Glasgow Climate Change Assembly 2021

This much discussed and televised meeting will achieve nothing because it cannot and will not achieve anything. You will probably ask why not? The philosophical School of Athens set itself four primary goals. I will highlight the first one because it matters: 'find the first cause'.

Please think for a moment before you answer, and ask yourself why previous meetings have achieved virtually nothing? Then look around you and observe a society in disarray; conflicts, pollution, wars, injustice, abuse of power, refugees, destabilizing Corona politics, and many other so-called global risks that are reported every year by the World Economic Forum, but for which still no solutions have been found because the 'first cause' is denied and thus ignored. You guessed it? Or not yet? Fritjof Capra described this cause as a 'human crisis of perception'. A so-called perception error that makes man perceive reality incorrectly and that is that man has exalted himself as if he can dominate nature. He sees himself as outside or above nature but does not realise that he is part of it and inseparably connected to it and dependent on it. He invents all kinds of ways out without accepting the damage he causes to nature and thus to himself. So he has built a surreal reality outside truth. And because he does not want to admit that he is making a mistake, he thinks that he will still be proved right by force (war, conflict, tyranny and suffering). Our whole economy is built on this quicksand, but now that climate madness has also frightened those who cause it, the same mistakes will be made again by politicians and their friends, who will abuse power to dominate the temperature. This is impossible, because we are dealing with complexity. This implies that nature can never be controlled by man because complexity means that a perception of linear cause and effect cannot be used in a non-linear universe. There are just too many factors, causes and effects in a complex system like climate. Nature does not allow itself to be regulated. Throwing a thousand billion € at it will not help. What can help is to redesign all harmful systems such as industries, products and services. The damage to nature must stop, of course. This is possible, but then the first cause; greed and the financial system built on that basis must also be redesigned so that the destructiveness stops. We call this the transformation from a negative interdependent system (benefit for some, but at the expense of the rest) to a positive interdependent system (benefit for all). This is achievable because the science and information to do so is available. Niklas Luhmann argued that the basic idea of autopoiesis (self-making) also applies to non-biological, social systems such as products, industries, companies, which produce their own elements. He conceived of human-made organisations and society as polycentric collections of interacting social systems through communication - i.e. cognition - and distinguished three types of social systems: interaction through conversation, organisations and function systems of communication. Sustainability can be achieved by using positive (reinforcing) and negative (dampening or correcting) feedback information in a balanced order.

Communication and conversation, or the continuous gathering and sharing of (new, real-time) information, creates the basis for adaptation, maximum control and predictability. A continuous learning process is the basis for long-term continuity of all social systems. Value-driven business ethics and corporate social responsibility are feedback (information) that, together with all relevant information, should be used to maintain stability. Therefore, an organisation cannot afford to ignore it, because only the exchange of all appropriate information allows for autopoietic functioning and longevity. At this time, this information is obviously ignored and even suppressed but as long as that happens, we are heading for the destruction of us, humans, because nature can exist without us, but we cannot exist without nature.

The sharing of information confirms the Stakeholder Theory of Edward Freeman, whose systemic deliberation suggests that the value of companies cannot be created in isolation but in cooperation and communication with all share and stakeholders, including nature and the environment.

Gregory Bateson wrote: "We create the world we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and manipulate the reality we see to make it conform to our beliefs about what kind of world we live in. The man who believes that the resources of the world are infinite, for example, or that if something is good for you, the more of it the better, will not be able to see errors, because he will not look for evidence of them."

Bateson confirmed that all "living systems" depend on information feedback mechanisms and com putare, which means reflection through cognitive faculties.

 

People will have to learn to understand and, above all, accept how nature has allowed life to survive and evolve for millions of years; it does so by symbiosis - working together through cognition: gathering and using all relevant information. Charles Darwin wrote: "adaptations, if useful, are maintained." The climate problem is caused by humans doing exactly the opposite. So all we have to do is copy nature. Simple and easy!

 

Arend van Campen