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What is this blog about?

March 28, 2021

The blog is about trying to navigate the problems of ‘solving’ climate change and ecological destruction. Trying to make the problems clear, and trying to point to the politics, psychology and technology of problem solving, energy transition and rethinking the crises. If we can’t solve the problems in time, it hopes to give people a way of living which might be useful in the ‘new world’ we face.

Multiple crises

Climate change is only one consequence of the ecological destruction and pollution that overwhelms our ecologies. We also live in many ecologies in crisis: social relations are disrupted and disrupting, we have precarious economies, our politics inclines towards fascism as we try and impose order, information is repeatedly and sometimes deliberately confused, which produces uncertainty, bewilderment and, sometimes in reaction, over-certainty. There are many problems, and we can ignore some of them if we focus on climate change alone.

Hence I try and situate climate change amongst these other problems. Once we see a mess of crises, then the social, economic, political and technical connections between them all seem clearer, as is the need for something like a thorough social and conceptual change.

Existential Crisis

I’m deeply concerned about the ‘existential crisis’ that arises from people’s recognition of climate change and ecological destruction. Basically, everything we have learnt to do to lead a satisfactory life, is now potentially destructive, or undermining of that life. The problems are so big, and complex, that it is hard to imagine being able to make much difference by anything we do personally. Ways of giving meaning to life are threatened. This sense  is overwhelming and confusing at best, and fairly depressing.

We are largely ‘unhomed’ by climate change, it creates unacknowledged anxiety and distress, and may even threaten our existence. We are in a situation in which the future is essentially unknown but disturbing. Even if you deny climate change as a problem, then you realise that your way of life is potentially under threat from other people. These factors can be hard to live with, and I suspect this is why why our responses are so dis-coordinated, confused and slow.

However, it is our thinking, feeling and acting that is as much a problem as what is happening in the world, and this primarily calls out for us to change our thinking, understanding and values – together with the ways we relate to, and connect with, other people. Which can be difficult.

Complexity

One change of thought that is probably required is the recognition that we live within largely unpredictable complex systems. Everything interacts with everything else, and modifies itself and each other. We cannot perceive the whole system, and the only real/accurate model of the system is the system itself. This renders our traditional modes of problem solving, in which we work out a solution and carry it steadfastly out until the bitter end, extremely dangerous.

We may need to use more of the pattern recognition parts of our mind, and less of the linear reasoning parts. If so, we need to recognise that we can detect patterns that are not there, and need to put our understandings to the test all the time.  This means we now need an experimental politics, in which we seek out not only what is going right as a result of our behaviour, understanding and policies, but what is going wrong, so that we can modify our behaviour constructively, or even discard our proposed solutions.

Because policies are partial understandings, complexity almost always implies that we will, in part at least, be mistaken. Persisting with mistakes, and ignoring the disorder arising from our attempts to impose order, is probably going to be destructive in most cases, even if there is a social demand to stick to what we recognise as ‘truth’. Accepting the importance of recognising error and disorder and not attempting to deal with it purely by suppression, is now fundamental to being able to live a good life. Everything we do has the potential for unintended consequences. Every situation, amidst these crises, is potentially new, no matter how similar it may look to previous situations.

Ordering practices can produce disorder and unconsciousness

To repeat, what we call disorder is often created by our ordering processes, and by our suppression of recognising vital events because we try to make ourselves socially acceptable to people we like, people who are significant to us, or because our culture and theories direct our attention away from those vital and disorderly events. 

To use a dramatic but well known, example: loyal Catholics did not see, or notice, abusive priests. Perhaps they thought the authorities would deal with the issue appropriately, perhaps they did not want to bring the Church (which they thought essentially valuable) into disrepute, or they thought that children were lying and punished them, and so children learnt to shut up, and became more damaged. As a result well-intentioned Catholics could not improve the situation, until people persisted in being attacked and unpopular and brought the events to everyone’s attention. 

Similarly this suppression of what we perceive as disorder is the way we create our own personal or cultural unconsciousness – by suppressing drives and behaviour we consider unethical, or even insights, wisdoms and compassion which go against our cultural or political norms. These suppressions often come back to bite us, or consume our energy in keeping awareness and distress suppressed. 

Obviously once you have recognised some of the problems it should change the ways that you live and think. 

I suspect that paying attention to neglected events like dreams, body sensations or senses of failure, can be useful in expanding your awareness, and hence our ability to live well. This is possibly one of the few great insights of psychoanalysis, or in particular of Jungian forms of analysis.

Technology

Technology is often a mode of ordering, which has unintended consequences as its use interacts with other complex systems, and disrupts them. Sometimes the disruption may be deliberate as when technology is designed to watch over and control workers, and prevent them ‘wasting’ the employer’s time by enjoying themselves, or resting. This is why it is useful to pay attention to the unintended consequences of technology: social, environmental, economic, polluting, destructive and so on. Often because some people like what the technology allows them to do, they ignore the harmful consequences it might have for both themselves or others.

Information mess

What I have called the information mess, arises through a number of factors, and adds to confusion.

The mess arises through information and communication technology and the way it is organised. In the contemporary world Information can be found to justify any position, and it will not be removed if it is false. A significant number of people try to impose political order on the world, not by discussion or finding the truth, but by repeating their claims and attacking those who disagree. To make sense of this information mess, and to save time, we tend to accept information which is accepted by others in our ‘identity’ or ‘information’ groups. Rejecting the information they share can risk our losing our place in the group, or losing our sense of identity. This is reinforced, by ‘winner take all politics,’ and by the politics between States, in which promoting false information of the right type can be seen as destructive towards our opponents. We also tend to be skeptical of information which comes from other groups, particularly outsider groups, or groups which our group defines itself as being against.

Information mess is reinforced by work hierarchies in which bosses are judged on informational competence, appear reluctant to admit they were wrong, and are fed what they want to believe by underlings who know better than to cross them.

Neoliberalism is one of the most important forms of attention direction and deceit in the contemporary world. It leads to harmful forms of common sense, and justifies the eco-destruction that is being pursued as necessary for prosperity and liberty. It helps people ignore the reality that without working ecologies we have no working basis for prosperity or liberty. What I’ve called the ‘neoliberal conspiracy’ is a basic part of the information mess and contemporary politics. It supports contemporary disorder and crisis.

Information mess is fundamental to understanding contemporary society, and our ability to steer our way through the mess is often disrupted by the conviction that we can steer our way through it.

Thoughts and theories

I take the theory dependence of observation quite seriously, and think it is useful to remember that we respond, not only to reality, but to our thoughts about reality which may not be accurate or useful. This is why the information mess is important, what we think directs our attention towards some factors of life, and away from others. What we think is heavily influenced by the groups we belong to, deliberately or accidentally. Being aware of this feature of our social-psychology is often helpful – we can challenge what we think is the case. 

This is why it is useful to recognise that popular forms of so-called ‘positive thinking; in which we deliberately, and repeatedly, lie to ourselves in the hope that we will come to shape the world by our lying are probably harmful. 

For example, President Trump seemed to want to solve the problems of Covid largely by playing down the danger and keeping people optimistic and alarmed at possible restrictions, and then by encouraging quick vaccine development. It is probable that this approach did not slow the virus very much, especially during that first year. Of course you cannot tell for sure, and what is done is done (so using Trump as an excuse for current failures is pointless), but I think being prepared to be aware of the problems and their complexities helps us to solve them, or bypass them. Denying the problems often does not.

To be clear, the kind of positive thinking I’m protesting about is the kind that tries to impose order on the chaos of life without any attention to what is happening. It’s not necessarily harmful to think that with practice and persistence you can come to do stuff that you currently are not that great at. This latter kind of positive thinking is useful for dealing with crises. It enables us to be open to the perception of the crises, and yet not completely overwhelmed by them, and to think that if we keep persisting and learning then we can help.

Dadirri

This is one reason why I have been talking about Dadirri and other forms of cognitive relaxed attention.

