Tag(s): ; ; ; ; ; ; , Add Tags
Add to My Group(s)

View Ratings | Rate It

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 6/15/08:     Permalink
View Article Stats      (13 comments)

Does the 2008 US Presidential Race Really Matter?

Add this Page to Facebook!
Submit to Twitter
Submit to Reddit
Submit to Stumble Upon

Tell A Friend

Become a Fan
Get Embed HTML Code
By (about the author)

Become a Fan Become a Fan  (2 fans)   -- Page 1 of 3 page(s)

opednews.com

Will contributing time and money to the Obama campaign, or just voting for Obama make any meaningful difference as to how the future unfolds? Conversely, does time and energy spent working for an Obama victory simply detract from applying these assets towards working for real societal transformation? I believe that evaluating these questions from a systems theory perspective provides insight on their resolution.

Global society constitutes a complex adaptive system. All systems possess three fundamental attributes:

1)      Interconnectedness. A set of units or elements are interconnected so that changes in any element or elements produce changes in all. A change in any part of such a system causes rippling changes throughout every part of a system.

2)      Emergence. The system as a whole possesses collective properties which are qualitatively different from, and not reducible to, the properties of its constituent elements. The wetness of a water molecule is not reducible to the properties of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Similarly, consciousness is not reducible to the properties of individual neurons.

3)      Boundedness. All systems possess a definite boundary between system and not system. This boundary may be closed or open. For complex systems, it is open.

Complex systems have unpredictable outputs. They process information and transform themselves in accordance with the results of their information processing. This is particularly true for complex systems composed of conscious elements such as human beings.

Because global human society is a complex adaptive system, its configuration is determined by the results of its information processing. All such systems may be said to evolve along a fitness landscape. As such they possess trajectories through this landscape or, as I usually call it, through learning space.


fitness landscape


trajectory

Above, I’ve included examples for a fitness landscape and its associated trajectory for human civilization from a paper I presented in 1997 at a conference on sociocybernetics at the University of Amsterdam. Once a complex system such as human civilization is reduced to a computer simulation, its fitness landscape and trajectory become readily apparent. The full text of the paper is available at: http://www.michaelpbyron.com/SystemicaArt.htm for anyone interested in following this topic up in more depth. [Note: If these images do not appear above, they can be found at: http://www.michaelpbyron.com/image022.gif and at: http://www.michaelpbyron.com/image023.gif .]

Because people learn and have goals, society as a whole has goals and attempts to “learn” its way towards the attainment of these goals. Security, comfort of life, and health are fundamental goals for all humans. Attempts at ordering society through law, fairly and impartially enforced by a government, which is responsive to the citizenry, represent one such goal. Another goal has been the provisioning of public goods. Basically, we have sought both to develop ever greater organizational “software” for governance, in conjunction with ever more powerful “hardware” for the provision of material goods. 

In a system everything that happens causes rippling changes throughout the system. Consider our present day world: We have had limited success with developing the “software” needed to create what we would intuitively recognize as a just and humane society. We have recently been somewhat more successful at the provisioning of material goods, thanks primarily to cheap hydrocarbon energy. This material success has led us to the point where nearly seven billion humans are artificially sustained by the rapid release of chemical energy stored in oil and other hydrocarbons. However, availability of these resources must begin to decline ever more precipitously, and beginning soon.

Further, this decline of availability of cheap fuel is triggering ever more rapid use of the “dirtiest” of these energy sources because it exists in the greatest abundance: coal. This is triggering increasingly rapid climate change. Record setting droughts in some areas, record floods in others. As I write, a hundred blocks of Cedar City Iowa are under water due to historically unprecedented flooding.

The net effect of these climatic changes is to decrease agricultural production; and this is occurring at a time when world food reserves are already at an all time low for modern times. However, expensive oil, due to nearly flat production in the context of rising global demand, leads to increasing conversion of food crops to ethanol production, further lowering food reserves.

Global industrialized agriculture is almost completely dependent upon petroleum. Fertilizers are derived from natural gas. Pesticides are derived from petroleum. The entire agricultural production, processing and distribution system depends upon petroleum. The industrialization of agriculture across the planet had led to the majority of humanity becoming, for the first time, city dwellers. More than ever before in history, people are dependent upon the system of industrialized agriculture for their food.

As far as our governmental “software” is concerned, political power is fragmented into numerous nation states of varying power and affluence. Wealth and opportunity are inequitably distributed in all of them. Two thirds of the planet’s remaining petroleum reserves, along with forty percent of its natural gas, are located in the Persian Gulf. The United States is the only nation on the planet with the capability to project large amounts of military power globally. It is bogged down in the Persian Gulf nation of Iraq, in the sixth year of a war to control these resources.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

 

http://www.MichaelPByron.com

Michael P Byron is the author of The Path Through Infinity's Rainbow: Your Guide to Personal Survival and Spiritual Transformation in a World Gone Mad. This book is a manual for taking effective action to deal with the crises of our age including (more...)
 

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author Contact Editor View Authors' Articles

 

Share this page: (what's this?)                   Tell a Friend: Tell A Friend

Add this Page to Facebook!      Submit to Stumble Upon      Submit to Reddit      Add This Page to Mr Wong!           NEWSVINE      DEl.ICIO.US      Looksmart Furl      My Web      Blink List     (More...)

Comments

The time limit for entering new comments on this article has expired.

This limit can be removed. Our paid membership program is designed to give you many benefits, such as removing this time limit. To learn more, please click here.

Comments: Expand   Shrink   Hide  
13 comments
To view all comments:
Expand Comments
(Or you can set your preferences to show all comments, always)

Interesting Points by Philosopher Jay on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 2:04:57 PM
I SEE A DOG by Wolfie on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 6:39:07 PM
That's right, Wolfie! by Oh on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 10:58:59 PM
Systems Theory is nice by John R Moffett on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 8:41:34 PM
Systems Theory is nice by Dr. Michael P Byron on Monday, Jun 16, 2008 at 12:03:29 AM
Only if we stop feeding the crooks. by John Hanks on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 9:11:57 PM
Yes it does matter by Pat Williams on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 10:36:40 PM
2008 presidential race by Gary Denson on Sunday, Jun 15, 2008 at 10:42:29 PM
Systems theory by bgilmore on Monday, Jun 16, 2008 at 12:49:43 AM
No by pft on Monday, Jun 16, 2008 at 1:19:40 AM
It'd be interesting to combine a systems & Chaos theory... by Rob Kall on Monday, Jun 16, 2008 at 9:57:34 AM
It'd be interesting to combine a systems & Chaos theory by Dr. Michael P Byron on Monday, Jun 16, 2008 at 10:23:46 AM
WHAT ABOUT NADER OR MCKINNEY? by rhalfhill on Monday, Jun 16, 2008 at 11:28:53 AM