DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES

NOTE: Here's one more exploration of thermodynamics as an underlying driver for the high levels of systemic malfunction we are currently experiencing. It also implies that the global situation will get much, much worse before it improves.

Sorry for all of the high level theory, but it is proving useful in defining the parameters for successful decision making in the future and where/how violence will erupt.
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If we view our world as a thermodynamic system, a simple application of the second law of thermodynamics won't suffice. Everything doesn't get progressively worse over time. Based on our collective experience, the global system, as well as simpler biological systems, operate on a different basis. They don't run down with the conversion of energy. Instead, they increase their structural complexity over time.

The modification of thermodynamics necessary to accommodate this observable fact was formulated by the Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine in a theory called "dissipative systems" (read his excellent book: "The End of Certainty" for more). One important leap in this theory is that a dissipative system isn't a closed system. Rather, it lives within a larger system (an "environment") that it can interact with.

This upshot of this is that it can extract energy from this larger external environment to increase its structural complexity (build itself up through a process called self-assembly). It can also use this external environment to dump the entropy created during the energy conversion process to minimize the deleterious impact on its structure.

In summary, the global civilization we inhabit fits nicely within Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures. Unfortunately, there are numerous signs that that our system's structure has grown so large, that is now nearly equal in size of its external environment. This implies that disruptive fluctuations will likely increase in intensity (positive feedback loops) until the global system either reverts to a much simpler model (closer to thermodynamic equilibrium, think Kunstler's "World Made by Hand") or evolves into a more stable configuration (think "Resilient Communities").

Comments

[slapout9]

John, your posts are getting real interesting!!

[Syn Diesel]

"global civilization"

The structure you are referring to isn't global nor is it civilized.

As Bucky Fuller would call it, a truely global civilization would be "world-around."

What we have now is a zombie corporatist god-king cult performing blood sacrifice and slavery in order to externalize costs during the extraction of information inputs.

We'll need Mind to design solutions working with the low-hanging fruit of ambient space-time information (think going from 10:1 to 12.5:1 compression ration in a gasoline engine to make virtual "energy" from pre-existant resources) which the "world-around" can deploy so that we can all get out of the way of each other in hopes we can get back together in a higher abstraction.

[SWIMMER21]

John, the more I'm reading you and give some thoughts about it, the more connections with other theories are appearing. It's really plug and play !
Autopoeitic "machines" are maintaining processes by connecting to their environment, resilience of eco(logical)-socio systems tells us there are phases in the development of them and there is dissipative systems you give us a comprehensive essential.
I'm not sure resilient communities will be mainstream in a short or long coming future. My intuition is that RC will appear more like a small and original branch of evolution in eco-socio systems. Hidden and thus protected sufficiently to grow to its size.

[deichmans]

John,

Since life itself is an "open system" without thermodynamic equilibrium, I submit that we are ALREADY living within a "Dissipative Structure".

On the topic of thermodynamics, remember that entropy can be controlled -- but it takes work to do so (otherwise it would be impossible to make ice, an organized lattice of hydrogen-bonded water molecules, from a disorganized liquid).

Organizations are formed in order to accomplish tasks more efficiently. While it is a staple of GG and your own JR blogs (and BNW) to note the declining role of the nation-state, it is worthwhile to remember WHY our nomadic species settled into agrarian communes: because it was more efficient. Therefore, urban centers arose because that was the BEST way to accomplish the tasks required in a civilization dependent on industrialization. Similarly, nation-states were the most efficient mechanism for providing for common defense while creating -- and regulating -- markets in the post-Renaissance era. The former political structures based on the church and the "Divine Right of Kings" were discarded, and we adapted to the new norms.

Have nation-states recently exceeded some threshold of efficiency? Or are there better examples for how we can organize to live, work and play without further disruptions to our environment?

RCs may just be one case -- and I hope you will more fully develop this theory in your forthcoming RC book. It probably deserves and entire section, rather than just a lone chapter.

The premise should be how can we best abide by the 1st Law of Thermodynamics (Energy is always conserved) while also allowing the core social structures to thrive within our environment.

[Duncan Kinder]

While it is important to articulate the features that a resilient community should have - thereby establishing our objective, there is another issue.

As the proverbial Vermont farmer put it, how do we "get to thar from here."

That is where signal / noise ratio analysis comes in. By enhancing our ability to detect ever fainter and fuzzier signals, we enhance our ability to "xtract energy from this larger external environment."

This may involve many items which have no obvious connection to the topics we discuss on this list - indeed it should, since a resilient community entails the structure of daily life. How children play hopscotch may be very relevant.

But what this means is that we may effectively take steps that increase the likelihood of our ability to tap into the energy flows that planet earth actually is importing from the sun whether solar energy technologies have been effected or not.

[wizardx]

Excellent post. A very similar way of looking at dissipative structures is Koestler's idea of panarchy or holons: organic systems can contain other systems, but those 'sub' systems are anything but sub and can have (self-organising) lives of their own that can even (for a finite time) create their own closed context until dissipation is necessary. Occasionally a holon (a discrete infra-system) can evolve into a dominant power in the system - even taking control of the system for a finite period. But all holons and parts of the system are ultimately (in the final dissipation) sub-servient to the overall whole system. Holons are what you see in fractals, those little bits of symetrical mimicry are representations of holons.

[Duncan Kinder]

For an illustration of the sort of thing I am talking about, see the following discussion of Jamaican Creole:

http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/DubPoetry/Contexts/JamaicanCreole.html

"Dub poets regard the use of patois as an act of resistance to the European domination of Caribbean culture. They see themselves as subversive linguistic agents in the continuous struggle against notions that denounce creole as "bastard language," "baby talk," "broken English," "bad English" etc."

"With the rise of the Rastafari movement, whose militant African consciousness questioned every aspect of cultural life, the language problem was for the first time reflected in radical terms. Patois was the source material employed to form a new cultural perspective, a new understanding of the role of language ''as an edifice on which is constructed ';0 racial pride and power as well as a defence against the assimilationist t, encroachment of the dominant society' "

For more information on the Rastafarian Movement, including its role in the slums of Kingston, goto:

http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/DubPoetry/Contexts/Rastafari.html

[enigma_foundry]

I'd also recommend the description of a dissipative structure in Fritjof Capra's book The Hidden Connections

http://books.google.com/books?id=wxoGAAAACAAJ&dq=inauthor:Fritjof+inauthor:Capra&ei=SOM0SJyCJabQigHKgryCBg

[enigma_foundry]

But what this means is that we may effectively take steps that increase the likelihood of our ability to tap into the energy flows that planet earth actually is importing from the sun whether solar energy technologies have been effected or not.

This suggests a new metric, for the efficiency of energy transfer from the biosphere to human use, implied here:

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/walkscore/

and (much less explicitly) here, too:

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/11/11/free-time-that-is-battery-free-time/

[John Robb]

The big challenge on the energy front is the jump from stored solar to active solar. The latter isn't efficient or scalable enough (yet) to make for an easy substitution. That leaves a massive CHASM.