Todd, your thoughts on homeorhesis bring to mind the work of James Kay at the University of Waterloo on self-organizing holarchic open systems (SOHO Systems). I’m not sure if you are familiar with his work relating to ecosystems and thermodynamics, but it’s really fascinating. Ecosystems really work in a state of non-equilibrium; they exist in a series of quasi-steady states away from equilibrium. They maintain these steady states by exporting their entropy (material and energy “disorder” or waste) to other holarchic (like hierarchic but with reciprocal power realationships, not the “top down” aspect of traditional hierarcy) levels. These levels span scale (watershed -> basin) and type (watershed -> landscape). At one of these quasi-steady states, the ecosystem is complex and resistant to change and gets more and more resistant as it approaches equilibrium. One could argue that ecosystems progress from steady-state to steady-state, increasing in complexity (homeorhesis). However, if you exhibit a strong enough force on one of these steady states (ie introduce or remove significant matter or energy) you can cause collapse of the complex state.

I think similarities can be drawn to social and economic systems. An economy, for instance, needs to operate at a position somewhat removed from equilibrium, since at equilibrium profits equal zero in a perfectly capitalist system. If we try to pull an economic system away from it’s steady state, say through concentrating energy and matter (power and capital) at nucleii, then the system will resist, often chaotically and possibly lead to a collapse to a lower level of complexity.

Your question helped inspire me to write another entry http://www.toddero.com/?p=86

I think in general the value of exploring reality (like the membranes of our cells) is to help inform ourselves of the structure of reality. The more aligned our own understanding is with reality, then it seems that our thinking about the practical implementation and solution to any dilemma will be far more likely to produce desirable results.

As to the practical implementation of this particular piece of reality…I was hoping you could help me with that!! But I think one implementation which I brought up in the post I mentioned is that somehow we structure organizations to actively seek a change in our understanding and then to have a system which translates that understanding into change. For example…some sort of annual review where the purpose of the organization is revisited perhaps? You tell me. Thx!!

I think that what you both talking about, and please correct me if I am wrong, is not so much a favoring of the external over the internal, the membrane over the nucleus, but rather favoring them more equitably, recognizing that both have different, essential roles to play.

Todd, this reminds me of another example. The other day I was talking to your sister about the internal and external powers of man, as described by Abdu’l-Baha. The internal faculties of imagination, comprehension, thought, memory, and the common transmittal faculty, and the external senses which we share with the animal kingdom: http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-56.html We were confused because the roles assigned to these faculties by Abdu’l-Baha differs from the common use of their terms. Imagination for example translates the raw data from the senses into images, which are then transmitted to the comprehension. Abdu’l-Baha was describing a process in which information comes from the external and is refined as it moves through each of the internal faculties. Often the process of thought I hear espoused is one that moves in only in the internal: we generate thoughts from our memory, go about comprehending them, imagining with them, and then putting the whole thing back into our memories. This is the exact opposite direction described by Abdu’l-Baha.

I’m not saying that either direction is preferable, but rather that there must be constant communication, refinement of process, etc in keeping with the roles and responsibilities on the various participants in the system, that is to say the internal and external realities must needs affect each other. Furthermore, because we live in a state where the central is strengthened and the peripheral largely ignored, the stronger participant, the central has the responsibility of recognizing and reinforcing the role of peripheral such that a better balance is achieved.

very cool stuff though

“I believe that the implications for economic activity are also profound. One thing that should be learned from the current global economic crisis is that huge, multi-national, centrally managed businesses and financial institutions are the ones that are generally failing around the world, while smaller locally owned and operated business and financial institutions (that are closer to the membrane, among other things) are fairing much better. National Banks are failing but local credit unions are doing fine. Many large auto companies and manufacturing industries and national retail chains are failing, but many small and mid-sized enterprises that are closer to the ground are doing much better.

The problem as I see it, in our economic sphere, is that countries like the US have adopted economic policies that encourage the growth of huge centrally managed mega-corporations and that discourage smaller-scale economic activity. This is true even in the agricultural sector, where a century of enormous public subsidies in the US (many billions of dollars for many decades) have supported the development of huge agro-businesses that employ integrated systems of highly mechanized, chemically intensive, genetic-engineering based industrial processes. These systems are derived from publicly-subsidized research and development dollars. They respond to direct crop subsidies and protectionist trade policies. And they have been liquidating ecological capital across the country through massive soil erosion, pollution and depletion of water sources, habitat destruction and species extinctions, and so forth.

In the process, small-scale, community-based, environmentally sustainable forms of agriculture, that create meaningful and empowering jobs for people, and where the learning and adaptation and generation of knowledge occurs “at the membrane”, have been completely decimated across the country (and around much of the world). Moreover, this situation has become so normalized that most people today simply assume that small-scale ecologically sustainable organic agriculture is “more expensive” and “less efficient” than the agro-industrial model.

What this normalization obscures, however, is that the primary reason the agro-industrial model APPEARS to be more efficient and less expensive is because it has benefited from a century of massively subsidized R&D money that privileged certain technologies and business practices, combined with direct subsidies and trade policies that further privilege those technologies and business practices, combined with governments that turn a blind eye while agro-industries engaged in the short-term liquidation of the earth’s ecological capital.

If those same billions of dollars of R&D money had been spent on developing ecologically-sound small-scale agricultural technologies and business practices rooted in the localized generation of both knowledge and jobs, and if equivalent subsidies and trade policies had been directed toward those job-generating and environmentally friendly agricultural practices, then the reverse would likely be the case: organic agriculture might be cheaper than the agro-industrial model. It would undoubtedly be cheaper when one factors in the environmental externalities.

As these current economic arrangements show, getting the relationship right between the “nucleus” (i.e., governing institutions and policies) and the “membrane” (localized production, innovation and adaptation) is essential. Otherwise, it is exceedingly difficult for people and small organizations at the membrane to function in the ways described in Todd’s post.

This is not to suggest that there is no place in the world for large organizations, or no place for international trade. It is simply to suggest that, as a result of prevailing systems of governance and the market distortions/corruptions that have been permitted/encouraged under their watch, the balance appears to be way out of whack.”