MONDAY, DEC 21, 2015: NOTE TO FILE

Introduction

Brief

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: SCIENCE MATTERS, FROM THE WIRES, NON-FOSSIL-FUELED, REALITY-BASED, ECOLACY, FEDERATION OF WATERSHEDS

TUCSON (A-P) — Meta-summary:

• Earth's first global empire will (likely) collapse or otherwise "fade away" as all prior regional ones have.
• The great hope, the basis for off-the-scale optimism, is that this time around we have the intellectual tools (information + science + time) to understand our trajectory and predicament (the dynamics of the world system, e.g. pursuit of short-term self interest selects against foresight intelligence and for failure of complex society, e.g. our Modern Techno-Industrial monetary culture).
• The descent part has always seemed lamentable to those living through it.
• Secondary to the lamentation and sorrow of it all, a teachable moment may arise.
• Many will wonder how to mitigate the descent and some will wonder if descent/collapse could be avoided the next time around.
• Can we acquire a capacity to question everything, all assumptions and verities—to temper our certitude-as-usual?.
• Some will point out how the business-as-usual norm will have to foundationally change to avoid repeating the pattern and perhaps enough will transition (vote with their feet) to create a new world (ecological civilization) norm where sustainable progress (asymptotic growth) in loving and learning can be realized.
• To both persist and prosper, some humans (enough) need to 'get right with reality' (aka Mother) or otherwise smarten up, meaning get systems science literate (ecolate).
• Step one for the inecolate, before reading anything else on this site, is to read Donella Meadows' book Thinking in Systems: A Primer, because it is a primer.
• The 21st century needs to be when the word 'science' becomes short for 'systems science' as everything else is 'silo science' which is marvelously wonderful and all (I've never met a silo science or area of evidence-based scolarship that I didn't like), but views through the microscope will not be enough to get us through this century intact.
• Unless you specify a focus of interest, then systems science (which connects all the dots of the silo sciences via its conceptual macroscope of systems thinking) should be assumed, hence science = system science.

To minimize reading my typing (I'm not an expert), start with the transcript of 'Critical Mass', then read the transcript of 'Living in the Futures Past' and take in the concerns of about sixty experts who are among the few who are also systems science literate for the most part.

In fewest words, with links to all articles on major points (and a few minor), those who are just way too busy, and already know about our problematique, should start with an overview of the 'big ideas' in outline format: Design for a Viable Civilization. I have a special interest in ‘real solutions’ as do a few others (one that I know of, but there could be others). I am interested in what a design for a viable civilization might look like. This results in a lot of typing which is free but for the price of an effort to consider words, words, words. I recently (2020) started a Quora ‘Space’ for those having ‘existential concerns’. If ‘real solutions’ are of interest, my Design for a Viable Civilization offering, an overview in 10+K words, is likely more than anyone wants to read or think about. But I could be wrong, so also consider (or not) my Existential Concerns on Quora to which others may contribute outreach content (9/2021 update: no one has).The note to start with would be my answer to the question, 'Could what happened to the Indus Valley Civilization happen to us?'

April, 2018 I summed up my endeavor to think in three paragraphs. The newest article worth reading is a review of Demystifying Sustainability, which says what needs to be said, so unless you have an interest only in Plan B, read the Foreword and Introduction to Demystifying Sustainability: Towards real solutions, then read the book.

For visual learners consider Lord Man.

For others, one option would be to read Understand the Exponential Function as it is the cognitive starting point. Then consider the last chapter, Finis: The Nature of Things. If start and end points seem of interest, read between the alpha and omega. For those having less sciency interests and background, storytelling works best. The Cruise Ship Earth series includes overview introductory material. The Time Traveler's Tale can be read merely as entertaining fiction. For the real fiction: Hu-mans Awake. Those who know of the Elder Brothers' Warning from the Heart of the World could start there as the Kogi mámas' message is the same as our ecolate (systems science literate) scientists have been offering us since the 1950's.

