physics of happening

January 27, 2007

The internal limits riddle

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 11:18 am

Posted to FRIAM 1/27/07
 

So I didn’t get takers on the question of what internal limits to growth apply when there are no external limits.   It’s sort of a trick question.  My approach to the answer has to do with the difference between physical and theoretical systems.  Mostly we think about physical systems as if they behaved like theoretical ones but theories are infinitely malleable and have no inherent limits, internal or external.  They’re just projections of rules and natural limits are discoveries of changes in the rules, not extensions.  
One categorical divide for the types of inherent internal limits to growth for physical systems uses the two categories, stabilization and failure.   Stabilization results, broadly, from diverting the positive feedbacks before they become disruptive, and failure from not doing so.   Some physical systems have some choice in the matter, and for others it’s pretty automatic.  
If you don’t see the possibility you don’t have the choice, of course, and we’re trained to substitute models for physical systems in our explanations for things, and therefore tend not to see the possibility.  I think learning to be aware of what’s inherently different about physical and theoretical systems takes patient attention to the discrepancies, using theory to guide you to an fresh exploration of the world rather than as a substitute that hides the real world…   Certainly living in theories can be both fun and productive, but it’s also missing some essential things.
I hope it’s not too painful to watch me struggling with the words for this.  Often enough I just get frustrated, but I think this bit may have it fairly straight.   Ring any bells for you?
Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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Schematic Design of Sustainability

