Critical Cybernetics
As complexity grows and shows, so does our ambivalence about certainty. There is no resolution. Existence offers no easy answers or prepackaged solutions to its paradoxes. That is why we need philosophy and theory to think and act together.
The way to the new is controversial. I’m attempting the fusion of second order cybernetics with critical theory. The former examines the role of the observer in the observation of complex systems while the latter, based on the rich continental tradition, employs a negative dialectical approach to critique by working through immanent contradictions. This fusion holds the potential of integrating cognition, subjectivity and emergence with mediated material ways of grappling with ideology and society.
This potential also carries with it inherent contradictions. There is no finality, it’s a process. My aim is to come up with human futures without succumbing to dogmatic doxa. I think that human flourishing can be found in the fertile soil of complexity.