Going into these kind of states of listening, can relax a person’s attachment to programmed thoughts. It can also allow our inner wisdoms, pattern detections and perceptions arise.

This can help reduce the sense of existential crisis.

We can diffuse the urgency with which we can run away from unpleasant feelings or sensations, we can accept them gently, and sometimes that allows events to progress, we can get insight and understanding from not suppressing these unpleasant sensations, the sensations can perhaps move on.

Likewise attention given to spontaneously arising symbols and images can expand our awareness.

All of this can free our creativity, generate new meanings, and allow problems to be solved, by-passed or diminished.

It may not solve everything, but it can help.

We then take our solutions to the world, and see if they can help other people live through the situations we face. If they reject those solutions or find they do not work, that still does not mean we have not contributed something.

To go back to an earlier point, all solutions are experimental, and need to be tested and refined or abandoned. That is how we learn constructively.

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God and ecological ethics

February 26, 2021

Religious people often assume we could solve the eco-crisis with ‘more God’, or by everyone recognising God as King, Jesus as Saviour, or Mohammed as God’s prime prophet. But these people rarely explore the issue of why it is that more recognition of God would necessarily guarantee sustainable behaviour, or whether it has in the past.

I’ve previously argued that God, or rather ‘holy books’, do not solve the problem of ethics. Indeed we may use our ethics to judge the behaviour attributed to God and wonder if such a God is ethically worthy, of being ‘the’ God. If the God is not judged worthy, then it is probable that belief declines, or the stories become symbols and allegories interpreted to save God from lack of ethics, rather than taken as events demonstrating the power and justice of God. While it is obvious that a desire to please God, or a love of God, can inspire people to do marvelous acts, it also seems correct that people often use God to justify unpleasant, or cruel, things they wish to do to others.

Some features attributed to God, may even (perhaps unintentionally) hinder an ethical relationship to the world:

  • We might assume that God’s creation is eternal and we need do little to preserve it, as it will continue whatever we do.
  • We might assume God put humans on this world to subdue it, or master it, rather than care for it.
  • We might assume the world is something to be left behind (as trash?) as believers ascend to Heaven after death or after the last judgement.
  • We might assume that we are saved by faith, or by performing the rituals, and our other actions are almost irrelevant, or that the ecology comes way down the list of important things we need to care about – such as purging non-believers, punishing sexual minorities, subduing women, making the law harmonious with the holy books and the interpretation of our favoured scholars, or whatever.
  • We might assume that eco-destruction is part of God’s plan for the final judgement, and that working to stop this from happening, is working against God or evidence of the failing of pride or presumption.
  • We might think that God models tyranny, and that leaders should be likewise and discipline everything that exists (including the natural world) without regard to the people or the ecology’s needs.
  • A person might think that Humans are special in their connection to God, and non-human creation does not matter – certainly it may matter even less than caring for the present lives and comfort of heretics or infidels.

All of these views might derail attempts at preserving ecological functionality and sustainability. They might have that effect, even if people talk about how God commands us to keep balance, look after the land, or plant trees.

Another problem for me, is that I presume that people are currently influenced by their ethics and religion, and this has not prevented us from generating ecological problems. For example Evangelical Protestants and rightwing Catholics have supported Trump and thus have supported Trump’s lessening of environmental protections and pollution control rules; Islamic states have not curtailed the sale of their oil and the destruction that results from its use, or even supported the use of renewables until relatively recently, and they do not seem to take responsibility for the results of the use of that oil, any more than other non-religious oil companies do. Many Catholics seem to oppose Pope Francis because he does not continually praise capitalism and environmental destruction, even if they previously argued that obedience to the Holy Father was fundamental to Catholicism. Few major religious, or ethical, organisations are having great success challenging the crisis – although many are making the effort.

To effectively argue that we need more God to solve the problem, we would need to show that devout and religious countries have treated their environment better, and made it better and more sustainable, than countries that do not have a strong code of belief in God. If you then argue that the US, Italy, Brazil, Saudi Arabi, Iran, Afghanistan and so on, are not really devout enough, then you are probably going beyond human capacity into fantasy, or planning to use more violence to force people into devoutness, which probably means you will use more force on ecologies as well.

If there are God believing countries that have protected their ecology, and have not contributed to ecological destruction or climate change elsewhere in the world, then we need to explore what they have done, and how it ties in with their religion, and what is different in their practice to the practices of those with a similar religion.

Another step in the argument would be to ask what religions are most likely to encourage ecological relationship. We might suggest that some forms of Buddhism (with explicit compassion towards all beings) or non-ritual Taoism (with its efforts towards living in harmony with the flow and non-domination of the world) are promising. Unfortunately, the tendency of some kinds of Buddhism to leave relationship behind, and aim for non-suffering in ’emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’ may sabotage this possibility, and non-ritual Taoism is not really an official religion by its nature. Probably, the most effective religions of relationships and care are indigenous, in which natural beings are relatively equal and have to be respected, honoured, observed, talked to and cared for, and in which relationship with country is fundamental. But these people may not worship God as such, or they may be marginal to God religions, so they are not probably those being recognised by those who want more God.

Perhaps the call (unintendedly) suggests we need a new religion, one that hallows relationships with the natural world, one that situates humans in nature, one that does not promote violence against non-believers because they clearly sin against the true religion and hence deny God, one that does not have a God that lives entirely somewhere else or implies that good humans will leave the world behind, one that does not encourage consumption and wealth accumulation, one that encourages relationship and sympathy with all beings.

It could be logically possible to construct such a religion, but artificial religions rarely take hold. However, acknowledging the apparent failure of existing religions and knowing we could need such a religion, might set creativity, inspiration and discussion going. The New Age, whatever its obvious faults of positive thinking, prosperity by accumulation, or promotion of the idea that there is no reality beyond a person’s thoughts, may be a start in that direction – who can tell at this stage? It is even possible there could be a new reformation in Christianity, or a new understanding of Islam, which does not promote violence against nature and against non-believers.

The final problem is that I’m not even sure that people make decisions based on ethics, or moral instruction. There is the problem that people also seem to choose their ethics to justify what they, or people they identify with, have done or want to do. Although it is now a cliché, religious organisations might not have been expected to protect people in their organisations who were rapists while condemning their victims, if they were ethically concerned at all, but this process seems to have been quite normal and (presumably) ethically justified. We are even learning that despite the scandal, the same attitudes seem to be being taught at elite religious private schools.

While religion may promote morality, it does not guarantee universally valid morals.

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Basic Complex Systems for eco-social analysis again

December 25, 2020

This is another go at formulating a list of basic systems which need to be considered for eco-social analysis. For earlier versions see here, here and here.

Introduction

As a guide to the factors involved in eco-social relations we can point to a number of different, but interacting systems. This list is not claiming to be complete, but it can be used as a set of reminders when we try to make analyses of our contemporary situation, and we may be able to make some general statements about how they interact. The order of relative importance of these systems is a matter for investigation, and the order of their presentation, in this blog post, is not a claim about their relative importance.

The seven main systems, discussed here, are

  • Political;
  • Economic (extraction);
  • Energy;
  • Waste, pollution and dispersal;
  • Information;
  • Technological;
  • Planetary Boundaries (geography) :

All these systems are complex systems, and it is generally impossible to predict their specific course. They are also prone to rapid change, gradual instability, and the ‘seeking’ of equilibrium.

Political System

The political system, includes:

  • the modes of struggle encouraged, discouraged, enabled or disabled,
  • the patterns and divisions (the ‘factioning’) within the State and wider society,
  • the differing effects of different bases of power: such as monetary power, communication power, power through violence or threat, hierarchical power, religious and cosmological power (the power to delimit the official views of the way that the cosmos works), organisational power, etc.,
  • who gets into positions of power and how, and so on,

Politics can affect all the other human systems. What activities (extraction, energy use, organisation etc.) are encouraged or discouraged, the kinds of regulation that apply, what counts as pollution or risk, what information is easily available, and who is to be trusted, and so on.

