Polysingularity is a concept that I developed in 2011 to describe a certain quality of perception and action that felt intuitively natural to me. As I started unfolding the threads of this idea, it materialized into a practice and a methodology, which I have since been using both in my life and in my work.
At its core, polysingularity is a state where multiple solutions are possible but only one is actualized at every moment of time. “This can be like this, but it can also be like that and like that. However, I choose to insist on this being like this for this moment in time. Then, it might change, but for now, it’s going to stay as it is.”
Aesthetically, polysingularity is about finding beauty in multiplicity and in patterns that emerge from repetition. It is also about finding beauty in morphing patterns and the combination of differences that emerge as a result.
One can say that polysingularity is a particular way of perceiving and enacting multiplicity where you acknowledge the existence of multiple perspectives and affordances but choose to enact only one of them for a certain period in time.
It has a close relation to the concept of metastability in physics. In a metastable state, there are multiple points of equilibrium. Some of them are stable, and some of them are not. A system is characterized by a specific trajectory through those temporary equilibriums, its sum total is a combination of strange attractors. Interestingly, life is metastable, resilient social networks are metastable, most beautiful ideas are also metastable.
Polysingularity can also be a response both to liquid modernity and to singularity.
Unlike liquid modernity, which is characterized by symptomatic inability or unwillingness to take any position, polysingularity insists on taking a position even while knowing that it’s not the only option possible. This position may be defined by belief, morals, intuition, or any other framework (hopefully, not purely based on convenience).
Unlike singularity, polysingularity does not project into a singular point in the future. Multiple futures are possible, so it proposes to hedge for and to bet on a diverse range of realities. It does not buy into the savior apocalyptic religious narrative of technology. Rather, it proposes to ensure that multiple realities can unfold to ensure diversity, avoid homogeneity and totalitarian tendencies of the “one and only”.
Polysingularity is fascinated with the diversity of multiple morals, intuitions, understandings, beliefs, and truths. Their constant interplay ensures one doesn’t overtake the other, so there is always an inhibitory principle in the system, which prevents it from spiralling out. At the same time, an excitatory principle is also in operations, so escalations do happen and sometimes they lead to disruptive explosions, which create the conditions and space for a new form of life to emerge or to never emerge at all. That is why, in the true spirit of hedging, it might also be a good idea to make organic life interplanetary, even if it’s a self-sustained AI-guided machine to ensure biological life can exist. A living monument on the moon of a life that has once been and ceased to exist long before.
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To learn more about Polysingularity, please, see related work on this website, and also check out polysingularity.com where you can find related writings, sounds, and images, as well as the Tumblr polysingularity blog.