Cultural Complexity

Inquiry on the Expected Synergy between the: Quatro-Construct Reducing Trauma, Enhancing Empathy, Guiding Epigenetics, Governing Complexity and Triad Generosity - Creativity - Solidarity

by Andrés Ginestet

This document illustrates how complexity theory linked to the violence theory of Andrés Ginestet is being integrated into general research

Generosity is supposed to be a related deeper turning point. An equivalent type of statement may be referred to... more Generosity is supposed to be a related deeper turning point. An equivalent type of statement may be referred to solidarity. Homo Sapiens, as a species, are distinguished clearly from other species by their socio-cultural nature, drawing on a deep inner universe of cultural meanings and values which inform both individual and group behaviors. These meanings are created phenomenologically in the gestalt of consciousness, framed in the context of deep value-systems which shift as a result of psychological, biological (and existential) realities. Recent research has begun to uncover the complex waves and patterns associated with these shifts. They indicate a dynamically stable system which underpins human activity at the level of both the individual and the civilization. In this context, technology is a materialization of the culture of our civilization and its material nature as a cultural meaning needs exploration and understanding. On in this way can we begin to understand the trajectory (or multiple trajectories) of our current civilization, with all its new connectivities and disconnectivities mediated as they are through information and other technologies.

Complexity Definitions

by Andrés Ginestet

These definitions are included in a dynamic process and they change as the theory developed by Andrés Ginestet changes. Complexity is based on dynamics, and the response needs to follow the dynamics of complexity itself.

- Environmental complexity (C0) is any portion of organized information in any state that is required to fulfill... more - Environmental complexity (C0) is any portion of organized information in any state that is required to fulfill survival conditions for human complexity (C1+C2+C3)
- Absolute complexity (C1) is any defined portion of organized information in an inert state.
- Relative complexity (C2) is any dynamic communication (communicative exchange) of a defined portion of information.
- Contingent complexity (C3) is any dynamic multiverse possibility of any transformation of any absolute information that has (had) a relative quality to it.

Collapse in Early Mesopotamian States: What Happened and What Didn't

by Paul B. Hartzog

2007, January, Co-authored with Norman Yoffee, University of Michigan, Santa Fe Institute

In recent years some historians and archaeologists have become interested in social science approaches, such as are... more In recent years some historians and archaeologists have become interested in social science approaches, such as are considered at the Santa Fe Institute, to issues of cultural selection and individual choice (often called “agency”) and how social institutions are shaped by these choices and in turn shape the domain in which choices are made.

Nevertheless, I argue that my work on “collapse” in Mesopotamia may well be a relevant case study of culture change that is amenable to new kinds of theorizing that may be appropriate for this working group. The paper presents examples of macro-societal change, the nature of social interaction in highly stratified societies, and principles of stability and instability in hierarchies, and it discusses the choices that humans, of high status and low, made and which affected their lives in the most profound ways.

Fuzzy Set Theory (or Fuzzy Logic) to Represent the Messy Data of Complex Human (and other) Systems

by J. B. (Jack) Owens

Co-authored with Emery A. Coppola, Jr.

Historians and Human Geographers deal with human systems or subsystems of considerable complexity. This situation... more Historians and Human Geographers deal with human systems or subsystems of considerable complexity. This situation presents a dilemma to those who use computational technologies, which demand a high level of precision to organize, analyze, and visualize information: the more complex the system is, the greater the imprecision of the available data. Historians and geographers often feel that their imprecise, ambiguous, contradictory, messy, largely qualitative information does not “fit” well in the available software categories, and they have trouble discussing the results produced when they work within computational environments because category assignment seems so arbitrary. This dilemma appears dramatically with the use of Geographically-Integrated History (GIH) as a research strategy. In this paper, we introduce fuzzy set theory (or fuzzy logic) as a proven solution for dealing with imprecision in complex systems.