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First: Develop a Plan A and B

Develop Plan A: Planned, harmonious descent to sustainable prosperity, and.....

Develop Plan B: If Plan A fails, if turning things around before hitting the wall (of biophysical limits) fails, if a managed descent (as distinct from a chaotic collapse) fails, then have comprehensive information packages prepared for the possibility our children, grandchildren, and/or great-grandchildren may have to restart after crash. A remnant population will likely restart, always has so far, but Plan B is not to return to business as usual as soon as possible, but is about transitioning to a more enlightened way of knowing and living life (which involves acquiring new insight, something like an 'ecolate Tao of Systems Thinking') that doesn't continue to repeat the pattern of overshoot and collapse with loss of information/civilization as usual. Due to human cognitive limits, individuals and teams will tend to focus on developing and implementing one plan or the other which differ only in terms of when they are implimented. This quasi e-book considers Plan A, does not exclude it, but tends to focus on:

Plan B

Prepare information for posterity to use during and after collapse who live in pockets of sustainability and functionality (intact complex society): A science-based community effort.

   1. Primary education materials for autodidacts—for citizens and generalists.

•Literacy: Lingua franca stories and storytelling, from mythology to the endeavor to tell the most likely stories (i.e. science).
•Numeracy: Mathematical storytelling by functions, equations, formulas, graphs, and diagrams (e.g. Wolfram Language).
•Ecolacy: Systems science as viewed through macroscope of systems thinking, i.e. operating manual for spaceship Earth (e.g. Ecolanguage intro to Odum Diagram Language). Science involves all three pillars of education.

   2. Specialist information needed to do focused tasks.

•Food production, preparation, preservation in local environment without fossl fuel inputs.
•Making and repairing needed items locally using minimum of industrially produced and transported materials.
•Information collection and interpretation for monitoring local environment.
•Specialist knowledge to perform services—repair, crafts, medical care, education, management...
•Large scale technology—long distance transport, manufacturing, energy production for industry.

Design socio-political-eco-nomic systems for future implementation that avoid post-overshoot chaotic descent (collapse) based on experiment, evidence, and modeling.

   1. Global government to manage (protect) planetary commons and set limits (see Ecolacy 101).

•Management subsystems based on watershed areas up to 100 km radius as alternative to nation-states.
•Shared global military force to prevent interwatershed aggression or successful attack by non-Federation empire-builders.
•Humans, plus their industry and plant/animal mutualists, limited to 20% of watershed area.
•Planetary monitoring of nature's 80% with intervention as needed to protect it.
•Set limits on industrial production and pollution centered around high energy urban centers.
•Preserve, evaluate, interpret, add to and freely distribute information.

   2. Local government based on mutual coercion mutually agreed upon as self-organized through trail and error.

•Immigration by consent of locals—in low population areas uninvited immigrants would not go unnoticed.
•Open borders to visitors limited to time needed to walk across watershed (or longer with permission).
•Any individual could eMigrate to another watershed that would have them as a member.
•Each watershed managed as a Federation of Communities of village size (50-150) that self-organize.
•Population of pets, domestic animals and humans managed by each watershed to match the carrying capacity of their 20% by reducing the longage of demand.
•Freedom would include the freedom to fail within the claimed 20% without destroying the 80%.
•Failure of some of the 20,000 to 25,000 watershed areas would be limited and local, as well as educational.
•A voluntary refugee (eMigrant from industrial society) movement would transition to a foundationally different apolitical Federation of Watersheds management system.

 

Summary of Summary:

Life sustainable is a race between education, maturation, and something else. Of the three pillars upon which an educated mind is supported, ecolacy alone is essential. Reading and arithmetic are nice but dispensable (e.g. Kogi). The intelligentsia of the Euro-Sino Empire are partially literate—typically science (as a way of knowing/finding things out) illiterate, and most writings in the intellectual press are merely eloquent, unadorned by graphs or even diagrams, let alone any other signs of numeracy. Most of the educated elite know of the word "numeracy" and may have read about it, but most who are products of the educational system have never heard of "ecolacy" and have no sense at all that any human claiming a slight grasp of reality must be ecolate. Implied is that one has concerns regarding the human predictament.

