Precarious Global Condition

State of the world

There’s no point reading on if you are not aware of, concerned, and active in dealing with the global condition. Not much needs to be said here that you don’t know: environmental degradation, political instability, suspect economic. Whatever we are aware of, however we describe it, fundamentally the effect of humanity is visible in environmental degradation. It is widely acknowledged we need to organise ourselves in new ways, but our current political and economic structures are part of the problem. We need fundamental change.

The global condition is considered to be a ‘wicked’ level problem (Churchman 1967), combining complex and complicated (Anderson 2014), with pervasive and changeable conditions. It’s worse than that, it’s a mess of messes (Ackoff 1979). And it is our mess. The approach taken here is to explore, provide and practice alternative fundamental methods across multiple systems, which bring us back to a more human relationality. 

Systemic Change

Seven system change, to start with…

It is not enough to come up with a solution in one sub-system; all systems are interdependent and thus whatever system we work in must integrate with other systems. Although challenging in scope, each system (meta-method) is simple enough to adopt: 

• Economics (Sqale) – Treating money as a vector not a scalar creates a ‘gift economic’ and an alternative social accountability. 3000 years of disruption.
• Entertainment (Urb) – Psychological fantasy fiction based on the garsu crystal which amplifies mental projections. Virtual sandbox for our global condition.
• Education (ABC State) – For students to self-organise and liberate their teacher from institutional disciplinarian. Self-discipline through social-responsibility.
• Business (Action Cycle) – Non-bounded, network practices to resolve problems which current hierarchies can not reach. The human equivalence of murmuration.
• Academia (Reflexive Reading) – Imaginative hermeneutic moment to transform our dense reflexive environments (ie books and articles). Relational basis for social science.
• Mathematics (XQ) – Not mathematics as applied to physical objects (science), nor the logic of notational transformation (pure maths). Psycho-social mathematics.
• Religion (Descartes-Fox) – A dynamic structure of individual psyche which in parallel with others intensifies our ‘spiritual’ experience. Zeroing the social distance between us.

Current Status

What I’m doing now

Just like you, somewhere between surviving and thriving. Brief bio:

• Social Anthropology – Accepted to study Pure Mathematics at Oxford but decided we didn’t need another mathematician in the world. The problem was social, and Social Anthropology provided the widest base to escape from western psychological, philosophical and institutional biases.
• Maths PGCE – I took teaching mathematics as a kind of extended, immersed fieldwork and explored self-organised social learning and metacognition. Amazing results. However, the hierarchical institution of adult organisation inhibited the learning of my students growing beyond our classroom.
• Ecological Economics – Students provided an alternative way of looking at mathematics (playfully called XQ), eg seeing economics as an embodied mathematical experiment running for 3000 years. Changing the axioms of money (method of exchange to method of sharing) co-emerged with mathematical shift (from scalar to vector) and social contract (from exchange to giving economic). Sqale is the online tool.
• Information Studies – Although accepted to study a PhD to test the validity of ABC State in schools, COVID-19 have meant a shift towards understanding the practice-theory divide. As always, the problem is a lack of relationality. I’m working on producing a mathematical description to bypass the endless complexity of representational, categorical language. 

I have been strongly influenced by non-representational, social practices (eg tango, tai-chi, GO) in order to avoid the central problem described as linguistic fallacy (a case of epistemological fallacy, Bhaskar). The practices of Buddhism & Quakers (meditation & contemplation) have been influential, but again there is a tendency to situate change in the individual. I have spent a lifetime exploring and stabilising the dynamically unstable moment of relationality. If it is to be found anywhere, the solution is between us.