KSR on ideology, science & philosophy

"Ideology, n. An imaginary relationship to a real situation. In common usage, what the other person has, especially when systematically distorting the facts. But it seems to us that an ideology is a necessary feature of cognition, and if anyone were to lack one, which we doubt, they would be badly disabled. There is a real situation, that can't be denied, but it is too big for any individual to know in full, and so we must create our understanding by way of an act of the imagination. So we all have an ideology, and this is a good thing. So much information pours into the mind, ranging from sensory experience to discursive and mediated inputs of all kinds, that some kind of personal organizing system is necessary to make sense of things in ways that allow one to decide and to act. Worldview, philosophy, religion, these are all synonyms for ideology as defined above; and so is science, although it's the different one, the special one, by way of its perpetual cross-checking with reality tests of all kinds, and its continuous sharpening of focus. That surely makes science central to a most interesting project, which is to invent, improve, and put to use an ideology that explains in a coherent and useful way as much of the blooming buzzing inrush of the world as possible. What one would hope for in an ideology is clarity and explanatory breadth, and power. We leave the proof of this as an exercise for the reader."

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"We have to create and employ an ideology to be able to function; and we do that work by way of thinking that is prone to any number of systemic and one might even say factual errors. We have never been rational. Maybe science itself is the attempt to be rational. Maybe philosophy too. And of course philosophy is very often proving we can’t think to the bottom of things, can’t get logic to work as a closed system, and so on. And remember also that in all of this discussion so far, we are referring to the normal mind, the sane mind. What happens when, starting as we do from such a shaky original position, sanity is lost, we defer to another discussion. Enough now to say just this: it can get very bad."

"The Ministry for the Future: A Novel" by Kim Stanley Robinson,
88

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On money as social trust-

"And when definitions of value shifted from talking about interest rates to talking about social trust— when finance and theories of money fell through a trapdoor in daily normality, down into the free fall of philosophy’s bottomless pit— when people began to wonder why money worked at all— wonder why some people were as gods walking this Earth while other people couldn’t find a place to lay their head at night— it turned out there was no very good answer. Certainly no answer at all when it came to investment strategies you could count on. Money was made of social trust. Which meant, in this spasmophilic moment, with everything changing and the ground falling under one’s feet in immense tectonic jolts, that money itself was therefore in limbo. And that was scary. Vast amounts of paper turned to vapor. The banks of the developed Western world were too connected to fail; if one or two of the big ones went down, the rest would shrink in on themselves and wait for the state to reestablish trust before either lending money or even paying what they owed. Why pay a creditor that might be non-existent next week? Best wait and see if they survived to press that debt in court."

377

On technology-

"Doesn’t it follow that technology has been the driving force in history? We are the driving force in history. We make do, and on it goes. All right then. Enough of philosophy, I’m afraid I’m getting confused. Yes. Let’s move on to some specific examples. Have you heard of those drones developed to shoot mangrove seeds into the mud flats, thus seeding hundreds of thousands of new trees in terrain difficult of human access? Very nice, but that same drone could shoot a dart through your head as you walk out your door. So it illustrates my point, if you care to think about it. Our tools are expressions of our intentions, so what we want to do is the key driver. I’ll save that for our next foray into philosophy, which we will certainly schedule soon. Meanwhile, what do you think of these new bioengineered amoebae that are now grown in vats to form our fuel, while also drawing carbon out of the atmosphere? Kind of a next-stage ethanol? Useful."

— The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson
https://a.co/55QB5gB

McKibben review in NYRB...

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

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