Complexity and crisis

There is a persistent crisis around the world too much seen as “an economic crisis”… And the only ways people try to solve that crisis are “economic ways”… So, humankind walks in circles…
That reductionism is far from to find stable solutions.
It is difficult to accept that we are living under paradigms different from those of postmodern times.
As history go round in circles and vortex, so some parts of philosophy.
Aristotle wrote that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. If we think only in one aspect and work only in that field we will not achieve the whole.
Complexity can afford ways to deal with problems and questions beyond the limits of each field of knowledge. We must see the link among things and not only each thing itself.

which singularity?

When wrote about "ecosophy" the philosopher Felix Guattari used the therm "singularity" to mean something very connected to the inner part of each person to achieve a balanced level among someone's subjectivity, the community and the nature. It is a concept that implies human respect and recovery of mankind in the subjective aspects of each human being.

In the end of 20th and beginning of 21th century "singularity" became a kind of an "almost sci fi concept" about the human being achieving some kind of "transhuman condition", made by technology, under circumstances where doens't matter how much humanity could be lost: the aim is to achieve some kind of "imortality". But could it be a kind of a imortality of a "not anymore human being"...

This "transhumanity" is different of that used by Basarab Nicolaescu when he meant a kind of "transcultural condition".

So, maybe the "singularity" of the "almost sci fi human being" could mean some "dehumanized human being"?

At the same time that more than 1 billion people are starving and more than that has obesity, what of the two singularities could be more useful to humankind?

Metaphorically, the "Bicentennial Man" (the movie) chose to be human instead of to be immortal...

Now, when the efficiency of postmodern is weak, and the humankind is searching for meaning of life, maybe we could remember the singularity of Guattari...

We know that the technology of that "postmodern singularity" could bring some benefits to human life, but it is important that we do not forget the "singularity" of each human being in the world...   

after-postmodern social bindings

The economic crisis is the same since 2008.

It is not only "economic" or even political, but it has other "transversalities".

Under a complex approaching we can see that history is in a bigger change that we could first suppose.

Each human community is looking and discovering its own roots at the same time that communication and deal among human beings is easier than ever.

People are looking for their own identity. This identity has universal bindings but it has also local, ancient and sometimes almost lost bindings.

After the end of the Cold War, step by step human communities are discovering aspects of their identities that was repressed under political power and other factors.

This segmental process is a movement in the pendulum of history.

In the end of the Roman Empire the occidental nations were divided in smaller groups linked more by cultural   aspects than the former political and economic binding with the empire.

We cannot say that we are going to a "new feudal era", but the pendulum of history shows that there is a moment for humankind to look back to inner collective values and not just to external economic bindings.

Maybe this is a side of the crisis that could be better understood under the after-postmodern complexity. 

unsustainable sustainability - part 3

How to work for sustainability with insatiable human beings...

If sustainability implies some limit, what are the limits of insatiability...

... or satiability...

Maybe Complexity is the field where those limits could work, or could be worked...

Even with a insatiable human being, there is not possible to build sustainability without the human being.

There is not environment without human being.

So, the balance must be found inside complexity, among all actors of worlds scenario. 

unsustainable sustainability - part 2

Does sustainability need money?
Maybe it is more a matter of action and direction... or a matter of changes...
Many times changes are not comfortable "movements".
But each one must find its own change.
In the deep this is not "my change", or "our change" but "your change".
Arne Naess thought about superficial ecology and deep ecology.
Sustainable sustainability implies deep ecology.
Many steps of superficial ecology are perhaps necessary, but they are not sufficient.
Between 1992 and 2012 the world was, in the first half of this period, in the Postmodern climax; and in the second half it was in the descensus of the Postmodern, in the waning of the efficiency.
In after-postmodern we must find other ways to find the change inside complexity.

unsustainable sustainability

Susteinability is the word of the moment...

Nonetheless we do hear so much but we do not see how to sustein...

As we said before, in after-postmodernity we see the end of the efficiencies, those efficiencies of post-modernity: strong as a truck but not too much "human"...

Everything that is done for environment is necessary but it is not sufficient for achieve a new level of sustainability.

Human beings need to talk and deal all the time to achieve a balance between "modern life" and "after-postmodern conditions" that include a stronger respect for nature and life on earth more than ever were before.

For while we see more "vicious circles" than "virtuous circles" in therms of sustainability. 

In other words, what seems to bee sustainable, in the end of the day brings unsustainable collateral effects.

A sustainable virtuous circle could mean a chain of sustainable causes and effects.

Maybe History itself will, step by step, push humankind to inevitable sustainable paradigms...

But it could be less expensive if human beings try to start practical measures to stimulate small communities to find their own ways to development respecting environment, at the same time the greater measures are applied among countries. 

after-postmodern problems, after-postmodern solutions

Henri Bergson wrote that we will be free when we formulate a problem instead of simply receive it already formulated. 

Thomas Kuhn wrote that a paradigm conditionate the formulation of the problem and the formulation of the solution. Most times that we read this we do not pay attention to the word "problem", we only pay attention to the word "solution". We can also replace the word "problem" with the word "question" and we can replace the word "solution" with the word "answer". It is a similar thinking.

So, we are conditioned to see a problem or a question only under the current paradigms.

But we are in times of changes...

Kuhn also wrote that when a paradigm cannot have anymore answers or solutions it is time to rise a new paradigm.

In after-postmodern era it is more and more difficult to use the postmodern paradigms to solve the problems.

We must read or write questions and problems with new formulations.

Maybe there are not only "global" problems. When we think only in global problems we do not see the "local" problems. 

So, transdisciplinary, we can see at same time global and local problems. But, in after-postmodern, maybe it is a liitle more important to look to the "local" problems, because we have the bias to forget a apparently "small" problem when we have a bigger...

Maybe we should ask to each community: "how the current crisis affect you ?" "What do you think that could be the solution for your local problem?"