Energetic Limits to Economic Growth

[GliderGuider]

11. It's a question of system boundaries.

I view global civilization as my top-level system of interest. Within that system are many components, some of which are individual nations. A principle of self-organizing or "autopoietic" systems (including social systems like nations or civilization as a whole) is that a change in one component doesn't invalidate the system structure. Similarly, a change in the behaviour of one component doesn't necessarily imply a possibility for a similar overall system-level change.

You might want to try reading Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's work on autopoeisis and structural coupling, or perhaps Fritjof Capra's latest book "The Systems View of Life". Seeing the world through a system science lens gives quite an interesting view. This is where my pursuit of human behavioral explanations in terms of thermodynamics, evolutionary psychology and cybernetics has led me.

It's hardly fatalistic to recognize that many aspects of a system's behavior are constrained by its current structure (one of Maturana and Varela's observations). There is still plenty of significant work to be done at smaller scales - like saving the Monarchs, building communities, doing engineering work, raising children, gardening, painting, writing - or just thinking about things. It doesn't matter if we can save the world or not. There are plenty of other meaningful things to do in the interim, just as we've always done - even in the face of the certain knowledge of our own personal deaths.