Political systems can forcibly ignore pollution or the consequences of energy production, economic extraction, the wage system, and so on, effectively rendering them part of a general unconscious, which eventually ‘bites back’.

Economic System

Most of the dominant economic systems currently in action can be described loosely as ‘capitalist’. The economic system involves modes of appropriation, extraction, property, commodification, exchange, circulation of ‘products’, technological systems, energy use, as well as accumulation of social power and wealth and so on. Most of which depend upon the State for their existence and reinforcement, although they may also challenge organisation and politics within the State. There is no inherent stability in current economic systems.

In many sociological theories the patterns of economic organisation and behaviour are known as the ‘infrastructure’ and are held to be determinate of most other social behaviours, primarily because the economic system seems the most obvious determinate of what people have to do in order to survive.

This organisation may have apparently unintended consequences, such as producing periodic crashes, or destroying the ecological base of the economy, and therefore threatening that organisation. They also may have quite expectable consequences, which are downplayed. In capitalism, political and economic patternings tend to be describable as ‘plutocratic’; as wealth allows the purchase of all other forms of power. However, different factions in the State can ally with different or competing factions in the economic system. For example, different government departments or political factions can support different types of energy: fossil fuels, renewables, or nuclear. The political system legitimates and enforces, allowable modes of extraction, property and pollution, and regulates economic behaviour among different social groups. Economics always involves political as well as economic struggle; politics is part of ‘the market’. ‘Crony Capitalism’ is normal capitalism.

Extraction

The Extraction system is part of the economic system, but it might be useful to separate it out from the economic system because extraction is one of the prime ways in which economies interact with ecologies and because different kinds of economies can use similar extraction systems. Extraction not only involves extraction of what gets defined as ‘resources’ (minerals, naturally occurring substances such as oil, coal or timber, and so on) but also the ways that human food gets extracted for consumption, via agriculture, gathering, hunting, industrial fishing, and so on. Ecologies are not passive, and they respond to human or other actions in ways which are often unpredictable in specific, but still disruptive. Ecologies seem to need attention, for survival to be possible in the long term.

Extraction in capitalist and developmentalist societies, often seems harmful to the functioning of ecologies, perhaps because of the need for continual growth, and thus a need for increasing extraction. Clearly, not all forms of extraction need to be destructive of the ecologies and geographies they depend upon. Extraction systems can allow the ecologies to repair after extraction, or attempt to rehabilitate the land. However, repair of ecologies can be considered an expense leading to reduction of profit, and hence is not attractive in a profit emphasising system.

As such, we can distinguish recoverable extraction, in which the ecologies and economies repair the damage from extraction, from irrecoverable extraction in which the ecologies and economies do not repair the damage from extraction within a useful time frame.

The Global Footprint network, suggests that:

Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and eight months to regenerate what we use in a year. 

Global Footprint network. Ecological Footprint

If this is correct, then the current extraction and pollution systems are generally irrecoverable, and deleterious for human and planetary survival. Investigating the differences between harmful and less harmful modes of extraction may well produce useful insights.

Economies are not the only possible harmful extractive systems – cosmologies can also require irrecoverable extractive behaviour to build temples, or to show the ‘other-worldly’ specialness of humans, and so on.

Energy System

All life and its resulting ecologies involve transformation of energy. These transformations stretch from transformation of sunlight by plants, the digestion of plants, to thermal gradients in the deep sea, to atomic power. Eco-systems require a system of energy release, energy generation and energy transformation.

Transformation of energy, together with effective ecological functioning, is necessary for any human actions to occur. The human energy system powers all other human systems. Because food is necessary for human labour, cultivation of food can be considered to be part of the energy system. The energy system and its ‘infrastructure’, could seem to be as important as the economic infrastructure.

The human energy system is organised, at least in part, by the political and economic systems, and by the environmental systems available. The environmental system includes possible energy sources from plant material, animal strength and docility, fossil fuels, sunlight, wind and moving water. Human labour, and its organisation, is (and has been) part of the energy system, and while not yet, if ever, superseded completely, can be supplemented and possibly overpowered by technological sources of energy. Coal and oil power, for example, provide masses amounts more directed energy than can human labour, and this ability is important to understanding the patterning and possibilities of the economic and extraction system, and its relationship to colonial/imperial history. Modern military expansion and colonialism, largely depends on this ability to apply large amounts of energy to weaponry, movement and organisation.

Important parts of the energy system include the amounts of energy generally available for use, and the capacity for energy to be directed and applied. Non-directable energy is often wasted energy (entropy), and usually unavailable for constructive use.

Another vital point is that human production of, or using of, energy takes energy. No energy is entirely free.

The availability of energy is influenced by the Energy Return on Energy Input (EREI) or ‘Energy Return on Energy Investment’. The larger amount of units of energy applied to gain a unit of humanly directable energy output, the less excess energy is available.

Fossil fuels have historically had a very high EREI, but it is possible that this is declining otherwise nobody would be tempted by fracking, coal seam gas, tar sands, or deep sea drilling. All of which require large amounts of energy to begin with, have very high risks of extractive destruction, and fairly low profit margins when compared to the dangers.

Renewables and storage currently have a high energy cost to manufacture (and possibly a high extractive cost as well) but for most renewables, after they are installed, the EREI changes, as very little labour, or energy expenditure, is required to gain an energy output – it is more or less free – whereas fossil fuel energy generation requires continual energy use to find and process new fossil fuels and keep the power stations turning, and produce continual pollution from burning.

Social power and economics may affect the ways that energy is distributed, what uses are considered legitimate and so on. However, the energy system also influences what can be done in other systems, and in the costs (social, aesthetic, ecological or monetary) which influence choices about the constituents of energy systems The system’s pollution products, which may be significant factors in producing climate and ecological change, may eventually limit what can be done.

As the energy system determines what energy is available for use, it is not an unreasonable assumption that social power and organisation will be partly built around the energy system, and that changes in energy systems will change energy availability, what can be done or who can do it, and thus threaten established social orders. Threats to established orders will be resisted. If an energy transition does go ahead, it is likely that the established orders will try and preserve the patterns, of organisation, wealth and social power which have grown up under the old system.

One important question is ‘how do we transform the energy system without continuing a damaging extraction and pollution system?’

Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems

Transformation of materials through energy use, or through energy production, produces ‘waste’. The simplest human society imaginable (and this is an overt simplification), turns edible material into energy and human excreta, which in this case can usually be processed by the ecology – although, even then, dumping excreta into rivers may not help those downstream.

Understanding the Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems is also vital to understanding possible energy and economic transformations.

In this book we will define ‘Waste‘ as material which can be re-processed, or recycled, by the economy or eco-system, and ‘Pollution‘ as material which is not re-processable within an arbitrary useful time frame, say over hundreds of years or more. ‘Dispersal’ occurs when some essential material is dispersed into the system, and becomes largely unavailable for reuse without ‘uneconomic’ expenditures of finance or energy – as occurs with helium and phosphorus.

When too much waste for the systems to re-process is emitted, then waste becomes pollution. This is what has happened with CO2. CO2 is normally harmless, even required for the system to work, but too much CO2 changes the ways eco and climate systems work. CO2 has also been dispersed into the atmosphere which makes CO2 extraction, which is stated to be essential by the IPCC and IEA for climate stability, difficult and costly in terms of energy expenditure.

These concepts, along with ‘extraction’, directly import the ecosystem into the economy, while pointing out that what counts as allowable waste, pollution or dispersal can change, economically, politically, scientifically and ‘practically’.

Waste, pollution and dispersal from the energy system and from modes of extraction, enter into the political system because that system decides and regulates what can be emitted, and where, and who is too valuable to be poisoned by the pollution. The political makes the laws allowing, diminishing or preventing, pollution. Often localisable pollution is dumped in ‘wasted’ zones or on poorer, less noticeable and less powerful people.

Energy and extraction may not the only significant sources of pollution, and other sources of pollution need to be curtailed, or turned into sources of waste.