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 11:12 am

Posted to COTE Forum 1/27/07
 

Jodi,
Well, not compounding your returns has the same sort of Catch 22 that doing great sustainable design and having the profits go to pumping up the world’s appetites does.   You need to build a broader reason fordoing the right thing.   For sustainable design we definitely do still need to learn how to live in a sustainable world, even if we don’t have one, and it has to make business sense.   On the first level we just need to respond to the contradictions involved, rather than avoid them.   Once there’s a critical mass of people who see that finance has to be different in a sustainable world, then you can think of how it’ll work for the community as a whole.   Up until then spending your returns is a leadership choice that puts you at a competitive disadvantage, unless you consider getting real in your own head and having a little extra money to use for steering the world a fairly good trade.   For me it’s a good trade partly because I figure I won’t stop work as long as I’m able because I enjoy it and will probably be able to.   That’s not the case for some people.   
What the effect would be when everyone spends their returns means describing speculative models of economics, and that gets a little unwieldy.   This is the central switch of money, and flipping it would have huge effects.   Reinvesting returns is the primary means of concentrating wealth and power, though it’s a ruse to say the money wouldn’t be used creatively if it was not in their hands.   If that money flow just simply reversed by people making individual choices, money would distribute and lower the bottom of the ladder, flow more to service rather than control.   Surprising change would continue but not be increasingly disruptive, with competition staying high but not continually intensifying, etc.   
Most people click ‘next’ on that sentence where you talk about what happens when the people in charge give up a large part of what puts them in charge. . .   Well, once the people with money, virtually everyone now, realize that the world is a physical place and people can’t handle ever more complicated decisions they’ll consider it.   One option is for people to keep their money invested, but not to multiply, and keep their toys, comforts and fun with their friends, and join everyone else in trying out a new game.   The primary alternative is to push the earth to crisis and have most everyone loose their money and toys, and a lot of the fun with their friends.   The trick as far as I can tell is convincing large numbers of people that we live in a physical world where decision making lag times really matter when your plan is to make bigger decisions ever faster, as sort of the crowning touch on all the other ways we’re undermining our own life supports and the earth. 
A lot of work would have to go into designing where to draw the financial line, but just the principle of spending returns on investment would not interfere with the barter and distribution functions of investment, business or consumer markets.   It would just affect individuals and their choice of whether to use their returns to multiply their returns or use them to express other values.   
It’s also the purpose of growth in living systems to make new living things.   We’d be letting go of the exponential part and allowing our world’s 600 year growth spurt to produce something new and lasting (other than a big mess).   It would give our long history of growth a real purpose.   I hope that satisfies some of your curiosity.   There would definitely be a lot that the institutional people would have to sort through fairly thoroughly, that most individuals only need to understand in principle.   The question is whether the sustainability movement wants to raise the issue, because our creativity is serving mixed purposes and that’s uncomfortable.   We hand out points for lots of other improbable things.   We could invent some points for this too!
Cheers,
Phil
—–Original Message—–
Phil,
There’s something I can start to grasp. . .  and do. 
Tell me more about the investments and how to a) make that happen and b) how that effects long-term personal goals such as retirement and college for your kids.   Right now we are investing and using the profits to further invest in order to have a nest egg for a (hopefully) long and content life.   Do these ideas work together?   
Jodi Smits Anderson
Architect, LEED AP
Collins Scoville Architects, P.  C.     —–Original Message—–
From: Phil Henshaw
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 2:06 PM
To: COTE Forum
Subject: RE: Then what about the schemaic design of sustainability?
Jodi,
Having a better idea of how the functional issue I’m raising is being missed is very helpful.   Thanks for responding.   There’s really no way to know how to answer silence, and anyone’s gut reaction does not need to be carefully reasoned to be helpful for adjusting carefully reasoned views.   To answer what you asked first.   I’ve done quite a bit in the direct development of sustainable design methods, and just living simply.   I’m also an architect detailing a $100M LEED silver building.   I’m also doing the one thing that would make our economic system sustainable, spending all the interest on my investments.   
It’s usually just a phone call, have the returns returned to you so they don’t multiply.   If we don’t do that we won’t be confronting one of the things that guarantees that our world is unsustainable, it’s growth imperative.   I don’t expect designers who know their own business and care about the earth to necessarily also understand the details of how natural feedback systems work.   If you’re working within a system that is veering ever further out of balance, and can’t smell a rat, though, we have no business thinking we can show others how to live on earth.   
If you trace the enormous (to borrow from Ross Perot) ’sucking sound’ you always find surrounding big money, you find it comes from the money practice of using the profit to multiply the investments.   That way they get to have huge piles of money and hire us and our sustainability banner, to serve their purposes.   We should be outraged, but most of us are just so delighted to be highly rewarded for what we love and do best, (hearing it as support for *our* purposes unfortunately) we just ignore what the people paying us are doing with their profits from our work.   They’re smiling very nicely and using the profit to continually multiplying the very appetites we’re trying to tame. 
I’m not sure how I stumbled onto what seems to be a very clear and understanding of this, and still find it very hard to convey.   It has something to do with switching my thinking to be about a physical world rather than an imaginary world.   There’s something in our culture that teaches us to treat the world as if it were imaginary, and to treat our images as if they were an accurate representation of the world.   Images are nice, but. . .   there are things missing. 
Phil
………………………………
Phil,
First, if anyone thought that choosing any particular “track” would lock them into that path forever, no one would make any decision to take any step onto any track.   We are at least starting to see people who think longer term than they ever have before when they build a building or choose a light fixture.   Many people are becoming used to thinking about recycling (at least) when buying all the consumer crap they don’t need.   It may be the wrong track, but it is at least a step toward understanding of the right track.   And we are not locked into any choice (until, of course, it is entirely too late for any choice to matter anymore).   
Second, I really appreciate the discussion that we need to reassess our growth/sprawl/efficiency, etc.   But I also feel that you are preaching to the choir AND denying reality.   We on this list, for the most part, agree a paradigm shift is needed.   There - that part of the conversation can be completed.   The reality is that we cannot convince the entire population of the world to change their goals from continued growth to continued sustainability by swapping words on this limited web list.   
Tell us what you are doing (doing, not saying) to show people the need for this shift and to help them achieve it.   I’ll sign on and set up the same shows/lectures/tours here in Albany to get the word out.   
I’ll beat the drum to the masses and teach them steps to take to improve.   I will not help them decide to never build again - I am an architect and I truly feel that schools and hospitals and libraries are perhaps the necessary evils of growth that I can actually support - and personally need in order to have the career that I love.   
What are you, personally, doing that is working and making a difference.   I guess I’m really American (though I often wish to deny it) in that I am a do-er and need to know what steps I can take.   Show me what to do and I will do it, and by doing it I will teach others to do the same.   
Jodi Smits Anderson
Architect, LEED AP
Collins Scoville Architects, P.  C.  —–Original Message—–
From: Phil Henshaw
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 9:32 AM
To: COTE Forum
Subject: Then what about the schematic design of sustainability?
 Say we’re in the schematic design phase of sustainability.   If these early phases are where you get on the right or wrong track, and making corrections later gets ever more impossible, are we on the right track?   Is what we’re doing making the earth sustainable?    What if the schematic design for sustainability included giving points for property investors choosing not to devote their profits to the perpetual growth of profiting from the earth?   Would that address something that’s missing in our formula?   
 –
 Phil Henshaw                    ¸¸¸¸.  •´ ¯ `•.  ¸¸¸¸
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January 20, 2007

