Is that a good idea? Death is functional. Survival leads to growth leads to consumerism leads to suffering. [[Luc Hoebeke]] made a great keynote on that topic at this year's [[Metaphorum]] (conference on management cybernetics).
Here's the link to the video of the presentation part but it's was PechaKucha, 7min; the interesting things happened in the next 50 min of dialogue)
Slides outline
- Questioning viability?
Replacing fear of death by a purposeful life?
As individuals, communities and institutions
- Death is Equifinal <br />
S.Beer
Can avoiding the end be an end?
- Death is an essential contribution
to any evolution or development
in a living ecosystem
Biological evolution as metaphore
- Hence
Is survival the purpose of any living system?
- Or is survival only a temporary condition for life?
- Human systems are different
J. Vickers
“Conscious of their death”
- Is the purpose of a “human” system what it does
“with this consciousness”?
paraphrasing S. Beer <br />
- Survival as purpose of human systems creates pathological autopoiesis
Fear of death expressed in growth, exploitation, the other as enemy
- Human pathological systems focus mainly on means to avoid the unknown end:
extrapolation as argumentation to mobilize means in economical, political, ecological, health discourses
- Healthy human systems have a purpose transcending their own survival:
System 5 has a metasystemic purpose
being part of a whole
learning place and time of the system, it identifies, in the whole
- Risking consciously a mutation instead of changing the system?
Cybersyn as failed mutation and learning experience?
Taking the risk of dying peacefully?
As individuals, communities, institutions?