Stupidity is not the absence of intelligence. It is what remains when intelligence has no traction. At planetary scale, selection pressure favours whatever travels fastest through the channels of attention, capital, and command. Systems built to maximise replication discover that nuance is drag and understanding is latency. Thought requires time; stupidity is instantaneous. In a […]
Climate change resists treatment as a set of isolated variables. It is not reducible to emissions inventories, technological substitutions, or regional agreements. It is a whole system phenomenon, where every action is bound into the larger field, and every tension is a projection of the system itself. The key property is not in the fragments […]
Engaging whole and holistic systems is a little like trying to orchestrate and sustain the infinitely complex requisite variety of a universal remote control. 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯/𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘴: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘴𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘺) 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 – […]
I spend a lot of time considering abstract, complex and the many aspirationally “real” systems that exist between our ears and upon the surface of our planet. My acquired suspicion in this context is that neither “growth” nor “degrowth” represent sufficiently sophisticated concepts with which to effectively engage this vast and multidimensional problem we are […]
The climate crisis is pretty much beyond salvaging now. Serial failures of governance, collaboration, intellect and co.passion have led us to the brink. All of this alongside the fact that a number of imperialist dictators around the world never learnt the first less of power (that potential conflict is both more effective and cost efficient […]
Context: Oceans are facing a mass extinction event comparable to the ‘Great Dying’ The oceans are dying and yes, friends, this is the kind of vast and unremitting catastrophe that, unlike global wars invoked by the pathological ideological autocratic states that are just not clever enough to understand how stupid and self-persecutory their actions are, […]
Observing the President of COP26 stifling emotion as he apologised for the shortfalls of the limited agreement obtained at this critically important conference, I find myself reflecting on the words being variously wielded and warped on such a Global stage. There are two primary games of symbolic communication (i.e. language) at work in these large […]
The conspicuous absence of Global unity on climate change is horrifying and, notwithstanding that if human beings do anything particularly well in gestalt it is to perpetuate an endemic disagreement and adversarial dissonance that optimally and endlessly reproduces itself through and as us, you would think that the one thing we might at least all […]
Context: Working More Systemically Towards Sustainable Food Systems: A Co-Inquiry Process A critical issue at the heart of this issue is that we lack a comprehensive, resilient and adaptive systems ontology upon which to build the structural, organisational and sociotechnical or cognitive/intelligent and technological systems we actually require. It is one thing to identify a […]
The Amazon is burning and with it is going humanity’s hope of holding back the worst consequences of Global climate change.
The non-linear cognitive flexibility and diverse conceptual vocabulary required to describe the complex problem-space of environmental and ecological complexity is also the heuristic practise with which we might seek to successfully address it.
A core human psychological trait of small-scale tribal herding may work against the kind of global organisational unity and cooperation required to cultivate substantive industrial and economic change in the limited time still available to us.
Daedelus Kite 