Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky wrote circa 11/08/2010 08:05 PM: > Have you read Slavoj Zizek, "In Defense of Lost Causes or A Plague of > Fantasies"? The two of you share much in common but Zizek is much funnier.
Ouch! That stings. ;-) No, I haven't read his work. > His attacks on post modernism are often spectacular. Unfortunately neither > of you two seem to have found a way out of the trap of solipsism disguised > as a philosophy. That may be part of the problem here, we have a phenomenon > so odoius that it has been mistakenly lumped in with other philosophies when > in fact I suspect it is simply a rubbish tip which we had to give a name. Well, I don't know anything about Zizek; but I'm not lumping anything with philosophies. I'm just suggesting that two of our recent threads (PoMo and literary fiction) and one persistent thread (realism, or the lack thereof) on this list may be related to the economy and the rise in population density. I'm not concerned with philosophy so much as speculating on the causes of things like a perceived over medication of children in response to perceived epidemics like ADHD (or even autism). By "things like", I also mean: Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities http://www.pnas.org/content/104/17/7301.abstract In other words, I see things like PoMo (and the bifurcation of life into "academic vs. non-academic", as Robinson put it in the video) as a consequence of information overload and constant innovation as we approach the carrying capacity of the earth. It's not about philosophy. It's about applied complexity. ;-) > In the absence of a philosophy we seem to have latched on to Reality TV and > Twitter. Perhaps we can view Reality TV and Twitter, also, as consequences of urbanization, constant innovation, and increased density rather than harking back to obsolete terms and methods like "philosophy"? > Fame or the camera spotlight are our highest goals as a society. And perhaps we can view individuals' attempts to gain the spotlight as the remnants of a bygone age where the individual was more important? In our current age the individual is receding in importance. And given that the US is a fairly sparse region, it's not surprising that individuals here are clamoring for a little spotlight as they feel the encroaching collective bear down on them. These phenomena seem more like growing pains than narcissism to me. > I like to call it the Tyranny of Mediocrity. > I recall upsetting the PTA ,20 tears ago, claiming that ADHD was a fictional > disease striking the middleclass two parent families that did not have > enough time to cook dinner.Often the diagnosing physicians were also > juggling careers and families. My goodness the foolish beliefs we have had > to endure, remember Facilitated Learning where the mentally deficient could > write stories typical of middle aged women with a need for fame. Curious how > a belief system can so delude the public. Now Druids are a recognized > religion in the UK and witches run for office in the US. No wonder the > Inquisition was disbanded when so many obviously delusional people started > claiming to have fornicated with the devil's minions. The Inquisitors lost > hope in ever finding a legitimate witch. They switched the focus to > alchemists and counterfeiters. Every night we can hear interviews with > criminals justifying their actions because of some newly formulated self > acquired Right. Here is a title "A Plague of Human Rights". In the same week > I saw activists claim that women had the Right to Abortions, The Right to > Abandon Infants, The Right to raise male children to be Mothers, The Right > to end the lives of the suffering with Dignity. The Right to Kill their > spouses who they accused of abusing them. The even pronounce that they have > the Right to be believed whatever contrary evidence exists. They have the > Right to impose their specific delusion on the rest of mankind. It is not > just PoMo this is fundamentally an issue between civic responsibility and > selfish interests. PoMo is a "Pseudo Philosophy created to rationalize > selfishness" That's a great rant! ;-) But it misses the fundamental issue, which was brought out nicely by Robinson in the section about "divergent thinking". The point of applied complexity is to work on the _inverse_ problem, hypothesizing potential generators for recognized phenomena. All the things you mention are the phenomena. What are the potential generators? If we are a complex system, then is it possible that these multifarious phenomena _might_ be generated by a, the same, small core of generators. Think divergently! "How many uses are there for a paperclip?" My speculation would be that all of the phenomena you list: o the _seeming_ abundance of mediocrity (despite Bettencourt's construct that innovation is fastest in cities and most of us live in cities these days) o the apparent epidemic of ADHD o the accommodation of 2-6 sigma religious beliefs o the fattening of the distribution of various "rights" o gibbering, entrenched, academics who speak nonsense and get tenure for it My speculation is that all of that might simply be our growing pains as we approach the human population carrying capacity of the earth. > Perhaps > philosophy itself will change when it recognizes that the classic cause and > effect system is no longer quite meaningful. In part as the world becomes > more complex the populace reverts to solipsism as the only means of survival > and thereby insuring their own demise. And I'll make one final riposte! 8^) I think philosophy, as a discipline, is _already_ changing. Witness Russ' recent paper and where it was published, or more generally, take a look at the IACAP: http://www.ia-cap.org/. I think we're seeing more philosophers turn to effective computation, as computing (and the constellation of disciplines it brings with it) percolates through society. Philosophy is changing to incorporate the new tools available to it and it's doing it for the same purposes it has always had, to explore cause and effect. And as our overly simplistic, linear models of cause and effect degrade into complex, non-linear models, philosophy follows right along.... even leads the way in many cases. But if my "story" is true, it's not solipsism at all. It's actually _realist_ in the sense that we're seeing all human activity track with (some tightly as with quantum mechanics, some loosely as with PoMo) our degradation, or expansion if you will, from the overly simplistic model we successfully used when the earth was sparsely populated to this complex model we now have to use in a more densely populated, mostly urban world. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