Information about pollution from the fossil fuel energy system and from the extraction systems, provide a major driver for energy transformation, partly because this issue seems ‘economically’ politically and energetically solvable, while other sources of pollution seem more difficult to deal with.

However, even facing the problem, provokes a likely politicisation of the information system. How would people, in general, become aware of pollution and who primarily suffers from its effects, especially when it threatens established systems of power?

Information System

What people become aware of, what can be understood or done depends on the Information System. This system determines what feedback is available to conscious humans, about what is happening in general. The information system, in theory, could allow humans to recognise eco-feedback in response to systems such as waste and pollution, or extraction. Information is vital to social functioning, and part of social functioning. Accurate information is even more useful.

Unfortunately, information about complex systems, such as societies or ecologies, is almost always limited and inadequate. Some information may tend to be symbolised rather than literal, because of the difficulties of representing the information in a literal form (these difficulties can be political as much as in terms of human capacity).

Information systems can also hide, or distort, ecological feedback, because of flaws in their design, or because powerful people do not want it to bring the problems to general attention. This adds to confusion, and to the possibilities, that the information system primarily reflects human psychological projection, fantasy and shadow politics.

The political and economic systems also directly impact on the information systems, as politics often centres on propagation of politically or economically favourable information and the inhibition of politically unfavourable or economically information. Economic power, ownership and control of sources of information can also influence what information is collected, processed and made widely available.

Information is not so much ‘received’ as interpreted, so Cosmologies and politics which provide a framework for interpretation, play a big part in how the information is interpreted and, then, what kind of information is transmitted.

Government, Religious, Economic, or military (etc) regulation can be a further important part of both the information and political systems, sometimes affecting what is likely to be transmitted. Information systems, in turn, indicate the availability or coherence of regulation and the understanding of problems and predicaments. Regulation is based on information selection as well as political allegiance, and regulations can be opaque, or hidden, as well as easily decodable. For example, until recently it seemed very difficult to find out what the NSW governments regulations for Renewable Energy Zones, meant in terms of business, building, or connection to the wider system.

The information system does not have to be coherent, thus we can be both informed and disinformed of the progress of climate change and energy transformation by the system. Certain groups are more likely to be informed than others, even though everyone tends to frame themselves as being well informed – especially in an ‘information society’ when being well informed is a matter of status. Information does not have to be accurate to have an effect, it is also part of socially constructed propaganda – as we can see with climate and covid denial, and this can influence political process, victories and inaction.

In summary, most information distortion comes from: economic functions such as business hype, secrecy and deception; from organisational functions such as hierarchy, silo-isation, lack of connection and channels; from politics where information is distorted for strategic advantage; and from the complexity of the systems that the information tries to describe and the inadequacy of the language or approach being used.

Technological Systems

Technological systems enable the kind of energy use, direction and availability, a society can have, the kinds of extraction it can engage in, the range at which political and economic systems can have an effect, the modes of transmission of information, and the types of waste pollution and dispersion which are likely to happen. Technologies also necessarily use properties of the environment and ecologies around them in order to work, and thus interact with those environments and again cause unintended consequences.

People use technology to extend their power over others, extend their capacity, escape regulation, or render previous technologies less dominant, and hence technologies tend to be caught in struggles between groups, thus provoking unintended social consequences.

We could hypothesise that technologies, as used under capitalism (and perhaps elsewhere), tend to extract people out of their environment, and break the intimacy between humans and ecology, or shift human perception onto the technology rather than the world, therefore making it easier to regularly engage in processes of destruction.

In the contemporary world, technologies become objects of fantasy, and metaphors by which we think about the cosmos in general. For example the clockwork universe is now almost replaced by the information processing universe.

Planetary systems and boundaries

Finally we have planetary boundaries. The planetary boundaries are ways of conceiving the limits and constitution of ecosystems, and are, as such, fairly abstract. These boundaries represent systems necessary for human and planetary functioning.

They do not necessarily form the one system, and can be separated out for purposes of analysis. They act as guidelines, and probable reactive limits which are essential for the consideration of ‘eco-social’ relations, and the likely long term success of those relations. Measuring the boundaries may have a wide margin of error, as due to the complexity of these systems and their interactions. We will not know for sure when they will collapse until they do, and once they start collapsing they will affect the resilience of other boundaries. So the known limits on the boundaries will change as we take more notice of them, and keep challenging them.

Exceeding the boundaries almost certainly leads to the rundown, or breakdown, of ecological functioning, and this breakdown then adds difficulties to maintaining other systems. If they are maintained ‘artificially’ then this requires extra energy expenditure, and may have further consequences. Kate Raworth’s ‘donut economics’ presents a quick and easy way of conceiving functional economies in terms of ecological boundaries and human betterment [1], [2], [3].

Any global system which does not preserve or reinforce planetary systems will probably give impetus to global ecological collapse.

The systems are usually listed as involving: climatic stability, biospheric integrity (distribution and interaction between lifeforms, balance between species, rates of extinction etc), water flows and cycles (availability of drinkable, non-poisonous water, and water for general ecological functioning), biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, dispersal of valuable materials which literally form the ‘metabolic rift’, etc), ocean acidity or alkalinity (which affects the life of coral reefs, plankton and so on), levels of particulates or micro-particulates (which poison life forms), ozone levels, and the introduction of novel entities into the global ecology and their unknown systemic consequences (new chemicals, plastics, microplastics etc.). [4]

It is the functioning and disruption of these boundary systems which make processes of pollution and extraction problematic. Thus they impact directly on society, and appear to limit the kinds of economic growth, extraction, energy and technological systems that can be deployed safely.

Capitalism and developmentalism tend to recognise boundaries only to ignore them, and claim that ingenuity and willpower, will overcome those boundaries forever without limit.

Geographic Systems

Then we have Geographic systems as a subset of planetary boundaries. Geography affects the layout of energy systems, the potential reach of political and economic systems, the ‘natural’ flow of air and water, changes in temperature, the availability of sunlight, and the kinds of extractions which are ‘economic’ or economic in the short term, but deleterious in the long term. Geography is relational, giving layout in space between spaces and constructions. Geography shapes and is shaped by politics, social activity, economics, pollution and so on.

Mountain ranges, forests, plains etc may affect the layout of Renewable Energy, or the RE may affect the land, if trees are felled, fields converted etc. Wind may be severe, putting a limit on size of turbines, or the angles of solar panels. Winter darkness, or heavy seasonal rain can affect the possibilities of solar power.

Geography constitutes the human sense of home, and transformation of geography or relations of geography can produce a sense of ‘unhoming’, or dislocation in place and in the future of place.

Conclusion and Provisional Advice

Recognition of the interactions of these systems, with their differing but interacting imperatives, seems vital to getting a whole and accurate picture of the problems and opportunities presented by energy transition.

All the systems that have been discussed here, are complex systems. They are composed of ‘nodes’ which modify themselves or change their responses in response to changes in the ‘system as a whole.’ The systems are unpredictable in specific. The further into the future that we imagine, the less likely our predictions are to be specifically accurate. We can, for example, predict that weather will get more tumultuous in general as we keep destroying the ecology, but we cannot predict the exact weather at any distance. Complex systems produce surprise and actions often have unexpected consequences. If we seek to apply a policy, we cannot expect it to work exactly as we think it should. For example, the political move to make ‘markets,’ the most important institution, did not deliver either efficiency or liberty, as was expected, almost the opposite in fact. In all cases of actions within complex systems we should seek for unintended consequences. Sometimes the only realistic way to approach unintended consequences is to realise that our theory could not predict those events, and without looking we might never even have seen the events, or realised their connection to what we did. Working in complex systems, all politics becomes experimental.

While complex systems adapt or seek balance, they do not have to arrive at the best conditions for human beings. From a human point of view, they can be maladaptive. For example, a social system can be maladaptive and destructive of our means of living. The ecology could arrive at a balance within which many humans could not live.

