Holotopia: Ten themes

H O L O T O P I A    P R O T O T Y P E

Ten themes

The pairwise relationships between the five insights provide context for understanding and handling age-old challenges, in entirely new ways.

Black arrows

Governance

Cybernetics of Democracy

This is a play on words, because "cybernetics" means roughly "science of governance" or "science of governability". The basic point that cybernetics has in store for us is that to be viable (or "sustainable"; Wiener uses the technical keyword "homeostasis", which is elegant and more to the point), a system must have some requisite structure ("communication and control" or "feedback and control")—which our governance systems as a rule don't have. Various subtleties or 'spices' are added by placing this conversation in the context of the power structure insight (where the issue of systemic structure is linked with the issue of power) and the collective mind insight (where we see that our communication is profoundly dysfunctional—even though the new media were created to give us the kind of communication we need.

The springboard story here might be about Jørgen Randers and his observation, after 40 years of frontier experience, that "we need a paradigm shift in governance". The Wiener–Jantsch–Reagan thread from the The Paradigm Strategy poster will provide both the big picture and the nuances.

Yes, we really need new 'headlights'!

Culture

Ludens: A Brief History of Modernity

While we may be biologically equipped to evolve as the homo sapiens, we have in recent decades devolved to become the homo ludens—who instead of seeking knowledge to understand the world, shuns understanding and adapts by simply learning the rules of the 'game' and 'playing' competitively. By placing this conversation in the context of the collective mind insight (which tells us that we cannot really see through the complexities of our world, when we look at it 'in the light of a candle') and the socialized reality insight (which tells us that while renegade socialization has always been a core cultural issues, we have for interesting reasons surrendered our cultural defenses to the power structure), we provide both for simple understanding of the homo ludens phenomenon, and for all the colorful subtleties.

The Nietzsche–Ehrlich–Giddens thread provides a good entry point into this theme.

Science

Transdisciplinarity—Future Science