Trouble in D.C.? Send God and Newton to Congress!

By Leon D'Souza

November 1, 2007 | Cambridge, Mass. -- Internet education pioneer Barry Kort talks about breaking the rules with the effusive enthusiasm of a mischievous middle-schooler. And he wants the rest of America to follow his lead.

That's right, break the rules. Go ahead!

Don't worry, there's a method to the madness.

Kort, a visiting scientist at the iconic MIT Media Lab, and an accomplished systems engineer, believes there's something fundamentally wrong with what he calls the "rule-based system." That's the popular model of lawmaking and punishment governments have used since the Babylonian king Hammurabi had the first written laws hammered into 12 tablets of stone.

Put simply, Kort says, rule-based systems rely too much on fear. And fear is the foundation of a toxic cocktail that is plunging our world into turmoil.

He explains: "When you have a lot of fear, a lot of concentrated power, and those who wield power are ignorant and also ruthless, then those four factors ­ fear, power, ignorance and ruthlessness ­ add up to evil."

Now, "evil" is a term that would ordinarily make scientists squirm, primarily because of its moral and theological connotations. But Kort has theology ­ and religion ­ firmly on the brain. In fact, he sees scientific thinking at work in the teachings of the great religions.

"The reaction to the advent of the state, with its rules and punishments," he says, "emerges with the religious philosophers. You have Moses with his Covenant and Jesus with his New Covenant, and these are not driven by rules and laws, but by something more subtle, more brotherly, trying to get rid of the violence."

Mathematically speaking, the pioneers of the world's oldest religions moved away from thinking along "herky jerky," stairway-shaped graphs ­ described in our language by "if, then or else" laws ­ and toward more gently shaped S-curves, reflecting a world of subtlety and nuance.

And if that has your brain twisted into a French roll, consider the story of the adulteress in the Gospel of John.

Briefly, a woman caught in the act of adultery is dragged by the Scribes and Pharisees before Jesus. The law calls for the woman to be stoned to death and Jesus is asked to render the final judgment. Not one to be cornered by rule-based thinking, Jesus turns to logic.

"Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone," he announces, much to the chagrin of all present.

There's a term for this in science, Kort says; it's called "reframing." That's "subtly changing the focus of something by inventing the excluded middle."

The anecdote illustrates the revolutionary connection between science and religion.

Kort puts it this way: "The calculus of the scientist is actually reifying the teachings of the religions. You take the teachings of religion and advance them from theology to theorem."

In other words, science and religion can work together to provide government by optimal and ethical practices. The problem is the political entity we call the "state."

"The state is doing something that is neither theology nor science," Kort says. "The state is saying if there's something we don't like ­ something we dread ­ we're going to make a law against it. And if you violate this law, if you rouse our fear, we're going to punish you."

That fear-driven governance stirs up violence, Kort says, which is just not good for business.

The solutions to the world's problems, then, may lie in mixing science and religion.

Forget separation of church and state. If Kort is right, the quest for good government may require more church, less state.

For the transcript of my interview with MIT's Barry Kort, visit http://leondsouza.blogspot.com/

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