the end of economic growth
DESCRIPTION
Lecture with Stephen Purdey, University of TorontoTRANSCRIPT
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Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation
February 2012
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What is Global Governance?
No world government = no global governance
But, if governance = provision of public order
Then, other sources of governance:
international organizations, agencies, regimes, alliances, forums, networks, public-private partnerships, etc ...
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What is Global Governance?
All forms of Global Governance are:
Partial and dissimilar
Surrogates for the absent world government
Attempts to fill the global governance deficit
Global Governance = A patchwork quilt of governance structures and systems
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Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
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Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
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Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
2. Steering Function
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Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
2. Steering Function
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Where are we going?
Our only clues:
The universalized political commitment to economic growth
More is better
Destination: The Land of Plenty
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Where are we going?
No roadmap
No realistic destination
No one at the wheel
Missing steering function = global governance deficit
Finding the answer in the noumenal domain
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What is a Complex Adaptive System?
Dominant worldview: Newtonian mechanics
But Newton’s laws tell us nothing about:
Forests
The world economy
Stock markets
The internet
Earth’s climate
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Characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems
Huge number of interactive parts
Constant energy input
Evolution
Threshold effects
Emergence
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What is emergence?
The whole is more than the sum of its parts
Example: Human consciousness
Supervenience and evolution
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Emergence and Global Governance
Human society on Earth is a Complex Adaptive System
Complex Adaptive Systems can spawn emergent phenomena
Do we have a collective consciousness, a ‘shared mind’?
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Does a shared consciousness exist?
A clue: Waves of shared emotion
Evidence from sociology
Culture supervenes on individual behaviour
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Stages of Evolution
1. Early childhood: Local awareness
2. Adolescence: excitement, gullibility, vulnerability
3. Adulthood: empathic care and responsibility
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Where we are now: Adolescence
The panacea of economic growth
The illogic of perpetual growth
Simple, exciting ideas dominate our evolution, but we lack a reflexive capability
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Two Questions
1. How can we influence the evolution of our shared ideational space?
2. Where do we want to go?
Answering these questions is the first step toward a new form of global governance
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How can we influence the evolution of our shared ideational space?
1. Bottom-up:
Open-architecture politics and social media (participatory democracy)
Examples: Occupy Movement, Arab Spring, Russian uprising against Putin, #tellviceverything campaign
Mobilize constituencies (youth, boomers)
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How can we influence the evolution of our shared ideational space?
2. Top-down
A New Reformation
A frontal attack on the “church of everlasting growth”
Shift from defence to offence
Shift the burden of proof
Stake a dogmatic claim to our own future
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Where are we going?
An ecologically safe and just human society
Transition from adolescence to maturity
Transition from bigger to better
A stable platform
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Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
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Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Political: From muddling through to open-architecture democracy and noumenal supervenience
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Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Political: From muddling through to open-architecture democracy and noumenal supervenience
Normative: From utilitarianism and moral relativism to a deeper understanding of the ‘meaning of life’
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Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Political: From muddling through to open-architecture democracy and noumenal supervenience
Normative: From utilitarianism and moral relativism to a deeper understanding of the ‘meaning of life’
Economic: From the growth model to the SSE model