After that Western Civilization lecture I picked up an acorn on campus because I knew its telos was to become a massive oak tree. Envisioning what our civilization’s capacity or ultimate aim is looks vastly different depending on who you are and what you value, but I wonder what the ultimate telos of our civilization is and what is limiting us from reaching it.

            Arguably, many of our systems are holding humankind back from achieving our telos. We have an economic system where there are disproportionate feedback loops keeping the wealthiest people wealthy, and a political system in which only two parties are supposed to collectively represent an increasingly diverse population. Obviously, the rabbit hole goes much deeper than just those two examples. Instead, thinking about the acorn again and what is necessary to draw out its telos, what are the potential variables that could affect its growth?  Different levels of sunlight, water, soil, oxygen affect how large it will grow, but systems differ from the acorn in that values have a significant role to play in how they develop.

    One decision made to change how resources within the government or private sector are allocated could be seen as fair or unjust contingent on who you are or what you believe. Depending upon your age, race, gender, economic, spiritual or cultural background, each one of those aspects of how you identify yourself permeates throughout how you view every decision being made within our systems. Representing all the possible permutations and combinations of these views is hard if not impossible to do, but “critical systems thinking is dedicated to human emancipation and seeks to achieve for all individuals the maximum development of their potential” (Jackson, 1991). When one perspective to dominates our system it comes at the cost of others and to the system. Human emancipation and therefore critical systems thinking is necessary for us to unleash the true power of our systems and achieve our telos as humans.

Question:  I was so inspired by my acorn’s capacity for growth that I still have it to remind me of what I can become. Our systems have an incredible capacity for growth, where should they look to be inspired?

Comments

[Jennifer Shriver]

the study of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions. telos.

adding intellectual vertigo could make it hard to find those ends.

your writing affirms for me the importance of defining my/our telos, when other systems are defining and moving toward theirs.

[Sam Krasnobrod]

This is a really interesting thought to me. It can be argued that the telos the early United States was manifest destiny. With that in mind, many of the systems that were implemented were in that same vein: to expand west, obtain and exploit all resources, and making America great again... Admittedly it is an ugly thought, but one that is, never-the-less, somewhat accurate. To change America's telos is to remove manifest destiny, and ultimately the American Dream. So, what is the new American Dream that we can sell to the populace?