pitfalls & workarounds

Previous posts have hinted at shortcomings of organism-centricity as a general trait of human communications & perception. Two special cases of the problem, namely anthropocentricity where we think of our species collectively as the center of the universe, and self-centricity which may leave our individual actions un-informed to the perspective of even those closest to us, are already familiar themes.

One of the less-recognized consequences of organism-centricity in general is our pre-occupation with individuals for credit and blame, while collective processes (like the effects of evolving media, policy design, and self-assembly) remain largely invisible or at best treated anecdotally. Data-driven approaches to these collective-processes are starting to get attention (cf. Picketty in economics), although multi-layer approaches i.e. systematic consideration of processes on multiple-levels of organization at once are still in their infancy.

them's bad guys

One place in the world of electronic communications, where our evolutionarily-important tendencies toward xenophobia and organism-centricity converge, is around criminal actions by non-state and rogue-state actors. Recall that a media "spectacle focus" on someone makes them seem important (in fact gives them net-surprisal), a result in the face of which the single bit of information as to whether it's " important-good" or "important-bad" may be insignificant.

In this context we've long argued that organism-centric humor ("look at what they are doing now"), rather than organism-centric xenophobia ("they may be evil incarnate") is a much more powerful evolutionarily-available antidote to the problem. Hence sarcasm is naturally seen as a more important target than is the enemy who speaks of your power, given that the latter may be an asset rather than a liability.

The root problem is of course generally not organism-centric at all, but has a solution which lies in a multi-layer focus on community health. Where else might this insight come in handy?