Natural Order All Around Us

in #anarchy9 years ago

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Economics, as the field and study concerning the uses of capital, gets the most attention as far as trying to understanding natural order.

In all fairness, this is a hundred percent reasonable as economic laws describe the social forces actively at work; but even so there's more to life than economics; and even trying to fit everything into an "economic consensus" ironically itself is subject to economic laws.

Now, natural order is not some academic term or idea that requires years of unnecessary drilling into the brain so concepts become lodged in without any real reference to how things things actually are.

Natural order is a common sense observation about the environment.

You will notice it immediately if you have taken any casual attitude toward looking around your surroundings. The very thing you are using to view these words on here is part of this whole spontaneous emergent order out of seemingly chaos—the Internet. Although that's just one example, there are many including language, biological life, physics, and of course the free market.

These are the usual examples of the self-organizing process around us. Though there are many others which you might be aware of, I think it's good to illustrate a couple of examples I am intimately familiar with for the purposes of bringing them out of their isolated understanding; as well as to bring home the point of how normal and orderly natural order really is.

Surfing

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Surfing is a very dynamic and at first challenging sport. What makes surfing intriguing and unique compared to other sports is how it's done and the unwritten rules surfers abide by.

The main problem in surfing is scarcity; there just isn't an abundant amount of waves for everyone and if the surf spot is good it will be very competitive and crowded. Because of this, a certain etiquette and meritocracy has naturally evolved in the sport to deal with the scarce resource of waves.

If your closest to the waves peak, you have the right-away for catching the wave. If you live and breathe a certain break as a local, you have priority over out-of-towners. Advanced surfers get to pick and choose their waves, while newbies still get a chance but have to wait. The "enforcers" in lineups act as regulators of select surf breaks in case anyone disrespects any of these principles.

These are just some of the rules which have come about through time as the popularity of the sport has increased globally.

Urban Planning

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Contrary to popular belief, or to what central planners want you to believe, urban planning and the development of great cities does not arise from top-down decision making; rather it's an emergent consequence of people living and interacting in a given area.

Jane Jacobs wrote extensively on this subject, most famously in her assault on the predominate ideas on urban planning in the 1950s titled The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Jacobs saw the decline of city neighborhoods in New York due to the rationalist planners who believed a master-planned and central outline for urban areas was the recipe for progress. The unintended consequences of this sort of dogma was the neglect of the organic complexities in which communities live under; as well as the preferences individuals in such places build upon based on the needs and requirements of daily living.

How can people who don't live in or have even visited a neighborhood know what's best for those who do?

Literature

The greatest works of literature, or what is widely called the classics, have seeming chaotic origins that have had a steadily stable readership since their inceptions. Before writing, oral tradition was the predominate mode of communicating stories and ideas from the grassroots.

What many people don't realize is that a lot of these works are based on disparate knowledge gleaned from sources which are never documented or in some cases not even real.

Homer, one of the first authors of Western civilization, has a cloud of mystery surrounding his works the Iliad and Odyssey. Nobody knows if the author(s) of these books were one person, several, or just a compilation from various poets. Eventually complete epics were created out of nothing but observing life and trying to understand it putting them into words.

From antiquity down to the middle ages till today, literary creations only sustain themselves through natural growth and interpretations made relevant for each generation.

Music

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Another art form, music, arguably has the most scattered and unclear range of history in it's development.

While most subjects and arts contain a detail record of its development, music has no such thing. Yes there are references by ancient civilizations, and of course notation and musical theory came to be a thing over time; though music is very likely to have began with just hitting stones on caves or sticks together, a very spontaneous evolution.

Musical instruments have been invented to manipulate sound and today sampling and audio engineering have become the prime mechanisms for completing a finished piece. None of this was furnished by a select group of people and definitely not through any sort of organized means.

Do you have any other examples?
Perhaps something you know well that you haven't thought could also be part of natural order?

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It was such a joy to read this post @superfluousman! I couldn't agree more, and in fact, I consider all these things obviously self evident. Unfortunately not everyone does, so I love all these great examples you brought up to illustrate it.

I included your article in my curating post Look What I Found. You can take a look at it here: https://steemit.com/curating/@stortebeker/more-posts-on-look-what-i-found I hope you like it.

Thanks glad you liked it, appreciate you doing that as well!

Thank you! See, I really don't like resteeming things. I feel it clutters up my blog. Even when I look at other people's blogs I tend to skip their resteems. However, when I find something I like I still want to share it. Sure, I'm just a one-person curator, not a team like @ocd with ten links a day, but so far I think this method has proven a good idea.

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