All posts by pfh

Ecosystem decline and economic risk…

The question was asked by Sue Charman on the UK Finance Lab, How do we start predicting ecosystem decline, and if business is capable of changing?
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One way is to begin to use more scientific measures of the net effect of things. There are some rather major problems with “sustainability arithmetic”, you might call it.

People tend to mix statements of social values and the numbers they use in a way that is very forgiving for whatever purpose intended. I don’t exaggerate. For one familiar example, people count their own personal waste items as their environmental impacts, such as the number of plastic bags they use.  They might count their efficiency in limiting cooking and cleaning, or running the AC, etc.

The real scale of their environmental impact, adding to economic risks, is hardly related to their personal waste at all, though. Continue reading Ecosystem decline and economic risk…

Group learning – marking evolutionary time

I was pointed to Michael Herman’s Open Space World, and his introduction to his Open Space group learning methods. We exchanged a couple emails and it occurred to me there’s a simple way to combine his and my learning process models, his using the four organizational dimensions of purposes, actions, stories & structures and mine as the dimension of natural progress in time. Continue reading Group learning – marking evolutionary time

Immersing ourselves in nature’s intelligence?

Geo Mobus’ post on his blog “Question Everything”, on “Where is the Economy Going” left little to question but that the choices for the physical economic system we’ve called home for a couple centuries is either down or faster down.

It does seem true enough, comparing the beliefs that led us to our present global impasse, and deep denial of how different the present physical world really is from those beliefs. But there are also other questions. This is a response to the ideas of “GaryA” and “Florifulgurator” yesterday, about other things to do than cling to our dead end. Continue reading Immersing ourselves in nature’s intelligence?

Seed events, the dyad powering butterfly effects

I had pointed my friend Steve Kurtz to my physics theorem, the Law of Continuity, showing why the conservation of energy implies physical systems need a “little push” from other events on a smaller scales of organization to begin or end. His good question gave me an opportunity to explain that, and a bit more of what the theorem is really about. He replied “Excellent explanation. Thanks”

His first comment was:

“I’m not up on the math. But a seed contains stored, embodied solar sourced energy. So I don’t see any mystery there. The mystery (to me) is the life propulsion…the apparent will to live and expand niches, and replicate.  Continue reading Seed events, the dyad powering butterfly effects

Who will be the Edison of the 21st century??

Andy Revkin had asked the question on Twitter:

Revkin
Thomas Edison, with energy breakthroughs, “invented the 20th century.” Who’ll invent the 21st? http://shar.es/m8ziQ #energy #innovation

 

The way nature engineers her highly dramatic smooth changes in complex systems, her“punctuated equilibria”, is to begin with explosive reorganization and energy flows.

The “catch” is that initial spurt is also their end, producing nothing lasting… *unless* the reverse cycle leading toward the resolution of all those multiplying loose endskicks in, called “maturation”.

So, if Edison invented the 20th century, the author of our explosion as it were, “Who will invent the 21st century”? It’s already quite clear, and already done. It just hasn’t taken hold yet. It was Keynes, actually, in more or less a footnote that was widely misinterpreted. He called it “the widow’s cruse”, defining the crystal clear and necessary steps a market economy must take to avoid destroying itself financially when approaching the operating limits of the earth.

Everyone who first considers doing what is quite physically necessary finds it “unthinkable” is one reason we’re in danger of not carefully looking into it, and failing as a global system. It would be unquestionably a huge relief, and assure our future comfort and security…two very positive things we could get to like,… IF we could just get over the shock of dealing with physical realities we hoped we’d never have to!

Blog entries linking Keynes’ ideas about general systems ecology with current issues. fyi http://synapse9.com/blog/category/natural-economy/

 

 

The Biblical Admonition… be good domestics for (the man hiding from view)

There’s been a fascinating discussion on the Monbiot Discussions of the Biblical model of nature as controlled by an authoritarian master, given to humans for us to “be fruitful and multiply” our “dominion” over and “domesticate” (both English words from the same Latin and older roots), and so treat as part of our household and subject our ever increasing control. … I liked this reply I made to Lila on the subject.

 

Lila,
But isn’t the biblical admonition precisely to treat the world as our servant, and to “domesticate” everything as fast as humanly possible, AS IF following an instruction from a profit maximizing ruler (calling himself God) speaking to his domestics? The mystery is why we believed it in the first place and clung to it for thousands of years…, given how completely that story contradicts the visible evidence that nature works by things taking care of themselves and finding ways to complement and fit together.

The emotional problem humans have is what’s hard to peg down, whether it’s just being so easily seduced by self-importance or what. The clear evidence is that we DO define economic stability as our economy’s rate of exponential expansion, and are all admonished to follow the Biblical model in fact, and be good domestics serving those in power by becoming ever more productive in advancing their aim of taking every more control of everything in sight, and get showered with gifts for it.

