Tales of the Open System

[GliderGuider]

I have a few things to say regarding those of us who now speak of softer matters like compassion, love and equanimity, instead of engaging the powerful with the harder truths of civilization and agitating for changes of behaviour during this time of accelerating collapse.

My teachers have always told me that one speaks best from personal experience, so I propose to say these things by telling my own story.

I've been speaking the harder truths to whoever will listen for over a decade now. At times it was a relentless effort, and my writings have been read by literally thousands of people. I've hit climate change, energy use, agriculture, sustainability, venal politics, the role of the deep state, the shadowy powers-that-be sitting spider-like at the center of the web of society gobbling all the goodies they can reach. I’ve written hundreds of articles on these topics, and given many public talks as well. In other words, I've done my time in the trenches.

All the way along I've been driven by a burning desire to know why. Why is this happening? Why are we so deep into overshoot? Why can't we seem to turn back? Why do the COP conferences on climate change keep failing? Why do species keep going extinct? Why can't we seem to muster the political will or social capacity to protect any aspect of this planet and its precious biosphere from our endless rapacity?

My investigations into these questions have followed a process called "inductive reasoning", which involves using empirical observations to discern patterns, and from there to infer underlying principles. Here’s how the process unfolded.

First I delved into what is known about collective and individual behaviour: group dynamics, game theory, the nature of psychopathy, social and neurological reward mechanisms, the nature of competition and cooperation, greed and altruism.

That survey prompted me to examine human behaviour throughout history. I was looking for threads of universality that cut across time and cultural differences and reinforce the sorts of behaviours we are trying, unsuccessfully, to counter today. I found them.

That study led me to evolutionary psychology, which pointed me in turn towards the operation of processes of natural selection.

The deeper I dug the more ominous the answers became. Two years ago, more than eight years of virtually full-time investigation culminated in a two-year orgy of research, and I found myself staring at the hardest truth I could possibly have imagined.

I had dug all the way down, as far as I could go in the macroscopic (i.e. non-quantum) world. I had arrived at the fundamental building block of the physical universe: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and how it operates in open systems.

The chain of induction I had forged was unbroken from there all the way back up to such human conundrums as: the laws encouraging loggers to deforest Malaysia for palm oil plantations; the bottom trawlers and drift-netters decimating the oceans; the farmers sucking the aquifers of the Great Plains and India dry for irrigation; the rise of authoritarian security states and failed states; the constantly rising levels of CO2 from cars and power stations - in short to the whole damned clusterfuck.

These are the broad brush-strokes of my big picture:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics described by Ludwig Boltzmann's entropy equation (S = k log W) provides the physical context for the growth in size and complexity of open systems. The effects of this driver are discernable in every aspect of life, from unicellular bacteria to human beings; and in every aspect of behaviour from bacteria swimming up glucose gradients to the creation of human institutions that support energy and resource extraction activities.

This operation of the Second Law has been dubbed the Maximum Entropy Production Principle, or MEPP. In summary form, MEPP implies that a system acts to degrade whatever energy gradients it uses as quickly as it can, consistent with maintaining the integrity of the system. The system extracts as much free energy as rapidly as it can from the raw gradients, and uses that energy for its own survival, self-repair, growth and reproduction.

Open systems need to obtain energy and other resources in order to function. When several open systems compete for common shared resources, they do so according to a principle developed by Alfred Lotka and H.T. Odum, called the Maximum Power Principle or MPP. This principle tells us that when such systems compete, the one that can mobilize the most power (i.e. extract the most free energy from the available gradients in the shortest amount of time) is more likely to prevail.

MPP is the principle that drives the "natural selection" in evolution. The living systems that result from natural selection under the influence of MPP have a built-in bias towards growth, whether they are plants, multi-celled animals, human societies or institutions.

Together, MEPP and MPP are the principles behind the growth of network complexity and hierarchy that we see in both natural and artificial systems:

Increased network complexity permits systems to develop more specialized sub-systems, and thus become more adaptable. Hierarchies make systems more efficient by allowing the development of specialized control functions that permit more efficient operation of larger systems. Those controls are the feedback loops identified by the science of cybernetics. They help to explain such human phenomena as road and communications networks, and the layered structure of the modern corporation.

