chaotic world

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Universidad Central de Venezuela Venezuelan Central University Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo Development Studies Centre Chaos and Development Planning Professor Hercilio Castellano Bohórquez Master in Development Planning Doctor in Development Studies [email protected]

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Today, the whole world is chaotic: complex, unpredictable and conflictive. Cause - efect relationships and fundamental concepts are blurred. This work contains a resume of: theories for trying to understand this world, some guidelines for living inside it, and some methods for analizing it.

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Universidad Central de VenezuelaVenezuelan Central University

Centro de Estudios del DesarrolloDevelopment Studies Centre

Chaos and Development Planning

Professor Hercilio Castellano BohórquezMaster in Development PlanningDoctor in Development Studies

[email protected]

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THIS TALK OBJECTIVES

1. To spread the interest about the question: What can we do for living and for planning development in a chaotic world?

2. To meet conversational partners.

CONTENTS

1. Motivation.

2. The chaotic surroundings

3 Development as a chaotic subject.

4. Development cultural keys.

5. Tools for understanding complexity.

6. Strategies for living inside chaos.

7. A methodological proposal.

8. The Venezuelan case.

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The world is chaotic

In order to survive in chaos, social and

natural systems must be resilient.

Systemic Orientors

according to Bossel.

Resilience: Adaptation capacity.

Population desire and

capacity for changing.

Pressures upon

societies

Balance: Permanency, Adaptation, Mutation or

Rupture

Policies for increasing resilience and/or

modifying pressures.

Ideologies

What is this all about? What are we going to talk about? How can we live inside chaos?

We need theories for understanding chaos and guides for living inside it

Connectivity

Liberties and

capacities. Sen –

Nussbaum, Others

System elasticity

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MOTIVATIONMOTIVATION

The world in general and Venezuela are becoming more and more complex due to the growing number of participating variables of many kinds interacting much at a great velocity. Consequently:

• The meaning of fundamental concepts becomes blurred. • Cause – effect relations becomes also blurred.• Uncertainty grows faster.

After a certain critical point, this reality becomes chaotic:• Normality tends to disappears.• Disorder prevails upon order.• Conflicts multiply.• Governability is extremely difficult.• Social systems, depending on their resilience, will go back to their “normality”, migrate to a different kind of equilibrium or disappear in a more or less traumatic way.

Facing this reality, social research and development planning have not solid answers. What is more, they could become totally or partially useless soon.

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WARNING

Along the last 50 years, complexity and chaos mathematical theory developed strongly and influenced a lot technologic development. But the attempts for adapting this knowledge to social sciences has been clearly frustrating excepting a few basic concepts.

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GENERAL SCHEME FOR APROACHING CHAOS

Development: Capacity for improving life quality adapting constantly to environmental changes.

Theories for understanding chaosDevelopment theories

(Cultural keys) Systems and Networks Theories

Autopoiesis TheoryPanarchy and Succession Theory

Post Modernity TheoryCybernetic

Diffuse LogicMathematical Theories

Guidelines for living in chaosParadigm: Sustainable Development

Edgar Morin: Principles and Knowledges

Capra: Ecological ParadigmSenge: Systemic Thinking

Amartya Sen: LibertiesCapacities: Nussbaum, Social Capital, Bossel, Connectivity

The spiritual reborn

Methodology for structuring complexity:

Bossel's Systemic CapacitiesGodet´s Structural AnalysisSenge´s Systemic Thought

Morin and Senge Errors Typologies

Methodology for action Resilience Diagnosis

Pressures identificationPressures – Resilience

BalanceProspective Analysis

Proposals and Assessment

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THE CHAOTIC ENVIROMENT: Theories for understanding them.

Bertanlafy Systems Theory

Complexity and Chaos Theory: Montpellier Seminar, Ilya Prigogine, Maturana, Rene Thom.

• Systems emerging properties.• Autopoiesis: auto construction• Auto regulation• Fast normality disappearance • Cause – Effect disproportion• Cause – Effect relations blurriness.• Catastrophism: the system may change abruptly

• After a certain time, particular order phenomena spontaneously merge from disorder

Behavior patternsAttractors: variables toward which the rest tend to head.Fractals: Patterns and attractors repeat themselves everywhere, in every place.

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One historic academic discussion on complexity theory in the book:

“Complessita e vaghesa, fractali e logica fuzzy: nuovi sentiere per la ricerca sociale” (Complexity and vageness, fractals and difuse logic: new ways for social research)

Marco Chiuppesi Laboratorio de Investigación SocialDepartamento de Ciencias SocialesUniversidad de PisaGli e-Books del Laboratoio

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Two random samples of how studies in this field grow exponentially:

“Towards a More Resilient Society: Lessons from Economic Crises” Report of the Social Resilience Project October 2010 Coordinated by: Japan National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation (JANCPEC)

La Teoría de la Complejidad y el Caos en la Ciencia Regional (Complexity and Chaos Theory in Regional Science).Andrés E. Miguel , Julio C. Torres, Pedro Maldonado, Néstor Solís. Puebla State Government, Mexico.

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With complexity and chaos theory, the following subjects become crucial:

• The relation Order – Disorder. • The growing order coming from noise, disorder and chaos. • Systems capacities for producing themselves. • Systems capacities for regulating themselves. • The systems spontaneous organization. • A reaction against determinism.• The acceptance of instability.• The valuing of what is possible and the stochastic processes.• Emphasis on the unexpected, the new and the creative.