That we don’t see where those growing gifts come from (AND even most “greens” are really not curious about the fairly easily traced connections) is the puzzle. The only satisfying explanation I’ve come to is that consciousness presents our cultural roles AS reality, and we fail to recognize that consciousness is actually a cultural reconstruction of what our senses tell us, following our culture’s traditional models.

It does seem to fit, doesn’t it? That our cultural ideal is still to behave like the domestics of some dead kings from impossibly long ago.. to get showered with approval from all around.

phil

Mind body problem revisited…

In comments on a discussion of “economics as if people and the earth mattered” in a NEF blog post Clever thinking about how we think, Dave Chester offered a concise statement on the scinetific method of reasoning, concluding:

The most famous saying which fails this test is “I think therefore I Exist” (Descarte). Better to claim that because I exist I can think.

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Yes, the phrase attributed to Descarte seems to omit whether the word “think” is referring to the physical processes of thought, or the logic. Those certainly exist in rather different senses at least, since the physical process doesn’t work by logic and the logic can’t work anything unless the person uses the physical processes at their mind’s disposal. Continue reading Mind body problem revisited…

The BP blame game.. blind spots

There’s been a lively exchange on GRIST around “Who’s to blame for the Gulf oil gusher?”

MimiK on 10 JUN 2010 8:59AM said:

EVERYONE: This whole issue, and ALL the comments, are all stuck on the same problem: the gap between what we THINK about what we are doing what we are actually DOING.

There is a LOT of theory from a lot of corners, from Buddhism to cognitive brain science to social psychology and more, that each in their own way come to the same conclusion: Human beings have enormous difficulty seeing clearly and truthfully how we are actually acting in life.

We do three things — all of us, every human brain — that make us all LOUSY at the “blame game.” First, we all have a blind spot in the brain that does not see how we are actually acting. Second, there is a gap between what we say about how we are acting and how we are acting — a tendency to believe our own press rather than look clearly and bravely at what we are actually doing. Third, the human brain always UNDER estimates how tragic something is.

So, if you’re going to play the blame game, play it with awareness of our common human brain handicaps: blindspot to how we are actually acting; gap between our words and our actual actions; and chronic underestimation of tragedy. …. Take it from there, people.

I replied:

MimiK,  There’s another dimension to our common cognitive blind spots that helps too. That’s the observable gap between the systems of our thinking and the systems of the physical world…

Consciousness tends to equate reality with the systems of our thinking and so greatly over simplifies and looses track of what the natural systems “explained” may be doing. I’ve written a few things on it from a natural science of systems view, as an inherent hazard of explanation. Once we have explanations for something we tend to think of the natural world as if operating BY our explanations. Of course, it never did or will, so we need to think of explanation as just a coping strategy and remain open to the real mysteries of any subject addressed.

I also approach that by having a list of natural processes that seem to have constant explanation, but usually represent complex systems that are in the process of becoming something else. Basically it’s the four types of accumulative growth systems, recognized from their characteristic feedbacks, (++, -+, +-, –) = (¸¸.•´ ¯ `•.¸¸). They may look regular but indicate complex processes that are turning into something else.

fyi: more at www.synapse9.com or “What Wandering minds need to know” or “Models Learning Change”

 

Risk of a further physical system collapse

Conceptually it would be nice to have ever multiplying money, but the physical systems of the economy are not cooperating.

Hybrid models of how money systems are linked to the physical world, show why money is putting dangerously increasing performance demands on the underperforming physical assets. Those demands need to be understood and relieved, by some means other than a further substantial loss of the fabric of our society.

If you only want to think about it your own way, and not study my insights, that’s fine. Please speak with others you think need to understand the subject, though. I think we all feel the next wave of irreversible loss brewing. What also seems at risk is further loss of our physical ability to recover. Continue reading Risk of a further physical system collapse

A “Small but Beautiful” addition to the plan

Susan Witt, director of BurkShares community currency system presented on theFinance Lab Webinar today and I got to ask her to clarify how it eliminated the excess growth of debt. Then I thought of how the macro-economic solution Keynes first proposed could be usefully built into the design of local currencies to make them more popular and test the larger solution too.
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Susan,
Thanks for presenting on the Finance Lab today, and refreshing my understanding of how the BurkShares currency solves the debt growth problem. I actually attended a daylong seminar with Schumacher in the early 80’s but I seem to recall his director of the project, which I guess would have been you, was not there that day.

I remember trying to talk with him about one of the other strategies for keeping money and debt from growing unsustainably.  At that time I don’t think I even knew that Keynes and Boulding had seen the same option for allowing investment markets to stabilize at their natural healthy limits to growth. Continue reading A “Small but Beautiful” addition to the plan