La publicidad como sistema complejo y su incidencia en una semiótica productiva

by Antonio Caro

Texto de la ponencia al VII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Internacional de Estudios Semióticos (IASS), Dresde, octubre de 1999.

Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self

by Brian Taylor

When one does philosophy, one dismantles strings of concepts into their respective parts to examine both the parts... more When one does philosophy, one dismantles strings of concepts into their respective parts to examine both the parts themselves and the relationships the parts have with each other. This semantic reduction provides us the best possible opportunities for finding truth. This was exactly the type of skill Brian Taylor needed to write his new book Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self, postpaper publishing, ISBN: 978-0-557-99909-5 http://stores.lulu.com/postpaper

The book began as a series of blogged essays in a response to the “Authenticity” movement presented by the like of Eckhart Tolle, Andrew Cohen and to a lesser extent, Dr. Phil. These men, and others, were coming to conclusions on the idea of authenticity that were, among other things, subjective fallacies, rife with interpretation and possibly counterproductive. On the other side of the coin we had skeptical guru Michael Shermer or perhaps Richard Dawkins making up one half of the “four horseman of the non-apocalypse.” These men, “scientists,” were and still are guilty of the same faults as their spiritual counterparts, interpretations rather than knowledge. Brian Taylor wanted to know, “Are there any actual answers in the arena of the self and its power?” As it turns out, reality is far stranger than ever before known and we actually know so much less than we think we do, if it can be said that we know anything authentically, at all.

After four years of research into our ideas about the self through the ages, the sciences of the self and what the self is, this book comes to the conclusion that the modern self, you and I today, are not only manipulated, but that manipulation is sought out, required and pre-programmed. This is a book about how we are all being intentionally hyper-manipulated without our knowledge, by whom and to what end.

To “anti-social engineer” is to counter this phenomenon of modernity through critical consciousness, dubbed “assignee's prerogative.” This self direction is aimed toward eudaemonia, which is an Aristotelian idea roughly meaning “happiness and promotion,” and it is further suggested that virtue is found in the mean between excess and deficiency, in these concerns. This sounds rather simple in such a paragraph form, rest assured, chasing the meanings and relationships of these ideas to any philosophical depth requires a maze of rabbit holes and someone to guide you through them. Taylor is nothing if not thorough in this regard.

Entertaining, personal, conversational, exact and profound, this book has a strange undercurrent, almost a charge running through it. Most clearly defined in it's most opinionated moments, there is a subtext, not a call to arms but to a social contract. Taylor says, throughout the book, that it is specifically battling social engineering, the command, hidden or not, “think this about that.” Yet, he too wants us to think a certain way, a centrist “golden mean,” a path of no extremes. Making an argument against his ideas is difficult, regardless of the talking points he uses. (These vary from possible moral objections we may hold for prostitution or murder, to social norms such as supporting the troops or the war on terror.) In his most controversial moments, when objectivity is at its thinnest, the author's existentialism shines through and he suggests it's better to not claim to know something than to suspect something incorrectly. The exception to this rule is when the social engineering is secret, malicious, degenerative or merely in error.

There are things that we can do anti-social engineer our hyper-manipulated selves and Taylor spells these tasks out clearly. Firstly, social engineering, be it delivered by a television commercial, ideology, civility, social construct, etc. is to be expected and recognized. Then Taylor presents us his Philosophy Generator which is described as “a dismantling of paradigm” and a way to determine if any particular social engineering is more persuasive or manipulative. If we are able to first know what it is we are deciding, then do our best possible thinking on the matter, which is what working through the Generator is for, we should be able to be confident in our decision, whatever it may be. Furthermore, given the standardization of awareness, contemplation and centrist philosophy, it should be expected that the same benefit experienced by individuals would transfer to societies.

