{"id":2648,"date":"2013-11-20T12:26:07","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T17:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2648"},"modified":"2015-02-20T12:38:48","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T17:38:48","slug":"natures-capitalism-homemaking-or-competition-for-shrinking-pies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/natures-capitalism-homemaking-or-competition-for-shrinking-pies\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature’s Capitalism: “Homemaking” now, not competition over shrinking pies!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is for the UN\u2019s OWG 5 proceedings next week, on\u00a0Post2015 Macro Economic development positions<\/a>. \u00a0It led to the OWG 8 proposal “A World SDG<\/a>“, introducing an integrated\u00a0true scientific measure of sustainability<\/strong>..<\/span>. It’s now followed with\u00a0“The Decoupling Puzzle \u2013 a partial answer<\/a>” , on measuring our\u00a0“decoupling rate”<\/span>, <\/strong>and\u00a0the development space reserved\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0within planetary boundaries, such as for achieving world cultural wellbeing!<\/em><\/p>\n

Sadly, as careful as I am with the language, there is some scientific thinking… so the social\u00a0organizations generally found no way to engage in discussing it. \u00a0 The basic principle is that “when you build something you then need to take care of it”… something everyone<\/span> knows in their personal lives. \u00a0That runs into the problem that, culturally,\u00a0we don’t see economic growth as “building something”. \u00a0We see it culturally as a “constant” of prosperity… the ultimate tragedy of our times. that ever faster change is seen as “constant” it seems. 4\/21\/14 jlh<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

____________<\/p>\n

As a young systems scientist many years ago<\/p>\n

I noticed a need for a better type of economic model<\/em><\/span><\/strong>,<\/h4>\n

that would connect money to its “externalities” in part. \u00a0More importantly it would let people see economies as the complex living organisms they really are. \u00a0What I found was the universal stages of natural development, that are repeated in the way any natural event or system develops from small beginnings to multiply at first, and then by multiplying in it’s environment changes it, an\u00a0Organizational Stages Model (OSM)<\/em><\/p>\n

Economies are chock full of independently organized and behaving social and cultural communities behaving like organisms, that each develops from a seed of organization in an environment of resources. \u00a0 You can talk about “why” things occur, <\/strong>causes at a distance or coincidences\u00a0but that’s an intellectual issue, a prediction, a theory. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is about using the most general of\u00a0pattern of “how” individual events occur<\/strong>\u00a0the processes of developmental causation taking place in nature\u00a0in every location where events occur.<\/p>\n

Economies, for example, are all populated by actively creative and learning people, discovering things and following each other’s leads…. \u00a0So what this “Organizational Stages Model” (OSM) approach\u00a0focuses on for\u00a0economies\u00a0is how people learn and how\u00a0what they learn to do spreads as transformational stages of growth and the emergence of new systems, and their natural limits. \u00a0 The simple rule, for the transformative stages of any process of new emerging organization,\u00a0then, is that it’s organizational process will\u00a0follow an “S” curve. \u00a0 The first half is of\u00a0multiplying innovation and expansion of connections, a “burst of development”, and the second a process of rebalancing and\u00a0integrating.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Organizational Stages Model<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That’s the dynamic we need to capture in our minds to understand the world we live in<\/em><\/strong><\/span>. \u00a0 \u00a0An economy is really a whole “civilization” in fact, organized like an ecosystem, accumulating and passing on its knowledge of “how to live” in the form of family and social cultures, as the living “genetic code” of the societies they create. \u00a0 THAT is what the word “growth” refers to, the compound rates of expansion of that whole organic living culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

As systems of nature, a<\/em>ll those living parts and the whole, first grow and then mature to live and later decline
\nby very much the same succession of life\u2019s great transformative experiences.<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

