Abstract
Dutch sociologist Felix Geyer, who has been interested in the applicability of Systems Theory since the 1970s to the present, created the alienation model as a result of an information-processing disturbance between individuals and their environment. However, Geyer's alienation theory is impractical because its conclusions are trivial. Namely, there are two types of people, those who can cope with environmental complexity and who are rarely alienated, and those who are easily alienated. In this article, we will demonstrate how such shortcomings are derived from the following two facts: The first is that Geyer attributed the causes of alienation to the information processing ability of the individuals. The second is that despite using the second-order cybernetics concept, Geyer did not take into consideration the fact that the difference between system (self) and environment (other) is constructed by the system itself. To overcome these difficulties, the closure type model and the second-order approach should be used to study alienation rather than the input-output model and the first-order approach. We will then be able to understand the causes of alienation while at least not using the determinist's point of view.