The book ends with a chapter called “God wears a yellow hat.” It is concluded with a list of 24 interesting intentions, (23 actually, one of them is missing,) this list is not meant to be a complete index of the topics discussed, but rather an indication of the book's scope. The war on terror, the war on drugs, food transportation, consumerism, capitalism, communism, false flags, dehumanization via technology, God, 2012, patriotism, culture, globalization, human rights and religion. There is an entire chapter devoted to a reasonable discussion between the two sides divided over the conspiracies associated with September 11, 2001. This book discusses conspiracy as it dismantles thought, which is a strange dichotomy. Taylor seems to want to convince us that he is a reasonable man, with a reasonable method and if such a man can find a reasonable conspiracy, we can take the suggestion from the fringe to the mainstream. He may be right. However, this is not a conspiracy book, this is a book about thinking.

One comes away from the experience of reading this book enticed to do more and this is the goal. Anti-Social Engineering the Hyper-Manipulated Self is about taking responsibility and looking ahead, prudently. It doesn't want to take anything away from you, you're entitled to have your beliefs as the author has his. We need our beliefs and we even need social engineering, these things are part of a natural, healthy species. The dangers of our beliefs are represented by the lack of awareness of them and the inability to think critically about them. Taylor argues that, if in fact we are not thinking well about the things we believe, we are not living up to the reasonable purpose we have as human beings. This appreciation of hyper-reality and our place in it defines our authenticity and is the promise expressed by the 21st Century Enlightenment.

World language policy in the era of globalization: Diversity and intercommunication from the perspective of 'complexity'

by Albert Bastardas-Boada

Published in "Noves SL. Revista de sociolingüística" (Barcelona), 2002.

Política lingüística mundial a l'era de la globalització: diversitat i intercomunicació des de la perspectiva de la 'complexitat

by Albert Bastardas-Boada

Published in Noves SL. Revista de sociolingüística (Barcelona), 2002.

Understanding the impact of nonlinear dynamics on the processes of human systems

by J. B. (Jack) Owens

Submitted: 20 September 2010
Published: January 2011
This paper was written as a response to the U.S. National Science Foundation’s “SBE 2020: Future Research in the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences” program. All of the abstracts and most of the papers, including this one, are available for download. There is also a full explanation of the program and the way that the SBE Directorate hopes to shape future research in these fields.
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/index.cfm

The global economic collapse of the fall of 2008 underlined in a powerful way the degree to which nonlinear dynamics... more The global economic collapse of the fall of 2008 underlined in a powerful way the degree to which nonlinear dynamics influence processes in human systems. As a way of understanding these influences, this paper proposes Geographically-Integrated History (GIH) as an interdisciplinary research strategy. GIH asserts that (1) the understanding of historical processes requires an integration of the natural, social, and cultural environments on the basis of place, space, and time and (2) accomplishing this integration poses a challenge that can be met with modern computational tools, especially dynamic forms of geographic information systems and social network analysis, and visualization techniques. The paper explains how GIH demands the integration of a broad range of disciplinary approaches and provides opportunities for generating truly new, transformative scientific ideas.

Patterns in Time and the Tempo of Change: A North Atlantic Perspective on the Evolution of Complex Societies.

by Kevin P. Smith

In Continuity or Change: The Role of Analytical Scale in European Archaeology, edited by James Matthieu and Rachel Scott, pp. 83-99.  British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1261, 2004.

Between 1175 and 1250 AD, medieval Icelanders transformed their society from a network of decentralized simple... more Between 1175 and 1250 AD, medieval Icelanders transformed their society from a network of decentralized simple chiefdoms into a unified proto-state. Uniquely, a vast corpus of vernacular writing - much written by the chieftains themselves - describes actors' ideologies, histories, motivations and understandings of the processes involved. Archaeological data provide alternative perspectives, highlighting processes that extended over temporal scales beyond actors' abilities to observe or manage. How robust can our explanatory frameworks be if the changes we seek to explain occur too rapidly to be monitored by most archaeological methods? Do archaeological perspectives provide valuable or illusory insights on the processes involved?