All open systems depend for their existence on the material and energy resources of their environment. The nature of those resources - their quantity, quality and availability - shape the system's structure and development. This dependence is obvious in plant and animal morphologies with their specialized feeding systems – for example roots and photosynthetic leaves, or grinding molars and cutting incisors.

More significantly for me, this resource-dependent morphological development operates in human societies as well. Anthropologist Marvin Harris describes through his Principle of Infrastructural Determinism how cultures exhibit traits that allow them to take best advantage of their varied environments.

As a result of all the factors I’ve just outlined, all human social institutions - from technology to politics, art and religion - act directly or indirectly to support and reinforce the operation of this chain of principles. Aside from any other functions it might perform, all human behaviour has as its core purpose the maximally efficient dissipation of energy gradients through the extraction of free energy.

In light of this, it should be obvious why degrowth movements have never gained any serious traction. Individuals may sometimes and in some ways "break out of the mould”, because they are single elements of a vast and overwhelmingly complex system. But the operation of human societies is as statistical in nature as a gas in a thermodynamic demonstration chamber. In that setting a particular molecule may have its own velocity, but overall the gas shows a uniform behaviour that is the aggregate of all its molecules.

The analogy is that while you or I may choose to leave our job and live in a mud hut, this will cause only an infinitesimal change in the overall behaviour of our society. Most people will not follow our lead. The laws of statistical mechanics apply just as much to societies as they do to gases.

In all of this you may have noticed that there is precious little evidence of any ability of human ingenuity, foresight, free will or consciousness to change the operation of the system. That is because human minds are conditioned by that chain of connections just as surely as our bodies. Thoughts of degrowth in a time of surplus are literally, perhaps even physically, unthinkable by the majority of human beings. Instead, the vast proportion of our collective creativity is pressed into the service of the growing open system of civilization - with the results we see around us today.

Well!
Well, well, well…

It should now be fairly obvious why, when I reached this point in my inductive investigations, I promptly had a nervous breakdown.

When an animal finds itself in an inescapable situation it will first tear itself apart trying to force an exit. If that does not succeed the animal will usually collapse and wait for death. I had torn myself apart and suffered the collapse, but being human I was disinclined to simply sink into passivity and wait to die - or just say "Screw it, nothing matters!" and party till Doomsday. Instead, I was determined to explore my newfound fatalism as deeply as I had explored our human condition, in the hopes that I would find at least some philosophical comfort while I lived out my remaining days.

It took some time, but a suitable personal philosophy gradually took form – woven from threads of Buddhism, Taoism, my understanding of Advaita and the “amor fati” of Epictetus and Nietzsche.

From that fertile philosophical conjunction was born my current peace of mind, and my deep compassion for ALL creatures that are swept along by forces beyond their control. My anger, blame, guilt and shame withered and fell away. In their place blossomed a love I had not previously known. It is a love that is all-embracing, touching the saintly and the venal without distinction or favour. A love that does not bind, but rather frees with forgiveness all that it touches. In a way, my collapse had been transformed into a Dark Night of the Soul.

This has been a most blessed and miraculous journey. One that I would not wish on anyone.

Afterword

I accept that this explication of the origins and causes of the modern human predicament is going to cause great consternation for many. After all, one of the cornerstones of the Western Enlightenment is the concept of human agency, and my hypothesis leaves precious little room for its operation. And to most people the whole notion that the structure and operation of modern corporations and political parties find their basis in “18th Century steam engine science” is going to seem frankly preposterous.

If you find yourself feeling that way, I would ask that you just let the matter rest. Whether I am right or wrong about any of it probably doesn’t make much difference to how the world will unfold. If anything, pay more attention to my penultimate paragraphs. If you can arrive at a place of compassion, equanimity and love without having to go through an existential collapse along the way, you will have – at least in my opinion – succeeded at one of the loftiest endeavours in life.

Best wishes,
Bodhi Paul Chefurka

[The2ndWheel]

1. About as well said as it could be

Personally I'm in the midst of an existential crisis surrounding our subjective measurement of distance, direction, and time. Even more than that, the universal application of those subjective measurements.

In my head, what you said would come out as, we can't continue, but we can't stop. I've never been much of a wordsmith.

[pscot]

2. Your journey recalls the subtitle

of Dr. Strangelove. I think Miley Cyrus has seen into the dark heart of our dilemma: We Just Can't Stop.