People involved in promoting Energy Transformation have to deal with the various complex systems we have discussed above. The complexity does not mean we cannot make any predictions, although we need to treat them cautiously.

  • People engaged in transition have to consider the effects of the political systems involved, and be aware that politics influences what is likely to be possible. A transition may be delayed by political action, and political patterning, no matter how sensible or affordable the transition is.
  • The Economic system will be entangled in the political system, and those who dominate the economic system will have disproportionate input into the political system, and this can cause problems. This recognition reinstates the economic process as both a political and a business process.
  • A transition has to fit in with existing economic patterns, or its supporters may have to be prepared to change those patterns.
  • Patterns of extraction, pollution and dispersal have to be less harmful than previous patterns or the harm will be continued, even if in a different manner.
  • Changing the energy system is a political problem, and may require a change in the economic system as well as in power relations.
  • We need to have the available energy to build the transformed system. As we are supposedly aiming to replace the existing harmful system without lowering the energy availability, this may prove difficult. Where does the energy come from to build the new system if not from the old? And we need to demolish the old system, because of its dangers.
  • We need to avoid using renewables to simply add to energy availability, without reducing energy from fossil fuels.
  • The new system and the path of transformation, has to reduce pollution and extraction damage, or ecological and climate crises will continue, and planetary boundaries will be given no chance to recover. A transition plan which does not consider this problem is probably futile.
  • Considering these problems may lead to conclusions about the necessity of some kind of degrowth.
  • Transition plans should consider diminishing the dispersal of rare and valuable materials. More of what is currently pollution and dispersal has to be transformed to waste, in amounts the systems can process.
  • The current information system does not seem to be functioning in favour of the transition. It seems highly politicised and does not report ecological feedback accurately, either denying crisis, or delaying the supposed arrival of crisis.
  • Our current information system is largely owned and controlled by the neoliberal fossil fuel based establishment, which is defending its power, wealth and ways of living in the world. Without an independent information system, it will be impossible to win the political struggle. At the same time accurate information will be attacked and dismissed as political.
  • Likewise, many people will see accurate information as political, because it potentially disrupts their way of living, or because of interpretation and projection issues.
  • At the least, people engaged in energy transformation have to be aware of the nature of complex systems and the normal arising of unintended and unexpected consequences. We need an information system that allows us to perceive such consequences, without attacking the transformation as a whole.
  • Geography will affect the layout and possibilities of the transition. Renewables appear to require far more land than fossil fuels per unit of energy although fracking and coal seam gas seem to require similar amounts of land and do far more permanent damage to that land.
  • Renewables should probably never be installed through deforestation.
  • Renewables should not monopolise agricultural land. They should co-exist with previous land use, or help rehabilitate the land.
  • We should note the capacity of any new form of energy generation, or large scale technology, to ‘unhome’ people. Fossil fuels are especially bad at this, and often also poisonous, but the information systems tend to find this easier to ignore.
  • The energy transformation should aim to avoid disrupting the planetary boundary systems as much as possible. They should be installed with the longer term target of restoring those systems.
  • Pointing to the range of boundaries will possibly remind people that climate change is not the only problem we face, and it should be clear that no energy, or social, system is going to survive if it violates these boundaries in the long term.

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Basic Systems for eco-social analysis

September 2, 2020

This is another go at formulating a list of basic systems which need to be considered for eco-social analysis. For earlier versions see here and here.

As a guide to the factors involved in the socio-ecological dialectic we can point to a number of different, but interacting systems. We can use this list as a set of reminders for analysis and we can make general statements about how they interact. The order of importance of these systems is a matter for investigation.

The main systems are as follows:

Political System

The political system, includes the modes of struggle encouraged, enabled or disabled, the structure and divisions (factioning) of the State, the differing effects of different bases of power (monetary, communication, violence, hierarchy, religion etc), who gets into positions of power and how, and so on.

Economic System

The economic system can presently be described as ‘capitalist’. The economic system involves modes of appropriation, extraction, property, commodification, exchange, circulation of ‘products’, and accumulation of social power and wealth and so on.

In capitalism, political patternings tend to be describable as ‘plutocratic’, although different factions in the State can ally with different or competing factions in the economic system. For example, different government departments or political factions can support fossil fuels, renewables, or nuclear. The political system legitimates and enforces, allowable modes of extraction, property, pollution and regulates economic behaviour among different social groups. Economics always involves political as well as economic struggle.

The Extraction system is part of the economic system, but it might be useful to separate it out from the economic system because extraction is one of the prime ways in which economies interact with ecologies and because different kinds of economies can use similar extraction systems. Extraction not only involves extraction of what gets defined as ‘resources’ (minerals, naturally occurring substances such as oil or coal, and so on) but also the ways that human food gets extracted for consumption, via agriculture, gathering, hunting and so on. Clearly not all forms of extraction need to be destructive of the ecologies and geographies they depend upon, and investigating the differences may well produce useful insights.

Energy System

The energy system powers the economic system and is organised, at least in part, by the political and economic systems. Human labour is part of the energy system, and while not yet, if ever, superseded completely, can be supplemented and possibly dominated by technological sources of energy. Coal and oil power provides masses amounts more of directed energy than human labour, and this is important to understanding the patterning and possibilities of the economic and extraction system, and its relationship to colonial/imperial history.

Important parts of the energy system include the amounts of energy available for use, and the capacity for energy to be directed. Non-directable energy is wasted energy (entropy), and usually unavailable for constructive use.

The availability of energy is influenced by the energy return on energy input. The greater the amounts of energy applied to gain a humanly directable energy output, the less energy is available. Because food is necessary for human labour, cultivation of food can be considered to be part of the energy system.

Social power and economics may affect the ways that energy is distributed, what uses are considered legitimate and so on. However, the energy system also influences what can be done in both other systems, and the costs (social, aesthetic, ecological or monetary) which influence choices about the constituents of energy systems The system’s pollution products which are significant factors in producing climate and ecological change, will also limit what can be done.

As the energy system determines what energy is available for use, it is not an unreasonable assumption that social power and organisation will be partly built around the energy system and that changes in energy systems will change what can be done, and thus threaten established social orders and be resisted. If an energy transition goes ahead, it is likely that the established orders will try and preserve the patterns, of organisation, wealth and social power which have grown up under the old system.

Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems

Understanding the Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems is vital to understanding current energy transformations. We can define waste as “material which is re-processable by the economy or eco-system”, and pollution as not being so re-processable. ‘Dispersal’ is where some essential material is dispersed into the system, and becomes largely unavailable for reuse without ‘uneconomic’ expenditures of finance or energy – as occurs with helium and phosphorus. These concepts directly import the ecosystem into the economy, while pointing out that what counts as allowable waste, pollution or dispersal can change, economically, politically and ‘practically’.

When too much waste for the systems to re-process is issued, then waste becomes pollution. This is what has happened with CO2. CO2 is also dispersed in the atmosphere which makes CO2 extraction, as recommended as essential by the IPCC and IEA, difficult and costly in terms of energy.

Waste, pollution and dispersal from the energy system and from modes of extraction, enter into the political system because that system decides and regulates what can be emitted, and where, and who is too valuable to be poisoned by the pollution. The political makes the laws allowing, diminishing or preventing, pollution.

However, energy is not the only significant source of pollution, and if we are to discuss transition this has to be remembered.

Information about pollution from the energy system and the extraction system, provides a major driver for energy transformation, partly because this issue seems ‘economically’ politically and energetically solvable, while other sources of pollution seem less easy to deal with. This involves a likely politicisation of the information system. How would people, in general, become aware of pollution and who it is that primarily suffers from its effects?

Information System

What people become aware of, what can be understood or done depends on the Information System. This determines what feedback is available about what is happening in general, but also the information which allows people to act politically, economically, in response to the actions and reactions of the ecological system to other systems such as waste and pollution, or extraction.

