I) Systems Theory and Revolution

Our global civilization today confronts multiple, inter-linked, crises which threaten its continued existence:

1) Peak oil. This is the rapid depletion of the hydrocarbon resources (oil, natural gas, and coal) which provide the lifeblood of industrial civilization. At present world oil supplies appear to have reached a production plateau at around 85 million barrels per day. Demand is about equal to this. Soon demand will permanently exceed supply as world oil production will have passed its peak and will then decline inexorably.

2) Global warming. This is a consequence of industrial civilization’s massive release of carbon into the planet’s atmosphere, along with our rapacious despoiling of the planetary biosphere in search of short-term profit.

3) Political (and economic) failure. This is due to the takeover of our global political economy by short-term profit oriented global corporations, politically allied in the USA and other leading nations with peculiar forms of religious fundamentalism which actively seek the end of the world in fulfillment of their interpretations of religious prophecy.

At this point in time, the forces of maladaptive politics and economics—our leading elites, those who control our political and economic systems—have a seemingly unbreakable lock upon the decision-making structures—governments, international organizations, even religious institutions—of our world. Government, corporation, media, and in some cases, even church, all form one seamless integral whole which acts to maintain the hold on power of these forces, while ensuring that people in general are ignorant and ill-informed as to the consequences of the actions of these elites.

Simply put, global civilization appears to be headed towards a now inevitable catastrophic collapse. Revolution is clearly called for under these circumstances, yet the power of the ruling elites, both militarily, and also in term of their ability to control the thinking of the majority of people through their control over the mass media, has never appeared to be greater. What are we to do?

I believe that an understanding of systems theory offers us insights into the methodology of effective, successful, revolution—even under the dire circumstances in which we find ourselves. The 10 points below offer enough of an overview of systems theory and related concepts, to allow for a clear understanding of how and why a systems theory predicated approach to global revolution can work in the circumstances in which we now find ourselves.

I acknowledge that systems theory and related concepts can make for somewhat dry and difficult reading. Many readers might want to just skim these 10 points and then resume detailed reading below at the section entitled: “A Systems Theory Based Approach to Planetary Revolution”.

For those who wish to attain greater insights, I’ve provided numerous hyperlinks to allow for study of these concepts in greater depth. Natural and human social and societal reality are quite complex. The interactions between all of these are orders of magnitude more complex still. Until the advent of computers, modeling these phenomena was simply not possible, except either in a fragmentary way using linear mathematical models, or more broadly, but much less clearly, via intuition.

II) 10 Points to Understand

1) Human civilization is a system.

As such it is characterized by three fundamental properties:

a) Interconnectedness
b) Emergence
c) Boundedness

All systems consist of some number of elements. These elements interact together with one another such that collective, group properties emerge. These collective properties are properties of the whole system; they cannot be reduced to the properties of the elements comprising the system. For a very simple example, water possesses the property of…call it wetness. Wetness is a collective property of an H2O molecule. It cannot be reduced to the properties of hydrogen or oxygen atoms. Thus it “emerges” from the interaction of its constituent parts—two hydrogen atoms along with an oxygen atom. All systems possess a boundary between the system and its surrounding environment. “Inside” this boundary is the system. “Outside” of it is the environment. Emergence is a very real, scientific miracle of nature. It is also, potentially a powerful force which we can harness to change the world as I shall describe soon.

Systems can either be simple systems which evolve deterministically and linearly, or they can be complex systems.  Complex systems are non-linear and non-deterministic. We simply don’t know in advance what the effects of a given input will be. They contain both positive (amplifying) and negative (stabilizing) feedback loops. Any feedback loop influences the behavior of all feedback loops.

The Earth’s biosphere, human civilization, and our global economy, are each examples of complex systems. As is typical of complex systems, each of the three systems I’ve named just above is nested within the preceding one. Simple systems can be, in at least some cases, modeled using equations. Complex systems cannot be. Computer simulation is required to research this class of system. Complex systems are also referred to as complex adaptive systems.

2) Complex systems possess historical trajectories.

