I find it quite
fascinating watching the current migrant crisis in Europe and
Sweden's response to it. Combine that with the actions of the
previous Alliance government in Sweden and it appears to me that both
the left and right in Swedish politics suffer from a collective form
of “insanity”. Although I don't think this “insanity” has its
limits within Sweden. On the right we have neo-liberalism; a “fnck
your buddy” ideology that has demonstrate an ability to create
short term economical miracles and long term nightmares. Not
surprising as it has its foundations in a distorted view and
erroneous application of science, especially Game Theory and Chaos Theory.
The left, however, has its own kind of collective insanity; often
referred to a the “regressive left”; the “I hate myself”
ideology. With its political correctness, cultural relativism,
identity politics, and socially acceptable anti-Semitism, it has a
very detached view of reality "where facts are just so untrue" and
feelings rule.
Modern Educayshun (the regressive left )
The Information
Flood
We live in a sea of
information. Our five sensors constantly feed data to our brains
giving us not just information about the physical world but also
about social interactions and, as a result of modern technology,
events the other side of the planet, on other planets, other star
systems and even other parts of the Universe far back in time. We
don't need all this information and our brain acts as if it employs a
filter that filters out anything that we find not relevant. And how
do we determine if the information has any relevance to us? Well, the
filter acts like it models aspects of the world around us. If the
information agrees with that world view it passes through. This
allows us to concentrate on what we need and prevents us from drowning
in the tsunami of information that greets us.
I have seen people
suggesting that society has become more “dumbed down” and point to
the decline of education and the rise of certain politicians. But on
the other side, we also see a rise in IQ suggesting we have become
more intelligent. Perhaps, we haven’t become “dumbed down” but
we have less and less of an idea of what happens in the World because
we have so much information that we can only utilise an ever
decreasing percentage of that information? This filtering helps us to
protect ourselves from information overload.
However, it does
have a disadvantage; what happens when our world model deviates from
reality too far? Well, our world model no longer agrees with reality
therefore, it will filter out any information that will show us that
we have deviated from reality. We become more and more deluded. As we
deviate further from reality we can become stupid. Stupid in the
technical sense of an adaptive/maladaptive behavioural pattern that
can results in harm to ourselves or others. Pain becomes the method
that gives us a way to get out of this. In the past nature had a way to correct this. If you believed a saber tooth tiger was a cute cuddly and misunderstood animal you probably didn't get to breed. But today, especially in Sweden, life is too easy.
As reality breaks through it
become distressing to us. A situation referred to as cognitive
dissonance. Although it can sometimes work the other way. People who
have suffered mental torment dive deeper into the delusions to escape
pain.
The Reality of
Reality
We live in a real
physical, complex, multi-agent, dynamic and chaotic society. The
neo-liberals partly understand that but the regressive left appears
to have absolutely no idea of it. However, the neo-liberals rely on
models that scientist have demonstrated false, in some cases as far
back as the 1950s. Neo-liberals understand the multi-agent aspect of
society but only model such agents as selfish agents who seek
to maximise their own utility. A behavioural pattern that only
economists and psychopaths utilise. Real people display far more
complex behaviour that doesn't fit the model. Neo-liberals correctly
assume that an economic system exhibit the characteristics of a
self-organising system but make an error in assuming that, left
without government interference, the system will self-organise to an
optimal state. However, the phase space of a socio-economic system
has many optimal stable states, not all of which benefit people. When
it all goes wrong, like in the 2008 financial crisis, the "do more of
what caused the problem" solution becomes the standard neo-liberal solution to
the crisis.
The neo-liberals
fail to understand other aspects of reality such as the physical nature
of resources. We cannot sustain infinite exponential growth with
finite resources.
The government forms
part of the system and can act to limit the stable states of the
system and the paths through phase space that the system can take
such as with functional socialism once employed in Sweden. For
example, left to its own the system will result in a state where a
small number of agents in the system starts to horde and ever
increasing amount of resources; the rich get richer. This produces a
state not beneficial to the majority and can cause the system to
collapse. Governments can act, through taxes, to limit this aspect of
the system making it more equal and more beneficial to all, keeping
it stable.
