Dear Erika,
Finally I feel confident to respond to your article. (My research is at rest and so I move on !)
Last night, when I was reading about systemics/cybernetics, I thought of the little machine called a Roomba. This cleaning tool starts its journey with no idea of where it is going. It responds to the environment as it goes along. It is designed to be entirely responsive, not to impose itself but to alter its course depending on what it encounters. This is my impression (perhaps wrong) of systemics/cybernetics. This is an entirely dynamic way of relating to experience. I neither allow another to impose upon me, nor do I impose upon another, but we constantly go forward as time evolves and in a way change each other.
I don't know if I have entirely grasped the concepts you are presenting, but this is an interesting journey, as is always the case with you.
Have the most wonderful day. Hope to see more blogs from you in the future.
Your friend,
AG
Thank you, my friend.
From how I would describe Cybernetics and Systemics it's not epistemologically but more of an attitude. It's from a point of view and perspective that asks unusual questions by using the methods and formalities drawn from science and the origin of scientific approach: a quest.
Not industry but curiosity. Not politics but the topic of which it wants to speak indeed. Not from am academic point of view but from a learners point of view, which can be both the scholar and the student at the same time. The dynamic you speak of, yes, it's not imposing but more of an offer to see things differently and not universally or "unificationally". It's the difference(s) what unites living systems (humans, animals, plants, bacteria, etc.) not the idea of unity.
Systemics, Cybernetics and with it the construct of "Emergence" all include in them the probability of constructive elements; not only for the human realm but also for other forms of systems. A human being, as Heinz von Förster once beautifully pointed out, could be called a "human becoming" which in his view was a more appropriate term. Not in the sense of "better" but in the sense of irritating the receiver of a term he is not used to. An irritation (disturbance) is perceived - by its very difference - as useful not harmful.
Which, by its irritating quality makes one wonder about the perspectives one usually falls for. All the offerings of those who investigated Cybernetics, Systemics and the like to this day want to question whether bivalent logic could be left behind us, for in all faculties we can see that this logic leads to enmity and hostility. We get stuck in the eternal discussion of who is right and who wrong.
Getting disturbed by unused terms is actually a very interesting use of language. For what we have heard a million times we do not pay our care and attention to. If the term "human becoming" would establish itself in the course of time its meaning would again become superficial. So someone has to shake us up to point to it's depth.
I have numerous blogs prepared. Only this one made it into public so far :)
Sincerely,
yours.
Thank you for that discussion--
It seems to me that cybernetics/systemics is basically an acknowledgment of life's nature. Nothing is static. We are (everything is) constantly in a state of flux. We are influenced at every moment by a variety of factors, some perceived and some not perceived. Cybernetics I think encourages us to be aware of that complexity, of the interaction between seen and unseen influences, not to be trapped into a 'yes' 'no' perspective.
Looking forward to those other blogs....should be interesting :)