Ahead of Change (eBook)

Contents 8
German preface for editionMALIK 10
Author’s preface 12
Part I – Delay 14
1.Law and Future 16
1.1 Law’s delay 16
1.2 A future unknown 17
1.3 The danger of delayed law 20
1.4 Two sources of change – people and technology 23
1.5 System failure 25
1.6 New perspectives 26
Part II – Stability 28
2. Managerial Cybernetics 30
2.1 Complex systems and variety 31
2.2 The Viable System Model 35
2.3 Conclusions 52
Part III – Anticipation 54
3. Crowd Psychology and Socionomics 56
3.1 Crowd Psychology 56
3.2 Socionomics – the science of social prediction 70
Part IV – Preparation 114
Literature 156
Notes 160

"3. Crowd Psychology and Socionomics (p. 55-56)

3.1 Crowd Psychology

3.1.1 The mirage of the dominance of human rationality

Man creates society. But he does so rationally – and even knowingly – only to a certain extent. Today we are taught to believe that what we see around us is the product of human will and reason. It is common doctrine that the achievements of civilization be it arts, the economy, our legal system or political institutions have been designed deliberately by man for man. In our current view there is still only very little room for accident and coincidence or for the concept of the evolution of social systems.

The origins of this notion which, following Friedrich von Hayek, I shall call constructivistic rationalism65, can be traced to the great French thinker René Descartes. To Descartes, reason meant the logical deduction from explicit premises, and he therefore accepted as true only those arguments, conclusions and propositions that had been reached in this way.66 Subsequently, Descartes’ followers applied his idea, which he himself had only used for philosophical considerations, to actions and, as a consequence, only such actions came to be accepted as rational that were based on demonstrable truth in the Cartesian sense.

This led to the erroneous conclusion that only actions that were true in this sense could be regarded as good and useful actions, and that everything else, everything »irrational «, could lead to any benefit for the human being. It was for this reason that tradition and history came to be thought of as unnecessary and were rejected as sources of human culture. Reason alone was supposed to enable the individual to assume responsibility for his future and lead to progress and prosperity.

This is not the place to explain in detail the tenets and consequences of the constructivistic approach. A brilliant treatise upon this can be found in Friedrich von Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty. I mention it here simply because it is important to see that this approach, which has been dominating our thinking for more than three hundred years, is wrong in that it falls short of what actually happens in our world. It is not just man’s ability of rational thinking that shapes society.

There are also other forces at work that are beyond anyone’s ability to control. These forces are far older than man and he is still subject to them. Without taking them into account, full comprehension of our world is not possible. The supporters of that other kind of rationalism, which is called critical rationalism and of which, for example, Sir Karl Popper and Hans Albert are two of the prominent representatives, have always been well aware of that.