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Blurriness

Any adjective may be blurry as far as it may have different meanings in different social classes, regions or moments.

They only are unequivocal as far as we have previously agreed some kind of common definition.

Consequently, blurriness is one of the most important obstacles for social research and development planning.

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Factors diminishing blurriness in the world:

• The persistence of “Grand Stories” (World wide explanations of why things are as they are): religions, Marxism, Freudism).

• The adoption of common codes about good and evil by large human groups, inside religions and daily life, rewarding their acceptance with heaven and punishing their disobedience with hell.

• The cradling of Humanity in totally or partially small isolated villages, avoiding the acculturation processes.

• The universal technical standards inside all kind of rules and handbooks.

• The universal icons in mass technologies.

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Factors increasing blurriness in the world:

• The weakening of the Grand Stories

• The Humanity “uncradling”. • The concepts Good and Evil have become relative to the pursued purposes: “The objective justify the means”. The day I exist, you will

listen about me!!

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The Impacts of globalization according to Giddens:

Humans tend to be more and more equal through two universal mechanisms:

The symbolic tokens: all kind of universally accepted money.

The Expert Systems: Everything is done in the same way every where.

The growth of risks

The lost of Traditions

The Fundamentalism

The thirst for Democracy The bad news is that, for those without any well founded idea, everything looks like fundamentalism.

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Capra´s Ecological Perspective.

The world is like we perceive it.

No system can be understood without understanding its environment.

Values to be emphasized are: cooperation, interconnection, sustainability, social responsibility, spirituality, creativity, intuition, non linearity, association, life experience.

The Ecological Paradigm is oriented to processes.

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Governability variables

Related to processes of selection and replacement of

authorities.

Related to government

capacities for implementing

coherent policies.

Related to citizens respect to

government and government's

respect to rules. Voice and audit: Free expression and the

possibility of auditing government's acts.

Government's efficiency.

Law enforcement: how much and well is it

applied.

Political instability and violence: how much the

ruling social class is capable for keeping the power and how much does it use or allows

violence.

Regulatory charge: how much and well human activities are tied or not

to legal restrictions.

Corruption: how much is it practiced or

allowed.

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Guidelines for facing complex environments.

Edgar Morin

Three Principles:

1. Dialogic Principle: nothing can be explained without its contrary.

2. Recursive Principle: Cause and Effect.

3. Hologramatic Principle: Totality is more and is less than its parts sum.

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Morin´s Seven Knowledges

The Knowledge's blindness: Error and IllusionPerception errors.

Mental errors: objective vs subjective

Intellectual errors: our theories and ideologies defend themselves against the invasion by others.

Rationalization errors: determinism.

Paradigmatic errors.

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Nature Economy

Society Culture

Sustainable development

with minimum risk.

Generational Equity Gender Equity

Territorial Equity Social Equity

Internal Social Capital: competition, cooperation, participation, solidarity, following certain values, attitudes and behaviors.

External Social Capita: Institutions: organizations, norms, procedures based on certain values, attitudes and

behaviors.

Development planning: What to produce, what for, for whom ,how much.

Territorial Planning: where, how, with what.

Technology

2. Pertinent Knowledge: everything has to do with everything.

Transforming Levers: Shared systemic vision, collective learning and self government.

In order to achieve this goal, a social system must be a GOOD one: it must possess the Bossel's capacities.

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Morin's Seven Knowledges. Continuation

3. The Human Condition. We are:

Inside and out of Nature

Made by the same materials the whole world is made of.

Limited to a very small non important single Planet.

In a never ending process of change as animal specie.

The Human's Humanity

Biological – Cultural Entity between sapience and madness.

The interaction brain – mind – culture.The interaction reason – affection – impulse.The interaction individual – society – specie.Humanity is a single diverse specie.

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4. Earthly Identity

Heterogeneity: Rich and Poor. North and South.

Counter Currents:To the destruction of the PlanetTo the predominance of quantity upon qualityTo what is vulgar and just utilitarianTo the uniformed consumptionTo money and selfishness. To violence.

Tendencies:To move to more multi class contexts. To develop a sense of belonging to the Earth beyond ethnic and geographic frontiers.

.

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5. Facing uncertainties.

Any action comes from a decision and, once it starts, begins to convert into a bet: environment and chance are the leading forces.

6. Understanding

Misunderstanding among human beings is growing fast due to “NOISES” of many kinds.

7. Humanity's Ethic

Democracy and planetary citizenship are, essentially, the two great ethical – political objectives of Humanity today.

Just press the button!

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•Cuanto más se presiona, más

• Cure may be worse than illness.

• The fastest can be the slowest.

• Cause and effect are not necessarily close in time and space.

• Small changes may produce big results.

Facing the world. The laws of Senge´s Systemic Thought. • Today problems come from yesterday “solutions”.

• When you push the system, it might push you more.

• The system performance may improve before getting worse, due to palliative actions.

• The easy action takes to the same place if you follow the same road.

• The most efficient variable could be the less feasible one.

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Mistrust and fear grow exponentially

If you were not afraid, what would you do?

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We try to understand our bodies, minds and feelings

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Two popular shelters:

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Spirituality and feelings become popular!!!

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Possible research themes:

1. Theoric development

2. Methodological development

3. How to increase resilience in:

1. Individuals

2. Societies

3. Governments

4. Economy

5. Infrastructures

6. Nature