Disruption, Crisis and Transdisciplinarity

Disruptive innovation gives impression of something good.

Maybe not always… It can bring unemployment, together with progress.

The after-postmodern notion of progress is not the same as in the 19^th century.

Today, the paradox concomitance of progress and crisis is possible.

So technical advance is not the same as “human” advance.

Transdisciplinarity can be a way to bring balance to this equation.

Transdisciplinarity is different from multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity.

Each one of these visions has its own context.

Transdisciplinarity deals with paradoxes without forget humanity and culture.

It can be a new tool to find exits and answers to the chronic crisis of the world.

Is “disruptive” an after-postmodern word?

In the last decade of the 20^th century, Clayton M. Christensen wrote about “disruptive innovation”, launching a new and specific kind of “paradigm changing” and a new vision of “invention”, in first place about market and development of technology in our days, in a complement, or even opposition, to the “sustaining innovation”, that is the innovation that just keep the things as they be. But “disruptive innovation” could also be applied for some discoveries in history of science and technology.

In the second decade of the 21^st century, almost in the third, the “disruptive” word has been used more and more in any circumstances, approaching the word to the “disruption concept” in the dictionaries. But it also reflects some after-postmodern visions. In postmodern times that was a certainty and a pragmatism that directed everything. Nowadays it seems that is a new way to “break the rules keeping the rules”.

In the sixties and seventies, it was a time for “deconstruction” of everything, combining with the “counterculture”. At the same time, pragmatism and certainty grew.

In the eighties and nineties, the pragmatism and certainty of postmodernity dominated.

The “disruptive” word started with “innovation”, but in the Macro-Shift of Erwin Lazslo, it became an amplified concept, together with the “liquid” of Baumann, the “transdisciplinarity” of Morin. They and others were visionaries of the future. And now we are in the after-postmodern times.    

“Slow food”, “Slow Medicine”, etc. It is all “about time”.

When we hear or read some qualification as “slow”, we can think: “why slow in the digital era?” In after-postmodern times this question is “about time” to be focused… And it is about time that we are talking.

In Postmodern era we thought that life was becoming faster and faster and that this acceleration was good. Well, if someone is thinking about “go to Mars” maybe it still sounds wright… or even in some circumstances as digital communication, emergency care, etc.  

But we are talking about a “state of mind”. The “slow state of mind” does not mean to be slow in everything. You can eat in a good restaurant in a “fast way”, or you can be in a “fast food” place, but in a “slow state of mind”.

In a similar way, someone can work in an Emergency Room with a “slow state of mind”, and vice-versa in another condition.

So, a “slow state of mind” means to have a peaceful mind, even when we are in a turmoil.

So, we have a “inner time” and an “outer time”. Inner and outer time can influence each other, but it is not absolute, although it can be a tool to do a kind of “in and out discipline”.

The Slow Movement is a way to bring balance to our use of time and of “our times”.

In after-postmodern era, to use the time well is not just about acceleration, but also about a “humanized time” open to the Complex Thinking and the complexity of life.

Kuhn’s Paradigm and paradigmatic crisis

Thomas Kuhn wrote his most famous work entitled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” based on the idea of “scientific paradigm”. In the beginning his “paradigm” was only restricted to the field of Hard Science. Step by step it became a tool applied to any other fields, and it even became a kind of a “fashion word” used in several circumstances. Anyway, as we have a succession of scientific paradigms in the History of Science, we could think if there is also a “succession of paradigmatic crisis” that we see or read through contextual concepts. Maybe, the Human History is a succession of crisis... or this is a vision of an after-postmodern point of view. 

After-postmodern Narratives 3

In After-postmodern times we live in a paradoxical situation in terms of the deep meaning of Narrative and its value for the West Society.

As the author Siva Vaidhyanathan explains in the book “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy”. Nowadays people do not care too much to read books and explore its deep meanings. Everybody is very busy with distractions and shallow things in Facebook, even with good things that in the beginning the   founders of it thought that was happening.

Maybe we can add to that reflection that some explanation of the situation is “the archetype of the shadow”, in a Jungian concept. The shadow of the human being is in every human activity. Any activity. Even if we think that it is the purest activity ever. The purest faith, the purest religion, the purest brotherhood, and so on.

The human being must learn how to deal with “the shadow”. Ancient traditions, religious or of other nature, have some keys to deal with the shadow. Even Narratives are a way to deal with the shadow. It is a very ancient way.

In After-postmodern times, some fields learnt to use Narratives to get a deeper knowledge and to deal with the shadow, as, for example, the Narrative Medicine.

Maybe Facebook must learn to deal with the shadow, or the users of Facebook. Or maybe people can have some time to read books or deeper narratives. Facebook is not good or bad. It depends on what use we make of it.

After-Postmodern Narratives 2

In 1966 Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg published the book “The Nature of Narrative”. It was something that emerged in the zeitgeist of the sixties, in postmodern times, when new perspectives appeared together with ideas of “deconstruction” of any concept, mainly the old ones. The last two decades of the 20^th century saw a victory of the pragmatism and objectivity over creation and subjectivity. As history has a kind of intertwined ways, the narrative studies continued. In the 21^st century started a transition to a new period: a shift to after-postmodern times. The narrative became something visible to different fields of study and practice. So, this is the time of Narrative.

After-Postmodern Narratives

In Postmodern Period, in the second half of the 20^th Century, some scholars started to think and write about “narrative”. At that days, each field of study was constrained to stay inside it’s own limits, although some interdisciplinary movements begun. Narrative was object of interest of some people. But in After-Postmodern current time, “narrative” became a kind of “interdisciplinary tool”, helping to understand different sides of human being.