Buy High Sell Low

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 9:56 pm

posted to AIA COTE forum 1/20/07

 

Steering feedback systems is tricky…

Anyone who has changed jobs and had to move investment accounts is familiar with the temptation to buy funds that are high, and just about to fall, and get rid of ones that are low, and just about to rise. Emotional first impressions are generally not a good guide for complex systems, and can cause us to make consistently bad choices.

We have problems of this kind in the design of the sustainability movement I think. Conservation is good, living simply is good, inventing cool things and making room for others is good, and doing these so our world can continually increase its consumption by steady small percents is a total disaster. The problem is that the end game of persistently ignoring exponentials develops explosively.   Just putting off dealing with exponentials assures that you’ll be out of options for solving the problem once you’ve run out of options for ignoring the problem.   It’s like deciding that you’ll surely turn the wheel of your car, just as soon as you’ve run off the road!

This is what’s called a ‘wicked problem’. The worst of these (or best as some see them) are the ones that seem to require  you to relish in your own stupidity to solve them, leaving you little satisfaction for your efforts than sarcastically observing, “anything that’s completely necessary must be good for *something*.”   We’ve been putting off revising the consensus world plan for endless exponential growth of commerce and complications.   Ending exponential growth is absolutely necessary, so it must be good for *something* then, but it’s quite hard to say what as long as no one is asking.

Maybe all you can do is keep track of the little places in reasoning where your emotional contribution is “oh yea” and be entertained and perhaps more than a little skeptical.  Not too far along that path is where you start to ask what our amazing 600 year exponential growth of modern civilization is really for.   I think it becomes obvious, succeed or fail, either way its for dramatically changing who we are as a species, full of great possibilities but also in the worst sort of danger for not addressing the real opportunity and problem being stuck on growth now presents.

Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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easy to mark

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 9:53 pm

post to FRIAM 1/20/07 

marking a map to help navigating the sysems territory

One of the things that Roger’s comments bring out about the discontinuities you find in tracing organism growth (epigenesis) is the question of markers.   Normal single growth curves are famous for representing huge changes and having almost no markers at all to signify what’s really happening.   
There really are only two places on them that are easy to mark, the upward and downward inflection points (¸¸ .·|´ ¯ and   ¯`|·. ¸¸ respectively).    The origins and endings of the curves seem completely disguised by the smallness of events at their tails.   Elsewhere in the history of their changes the wide distribution of seemingly unconnected but well orchestrated events makes it very hard to single out any particular thing for significance.    The inflection points, however, can be made quite mathematically precise, and do approximately correspond to matching major changes in what’s going on.   
One of several ways to say why these points are mathematically precise (despite within the margins or error the curve is locally a straight line at that point) is because it marks where the changes before and after switch from being in proportion to an asymptote in the past, to being in proportion an asymptote in the future.   Growth systems behave as if their explosive growth is spent looking to where they’re coming from and then switch to looking to where they’re going to, an orientation backward changing to an orientation forward.   This bears out in studying the feedbacks.
In most kinds of growth systems there is demonstrably no ‘looking’ going on, but people need images to help them understand things and I don’t think representing what a system is responding to as ‘looking’ is completely inaccurate.    It’s also necessary to use simplified terms when trying to discuss the process switches of such a wide range of different kinds of behaviors.    A third reason to be a little general about it is that we actually don’t seem to have any good general models for describing growth system mechanisms.    There’s a fundamental mismatch between what is physically happening and how we tend to represent it, with fixed rules of various kinds.   Growth systems are physically a process of changing structures.   That’s why I prefer to use models to just refer to the physical systems, and try to avoid using models to represent them.
Picking up on one major popular conversation about changing systems, I think a useful general statement of what happens at the inflection point is the switch toward sustainability.   The loops of the system switch from increasing instability in their design to increasing stability, changing from explosion toward homeostasis.   When you borrow other people’s words for new meanings there’s usually some trouble, but I think this one does largely coincide with both the technical meaning of the term, ‘possible to be sustained’ and it’s widespread modern usage referring to the transformation of our life support systems to be compatible with both the fact and spirit of living on earth.    
Up to the inflection point it’s often quite uncertain from the behavior that there will ever be a turning point.    Afterward it’s usually clear whether you have a stable change to a new steady state or just a flash in the pan that quickly decays.   For some the trigger for the switch is external, for others it’s internal, an amazing difference that opens another rich new field of study.   Our maps of systems, mine being just a bump on a curve, are very inadequate representations of what’s happening in the physical systems.   We can use them as exploration guides though, pointing back to the physical subject when and where there are interesting things to find.   

Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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January 13, 2007

RE: fun and sandpiles

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 9:18 am

Posted to [FRIAM] 1/13/07
—————————

Hugh,
On thing worth adding is the reason it’s useful to consider the maze of instrumental behaviors that constitute systems in the context of the whole envelope of their developments (¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸)from beginning to end. It turns the mystery of complex developmental systems into the puzzle of when and how they’ll go through the classic switches and display the key landmarks of doing so.

The growth to climax switch is one of the most interesting of them, and of particular concern to systems designed not to allow it, for example. Of course, a major preliminary question once the model is understood, is whether the switches that completely reorient the developmental processes originate from inside or out.

Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸

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—– Original Message —–

Hugh,
Sure, there’s definitely a point to make that the inactive presence of potential least energy patterns is frequently ‘the reason’ that patterns form. That might make it seem that offering ‘fun’ as an alternative (for the system exploring the options), is well, like it was said for fun… I also see a much more difficult issue involved.

There’s the significant question to raise about the difference between abstract causation (which has the end effect as the cause) and instrumental causation (which has the process leading there as the cause). The former is a lot easier, and arguably much more useful since it lets you give a causal value to abstractions like statistics for other situations than the one you’re actually considering. The latter is a horrible nuisance by comparison, because it requires extensive particular understanding of situations that will occur only once. Because it’s how nature does it, however (you can watch and see), the latter still seems interesting.

In tracing instrumental causation there certainly are some common mistakes to be made, and there’s not much of a developed tradition for guidance, either. What seems the worst of it is that trying to read instrumental causes sometimes seems to largely lead modern minds to conspiracy theory and magical thinking. Still, it gives one to wonder why people are so very bad at it, and about the examples of natural system steering where it’s navigating the instrumental causes that clearly seems to be the center of the fun.

Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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—– Original Message —–
From: Hugh Trenchard
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 1:55 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] fun and sandpiles

Thanks, Phil, and I definitely agree that sandpile phenomena and play phenomena are not mutually exclusive in the domain of complexity.

I think I was only trying to emphasize the point that I started my thread with a view to specific pattern formations of frigatebirds which result from some specific rules of interaction. At the risk of misinterpretation here (and no disrespect intended, if I am misinterpreting), an argument was presented, it seemed, that there are no reasons for certain behaviours other than that they are the result of having fun, but the argument was made in the context of animals that were not necessarily in the pattern formations I was looking at.

It may very well be that it is fun for frigatebirds to be in these formations, but there are, I think, still physical reasons why they choose those formations - and not other ones - related to the way in which they couple due to the energy savings that certain formations allow (I hypothesize).

Coming back to cyclists who interact, it is certainly satisfying when a drafting cyclist finds the “sweetspot” in the draft zone, where maximal drafting benefit is experienced. It also fun and satisfying to be part of the peloton experience, to have engaged in a series of interactions with other cyclists that result in emergent pattern formation. Even so, the pattern formations can be traced primarily to physical coupling between cyclists, namely the drafting benefit, collision avoidance and forward motion.

Bicycle racing, is of course, a sport, so it also involves strategies and directives from leaders, but you can remove those and there will still be certain types of patterns which will arise by the basic rules I’ve noted (I’ve simulated some by computer, although the results are still a bit controversial).

