Against Agents & Alienation

by Max Ramsahoye

The cover of Aldous Huxley's 1948 novel Ape & Essence

Within the intellectual space I orbit, I have noticed a tendency to characterise complex adaptive systems as agents. Amongst the most notable instances, the state is framed as a 'Leviathan' and 'Moloch', a demonic force emerging from negative-sum competition. Along similar lines, I see the recurrence of an organicistic and neomechanist ontology of civilisation as a whole as a form of 'superorganism' and 'superintelligence'. 

Whilst these mythopoetic representations and ecological-cybernetic models are useful cognitive aids for mere mortals - that help us understand such large-scale phenomena - there is a serious danger of mistaking the 'map for the territory' (the metaphor for reality), resurrecting a quasi-theological theory of causation and alienating systems that are the product of human action. 

In short and simple words, no such agents actually exist; they only appear as if they do. By using these mental models, we are hyperstitionally projecting them into existence and giving them ontological primacy over real living and acting humans. 

I call this speculative social ontology Hyper-Agential Hyper-Realism (a synthesis of Berardi's 'agential realism' Baullriard's 'hyperreality' and Morton's 'hyperobjects').