This means that complex systems are constantly changing over time. Specifically the relationships between the elements which make up the system are constantly changing. Complex systems do not have pre-determined, invariant, behaviors. Consequently, they do not evolve deterministically to some stable, static, equilibrium. They can approach equilibrium; however, this equilibrium is not the final state of the system. Thus complex systems tend towards dynamic equilibriums. Long (or short) periods of stasis can be punctuated by periods of rapid change. (Although it is outside the scope of this discussion, this reality is the underlying basis of the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium.)

3) Trajectories represent a system’s evolution or adaptation on a self-generated fitness landscape.

Because the relationships among and between the constituent elements of a complex system are constantly changing, it’s “position” on this landscape is constantly changing. Because the system is seeking a dynamic equilibrium, the landscape resembles plains, hills and valleys. We can consider the valleys to represent equilibrium points, corresponding to a high degree of adaptation or fitness, for such a system. At these points a system is relatively stable and will change in only minor ways for some length of time. However, as change is always occurring at some rate within a system, sooner or later the fitness landscape will alter enough to make a previously stable location less stable or “fit”. When this happens the system will undergo rapid change once again as it seeks a new equilibrium point. The increasing unfitness of the system to its environment causes a “crisis” which triggers rapid adaptation to restore its fitness and recreate its dynamic equilibrium.

The graphics below, which are taken from a computer simulation of the course of human civilization and its associated fitness landscape, which I presented at an international conference a decade ago entitled:  Conference on Problems of Action and Observation, at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, April, 1-4, 1997, which was later published in the journal Systemica, illustrate these concepts:

4) These systemic equilibrium points are called attractors in complexity theory.

This is because the system is “attracted” to such positions. This occurs because they represent the most stable systemic configurations in a given portion of a fitness landscape. Think of a marble rolling downhill to the bottom of a crater. Just as this represents the most stable position for the marble on that portion of an actual landscape, so too does an attractor represent such stability for a complex system. Note that once a system is located at an attractor, it cannot easily “move” to another attractor, even if that attractor represents an even more stable or fit systemic configuration. This is just like a marble that has rolled into a shallow crater. It cannot easily climb out even if a much deeper crater is nearby. The point to be understood here is that once a system has become locked into a particular way of doing things, into a particular configuration, it may thereby forfeit being able to take advantage of an even more fit configuration.

5) Attractors represent equilibrium configurations, towards which dynamic systems evolve over time.

Their path across the fitness landscape constitutes their world line. This world line is the system’s historical trajectory.  The figure above, on the right, illustrates such a world line.

6) The most fit, most adaptive, systems are located along the boundary between rigid order, and incoherent chaos. This is the "edge of chaos".

For human civilization, this is the “region” on our fitness landscape where civilization can flourish. Think of totalitarianism as corresponding to rigid order and incoherent chaos as corresponding to anarchy. All good governments seek to provide a framework of order and security through law. This framework then allows for spontaneous creativity and innovation, freedom of choice, and so on. Note that because systems are always changing, the balance between order and chaos, the laws needed at any given point, to provide maximum fitness must change as well. Complex systems must be adaptive to endure. In a very real sense, all successful complex systems exist at, or near, this edge of chaos.

7) Rather than blindly and randomly seeking out the most fit, most adaptive systemic configuration for any point along a system’s historical trajectory, we as conscious agents, can willfully reconfigure our human system, our global civilization, in ways which have a high, non-random probability of increasing its fitness.

Human civilization is a complex adaptive system which is composed of conscious agent-elements. This sub-type of complex system is sometimes called a second order cybernetic system. Such complex systems are composed of conscious elements which are aware of their existence as a system and are aware of their systemic effects on all systems within which their system is nested (nature for example) along with those systems nested within (the economy for example). Because of this self-awareness, such systems can possess the maximum possible adaptivity. Therefore they can evolve rapidly towards maximal fitness.

8) It follows from this that we ourselves can consciously choose to reorient ourselves away from participation in one system and towards becoming participants in another system.

At a global level, if people all across the planet were to quietly do this, to “secede” away from our corporate dominated planetary oligarchy, while simultaneously acceding into a new, more adaptive configuration, organized at all levels, from local to planetary, our quiet actions would bring a new, much more fit and adaptive, systemic configuration into being, while hastening the dissolution of the old, unfit, maladaptive system. We would consciously be shifting the configuration of our fitness landscape.