In any event, I certainly agree that there is a broad scale of complexity, since most types of interactions result in some sort of emergent phenomena. I think, though, that it becomes increasingly difficult to identify even what the emergent phenomena are when looking at complex interactions that involve a multitude of factors and rules of interaction, let alone isolate what the principles of interaction are that lead to the emergent phenomena. What is the emergent phenomena of birds that are playing, in apparently random configurations? I’m not suggesting there are any, they’re just difficult to see, that’s all.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Phil Henshaw”
To: “‘The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group’”
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Rogers and Animal Behavior

I for one don’t think emergent systems study requires choosing between ’sand piles’ and animals having ‘fun’. Playful experimentation is one of the all time best natural systems for discovering natural structures it seems to me, just a higher level version of jumping potential wells like some grain of sand seems bound to have done at a critical point to get a slide going. The range of complex system phenomena is tremendous.

One thing that helps me is that there seem to be various scales you can arrange the entire spectrum on, complexity of self-regulation for example. Thermostats and sand piles are on the simple side and animal acrobatics on the high side. You don’t necessarily have to assign a number to things to have a useful scale, of course, just have a way to order things and make note of uncertainties. That’s what the paleontologists do with all their species branching diagrams (clad notation). For those who like numbers, though, there’s the rudimentary numerical development scale, the number of doublings a system performs in its development. Humans and the world economy thus far are about 30 doublings, for example. Yep, kind of an interestingly compressed scale!

Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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—–Original Message—–
From: Hugh Trenchard
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 8:05 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Will Rogers and Animal Behavior
I for one am rarely afraid to ask questions, stupid or otherwise, when my curiosity is piqued.
Do the ravens in Santa Fe align in vee formations when they roll off chandelles? If they do, then regardless of whether they are having fun, it is an interesting pattern formation which causes one to ask reasonably why they choose such a formation. Do they do it for the sheer pleasure of the esthetics of the vee formation? This would, it seems, entail some “fun” of the formation, although I doubt I would find many people who would argue that is the fun they derive. So then why is it fun that they should align in those formations?
I myself wouldn’t claim to subscribe to a behaviourist school, unless you can generalize the term to include analysis of the emergence of physical patterns among collectives. Pattern formation within sandpiles is more akin to my specific interests than the behaviour of individual animals. That is always interesting too, but it isn’t the focus of my inquiry here.
Hugh Trenchard

—–Original Message—–
From: “Peter Lissaman”
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 1:05 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Will Rogers and Animal Behavior
When he was given a brief description of the learned theories of Dr. Freud, and told that they accounted for all human behavior, Will Rogers stated that: “he found it real interesting, but reckoned that in Oklahoma, folks mainly did things jes’ acause they felt like it”. I gave a paper at AIAA annual meeting in Reno earlier this week on birds extracting energy from turbulence. There’s a lot in it for the birdies, with their low flight speeds, superb sensing and rapid response. Ravens in Santa Fe are marvellous aerobats in the turbulence rolling off the Sangres. But why? When you see them rolling off perfect chandelles, as with dolphins surfing and gamboling in the bow wave, you have to admit that they’re “jes’ havin’ fun”, contrary to these gloomy animal “behavioristos” who claim animals do everything for a reason.
Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John’s College lectures

January 12, 2007

what do you tell a tree?

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 9:29 pm

Posted to AIA COTE forum 1/11/07

A great old oak that’s been the center of it’s neighborhood for decades, home to wild life and children’s play, a long labor for leaf raking and thing of beauty in every season, began it’s life with exponential growth that was equally splendid in its transformative magic even if also quite brief and left it quite small. A tree’s period of explosive growth and change ends about when it has it’s first two leaves, before it knows what branches are, or a trunk, or seasons, while it’s skin is still shiny, before it’s had a life.

The question is what would you say to a young little shoot who thought that this was quite unacceptable, and was inconsolable about the apparent fact it’s explosive growth was ending and it could imagine nothing of interest that could ever happen to it again. The idea of seasonal growth was like a vulgarity to it and completely unthinkable. What would you say to persuade it to take a sustainable path? After trying and failing to set it straight again and again, would you give up and snap at the little shoot, “Fine, go ahead, grow spindly get stem mold fall over and rot, see if I care”? Much too often, people seem to listen about as well as trees! Let’s see, if we keep adding by percents, and do it efficiently, that solves everything all at once, a nice neat package! Because the growth spiral is what is actually overwhelming the earth, (organizing our world around adding percents) and is produced by investors reinvesting their returns, anyone leading the way to a sustainable earth unavoidably must also take a lead in spending their returns. Undoubtedly, it’s better natural system physics than politics or economics, but then you can look at the models each uses (life, power & greed, respectively) and think for yourself.

phil

January 6, 2007

70 degrees in New York today…!

