TOWERS OF BABEL?

"HOW SYSTEMS SCIENCE ARCHITECTED THE POLYCRISIS"

Happy Friday NextD Journal Friends/Readers: Sometimes a journalistic enterprise can best contribute to a subject by pointing out perspective threads that seem to be missing. 

In this spirit we saw the recently published, essay entitled “The Oracles of Optimization: How Systems Science Architected the Polycrisis” by Clinton Alden serving to open a window into a side of the systems conversation fundamentally missing from the rather business-oriented platform of LinkedIn. 

For context; If we were to create a two sided continuum on the subject, logic would suggest that on one one side would be the non-stop, not to be questioned, broadcasting, promotional, systems thinking, marketing spin firehose of Joss Colchester (aka: Si Networks) and on the opposite side would be Clinton Alden. Proportionally speaking, what is visible everyday on LinkedIn is a preponderance of the former, vastly overhemling the latter.

Much of what Clinton has to say in his essay regarding the subject of systems can also be mapped directly to the current state of the complexity subject which has largely been taken off into the theoretical weeds, whether we all like it or not. 

Below are a few highlights from Alden’s essay from our NextD Journal perspective. His multiple references to “tongues of Babel” fit nicely with other conversations we have had regarding some anchor approaches adopting plain language use while others do not.

The “tongues of Babel” notion seems to be entanged in both the subjects of "systems" and "complexity".

HIGHLIGHTS: “The Babel Economy”:

“The hermits speak in tongues not because precision requires it, but because obscurity serves them.”

“Publish the research using language so technically dense that only specialists can parse it. “Autopoietic resilience,” “requisite variety,” “attractor basins,” “emergent complexity” — the tongues of Babel.”

“...framing debates in technical language that excluded affected populations from meaningful participation.”

“When affected communities try to articulate how systems harm them, they lack the “technical vocabulary” to participate in discussions about their own lives. When regulators attempt oversight, they’re told the systems are “too complex” for simplistic intervention. When journalists investigate, they’re handed white papers so dense that deadlines pass before comprehension arrives.”

“The most audacious move of all: Now, as the polycrisis they designed becomes undeniable, the systems science establishment positions itself as essential for survival. The same institutes, the same methodologies, the same corporate partnerships — now rebranded as “sustainability science,” “resilience consulting,” “systems transformation.”

“But the hermits’ monopoly is ending — not because better frameworks emerged from the academy (they didn’t), but because reality itself is invalidating their models.”

“Perhaps some future archaeologist, sifting through the remains of our civilization, will find the peer-reviewed literature and wonder: Did they not know? Did they not see?”

“The towers are burning. The hermits are still speaking in tongues. And somewhere, in the flooded ground floor, the rest of us are left to deal with what they built.”

Swimming journalistically in these subject waters for a lengthy period we do find that the scholarship around the subject of design futures can seem overly simplified, even provincial at times.

Clinton Alden’s essay is a good reminder that the picture is a little more complex than just adding systems thinking to design…:-) 

Happy to highly recommend Alden’s essay for our readers in this Design for Complexity Group. Big thanks to Clinton for this contribution to this slippery subject.

End.

Image Credit: Clinton Alden