The ultimate most useful model for it I found is really cool! \u00a0 It’s organized as “a Narrative of Life” as a great chain of instrumental <\/span>transformations. \u00a0 I’ve been looking for a name for my life’s work on it.. perhaps “Life Narrative Studies” (LNS) would do. \u00a0I won’t further introduce it here, as it’s what my whole site is about, but just present this new graphic to help readers get a feel for the general pattern.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Organizational Stages Model (OSM)<\/em><\/h3>\n

\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

______________<\/p>\n

It interprets economies more like organisms, as net-energy systems made of living systems. \u00a0 As self-organizing systems, of necessity, they develop by a “boot-strap” process of using their own resources to expand their own resource access, during growth. That is one<\/strong> of the natural periods of the whole system life narrative, Period 1.<\/p>\n

How money connects to it is as “information”, what people use to pass on requests for material services from other people. \u00a0How we use it conveys “feedback” on everyone else’s experiences of using the natural world (natural signals we need to learn to read). \u00a0For example, when passing on requests for services, and “other people” are finding the services harder to deliver, the price goes up<\/span><\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s one of “nature’s signals” to read, <\/em><\/strong>
\n“when the price goes up” is a natural signal of “enough”.<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n
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And our prices for using the earth have started dramatically going up!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We might then use money to relieve demands rather than add to them, to be more profitable.<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

I developed a variety of other theoretical models, did proofs, published papers, and no one cared that it seemed possible to tame a true “whole system view” for making critical decisions for steering whole systems toward their sustainability. \u00a0 the problem seemed to be it offered whole system guidance… not competing system guidance, so it seemed of not interest.<\/p>\n

This new thematic approach did seem to offer clear and highly actionable information for our present circumstance, of facing converging crises of many kinds at once. \u00a0 I’ve written about it in many ways, finding how Keynes himself foresaw the need for the system he designed to evolve this way, to respond to that signal from nature of “enough”. \u00a0 It would need to learn to thrive by people using their money to care for their sources of earnings, rather than to keep using their money to keep multiplying their demands on their sources of earnings, our world of other people and the earth.<\/p>\n

There’s a deeper problem I came across.<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

I was recently helped Pat Thompson’s book “Accidental Theorist”, on the troubled ancient history of public institutions of law and trade growing incessantly, while marginalizing to the point of subjugating the home centered ancient Greek and Minoan high cultures that preceded. \u00a0 Her interesting views of much the same problem I’d been studying, gave me several missing pieces. \u00a0 We had both been substantiating how, how\u00a0people were affected by becoming absorbed with abstract thinking.<\/p>\n

Over history, as became accustomed to living in worlds defined and modeled on our own reasoning, rules and concepts, it structurally altered our awareness of and relationships to things not in our mental models. \u00a0 We didn’t notice that abstract models have no way to refer to their environments, for example, because models can contain only self-referencing definitions.<\/p>\n

To hold together an abstract model needs to be in entire self-agreement, and without limits, eliminating the questions about what else might be happening. \u00a0 That personal experience is different, based more on enjoying and relating to undefined subjects generally, got less and less attention as the wealth and power of money and the limitless rules for using money to make money took over the public sphere.<\/p>\n

So, that may be where a big part of the self-defeating behaviors of modern economies comes from. acting as if they can continue using rules defined with no environment. \u00a0 That mindset has become more and more deeply embedded in our own global culture, not it appears to have been since the dawn of abstract language. \u00a0 \u00a0It’s at least clearly visible in the recorded 4000+ years \u00a0of\u00a0western history<\/span>. \u00a0 Abstract thinking builds worlds of its own, leaving people unaware of other worlds and environments. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The one word that seems to turn that around is “homemaking”, as if heard awaking from a dream: “What about homemaking?” what’s the rule for homemaking?? \u00a0 \u00a0The only use people actually have for money, after all, is taking it home, to give it away, to serve the greater purposes of our lives and cultures we all have. \u00a0 \u00a0Homemaking starts with concentrating wealth, starting small to multiply, to create the place to live in security as the natural end, not to continue till it fails.<\/span><\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

Our general Post 2015 economic plan contains a serious strategic error.<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n