Regulation is an important part of both the information and political systems. Information systems indicate the availability or coherence of regulation of energy and extraction, and the understanding of problems and predicaments. Regulation is based on information selection as well as political allegiance, and regulations can be opaque as well as easily decodable.

The political and economic systems also directly impact on the information systems, as politics often centres on propagation of politically favourable information and the inhibition of politically unfavourable information. Economic ownership and control of sources of information also impacts upon the information available. Economic power may also influence what information is collected and processed.

The information system does not have to be coherent, thus we can be both informed and disinformed of the progress of climate change by the system. Certain groups being more likely to be informed than others, even though everyone tends to frame themselves as being well informed. Information does not have to be accurate to have an effect, it is also part of socially constructed propaganda – as we can see with climate and covid denial, and this can influence political process, victories and inaction.

Geographic Systems

Then we have Geographic systems. Geography affects the layout of energy systems, the potential reach of political and economic systems, the ‘natural’ flow of air and water, changes in temperature, the availability of sunlight, and the kinds of extractions which are ‘economic’ or economic in the short term, but deleterious in the long term. Geography is relational, giving layout in space between spaces and constructions. Geography shapes and is shaped by politics, social activity, economics, pollution and so on. Geography constitutes the human sense of home, and transformation of geography or relations of geography can produce a sense of ‘unhoming’, or dislocation in place and in the future of place.

Planetary systems and boundaries

Finally we have planetary boundaries. The planetary boundaries are ways of conceiving the limits and constitution of ecosystems, and are, as such, fairly abstract. These boundaries represent systems necessary for human and planetary functioning.

They do not necessarily form the one system, and could be separated out for purposes of analysis. They act as guidelines, and probable reactive limits which are essential for the consideration of ‘eco-social’ relations, and the likely long term success of those relations.

These planetary boundaries appear to be either under significant pressure, or breaking down. Any global system which does not preserve or reinforce planetary systems will probably give impetus to global ecological collapse.

The systems are usually listed as involving: climatic stability, biospheric integrity (balance between species, rates of extinction etc), water cycles (availability of drinkable, non-poisonous water), biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, dispersal of valuable materials, which literally form the metabolic rift, etc), ocean acidity or alkalinity, levels of particulates or micro-particulates, ozone levels, and the introduction of novel entities into the global ecology and their unknown systemic consequences (new chemicals, microplastics etc.). It is the functioning and disruption of these systems which make processes of pollution and extraction problematic. Thus the impact directly on society.

Conclusion and Advice

Recognition of the interactions of these systems, with their differing but interacting imperatives, seems vital to getting a whole and accurate picture of the problems and opportunities presented by energy transition.

All the systems that have been discussed here, are complex systems. They are composed of ‘nodes’ which modify themselves or change their responses in response to changes in the ‘system as a whole.’ The systems are unpredictable in specific. The further into the future that we imagine, the less likely our predictions are to be specifically accurate. We can, for example, predict that weather will get more tumultuous in general as we keep destroying the ecology, but we cannot predict the exact weather at any distance. Complex systems produce surprise and actions often have unexpected consequences. If we seek to apply a policy, we cannot expect it to work exactly as we think it should. For example, the political move to make ‘markets,’ the most important institution, did not deliver either efficiency or liberty, as was expected. In all cases of actions within complex systems we should seek for unintended consequences. Sometimes the only realistic way to approach unintended consequences is to realise that our theory could not predict those events, and without looking we might never even have seen the events, or realised their connection to what we did. Working in such systems, all politics becomes experimental.

Complex systems do not have to be seek the best conditions for human beings. From a human point of view, they can be maladaptive. For example, our social system can be maladative and destructive of our means of living.

People involved in promoting Energy Transformation have to deal with the various complex systems we have discussed above. The complexity does not mean we cannot make any predictions, although we need to treat them cautiously.

  • People engaged in transition have to consider the effects of the political systems involved, and be aware that politics influences what is likely to be possible. A transition may be delayed by political action, and political patterning, no matter how sensible or affordable the transition is.
  • A transition has to fit in with economic patterns or its supporters have to be prepared to change those patterns. It may help or hinder the process if patterns of extraction, property and control are not changed. This reinstates the economic process as both a political and business process. Patterns of extraction also have to be less harmful than previous patterns or the harm will be continued, even if in a different manner.
  • We have to have the available energy to build the transformed system. As we are supposedly aiming to replace the existing harmful system without lowering the energy availability, this may prove difficult. Where does the energy to build the new system come from if not from the old? We also need to avoid using renewables to simply add to energy availability, without reducing energy from fossil fuels. Considering these problems may lead to conclusions about the necessity of degrowth, in the same way as slowing down the damage from extraction may do. Changing the energy system is a political problem, and may require a change in the economic system as well as in power relations.
  • The new system and the path of transformation, has to reduce pollution and extraction damage, or ecological and climate crises will continue, and planetary boundaries will be given no chance to recover. A transition plan which does not consider this problem is probably futile. Likewise a transition plan should consider diminishing the dispersal of rare and valuable materials. More of what is currently pollution and dispersal has to be transformed to waste, in amounts the systems can process.
  • The current information system does not seem to be functioning in favour of the transition. It seems highly politicised and does not report ecological feedback accurately, either denying crisis, or delaying the supposed arrival of crisis. Our current information system is largely owned and controlled by the neoliberal fossil fuel based establishment, which is defending its power, wealth and ways of living in the world. Without an independent information system, it will be impossible to win the political struggle. At the same time accurate information will be attacked and dismissed as political. At the least, people engaged in energy transformation have to be aware of the nature of complex systems and the normal arising of unintended and unexpected consequences. We need an information system that allows us to perceive such consequences, without attacking the transformation as a whole.
  • Geography will affect the layout and possibilities of the transition. Renewables appear to require far more land than fossil fuels per unit of energy although fracking and coal seam gas seem to require similar amounts of land and do far more permanent damage to that land. The capacity of renewables to take up agricultural land has to be factored in, as does the capacity of any new form of energy generation to ‘unhome’ people – especially fossil fuels which are also poisonous.
  • Finally, the transformation should aim to avoid disrupting the planetary boundary systems as much as possible, with the longer term targets of restoring those systems. Pointing to the range of boundaries will possibly remind people that climate change is not the only problem we face, and it should be clear that no energy, or social, system is going to survive if it violates these boundaries in the long term.

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More considerations on decarbonisation

August 3, 2020

What I’m trying to do, however badly, in the previous comments is to figure out what are some of the more important eco-social systems in play in decarbonisation, and the ways they interact. It is impossible to specify all such factors in advance, so these are limited, and could be discarded. The main point is to avoid reduction of reality to the two blocks of ‘society’ and ‘ecology’ although I’m limited in my ability to do this because of lack of ecological knowledge.

When I use the term ‘eco-social systems’ I’m deliberately placing ecologies first. Humans do not exist without ecologies, while ecologies can and have existed without humans.

The eco-social systems selected out here, are:

  • Energy,
  • Waste/pollution
  • Extraction
  • Information
  • Planetary boundaries, and the limits of ecological functioning or resilience.

Energy system

This is obviously based in eco-physical functioning. The ecosystem itself can be considered to be a system of energy release/generation and transformation.

I’m suggesting Labour is part of the directed energy system, but no longer should count as the major and only significant part of that system, as in Marxism or classical economics for example, due to the bulk of directed energy coming from other than human sources.

It is useful to explore the dynamics of the limits and stresses of the energy system, and its transformation. For example, we have the possibility that renewables could simply become an addition to the continued use of fossil fuels, unless we have a specific programme to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Waste/pollution system

I think it is useful to specify a conceptual difference between ‘waste’ and ‘pollution’ (waste is re-processable by the economy or eco-system, and pollution is not), because the ecological feedbacks, and eco-social consequences are different. It suggests how eco-social activity can overpower ecological resilience even through such apparently harmless action as the production of CO2 – the CO2 waste becomes pollution after it passes certain levels, and the more the ecology is destroyed the more waste becomes pollution.

