Categories
Alien Anthropology

Totalitarian Psychosis, Revisited

Context: ‘The Russians have started coming’: Finland considers tourist visa ban The curious thing about the autocratic regime reacting negatively to other nations taking rational actions against them (and their war) is that for all their sabre rattling and vigorous external finger-pointing, the difference and opposition they are creating is precisely the dissonance and turbulent […]

Categories
politics

Self-persecutory Pathology in Autocratic Imperialism

The curious thing about those who seek to leverage political capital from conflict is that this represents an atavistic ideological “business model” that in such a deeply interdependent world, all actions and aggressions return – amplified – to the actor. Even more so, in such an intricately entangled social, economic and technological context in which […]

Categories
Philosophy

Political Belief

Political systems, as much as the ideologies which endlessly resonate through them, are very much not as controlled or indicative of individual or collective self-determination as people might choose to believe. There is certainly choice, just as there is responsibility, but the overall complex dynamical system as information and energy-processing field that these artefacts  embody […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Spinning Democracy: Capitol Insurrection

Context: China, Russia, Iran Spin Capitol Insurrection A note on geopolitical spin: very much like quantum entangled pairs, it exists in a superposition of states – measurement along a particular axis produces the reality. Most instances of perceived weakness can as easily infer strength – it just depends upon which axes of measurement (and narrative) […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Was Capitalism Inevitable?

An interesting question is as to the inevitability of capitalism – or something very much like it – in any hyper-inflating socioeconomic (and by extension, geopolitical) referential space. That is to say: are there senses in which the natural bias towards autonomously self-optimising information and energy-processing systems – as manifest through and as human civilisation(s) […]

Categories
culture information technology

Information Age: Influence and Deception, the Omnipresence of Conflict

A game of information, influence and seeded (or targeted) turbulence is unlikely to be winnable (or won) by reproducing and reinforcing the structural, organisational components that merely reproduce and self-validate the axioms, grammars and rules of that game. These games are won by rewriting the rules; by extending an existing grammar and logical framework in […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

One Planet: a Smoke Signal in this Warming World

Every day, in the afternoon or early evening, for around 4 weeks a blanket of smoke has drifted across my city. I reflected on this here recently but tonight I found myself inadvertently caught up in the smoke as I was walking. My eyes are stinging, I have a sickening burnt wood taste in the […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

The Violence Paradox: is this Really a More Peaceful World?

The cost of order is always going to be a certain degree, presence or manifestation of disorder. The notion of a “more peaceful world” is one in which vast numbers of (relatively) small, regional conflicts proliferate, generalisations notwithstanding. There is even, perhaps, a sense in which such distributed conflict is inevitable as a displaced information […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Geopolitical Exasperation

Exasperation is a condition of annoyance, irritation and frustration. It is a word that is perhaps best used where feelings of futility or powerlessness are also significant contextual factors. My own persistent experience of exasperation has been in professional and intellectual contexts. The central focus of my angst and frustration is that of being unable […]

Categories
systems

Hong Kong: Umbrellas on the Go Game

The international society of nations, such as it is, is not very often seeking clever solutions to the problems that it itself is generating, across all countries and conflicts. Each instance of dissonance is a microcosm of a global property of discontinuity, a distributed planetary discord that is oblivious to nation or ideology and that we all are dealing with, wherever we are.

Categories
Alien Anthropology culture

Compared to Climate Change, Brexit is trivial

Compared to Climate Change, Brexit is small cheese.

Categories
technology

Utopia, Dystopia and Technological Forecasting

As the frequency of technological change accelerates, the amplitude and range of uncertainty is concurrently amplified.