Categories

Populism

I support democracy and freedom, but neither means much if we fail to understand what sustains them, or how easily they can be undermined while everyone continues waving the appropriate flags. My writing draws upon decades of independent study in philosophy, cybernetics and complex systems. I am interested in the deeper dynamics of human society: how language shapes belief, how power persists, how institutions reproduce their own contradictions, and how we become collectively entrained to ways of thinking and behaving that are not necessarily in our own interests. Populism is one expression of a much larger problem. These articles approach that problem from different directions, questioning not only the people and ideas that occupy our attention, but the conditions that put them there in the first place. The point is not to replace one political orthodoxy with another. It is to understand what we are doing, why we keep doing it, and whether we are capable of doing something else.