We can see the real
physical, complex, multi-agent, dynamic and chaotic nature of our
socio-economic system if we look at the migrant crisis in Sweden.
Sweden once formed an example of a relatively cultural homogeneous
society. Apart from the Lapps (who don't differ too significantly
from Swedes regarding values), the Swedes acted as agents that basically followed the
same rule set with only minor variations. The agents reached an
evolutionary stable state which contributed to the rise of Sweden
from a third world like nation to a modern wealthy post-industrial
nation. The generous Swedish immigration policy has, however, brought
in new agents into the system using a different rule set. What we
should see should exemplify a change in the dynamics of the system
depending on the flow of immigrants coming into Sweden, like looking
at a Lorenz Water wheel. A Lorenz Water wheel has a set of buckets
attached to a wheel. The buckets have holes in them. As the water
flows in it also flows out, though the holes. If the flow in is too
slow the water will flow out too fast for the wheel to turn. However,
if the flow becomes just right and balances with the flow out then
the wheel turns and behaves as a normal water wheel. However, the
really interesting behaviour occurs when the flow in becomes greater
than the flow out. The wheel behaves chaotically; first spinning one direction then the other in an unpredictable pattern.
A Lorenz Water Wheel
also forms an example of a real physical, complex, multi-agent,
dynamic and chaotic society. Much simpler than our socio-economic
system but our socio-economic can display the same sort of chaotic
behaviour to inputs that flow too fast. A flow of people from one
group to another has its advantages; new ideas and new blood. But if
it becomes too excessive it can destabilise the society. A society,
however, has many more complexities than a water wheel and it is not
just the amount of immigration but also the type of immigration. Not
all cultures follow the same rule set but we can often find overlaps
or similarities. The greater the difference in rule sets the lower
the threshold before chaotic behaviour could emerge. When you get
Swedish politicians say they want 30 million immigrates (when we have
7.5 million ethnic Swedes as it is) and they think people in Sweden will
still speak Swedish as the main language. Or when you get politicians
saying Sweden has no limits to the amount of immigrates it can take.
Or saying Sweden doesn't belong to the Swedes. Or saying they will
make a temporary adjustment to reality and the majority of Swedes go
along with this, you get an indication of how detached from reality
Swedish politicians and people have become.
A Lorenz Water Wheel
Now enters
Ultrasociety. Ultrasociety, a book by Peter Turchin, looks at the
rise in cooperation between humans. It takes an approach called
cliodynamics which aims to present the evolutionary logic behind the
development of our species through history; why do we cooperate?
Basically, we evolved as we did to form such complex, cooperative,
peaceful societies through war; as if to become fully human we need
struggle, pain, and suffering. As if we need to be purified through
fire. Pain and suffering have a role to play; they can help bring us
back to reality. I have a friend who describes Sweden as damaged by
200 years of peace and the evidence would suggest he got it right.
Perhaps that accounts for what has gone wrong in Sweden? Why we see
the decline in education and in social systems? Why the state became
so strained last year to the point that people were talking about a
collapse (although I think we were far from a collapse)?
On to the Future
But what is the
relevance of all this to a future, moneyless, sustainable society? I
often see a tendency within the futurist community to dream of
societies without pain, suffering or war; beyond politics, poverty
and war as Jacque Fresco puts it. Some transhumanists go so far as to
want to re-engineer nature so that animals won't cause suffering to
other animals; the lion will lay down with the sheep. Human behaviour
emerges from both genetics and environment, each feeding back on the
other. We evolved in a world of violence and suffering. But if we do
that, if we create a society that has no war, no suffering of any
kind, if we take away the pain, could we create for ourselves an
insane nightmare?
Insanity reigns
supreme!
Ultrasociety