Filed under: mail log — admin @ 11:53 pm
Posted to the AIA Committee on the Environment Forum 1/6/07  

…… It violates normality… but isn’t the more remarkable thingourrelative national silence about the whole torrent of authentic new evidence of rapid change in the climate ? No one anywhere seems to be up in arms about it, when beating the lag times is EVERYTHING in having any real impact on the eventual heating of the globe!Its a lot like another curious disconnect, that has been raised time and again but has always been pushed aside for ‘more immediate concerns’. When you’re multiplying your consumption, doing it more efficiently doesn’t really change anything. That’s been brought up time an again during the 40 years I’ve been watching the environmental movement. It just dies as a topic of discussion, even though it actually does directly invalidate the dominant conservation centered approach to saving the world’s environments.

Al Gore even went out of his way to avoid mentioning the problem, the simple and clear fact that the main cause of global warming is humanity’s concerted public plan to endlessly multiply economic activity, in a world where that multiplies C02. Reducing unit impacts doesn’t matter if your going to multiply the units.

It’s as if the brightest and most caring of us are simply missing some lever of thought needed to tell the difference between the relative and the absolute. Conservation is necessary, for many fine things, but it’s simply insufficient to change the direction of growth’s multiplying impacts. What conservationists care about would recover from a period of needless waste, IF that period were spent fixing the real underlying problem, that the global consensus model for ‘prosperity’ is endless exploding consumption. If we only slow our rate of multiplying ourabuse of the planetwe commit a true and complete waste of our efforts.

We mostly just don’t get it, though. No matter where you find it in nature, growth is always an imperative for change, an exploding demand that must be addressed, an absolute challenge to its own world, and to itself, a creative process with a heart of instability. One of the great beauties of growth systems is that they’re always fundamentally out of control, whether it’s the tiny reflex explosion that triggers the blink of an eye, or our 500 year explosion of creativity and self-deception now on the way to producing a grand global flame-outinstead of a more modern kind of man, growth systems are unique in their originality and aggressiveness in producing change.

The physics principles of growth systems are fairly simple, but like much of science also a little dry, they have a simple four part succession of evolving organizational phases (¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ).I think learning howto read these natural phases of change shows you what phase things you see around you are now in, giving you a glimpse of the real future,and letting youstop living in the past.ItsJust like reading events as part of ecologies, though itdoestake a fair amount of study.There’s also the problem that science does not have established conventions for how to talk aboutgrowth in this way.The logic of growth systems representsmore or less the opposite of what science has been looking for in nature since the beginning of modern science.The subject of growth hasbeen of little or no actual scientific interest.I put it on the Wikipedialist of great unexplained physical phenomena, and it was erased.

Growth systems are out of control,they’re local eruptions that serve as nature’s main workhorse engines and triggers of change, and science, instead, has beenlooking for what controls everything, looking for the global rules that things follow.Growth doesn’t care for rules…preferring to beradically inventive instead,making up it’s own rules as it goes.Growth isan outside symptom of something erupting from the inside, the invention ofsome new inside world, and science has been looking for how everything is determined from the outside.

So…. there’s some reason for the criticalinterest in the problem of growth to go silent.It appears our cultural knowledge doesn’t help us,but actively suppresses the discussion.Still, it’sthe one centralthing we need to solve to make civilization sustainable, and avoidingdiscussion of itis apparently built into our widely shared model for solving problems.

Maybe this would help.Growth is a lover’s irresistible seduction, a terrifying scream at night, a rupture in the pleasant cycles of harmony,demanding a response,…definitelynot least from itself.From the inside of the storm the explosion of it’s heart in flames of passion disguises what it must always discover,an arriving flurry ofsmall invitations to change yet again, that can not be denied.

Phil Henshaw¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
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