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Lecture with Stephen Purdey, University of Toronto
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Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation
February 2012
What is Global Governance?
No world government = no global governance
But, if governance = provision of public order
Then, other sources of governance:
international organizations, agencies, regimes, alliances, forums, networks, public-private partnerships, etc ...
What is Global Governance?
All forms of Global Governance are:
Partial and dissimilar
Surrogates for the absent world government
Attempts to fill the global governance deficit
Global Governance = A patchwork quilt of governance structures and systems
Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
2. Steering Function
Two Functions of Global Governance
1. Provision of Public Order
2. Steering Function
Where are we going?
Our only clues:
The universalized political commitment to economic growth
More is better
Destination: The Land of Plenty
Where are we going?
No roadmap
No realistic destination
No one at the wheel
Missing steering function = global governance deficit
Finding the answer in the noumenal domain
What is a Complex Adaptive System?
Dominant worldview: Newtonian mechanics
But Newton’s laws tell us nothing about:
Forests
The world economy
Stock markets
The internet
Earth’s climate
Characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems
Huge number of interactive parts
Constant energy input
Evolution
Threshold effects
Emergence
What is emergence?
The whole is more than the sum of its parts
Example: Human consciousness
Supervenience and evolution
Emergence and Global Governance
Human society on Earth is a Complex Adaptive System
Complex Adaptive Systems can spawn emergent phenomena
Do we have a collective consciousness, a ‘shared mind’?
Does a shared consciousness exist?
A clue: Waves of shared emotion
Evidence from sociology
Culture supervenes on individual behaviour
Stages of Evolution
1. Early childhood: Local awareness
2. Adolescence: excitement, gullibility, vulnerability
3. Adulthood: empathic care and responsibility
Where we are now: Adolescence
The panacea of economic growth
The illogic of perpetual growth
Simple, exciting ideas dominate our evolution, but we lack a reflexive capability
Two Questions
1. How can we influence the evolution of our shared ideational space?
2. Where do we want to go?
Answering these questions is the first step toward a new form of global governance
How can we influence the evolution of our shared ideational space?
1. Bottom-up:
Open-architecture politics and social media (participatory democracy)
Examples: Occupy Movement, Arab Spring, Russian uprising against Putin, #tellviceverything campaign
Mobilize constituencies (youth, boomers)
How can we influence the evolution of our shared ideational space?
2. Top-down
A New Reformation
A frontal attack on the “church of everlasting growth”
Shift from defence to offence
Shift the burden of proof
Stake a dogmatic claim to our own future
Where are we going?
An ecologically safe and just human society
Transition from adolescence to maturity
Transition from bigger to better
A stable platform
Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Political: From muddling through to open-architecture democracy and noumenal supervenience
Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Political: From muddling through to open-architecture democracy and noumenal supervenience
Normative: From utilitarianism and moral relativism to a deeper understanding of the ‘meaning of life’
Four Transitions Cognitive: From Newton to CAS
Political: From muddling through to open-architecture democracy and noumenal supervenience
Normative: From utilitarianism and moral relativism to a deeper understanding of the ‘meaning of life’
Economic: From the growth model to the SSE model
