Friday, September 15, 2006
Open Systems and Change
Sara Robinson, who has been recruited to write at Orcinus, is rapidly becoming my favourite futurist. Here is a bit of her must recent posting. Also we is the writer behind the Cracks in the Wall series of essays... if you haven't read them do so now.
Beyond accelerating technology and all its outfalls, we've got seismic geopolitical shifts, global warming, increasing resource scarcity (water is the big one nobody's talking about), and the necessary transition from hydrocarbons to other fuels. We've got a massive amount of work to do just to keep this blue ball alive and spinning; and the clock is ticking.
Unfortunately -- as we have so painfully learned from the way America's authoritarian leadership botched Iraq -- the inflexibility, irrationality, defensiveness, either/or dogmatism, and epic capacity for denial inherent in authoritarian systems often preclude them from even recognizing actual threats, let alone moving ahead to create clear and effective plans to deal with them. Any system that allows a few amoral opportunists do most of the thinking for the entire group is not only inherently brittle and unstable; it's also profoundly ill-equipped to respond effectively to the kinds of challenges we are going to be facing in the century ahead.
It's obvious that authoritarian leaders and followers, reflexively acting out of their fear of change, will not be the ones to solve our huge and looming problems. Even worse: they've already put us on notice that they're going to do whatever it takes to keep us from even acknowledging those problems, and doggedly work to obstruct our best efforts to do anything about them. There is too much at stake here to waste time on these people. We no longer have the time or the bandwidth to deal with their nonsense.
Ten thousand years of human history, 220 years of modern democracy, and the more recent discoveries of chaos theory have convinced most of the world-- pretty much beyond argument -- that groups and individuals operating within free, open societies are more innovative, prosperous, and creative. They are also more likely to seek and preserve peace, and immeasurably more flexible and adaptive in the face of serious political, economic, environmental, or other threats. Looking ahead, it's clear that if we are going to solve our looming global issues, promoting and preserving democratic societies is the critical precondition for success.
At the same time, we are coming to understand that these open social orders and democratic societies are also complex organic systems that take many generations to come into being, but can be very easily and thoughtlessly destroyed in the space of a few years. These fragile ecologies are global assets need to be protected for the sake of the future of the planet, no less than the rainforests and oceans.
Yet, when it comes to building the kind of open, democratic societies that are our best hope for a prosperous and peaceful future, the world's authoritarians can only manage reactions that range from vague suspicion to outright hostility. It's probably not an overstatement to say that the fate of the planet may well depend on our ability to reliably, intelligently, effectively identify and deal with these enemies of the future wherever they crop up -- and figure out how to create the conditions that will prevent them from arising in the first place.
