The world and the Way: In energetic systems, when energy comes in from an outer source, the dynamic of the system changes to accommodate incoming energy. In technical terms the system adopts newer more dynamic states to accommodate the influx, these are called thermodynamic gradients. In our human microcosm of social systems and their consequent production and energy/waste cycles the same happens relative to the amount of information being exchanged in the world. If society was a pot of water, then consider that each time the dial is moved up a notch, the water in the pot moves at a more dynamic patterning, the rate of change itself increases...every so often we reach thresholds of societal development, and these are major shifts, structural shifts, or technically to complexity theory - phase transtitions. This, in the case of a pot of water, is what happens when water changes into steam, the structure of the system can no longer accommodate the incoming energy in the current structural form and so the structure of the system itself changes - water turns to steam. In human society, where society is the pot of water on the hob, technology effects the rate at which information is exchanged, this information-exchange is the outer energy coming into the system lets say. It is a complexification natural to the general trend of sought equilibrium at play in all micro-systems in the universe, otherwise called energetic dissipation. In a nutshell then, take a simplified breakdown of human society in the last 800 years. The structure of the nodal pyramid, that of the hub and spoke, and that of the mesh network, are three successive information exchange patterns corresponding to the feudal system, the nation state, and the network respectively. Each necessitates, or favors (in terms of what we call evolution) certain organizational modes and thus productive modes. Each are successive with the latter always being more complex that the former. In universal evolution, as often referred to in thermodynamics, the shattered glass does not reassemble into a composite glass on the table, which is taken to mean that the arrow of time works with thermodynamics toward complexity, not going backward. In the space between , the edge of transition lets say, the threshold of emergence, there is a naturally dynamic situation at play, the water is bubbling, the process appears chaotic. The only way to arrest the transition is to either take out the incoming energy, or enable it to be accommodated by developing a new thermodynamic gradient, which in terms of society translates to new modes of production, new social relations, new forms of interaction, practice, emergence of new skills of symbolic interaction etc. And so this is happening. In the study of exergy , the study of the energy capacity of systems, what is looked at is the capacity for energy to change its form. The potentiality of the system is what is examined. The universe doesnt draw straws, the process that tends toward further dissipation, paradoxically, is not the destructive process that shatters glass, it rather, is one of complexification. The higher the order, the more complexity the system, the more energy can be dissipated throughout that system. No the universal clock does not go backwards, it strives forward, and does this creatively. We have this problem though, the environment as meta-construct, the fact that interest and monetary symbolic amounts are not degrading as the biological does, and this residue is an unnatural limitation on the natural process, it is manmade. Other among these processes that do not change in step with the universal mechanism of which all consciousness is a part, is that of policy and the funneling of the higher form into manmade tracks that skim profits for crooks and sheisterers. at no other time in history that we are currently familiar with has the peril of this activity been so comprehensive. If we continue to build hub and spoke systems into our energy cycle or so called waste cycle , if we continue to rely on the hub and spoke organizational form in the current environment of information exchange, we are trying to accommodate 100degrees in a 20 degree system, if that boiling at 100degrees looks chaotic you should see what happens in this latter instance...this is systemic breakdown at a massively chaotic level. We must re-approach the interdependence of our systems and see each as one among the part-whole relationships comprising the sum totalum. Given the level of complexity and the clear examples worldwide of the forms naturally emergent that are part of this stage it is only self interested hubris that allows the clinging to old forms, and it is detrimentally destructive in that the energetic basis of the new environment must retain the characteristic structure of that new environment if the system can be firmly founded such that it will continue in a balanced way. To try to retain the type of systemic control of less complex arrangements in a highly complex environment is to choose to facilitate the destruction of potential for ones own comfort...much in the same way a possessive controlling parent derails the and manipulates the life of the child for their own selfish and damaged purposes. There is no excuse that should be allowed in the place of good solid approach at the depth of the situation at hand, with the resolve to engage the challenge with the level of complexity that it requires. When the cart travels before the horse, The tail wags the dog, The fox minds the hens, And the world moves the Tao. Over the threshold: The horse is dragged by the cart, The wagging thrashes, The farm a massacre, The world a chaos. To ignore the Way of the subtle, Becoming attached to the machinations of the gross, The natural and the Earth degrades, Nothing can serve to further. Acknowledging and moving with the Way, Yielding to the emergent firmament, Developing to accommodate the subtle, By the modification of the gross, Perseverance turns backward on the Path to the Origin.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 12:13:13 +0000
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