Initially, I thought I would present you with a brief résumé of the state of the art in the sciences of complexity and neoliberal globalization, and then refer to the principal discoveries and tendencies that have occurred over the past ten years. But as I realized that any of these proposals would take too much time to describe, I have opted for formulating five of the principal and multiple social problems that are being tackled or confronted by research in the sciences of complexity and of self-regulated, adaptable and creative systems...  Take note that they are half of the proposals made by Gilbert in the World Congress of Mathematics in 1900... They are the following:

1º The first problem corresponds to the predominant ideological limitation that consists in analyzing ONE system and its context, that von Foerster appeared to have overcome with his second-order systems theory, but in reality it was not overcome because the second-order system only observed and, when necessary, corrected the behaviour of the first system, so that in reality it was part of the same system.

Overcoming the theological and metaphysical problem of THE ONE was and is the task of the military sciences or arts.  In these there is indeed a notable development in the use of the sciences of complexity with "two or more strategies", "formations", "organizations", real and virtual actors. Everything takes place among amalgams of conventional and non-conventional, warfare, with real and up-to-date formations and scenarios, as well as among financial, monetary and economic wars in general, and with many other political, psychological, cultural and social wars.

2º For the second problem I notice that, of the various threats to life on Earth, there is tendency to emphasize only global warming, through numerous world meetings of scientists and government officials, and with policies that only commit to resolving merely part of the problem at some time in the remote future... while many agreements have no obligatory character, etc.  Much less attention is given in "the media", governments and corporations to the Ozone Hole, the devastation of the soil and subsoil, and of the seas, rivers, lakes, snows, forests, the air quality in the cities, etc. And in this etcetera I include the exiled children, women, men and old people... who are left without cities and without a country.

Certainly the denouncements are not lacking, nor the videos on whole cities torn apart by bombing.  Less frequent are reports on the cruelty of the war-games and on their victims with the implanting of a culture of hatred; also, the explanations of the situation fail to bring to light that there is something more here than struggles between Islamists and Jews, or Islamists and Africans or against terrorists and bewitched states that are well-armed and trained; or that to a large extent, the wars involving nuclear powers and voracious corporations are designed to increase their zones of influence and domination.  All these are facts that are confirmed by their own declassified reports or those published in social networks of the whole world by their former collaborators.

3º All this is very objective, as is the fact that the dominant world system has as its principal “attractors” the increase in power and profit, in natural resources, provision of cheap labour, all conquered through acts of dispossession or pillage, as well as from macro-corruption and macro-repression combined.

The process of terrorist struggles is presented in the media as distinct from mere commercial competition through markets; the latter is explained as the result of efficiency and the efficacious nature of corporations and complexes, united to achieve maximum national and global development, and which, due to their works, are "naturally" beneficiaries of immense profit and wealth, that some show off as "property owners" or "managers" and others as "sovereigns"...who are nonetheless property owners.

Analyzed with the theories and techniques of intelligent systems, that are adaptable and creators of the dominant global system, they indicate having chosen, in the prisoner's dilemma, a path that is not only efficacious, efficient, intelligent and adaptable, but also self-destructive.

4º As is well known, intelligent systems belong to the broad field of systems of communication, information, organization, circulation and messages.

In the present case of organization of life and work, of politics, culture and society, as well as the economy, the neoliberal message has shown an immense efficiency and effectiveness for demonstrating the attractors of the system. Von Hayek on the one hand and Friedman with the Chicago boys on the other, designed a "complex" neoliberal message with impacts of the first, second, and "n" degrees. 

The ingenious and rigorous message of the neoliberal economists – supported by the Bilderberg group and other corporate power groups – produced a chain of derivations along with the expected answers and with growing effects of domination and accumulation as they moved from one link to another, while the "rational choice" was efficiently oriented to obtaining the values and interests of the self-regulated system.

The "collateral damage" that the neoliberal message generated was explained as a normal part of the phenomena of Nature, so dear to Hobbes and Darwin. The efficacious functioning of the message to pass from one restructuring to another – with progressive and even exponential advantages for the corporations and complexes – led to the results being singled out as the effect of "human freedom" that generates huge returns, and the negative results are explained as inevitable and even as proper in the best of all possible worlds. They also allowed for humanitarian and charitable actions the amount of which was returned by the treasury.

In these circumstances, the implosion of the socialist countries came to confirm the greatness of market freedom and to weaken or nullify the communist and socialist movements and parties and national liberation movements, that had nothing to offer either as an ideal or as a programme of real social and democratic advances.  The restoration of capitalism at the world level reinforced the enthusiasm of the globalizing organizations, their policies and technologies. The triumph was such that to propose socialism or the welfare State as an attractive project appears politically unnecessary after the destruction of the socialist camp, and technologically undesirable given the extraordinary developments in robotics, nano-technology and intelligent systems, as well as the networked structures that can substitute for organized workers.  Therefore, it not only fails to appeal to the majority of workers, but even when it does attract their attention, demonstrates their weakness compared to the corporations and the complexes, that do not hesitate to coopt and repress those who lead or attempt to organize them.

At the backdrop of this weakness are robotics, nano-technology and artificial intelligence, or the numerous "applications", with many other resources that save immense costs of production and services; they do pose the problem that robots cannot buy anything, but that can be got around, as can the fact that the immense majority of human beings suffer in their own bodies and in those of their loved-ones, the triumphs of "the rich and the powerful".

5º So I come to the fifth problem that is no less important, and that in this kind of knowledge of complex and intelligent systems, applied to the organization of life and work on Earth, corresponds to what is called "uncomfortable knowledge" or "forbidden knowledge", expressions that I use in English to be more precise and not to think in terms of the Spanish Inquisition of past centuries, nor in terms of the Gestapo or the KGB, but along the hidden lines of a democracy of elites without humanist or moral prospects, but that is "increasingly efficient and efficacious" and ever more self-destructive.

I hope that this congress will be part of a movement within the sciences of complexity and of self-regulating systems, that can contribute to organizing freedom, justice and democracy in the world and with them, work and life.

19/11/2015

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Pablo González Casanova is the former Rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

* Paper presented in “La Semana de Ciencias de la Complejidad del C3 (Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad)” (the C3 Week of Sciences of Complexity) of the UNAM.