9) This reconfiguration would bring a new attractor representing sustainable human civilization into existence.

Or possibly, it would simply move us from one region of the fitness landscape where such a systemic configuration is unattainable due to our having fallen into a basin of attraction representing a much less fit systemic configuration corresponding to our present corporatist world order, to a distant region in which such an attractor is located. Either way, it is the same.

10) Secession from the old world ordering in conjunction with accession to a new world ordering are individual choices in a second order cybernetic complex adaptive system such as human civilization.

All change begins within us. Then it grows, forming ever proliferating linkages with others who have made similar choices.

III) A Systems Theory Based Approach to Planetary Revolution

Very simply put, our human world system is locked into a basin of attraction which not only represents increasingly low fitness and adaptivity, it is also unsustainable. Its world line is about to “flat line”, if you will. Left to itself, it will break up into a number of geographically small, low energy, low population systems. Total complexity will decrease enormously. It will collapse in flaming ruins as the oil runs out while the climate spirals out of control, in conjunction with ever decreasing ability to adapt to these challenges, by government. This will result in a protracted planetary Dark Age.

Our world system is now hopelessly trapped by past decisions, which are now locked into its fundamental configuration, into rapidly approaching such an attractor. So, bottom line, our world system is irrevocable doomed—period.

Yet we are not necessarily doomed, nor is global civilization, necessarily doomed. What we need is to be located somewhere else on our fitness landscape. Since the fitness landscape is created by the nature of our civilization, and since our civilization is a second order cybernetic system composed of conscious elements—us—we can shift this landscape by changing ourselves along with our interrelationships with others.

If we recognize the inevitability of our current world system’s demise, we can begin to rapidly withdraw from it. Stop depending upon it for energy, for food, for security, for information, for everything. Start relying upon an ever growing self-weaving web of interaction and mutual support with others who have reached compatible realizations to yours.

Food must be grown locally without hydrocarbon-derived input from the old civilization. Power must be produced locally and shared within a reciprocally sharing community. Initially such efforts will be tentative and partial. However, the growing mismatch between supply and demand for oil, increasing climate instability in conjunction with the growing irrelevance of existing government in the face of these challenges will impel the transition to local sustainability.

Information can be continuously exchanged between such communities across the entire planet. Energy can be shared across the planet as well. Buckminster Fuller wrote about this concept of planetary energy-sharing, and its vital importance to the creation of a truly humane, sustainable civilization, decades ago.

Doing these things at a time of civilizational breakdown requires considerable forethought, but they can be accomplished. I describe how in my current book Infinity’s Rainbow: The Politics of Energy, Climate and Globalization, and also in even more detail, in my forthcoming book The Path Through Infinity’s Rainbow.

This massless integration via worldwide webs of information and energy transforms our coalescing new global system from a haphazard, vulnerable, series of isolated regional systems, into a truly planetary system, capable of planetary transformation.

Change yourself, how you live, work, and obtain food and energy. Organize locally, regionally, and worldwide with similar minded people. Do not directly challenge the power of the State. Simply by realizing that it is both illegitimate and doomed you free yourself from it to a significant degree. By becoming increasingly less dependent upon what it provides—food, energy, material goods, you secede ever more from it. A movement acting at all levels from local to global can act to constrain the existing powers that be from excessive interference with our endeavors, while mitigating at least some of the harm caused by the old system’s death spasms.

By the time that the old system’s deteriorating position compels it to make demands, using the authority of government, upon your person for labor, military conscription, etc, it will be much easier to opt out. Because the existing system is self-doomed, the direct application of force to destroy it or to expel it from a given area is not required. It will destroy itself. We need only outlast it.

We also need to be able to endure the immense human, biospheric, and climatic, catastrophes which it is setting into motion, and which will, consequentially, cause its collapse. This will be difficult. However, the more organized we become, the sooner that this organization coalesces, the greater the nucleating effects, as more and more people, towns, universities, new technology centers and so on, simply defect from the old order and into our newly emergent order, the less the devastation caused by the demise of the old order will be.

Think about this for a time—then ACT.