I also hope naming this system reminds people that the manufacture and distribution of renewables may produce pollution. We need to cut this pollution down, but it seems that renewables are relatively non polluting after installation (before decommission), unlike fossil fuel energy, which only functions through continuing pollution. However, waste and pollution are not removed from the system.

If renewable energy, after the initial costs, is almost free, until the installation reaches the ‘waste/pollution’ stage, that has a large disruptive capacity in itself.

The Extraction System

The eco-social extraction system can damage itself, through ecological ‘revenge’ effects and feedback. There is obviously nothing unusual about asserting this, although it does not seem to be recognised in orthodox pro-capitalist economics.

The damage does not have to be gradual or linear. It can be abrupt and excessive as systems breakdown.

Extraction systems do not have to be harmful – they can pay attention to ecological information, and moderate themselves as needed. However, largely, unconstrained extraction/destruction, pollution, and expansion (or what is usually called ‘growth’) have historically been part of both capitalism and developmentalism, and are the main factors which seem to produce the current eco-crisis. Capitalism and Developmentalism also tend to suppress, downplay, or ignore information about ecology. We can also note that pro-corporate neoliberals tend to remove limits on extraction, pollution and expansion, as soon as they can.

Given this, we can raise the question of ‘how we can transform the energy system without continuing a damaging extraction system?’

If economic growth is linked to increasing extractive destruction, then either growth has to go, or we need to find new ways of extraction. This may cause ‘climate justice’ issues if growth remains our main solution for poverty.

The Information system

This is how humans generally recognise eco-feedback. However, the information system can be distorted by organisational, economic and political processes.

It seems useful to have some idea of how this distortion occurs, and where it is dangerous, and maybe how to diminish it .

Planetary Boundaries and the limits of eco-social resilience.

This is pretty crude but, that is because of a lack of ecological knowledge. However, it does place constraints within the model.

Firstly we need to consider the physical layout, geography, climate, and spatial configuration of a place. This can effect the possibilities of the renewable energy being used, and the way it is deployed. Changing the environment can produce the experience of people being ‘unhomed’. Land not only shapes human activities but is shaped by them. Possible uses of land depend on political struggle and sometimes violent displacement of those originally occupying the land.

As well as this the world’s systems are effected by what people call planetary boundaries, which are themselves systems. The formal planetary boundaries and the eco-social systems which encapsulate them are:

  • Climate stability,
  • Biospheric integrity (balance between species, rates of extinction etc),
  • Water cycles,
  • Biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles etc),
  • Ocean ph (acidity or alkalinity),
  • Particulate levels,
  • Ozone depletion, and
  • Novel entities (new chemicals, microplastics etc.).

We can think of these as essential planetary geo-bio cycles – they are necessary to human functioning, and to the functioning of the planet. They can be broken, and appear to be being broken at this moment. Adjustment will eventually happen, but there is no reason to think that this adjustment will automatically be friendly to current human societies, or even to humans themselves.

It seems that capitalism and developmentalism, both seek to avoid limits, and claim they can transcend those limits, usually though innovation and new technology. But this is likely to be a fantasy. Going by the evidence so far, it is a fantasy – however consoling it might be.

Even if we have massive unexpected technical innovation in the next twenty years (say, fusion power), then it still may be too late, and we still have to stop pollution and ecological damage from other sources.

It almost certainly will not hurt more to stop breaking the geo-bio cycles, than it will hurt to continue breaking them.

Further comments

All of the above systems are obviously interconnected, but specifying them out, might help us factor them all in to our analysis, all the time.

I didn’t particularly bother about the class system and its political dynamics (plutocracy) at this time, because I figure I’m unlikely to forget that, but it affects all of the above. Likewise the political system and its patterns affect all of the above.

Politics can affect the energy system. People can encourage and hinder certain forms of energy. They can forcibly ignore the consequences of energy production and so on.

Politics can affect the waste/pollution system such as the kinds of pollutions accepted or banned. Who is allowed to pollute. Where the pollution is dumped. What kind of penalties apply, and so on.

Politics affects extraction. Who can do the extraction. What kind of royalties are paid. What kind of property is made. What kind of limits to extraction exist. What local benefits arise.

Politics affects what kinds information are promulgated. The kinds of truth standards to are applied. The modes of distribution of information. The suppression of information and so on. What kinds of people who are ‘trusted’ with respect to information. The kind of information is accepted by different groups?

In later blogs I’m planning to try and incorporate the property/accumulation system, and the class/plutocracy/group-categorisation systems into the analysis.

Decarbonisation

Decarbonisation seems obviously affected by all of these factors:

How do we generate the energy to decarbonise, without disrupting ecologies, through waste/pollution and extraction processes? How do we decarbonise without harmful growth?

How do the information systems work to recognise, or not recognise, what is happening? how do they play out through the political and economic processes? Is it possible to improve them?

How do ecological limits affect decarbonisation pathways when they are not in good shape. We face doing decarbonisation in an era of compounding eco-social crises, which increases energy expenditure as people attempt to control them. This adds to the difficulties of decarbonisation.

To reiterate: we cannot successfully decarbonise, without generating enough energy to decarbonise. It also seems we must generate this energy at the same time as cutting pollution, ending extractive destruction, ending growth, refining information, and protecting ecological resilience, etc.

Conclusion

If there are any points that I would really like people to take from any of this it is that:

  • It takes energy to ‘release’ energy – and usually leads to waste or pollution somewhere in the cycle. Pollution must be minimised to keep geo-bio cycles functional.
  • In this sense, no energy is completely free.
  • If it takes more energy for humans to make energy than energy is released then, over the long term, the human system will collapse.
  • Human action is limited by available energy. It is also limited by the amount of destruction, and damage to the geo-bio cycles produced by the energy system.
  • The Information System and its confusions, is not an addenda to the other systems, it is vital to any analysis.
  • Human energy, extraction, waste/pollution, information and other systems, interact with planetary geo-bio-cycles or planetary boundaries, and if the human systems disrupt those geo-bio cycles, they will be limited and disrupted in turn – probably violently.

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Based on Alan Smithson’s Kairos

March 2, 2020

I’m not really sure where I am going here, but this is the start of an exploration of Alan Smithson’s ideas in his book The Kairos Point. I’ve occasionally changed the vocabulary and the emphasis. It starts in a different place because I think that this new beginning is clearer.

This is not him, but it would not exist without him. Occasionally I point out what I think are differences, but I may have selected incorrectly, and misunderstood important points. Hopefully I have got some of the important points right, but there is much more to explore.

Introduction

Thinking in terms of one principle alone is reductive, and usually leads to ignoring data, or contradiction. The paradoxes around the idea there being one omnipotent and omniscient God come to mind. We end up with other principles to explain what happens: a principle of evil, or a principle of free will or something. All of which implies that God is not omnipotent, omniscient etc.

Thinking in terms of two usually leads to opposition.

Thinking in terms of at least 3 principles opens the field of thinking up.

The Two and the Three

The two can be thought of in at least three ways

1) Opposition. The two principles negate each other: matter and anti-matter. Thesis and antithesis. predator and prey.

2) Differences of degree. The two are both similiar and statistically and/or categorically different. By some, of multiple, measures they can look similar, and by others different. It may vary with individual examples (Male and female).

3) Binary. The two do not share anything in common. Logical operators, A and Not-A.

Once we have the three we might, as happened with me, get another way of seeing two, such as:

4) Complementary. The two need each other and influence each other, or emerge from each other. They form an ongoing process. Predator and prey. (Smithson got this straightaway)

We might collapse this into the triad:

  • Difference; opposition; complementarity.

The Three opens things up beyond dyads, it forces us to look for other factors, and interactions. It suggests the possibility of multiple interactions, modifications and the spill of one category into another. It is, I hope, useful for talking about ecologies and climate change, although I will not be talking about climate change in this part of the exposition.

