Douglas Rushkoff: "The Ultimate Exit Strategy" | The Great Simplification
As I listen to this truly amazing conversation, it is really making me think deeply into what we might call “the deterministic structure of conventional causal ‘thinking’”.
I use deterministic thinking all of the time. AND I’m profoundly aware of the limitations of deterministic thinking. The world seems to me to be both ‘deterministic’ in some sense, and not so damned deterministic in other respects. And it’s not just that we have limited capacities, as humans, to model deterministic systems. The essentially philosophical problem is bigger, I think, than whether we can adequately model ostensibly deterministic systems. The ultimate problem we’re running up against isn’t the mere inadequacy of our capacity to model deterministic systems with completeness, but is to be partly found in our lack of truly thoroughgoing understanding of what determinism (and causation) amounts to, and what our conceptual limits might be in ‘modelling’ the same. In other words, I think that our map is not the territory, and we may need — therefore — to allow our maps to reflect this fact with regard to how the human mind and psyche influences world events. This, of course, includes both individual minds and minds in the larger, socially embedded context of cultures, societies, polities, etc. We’re social animals, after all — and cultural animals. Deterministic rationalism is a very recent development in a long history of cultural evolution — and may be far more ‘primitive’ than we’ve been led to believe. In other words, our sociology, anthropology, politics, etc., may be due for a rather profound revision, or even a paradigm shift. Who can say? Can you predict it?
Modern science, as a generality, has determinism as its core and base. If X then Y and Z. You know…, billiard balls. Clockwork. Machinery. The machine metaphor. The social sciences—along with ‘economics’ — whatever that is — basically rested itself upon this stuff, as did psychology, etc. But what about human agency? Is human agency a deterministic machine? Are we basically human robots which can be predicted and controlled? Is it “going meta” to ask? And could it be, maybe, that our way out of this rat race of obviously ridiculous human robots might be found precisely at such a ‘meta’ exploration of all of the systems which involve human agency?
I don’t know. Let’s find out!