SocioCybernetics

Sociocybernetics is an independent chapter of science in sociology based upon the General Systems Theory and cybernetics. One of the tasks of sociocybernetics is to map, measure, harness, and find ways of intervening in the parallel network of social forces that influence human behavior. Sociocyberneticists' task is to understand the guidance and control mechanisms that govern the operation of society (and the behavior of individuals more generally) in practice and then to devise better ways of harnessing and intervening in them – that is to say to devise more effective ways to operate these mechanisms, or to modify them according to the opinions of the cyberneticist. It claims to give a deep understanding of the General Theory of Evolution. The outlook that Sociocybernetics uses when analyzing any living system lies in a Basic Law of SocioCybernetics. It says: All living systems go through five levels of interrelations (social contracts) of its subsystems:

1. Aggression: survive or die
2. Bureaucracy: follow the norms and rules
3. Competition: my gain is your loss
4. Decision: disclosing individual feelings, intentions
5. Empathy: cooperation in one unified interest

Going through these five phases of relationship theoretically gives the framework for the sociocybernetic study of any evolutionary system. It serves as an "equation for life."

Recent research from the Santa Fe Institute presents the idea that social systems like cities don't behave like organisms as has been proposed by some in sociocybernetics. Perhaps the most basic challenges faced by sociocyberneticians are those that stem from Bookchin's work "The Ecology of Freedom and the emergence and decline of Hierarchy". Bookchin's argument is that what have often been described as "primitive" societies are best thought of as "organic" societies. People within them have differentiated roles as do the cells of a body, but this differentiation is largely reversible. Coordination between the cells is not organized by some "center" but through a network of feedback (cybernetic) processes. Particularly important are organisms' ability to evolve as well as reproduce. But simply saying that the process is "autopoietic" is to evade the task of identifying the multiple and mutually reinforcing cybernetic processes that are at work.

Yet Bookchin's claim, which appears to be thoroughly documented, is that the evolution of organic societies into our current, vastly destructive, hierarchical societies - over millennia - has also taken place through some ... (almost cancerous?) ... unstoppable autopoietic process. If we are to halt this process ... which is about to destroy us as a species, probably carrying the planet as we know it with us, it will be necessary to map and find ways of intervening in the sociocybernetic processes involved. No centralised system-wide, command-and-control oriented, change will suffice. Systems intervention requires complex systems-oriented intervention targeted at nodes in the system, not system-wide change based on "common sense".

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FOR FURTHER READING

• "What is SocioCybernetics"
• Felix Geyer and Johannes van der Zouwen (1992). "Sociocybernetics"
• Felix Geyer (1994). "The Challenge of Sociocybernetics"
• Felix Geyer (2001). "Sociocybernetics"
• Felix Geyer and J van der Zouwen "NORBERT WIENER AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES"