Publisher's Synopsis
An open, flexible and multicultural society is the dream of many left liberal politicians and politically interested people. It is frequently presented as a rational vision, in contrast to allegedly "anxiety driven" views advocating clear boundaries and cultural homogeneity. But is the idea of an open society really reasonable? Is it able to work well by criteria usual in natural and engineering sciences?From the viewpoint of sciences concerned with the behaviour of complex systems, it is at least questionable. According to the systems theory, open and elastic systems without clear boundaries abound with serious problems. In the daily practice of every engineer, they are genuine nightmares. Through an unsupervised or unintentional mixture of heterogeneous components a system may degrade or even lose its functionality. This degradation can ultimately result in the catastrophic scenario of "heat death of the universe" known from the astrophysics, where every functional structure would die off. Are social systems an exception? Does this also apply to a mixture of different cultures?The consequences of these findings are serious: openness, flexibility and heterogeneity can lead to the loss of functionality of the civilisation. This can manifest itself in various ways: as a decreasing security, increasing stress level or even a collapse of the democracy and the constitutional state. Also further arguments in favour of open society such as "ageing society" or "skilled labour shortage" are spurious arguments that result from a wrong understanding of relevant relationships.These are the questions to be discussed in this book, to give impulses to the political discourse.
