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Towards a Global Systems Steering Vision that is Simple Enough, But Not Too Simple: Symviability
Author(s) -
Boyd Gary,
Zeman Vladimir
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
systems research and behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 1092-7026
DOI - 10.1002/sres.1107
Subject(s) - vision , simple (philosophy) , environmental ethics , variety (cybernetics) , solidarity , transformative learning , epistemology , population , sociology , law and economics , political science , aesthetics , computer science , law , artificial intelligence , philosophy , politics , pedagogy , demography , anthropology
The question addressed is as follows: How can we have pleasant long‐term humane human survival on Earth, given our very potent globally impacting technologies, our huge population and our terrible propensity for solidarity to propagate our own ‘pure’ quasi‐tribal genetic and cultural identities through ruthlessly devastating competition with and suppression of others' genes and cultures? What has been tried and why it is not good enough: We have tried religious visions of peace, love, caritas and asceticism. These have indeed appealed to vast numbers of people but have left them almost defenceless against those whose religious beliefs demand the conversion or extermination of unbelievers. We have also tried bread and circuses—economic growth with fair shares for all—but the ‘trickle down’ of benefits does not happen automatically. The human race's guiding visions have been workable for small populations with primitive technics, but these visions are proving to be much too simple to enable us to collaboratively steer the complex webs of coupled systems that constitute life on Earth today. Yet there is hope thanks to our continually developing knowledge‐based empathy for one another. We propose a vision that is simple enough to evoke a worldwide concertation of efforts yet complex enough to ensure a requisite variety of ventures, strategies, tactics and tools. We propose a transformative educative value vision based on pragmatic philosophy and the systems sciences. We propose that this be implemented with discursive legitimation representing all stakeholders, carried out through a global communi‐control technology. The vision is as follows: Both ecological–cultural symbioses and intercultural symbioses, where each cultural actor appreciates the need to allow and support other cultural actors to live and flourish, providing that they control themselves to do likewise. Such ecolo‐co‐cultural worldwide symbiosis can be named SYMVIABILITY. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.