 

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I have played many roles sometimes with the majority, but more often attempting to shock the scientific establishment into a better view. — Howard T. Odum

I include students of science among those who should be shocked into a better view and the intelligentsia who could be if they would be (when a 'teachable moment' arrives). Students are better able to consider the possibility they might be wrong, however. Committed doomers and cornucopians may go elsewhere. Inecolate cornucopians can soon go to Mars or one of many planned space colonies ultimately powered by Sol's Dyson sphere when not vacationing on Resort Earth. Doomers can go to their bunker and fondle their ammo or read Guy McPherson's Nature Bats Last blog, or watch Hambone Littletail's (Sam Mitchell's) thousands of YouTube videos made for his thousands of Humptydumptytribal members.

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Introduction by Special Interest

To serve the SYSTEM we become specialists (for better or worse). On the apparent pluse side we make money, and on the more questionable side we contribute to 300 years and counting of sustainable development of industrial society and its pace of planetary destruction/transformation.

Netizens
Educators
Students/Concerned Citizens
Activists
Scientistic Philistines
Nerds
Literati
Systems Science Fiction
Emergy Lovers
Engineering
Economics
Political Science
Faithers/True Believers
Skeptical Inquirers

If none of the above, maybe read Cruise Ship of Fools.

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Only 1.5% of households make over $200/day. By global standards, Americans are not the 1%. We are (53 / 3499 x 58) the 0.89%. America's poorest of the poor are 'rich' (nothing 'good' implied) hyper-consumers by African standards.

In the USA, the only Sustainers to survive into the 21st century are traditional Hopi Puebloans who still speak Hopi and don't watch TV, share on social media, or have a motor vehicle. They have resisted acculturation, first by the Spanish then Anglos, for 475 years. There are 12 villages on the Hopi Reservation (aka Nation) and in some traditionalists live self-sufficient lives that depend on sun, soil, seeds, rain, and having a digging stick and robe. They have been farming on their mesa since about 700 CE. When the transition comes they will notice that few tourists come anymore; that the alcohol/drug and other problems among non-traditional Hopi have diminished, and that their grandchildren are eager to learn. You can't join the Hopi tribe, but you can be Hopi, you can be a Sustainer which could involve having a low-power vehicle (e.g. bicycle) and some electricity (maybe as much as 50Wh/person/day).

In South America, the Kogi, our Elder Brothers, have lived at the Heart of the World since about 900 CE and have survived, culture intact, into the 21st century. In 1990 they gave Younger Brother a warning. Younger Brother failed to listen. In 2011 they re-invited the original BBC director back to give us a final warning: Aluna. Another way to state their message: of the three pillars of education, ecolacy alone is essential.

 

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• Hu-mans would rather believe than know. [idea: E. O. Wilson]
• Hu-mans reject (don't believe) what is true but unpleasant and embrace (believe) what is obviously false but comforting. [idea: H. L. Mencken]
• Imagine: no heaven, no hell, only sky above, people living for today, no countries, nothing to kill or die for, no organized religion, people living in peace, no deeply held claims to possessions, no need for greed or hunger, a siblinghood of hu-mans, people sharing all the world....with other organisms. [idea: John Lennon]
• Eco-mans (ecolate hu-mans) endeavor to understand the structure and functioning of the Universe to develop a model for survival that molds hu-man behavior into a plan of actions and avoidances that is oriented toward the maintenance of a viable equilibrium between hu-man demands and Nature's (the Mother's, Aluna's...) resources in which the individual and society both carry the burden of great responsibilities which extend not only to the local community but to the whole of hu-mankind. [idea: Kogi Mámas]

The challenge is to keep within the viable, equitable, bearable, but narrow equilibrium of the sustainable.