ShamanismAsAResponseToInformationOverload

Context: TechnoShamanism

So one response to PostModernismAndInformationOverload is that we all become shamanic.

What it means to become a shaman, is to stop taking a DesignStance towards a complex phenomenon, and start to take an IntentionalStance towards it. To stop thinking that it is something to be analyzed and controlled through understanding its mechanism, and to start thinking of it as a free, individual agent that must be negotiated with / placated.

Economics is at the forefront of the shamanic response to complexity : from AdamSmith's InvisibleHand, to Keynes talking about AnimalSpirits of the market. To Hayek pointing out that mere human rationality can't solve the "EconomicCalculationProblem" that the market "solves". To today's RightWingDeathCult satirized in the LineMustGoUp memes.

But all complex phenomena afford shamanization. Countries and corporations are talked about as agents. Meme-complexes are agents. Deleuzian machines are agents.

When I put this to HilanBensusan he suggested that the PostHumanists and CthulhuCene theorists (the tradition of BrunoLatour's ActorNetworkTheory) might have other stances that afford shamanism towards and as a tactic for engaging overwhelming complexity, that are better than an "intentional stance" (which still smacks of Humanist notions of agency).

NetoCracy's break down into nexialists etc. might be yet another approach.

Transcluded from TheChadAnimist