[Ghost Dog]

3. Peace. War (highly entropic) comes next.

I sit on my island,, watching my back, observing, seeking a means of creative expression, and make music, friends and connections in the community.

[hunter]

4. That's an insightful view from an optimist's perspective.

I said in another thread somewhere that I blame optimists and "positive thinking" for most all the ills of our civilization.

My own experience thinking about these issues was not a spiraling down to a hard landing and than bouncing back to some state of inner peace and acceptance.

My off-my-meds state is a black hole of depression and OCD, with not even much room for pessimism in there.

I started college with the goal of being some kind of television engineer, largely because it meshed well with my electronics and computer obsessions. Digital equipment was just beginning to be used in television at the time and I probably could have made a very lucrative career in that field... if I'd lived. Or I might have fallen so deep as to be entirely unsocial and unemployable, a homeless guy in the library scribbling incomprehensible notes on whatever pieces of paper he can get. I don't know.

I found my happy place, such as it is, in evolutionary biology and paleontology, and changed my major to biology. I was still asked to leave school twice after that, to get myself "together" in some way, and the university wasn't going to take me back the last time but for the intervention of a kind paleontology professor. Other kind people also kept my university computer accounts open, etc.. My parents were pretty tolerant of me too, or maybe they were distracted by my insane grandma who was becoming a danger to herself and others, and my brother who had cancer.

Anyways, looking back into deep time I found kind of peace in this crazy world, and at the same time my meds were improving.

My brother found the same sort of peace after a six hour surgery, a few rounds of chemo-therapy that killed the remaining cancer and didn't kill him.

This world has seen environmental upsets like humanity before, and it will see them again.

What are the odds of existing in such turbulent times as we do? It is at once extraordinarily good fortune and bad fortune. Nothing to do but enjoy the ride. We humans are not in the driver's seat.

I live my life as an organic gardener as most I'm able, in all my relationships with this earth and society.

One plants seeds and they grow. Or they don't.

Make your garden friendly for birds, spiders, ants, and other predators of unwelcome garden pests, compost all your kitchen waste, and generally the garden will grow

[GliderGuider]

5. Here's a more plain-language interpretation of the idea.

The kernel of the idea is that all the activity of all living systems and all the systems they create follow the rules laid down by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This includes plants, animals, human beings and all human systems such as our various educational, legal, political and religious systems. Basically, everything we do is shaped by the effects of this law.

Here are the effects that are the most important for human civilization:

1. The Second Law enables the growth of systems as they import free energy. All systems will grow in complexity or size if possible, so long as surplus energy is available and their own structure permits it.

2. If growth is possible and energy is available, systems almost always grow rather than shrink. Systems only stop growing or begin to shrink if the energy needed for growth is no longer available, or their internal structure can no longer support growth (e.g. due to ageing).

3. If two systems compete for the same resources (think of two countries who both want a particular piece of land), the one that can mobilize the most energy the most efficiently tends to win the contest. This is why Russia won WWII, and also why empires with access to more energy succeed empires less energy. Think of the Spanish empire based on wind power, the British empire based on coal, and the American empire based on oil. High-powered systems tend displace lower-powered systems unless special rules are in place.

4. These growth-enabling effects become encoded in our genetics over time, and as a result become part of our unconscious thought processes. This is described by the branch of psychology called evolutionary psychology. This is why growth (for example growing salaries, GDP, population size, industrial capacity and communications and transportation networks) seems so unremarkably natural to us, and the shrinking of any of these seems troublesome or sometimes even catastrophic.

5. Because these thought tendencies come from our deep evolved brain structures they are difficult to fight against. When people are in large groups (like countries) this thinking is reinforced by other aspects of evolutionary psychology that act to keep such large groups together. Outliers (like me) are not tolerated at any high level because our ideas are seen as threats to the cohesion and continued growth of the group.

6. Because of all this, our global civilization is "highly unlikely" to take action to reduce its growth significantly, especially where energy and resource consumption are concerned.

7. Collectively, this civilization is screwed, and there ain't a blessed thing we can do about it.

8. Individuals have more freedom of action, so that's where we will see the most change before the collapse begins in earnest. However, their changes will not have much if any influence on the behaviour of society at large. The best we can hope for is that such individuals will act as a sort of "seed stock" for some post-collapse societies.