On Wednesday 21 September, Greg gave a presentation to the IES in Brussels on the subject of “Social Complexity, Public Policy and Subsidiarity”.
This is Greg’s presentation – link. The theme running throughout his presentation was a quote by Einstien, who wrote “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.
If we contrast the ‘complexity’ of the globalised society around us with limitations of human cognition, our political economy looks over-centralised. This is notably true of the United Kingdom. If we look at the world through the lens of dynamic networks, and consider the works of people like Friedrich Hayek and Herbert Simon, who emphasised the inherent constraints of human knowledge, we can begin to appreciate the rationale for subsidiarity. Moreover, the work of Bernard Lietaer suggests that our machine-like political economy is designed for efficiency in an unchanging world rather than resilience in a world that is constantly evolving. Such approaches are brittle. We need to re-think our political economy so that it is more resilient, to cope with the continuous evolution of social systems.
Please contact Greg if you would like to discuss further – greg.fisher@synthesisips.net.