Human civilization has always been, and is to this day, shaped by a series of compromises between culture and technology - both in the broadest sense possible.

This is not bad, we want it to happen. Because we’re utterly dependent not just on technology, but continued technological growth. And not just because we need better technical capabilities, but also because it forces culture to improve (printing press is a case in point).

The monster we’re fighting now is a parasite that in one sense has always been there - the cluster of centralization, optimization, quantification, formalization, standardization, as well as short-sighted risk analysis and top-down linear thinking that lends itself to all resource exploitation.

It’s not always bad, and indeed often necessary. But it is self-reinforcing, and can quickly get out of hand.

It came into our culture after 1871, when the Germans offered the world final proof of the superiority of their militarized model of society (by sweeping the french armies off the map in a matter of months), and every western power promptly copied their school system, as well as their bureaucratic logic.

The elimination of the gold standard then became a matter of time - an unavoidable victim in the modern project. A centralizing beast had been implanted into western civilization, which is kinda ironic since its success in the first place came of decentralization.

Another irony (or paradox) of the past 100 years is that while unity was sought in politics and statecraft, art and culture faced utter fragmentation and relativism. Dunno what’s going on there, to be honest.

Anyway, what is needed is to abandon the exploitation mode, and get back into exploration mode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitation_dilemma).

Civilization thrives when it has frontiers, opportunities and freedom - all fruits on the tree of technology.

So I say: Embrace technology, but repudiate the idea that we should control it.

We can’t, and shouldn’t try to.

It affects us as much as the other way around, and for most of human history, that has been a very good thing indeed.

(This is not a comment on Core vs. Knots, btw.)

I’m hopeful that complexity theory offers a way forward in social science. That would provide a major ipgrade in the way we speak about politics, economics, society, even ethics and relationships.

Once you understand the fundamental difference between simple, linear, designed systems, that can be tweaked and optimized, and complex adaptive systems, that can only be gently nudged at best, on the other, a lot of the scientific journal literature looks like geocentric astronomy.

And once you realize that these are two *worlds*, drawing a sharp line through all of reality, between that which can and cannot be quantified, optimized, formalized, standardized and generally tinkered with, solutions to old problems, large and small, seem obvious.

But perhaps the most amazing thing about complexity theory, is that it provides the most forceful arguments for freedom. From its many insights, spanning all the sciences from history and art to physics and economics, a common thread of emergent order and efficiency speaks to the importance of letting systems adapt.

And the irony is that those who constantly tell us that gender, ecosystems and sexuality is complex, do so to justify far more dangerous interventions into far more complex, and far more important systems, such as the market, civilization and the scientific enterprise.

Might as well start posting here right away. I mean who are we kidding… Europe’s totally gearing up to shut down X.