Dynamism is a new label for a new political philosophy, a philosophy that Virginia Postrel explains in her 1998 book, 'The Future and Its Enemies - The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress', has given us greater wealth, opportunity and choice than at any time in history.
According to Postrel many conservatives and social liberals (members of the right and left of politics) have much in common as they want to control the future while Dynamists believe in the capacity of human beings to improve their lives through trial and error, spontaneous adjustment, adaptation and evolution.
That’s some of what I wrote in Part 1, of ‘Why I am a Dynamist’. I thought some of the comments in the thread that followed were interesting with Gavin suggesting that “dynamic change could lead to chaos.”
It is worth remembering, the evolution of life on earth has been a dynamic process with no-one in control and yet it has not lead to chaos.
Dynamists see the same potential in human enterprise provided there is a reliable foundation on which to build complex, ever-adapting structures that incorporate local knowledge.
Postrel suggests that some of those structures will be elaborate new schemes of rules:
“But the rules will be voluntarily subscribed to, allowed to evolve, and able to incorporate detailed knowledge of particulars. … and they should not be confused with the fundamental rules that, in fact, allow such specific-purpose rules to develop.”
Postrel suggests that respect for local knowledge and rules can avoid the tragedy of the commons:
“Grazing land and fishing sites are classic examples of commons. Economic theory predicts that such common property will be overused, since everyone has an incentive to draw as much as possible from it rather than to conserve. But Elinor Ostrom [Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, 1990] finds many examples of cooperative institutions evolving to regulate commons use effectively, to everyone’s benefit … developed through trial-and-error learning, with the rules made by the same people who must abide them.”
Dynamist? I think you may have misspelled "Denialist"?
Sounds to me like Postrel is one of those people who deny the universe was made in seven days and God meant it to run in a steady-state situation with culture and technology remaining at the level it initially attained at ca. 5,000 BC.
Deniers and skeptics. This is a bad state of affairs.
Has anyone noticed there's a world-wide shortage of caves to live in? People are living in apartments and things, that's how bad it is.
Jen,a few years ago in The Bulletin there was a cartoon. Two guys in hell on the rock pile with the devil standing over them, pitchfork at the ready.So one fellow says to the other "Imagine there I was... an atheist" It made it to the fridge door.
Please find a unique perspective on where our Western so called dynamism has INEVITABLY brought the entire world---"dynamism" is really just a euphemism for the drive to total power and control or objectification at the root of the entire western "cultural" project.
A project that has totally objectified everything including human beings. The so called "culture" that Randian "objectivists" celebrate as the most "advanced" form of human culture, thus far.
1. http://www.ispeace723.org/realityhumanity2.html
2. http://www.ispeace723.org/youthepeople4.html
Jen, back a bit you claimed we got here by 'adaptation and natural selection - oh and competition - all based on particular rules'.
The sociobiologists would have a bone to pick with you and your selfish free marketeers. Competition is necessary but not sufficient.'Selfishness beats altruism within groups; altruistic groups beat selfish groups.' ( every thing else is commentary!)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5857/1737
http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/22590/chapter02-climate-scenarios.pdf
In response to Sid and John:
The most reliable information on how the conditions surrounding the Great Barrier Reef have changed comes from the work of Dr Janice Lough at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. You can find a very nice summary of this work in chapter 2 of the Vulnerability Assessment produced by Great Barrier Reef experts last year (http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/22590/chapter02-climate-scenarios.pdf). There are a number of other references that you might want to read by digging deeper. Though these changes to water temperature look small, they are large relative to the rate of change over the past 420,000 years. An analysis of this can be found in Table 1 of a recent science article which we compiled with 16 other experts (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5857/1737).
Jen - "God stuff" - tongue in cheek - in the vein, but not quite, of Einstein or Hawking - "Does God play dice with the Universe".
Einstein said "God does not play dice" whereas Hawking said "God does definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen".
Not sure if these guys were/are dynamists ?
http://www.hawking.org.uk/pdf/dice.pdf
Graham,
Perhaps the only way to understand where I am coming from (rightly or wrongly) is by way of an environmental example - a trajedy of the common's type example. And to consider how a dynamist versus a classic liberal might deal with the problem. I might think of a good example for another post on this issue (Part 3).
PS. you lost me on the God stuff. remember I'm an atheist and I don't see evolution as having been necessarily 'good' but it has tended to the more complex.