One of the differences between myself and Smithson is that he tends to talk of a duality between ‘nothing’ and ‘one’ or ‘wholeness’. I tend to think in terms of the triad:

  • Nothing; One; Many.

Wholeness may not be harmonious in any appearance. Looking for the disorder, the unincluded, the ignored, the many, the conflicting is as useful to understanding as looking for the harmony, the co-operation and the oneness. Through this triad we are reminded that the ecologies we exist within are complex, and complexity has consequences.

Minds and Matters

Mind and matter are usually thought of as an opposition, or a binary. But it might also be possible to think of them as complementary, or as differing in degree in some set of qualities, or as also part of a triad: Mind; local ecology; Matter, or as part of a many pointing triad: Minds; local ecologies; Matter(s). I use the term ‘local ecologies’, because we have experience and live in a local ecology with ongoing processes, history, movement and change, rather than an abstract total whole (which we also exist within, but which implies another level of analysis, and can imply static-ness). If you prefer the singular triad Mind; Absolute Whole; Matter, then test it and see what happens.

In human reality we never observe mind without matter, or matter without mind. We never observe outside of some ecology or context – that is we rarely, if ever, observe outside of time and process. We function in (at least) the triad. We also observe what looks like multiple minds – of other people and things. We may notice what appear to be different types of matters, water, air, fire, flesh, wood, stone, metals, etc. We have previous learnings and experiences, which colour our present experiences, feeling and thinking. Minds involve feelings and bodies.

What we call Minds and Matters are part of (or partitioned out of) an apparently ‘durational’ Local ecological whole we do not understand. We might want to give one of our duality priority over the other, saying (all or some) matter emerges from mind (say the mind of God at creation), or (all or some) minds emerge from matter (as in conventional evolutionary theory), but the reality is that we observe both at the same time, as part of some processes in the local ecology, and we cannot observe one without the other, outside the ecology. Observation implies minds doing observation, and some ecology they exist within.

We don’t exist as minds without observation and interaction of ‘matters’ or of something else which appears not to be us (such as other minds). We think about minds using metaphors from matter, and vice versa to some extent (as in alchemy). We live amidst matters and other minds; again within the local ecology. We live amidst an interactive realm of feeling, even when we deny it, or name it as matter. We are never completely alone, completely without the context of the local ecology.

If we still want to think of ‘matter’ and ‘mind’, we can think of the interaction between them as circular, without obvious end, within the ecology which allows the circle to exist. If there was an end, there would be no observer and/or nothing to observe.
Mind -> Matter -> Mind -> Matter or
Matter -> Mind -> Matter -> Mind
and so on

To repeat, what we observe is at least a triad:

  • Mind; Matter; Local ecology (or Reality).

Without local ecology there is nothing that we can call mind and matter. Mind involves that feeling and embodiment.

Reality pictures

There is also no mind without “reality-pictures” which are not the same as reality, but which emerge from that reality, and give “reality for me” and/or “reality for part of a culture”. ‘Mind’ is itself such a reality picture as is ‘matter’ or ‘local ecology’.

Reality pictures may be made up of thought and feeling patterns etc., or they may be partially made up by biological and material properties and interactions.

Reality pictures are real and have an effect. They may be what we call ‘accurate’, they may not be accurate, they may be partially accurate, or they may be accurate-enough to get by, but they are convincing at a certain moment to particular people in culture, history, place and ecology etc. They seem to affect how we behave, and thus have consequences.

Realising that the idea of ‘mind’ is a reality picture, complementary to the reality picture of ‘matter’ (and possibly deleting large amounts of reality, or the local whole or ecology, allows us to look at some of the confusions in the term and in the triad.

Confusions?

When we think of a ‘whole’, we tend to think of integration and harmony, rather than simply “what is,” “what exists,” or “what is happening”. We tend to delete the interactions within what exists.

However, there is no reason (other than this bias) to not think of reality as a interacting, confusion, with multiply (‘multiplee’) opposing, different, binary and complementary etc forces, acting. Animals feed off other animals and plants, one person’s interest may not agree with another, an exploding star may have dire consequences it never ‘intended’.

Smithson finds it necessary to remind people mind is real. Jung had to proceed likewise. I find this hard to understand. Surely people know their mind is at least as real and unreal as matter? Let us take it for granted, that minds are real, but we may not understand them remotely accurately, and our conceptions of minds may be wrong, as they may be of anything. For example, Western culture tends to delete feeling from mind saying feeling is irrational or beyond rational (part of soul?), thus helping to make mind seem like pure thought without interconnection. It is easy to talk of mind in this way, even when you are aware of the other view.

When we talk about ‘mind’ we tend to ignore minds. As if all minds where one mind. Which they might be, but they might not. Animals seem, to me to have minds, or feeling minds, which could be both different to human minds and share some features with human minds. They are are at least Differences of degree. It is also conceptually possible some types of minds are completely different, in ‘opposition’, binary or complementary etc. (Perhaps the minds of cephalopods). To Descartes and orthodox Judaeo-Christian-Islamic thinkers animals do not have minds – because mind comes from soul which marks human uniqueness – which may or may not be true; but it is certainly limiting. This limit makes us think there is only a singular binary (mind and non-mind). Their reality-picture of mind does not recognise the ecology part of the triad, nor the importance of previous experience or process to the formation of minds.

Mind-worlds and the whole

Likewise, thinking of ‘Mind’ tends to lead us into the Popperian position of there being a “world of mind” (not world of minds) which can be throught of as a huge library of knowledge, art, culture etc, and is (yet again) opposed to the world of singular matter.

However, it could seem the minds world is never completely independent of the ‘matters world’. The local whole or ecology, is never completely available to the parts, and the parts share different and often incompatible parts of these ‘worlds’. The singular ‘mind world’ idea does not immediately point to the diversity of mind worlds, or their distributed and shared natures, or to the multiple effects of ecologies, or even the availability of language, interpretation, storage and availability. Smithson tries to get around this by thinking of the mind word as holographic, but I’m not sure that helps.

Again mind does not exist apart from the possible confusion, mess and multiplicity of the ‘local-ecologies.’

Anthropologists tend to use the word “cultures” for something like “mind worlds,” and that plural reminds us that mind worlds do not exist as “one”, and they are supported by, and grow out of, varied customs, habits, feeling patterns, and interactions of people with the reality-wholeness from which they emerge (including other people). To some extent cultures are part of a ‘local ecology’ within ‘Absolute wholeness’. Cultures are material, and involve practices, and interactions, as well as conceptions.

Cultures are also not static they are processes undergoing change, like ecologies and minds; they do not merely accumulate stuff in a library: later work can change the meanings of past work. Australian culture is not identical to US culture, and is not identical to Australian culture of 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, even it if shares features and continuity. Neither of these older cultures can be said to be the real culture, even by precedence, as earlier cultures precede whatever we select, and all cultures tend to be influenced by other cultures.

To restate, cultures are time using (historical) processes, collaborations, competitions, incorporations and rejections of events, among other things.

One set of reality-pictures may obscure the presence and understanding of another set and vice versa.

More to come.

Summary

It is useful (but culturally hard) to think in threes to open up our thought beyond patterns of the one and the binary.

Wholeness may not be harmonious in any appearance, or in reality.

What we call Minds and Matter(s) always exist in an ecology (which includes other minds).

Mind, matter and ecology are themselves appearances arising through “reality pictures.”.

“Reality pictures” may be more or less accurate given a particular ecology. Reality pictures influence interactions with local ecologies or reality, and produce consequences, intended or otherwise

Western reality-pictures of Mind tend to ignore feeling, and time, interaction and development processes

Minds may differ from each other in different ways.

Cultures are not singular or simple ideas in Minds, even if they don’t exist without Minds. Cultures are material and interactive. They use time and change.

If we take change seriously then we can perceive reality is fluxing over time. We don’t have to look for a fixed or static whole to find reality, or think such wholes are harmonious or ‘one’. Our Minds and Matters also flux. Impermanence is part of life. Impermanence is changing.

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