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not the product that counts” (Beer 1994b, 97), and
Beyond Dispute
documents
in various ways the fact the participants in syntegrations generally found
them enjoyable and productive. The phrase “consciousness-raising” comes to
mind, and we will see below that such phrases had a very literal meaning for
Beer—his idea was that a genuine group consciousness could arise from the
reverberations of syntegration. Let me close this section, however, with some
general reflections on the syntegrity approach to decision making, with the
critique of Beer's VSM in mind—“a topic of which” Beer declared himself in
1990 to be “heartily sick” (Beer 1990b, 124).
Like the VSM, syntegrity can be described as a form of subpolitics, this
time at a microscale of small groups. Like the VSM, syntegrity had at its heart
a diagram, though now a geometric figure rather than a neurophysiologi-
cal chart. Again like the VSM, syntegrity, Beer argued, staged an inherently
democratic organization, an arrangement of people in which concrete, sub-
stantive, political programs could be democratically worked out—indeed, he
often referred to syntegration as “complete,” idealized,” and “perfect democ-
racy” (Beer 1994b, 12; 1990b, 122). And, unlike the VSM, in this case it is hard
to dispute Beer's description. Beer's critics were right that the VSM could
easily be converted to a system of surveillance, command, and control, but it
is hard to contrive such fears about syntegrity. By construction, there are no
privileged positions in the syntegration icosahedron, and there is no evident
way any individual could control the syntegration process (short of wrecking
it beyond recognition).
Once more, too, we can see how ontology and subpolitics are bound up
together in syntegrity. As exceedingly complex systems, the participants can-
not know in advance what topics will emerge from the syntegration process,
and this emergence is orchestrated as a process of multihomeostat-like recip-
rocal vetoing and creative mutual accommodation between participants and
statements of importance. Of course, there is some prestructuring entailed
in the assembly of an infoset around a broad topic and in the geometric ar-
rangement of persons and topics, but here we can note two points. First, the
syntegration process was even more fully open ended than that of the VSM.
If a set of formal if revisable mathematical models were intrinsic to the latter,
no such formalisms intervened in syntegration: topics, statements, and goals
were all open-endedly revisable in discussion as they reverberated around the
icosahedron. Second, the icosahedral structure did undeniably constitute an
infringement on individual freedom: individuals could only contribute to the
discussion of topics to which they had been assigned. In this sense, and as usual,
syntegrity staged a hybrid ontology, partially thematizing and acting out an
