This is really a follow up to the last post where some ways of dealing with features of complexity have been discussed. Some of this is a bit vague but that is because knowledge about complex systems is often symbolic and points somewhere, rather than finds its object easily..
- Refrain from further disrupting an already disrupted system by pushing it towards disruption, unless there is a good reason to believe correction will kick in. Be experimental as such a procedure can be disastrous, without safety back ups
- Cultivate diversity and redundancy. We can ask what redundancy might need increase? I suspect that rather than cutting back social security we need to prepare to increase it, to deal with the oncoming flood of disasters that will spiral through the system
- Be aware that the system can be maladaptive and adjust it away from that as gently as possible, seeking the fictional balance, stopping imbalance and reducing the maladaptive tendencies. This may not be easy, and will probably take political action.
- Be aware of the dynamic contexts of any challenge within complex systems. Boundaries are generally fictions.
- Realise that changes will interact with different systems. Systems can only rarely be isolated. It is probable that systemic problems will require many different approaches simultaneously, so that many of the systems involved can change together. I’ve suggested that it is useful to consider seven mutually interactive systems.
- Ecology and Planetary Boundaries – the donut in Donut Economics
- Energy systems – as these are fundamental to what can be done, and are also often implicated in power relations
- Technology, what is available, how much energy it takes, how much pollution and harm it enables, what it links that was previously separated, how it affects power/economic relations
- Illth production: pollution, recyclable waste, harm to workers and users, dispersion of material, physical entropy, destructive extraction
- Economics and power. Money and modes of organisation are inseparable from power and regulation.
- Information – tells or hides awareness from people.
- Psychology, most social behaviour cannot be deduced from psychology, but psychology is implicated in social behaviour.
- Small changes can make big differences. Look for tipping points.
- Knowledge is fundamentally uncertain and we will be unconscious, or unaware, of some important factors.
- Information is always being distorted, by business, governmental and self-confirmation processes. It can never be certain, but we can try and make it as reliable as possible and not ignore all stuff we don’t disagree with.
- We live with limited predictability, and inherent uncertainty, so wee need to be ready to find out how experimental policies work, rather than assume the policy must work.
- Trends may be predictable, so check your trend prediction.
- Try discover what patterns are emerging. They could point to trends.
- If a trend going the way you want is establishing, it may be easier to work with it.
- Systems cannot always be reduced to their elements. Reductionism can be useful, but is only useful up to a point.
- Systems change, so is what you think you know about the system still relevant? What are the new and relevant trends?
- Pay attention to the local as well as the global.
- What steps can people take locally, and how can they be supported in taking them?
- Will these local actions feedback into the main system, and support useful change?
- Unintended consequences and ‘disorder’ can tell us useful information about how the system works. Do not ignore them.
- Work with natural dynamics rather than just trying to impose willed control.
- As systems tend to escape control, we even more need to work our way with the system and feel into it, to gain a sense of what we are working with.
Some general hints(?):
Activating the pattern seeking parts of the mind
- Activate the pattern seeking parts of our thought, through quiet immersion and listening and then testing and evaluating that understanding.
- Observing natural systems with care, is a good way of building up ideas and senses of how such systems work, how they can be surprising and so on.
- Looking at, or listening to great art, (again with care) according to some, may also happen to produce the same kinds of effects. Art is often about patterns and patterning.
- This should help in other parts of the world, as well as possibly calm the nervous system and help psychological integration.
- Again, the patterns you might observe should be treated experimentally, not as truth.
Climate generosity.
- Act without waiting for the situation to be fair.
- Don’t expect that others will act first.
- If others exploit you, that is ok, keep acting.
- Set the example you would like others to follow.
- Organise to act generously with others, build a community of generosity and see what happens.
- Give people the goods and support they desire.
- Compete in your generosity.
- Be prepared to experiment and make mistakes.
- Don’t expect people to like you for acting.
- An example is organising to gift solar panels to public buildings. People in the industry might help for the publicity. The more panels you get out, the less pollution you deal with.
- Try and set up community energy as generous community. This can be extremely hard work, but you are doing something.
- Try promote circular economies.
- Find people, departments and businesses who can help.
- Generosity feels good, and if done well builds ties between people. Ties between people helps get people motivated and acting.
- This might be easier for old people who don’t have to look after children or hold down a job, but everyone should be welcome.
Experimental Politics
- Experiment. only by experiment can you learn much about how a system works.
- Try things out. Expect failure. Keep what works.
- Climate generosity is an experiment. We test it out to see if works in the situation we are in.
- Look to other people and emulate what is working for them.
- Change what you take from the ecologies and the ‘waste’ you put into them, if there are issues in your local area.
- Look for unexpected consequences, some of them may support generosity, some of them undermine it. How do you engineer more of the support?
- What moves local politicians. It may not be what “everyone expects.” See how they and other people react.
- Try out new ways of being generous, or persuading others to help.
- That people may look out for themselves does not preclude them being generous in some parts of their lives, if there is a perceived benefit for them.
Community
- We live in community.
- Community adds to resilience as people know and help each other in calamity.
- Communities can become generous naturally, if people feel safe that their gifts will be return in forms that are useful to them.
- With a purpose, communities can really gather together and act.
- We can sometimes find the purpose through experiment. What gets people to act together? Is it better to have small groups working on different projects? or to allow a bigger group to develop to possibly do bigger things?
- Communities can be built in niches which are concealed from the main fields of power and convention, and thus be more free to be inventive and not confined by the processes of power. They can also be self-destructive.
- Communities can build a “scenius,” (or a culturally creative scene) which also helps invention and builds creativity, in both co-operation and rivalry.
- Communities do have factions and rivalries, and there will be disputes, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Gives more views on life and what is happening.
- The factioning gives experience with complexity.
- The bonds may force people together to solve the problems, but beware of outsiders boosting factions for their own purposes.
- Communities are pattern generating, again they help understand, or to recognise lack of understanding, of how systems work.
- The psychologist Adler asserts that building community feeling is part of maturation and developing psychological balance and resilience.
- It makes people feel good as well as have more support when needed.
- Conversation and cooperation can help build community and mutual recognition. Is it safe to discuss climate change and feelings with each other? Are there forbidden topics and why? (Forbidden topics may be forbidden for a reason).
- Community projects can include:
- Community recycling projects.
- Food composting projects
- Community gardens
- Community discussions on problems
- Trying to restrict harm and ‘illth’
- Cleaning rivers or parks
- Community Renewable Energy
Communities can organise from the bottom up, responding to local conditions. Normally structured corporations and governments cannot, or more precisely will not, because they want to maintain authority.
The point is that everything you can do together helps, and may help in the future.
Tags: climate change, complexity, solutions
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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