Summary - From Ecology to Economics - Part 7

Humans are an amazing adaptable species, the patterns of movement - (skills) and the patterns of behavior - (methods) that we can learn are vast in scope.

We specialize in unique ways, even within broader “talents” and modalities. This sets us up beautifully to operate in colonies where the division of labour increases total productivity.

Colonies require governance and common threads of motivation. Individuals within the colony depend on membership for survival, comfort, information, resources, affection and reassurance.

The no. 1 driver of human action will always be response to threat. We don’t have a choice about that - our limbic system alters our blood composition flow rate and distribution when stress triggers are hit.
As specialized members of a colony of organisms we turn to other “experts” for information and signals outside of our own spheres of sensitivity.

The more agitated, anxious or flat out fearful we are, the more we will look to others. Now in a colony such as a Siphonophore,(Portuguese Man o war “jellyfish”) this has worked for 500 million years. Our ancestry is less than half this and so far its dubious whether we will last another 100 years, with anything other than jellyfish in the oceans.
Why?

Our capacity to specialize and learn is continuing to improve, our use of opposing thumbs may soon make them unnecessary. While our ability to operate in large groups is improving, it appears to be, in the area of governance that we are failing.

Apart from radiation and the odd meteorite, the Earth and its atmosphere is a closed system. The resources we have, can be combined in many ways, but they do need to recycle. The way that evolution seemed to be unfolding was through fractal division of the food chains.

An exponential increase in the amount and type of species cycling organic matter and bringing in more minerals in the process. All powered by solar radiation and governed by gravity, electromagnetic forces,(including sunlight) and those nuclear ones.

Humans do pattern recognition, each of us is uniquely aware of and indeed curious about different areas of the total spectrum available to our senses. When we work together to share this awareness, we can invest in some great infrastructure that further frees us to learn.

However there is a bug in the system that I have been trying to locate and define for several decades now. I carry the bug myself so it is very hard and perhaps impossible, to create the distance required to see it in its entirety. I will never stop trying, for that is my area of specialization, my unique curiosity, my chosen playground if you will.

Competition serves as both a method of governance, and a rehearsal process. It is through enactment that we demonstrate and observe each other’s behavior. We build trust, and we allocate “roles” and resources accordingly. Socializing is an economic mechanism of seeking and communicating value and values.

Pattern recognition is what defines each of us. I see the ability to remember patterns as concepts is knowledge. I see the ability to apply that knowledge gracefully, effectively and with minimal use of energy and resources as skill.
The more access we have to resources and energy, the more wasteful and the less valuable skills become. It is more advantageous to spend time memorizing concepts than practicing movements.

We come to be known and valued for the concepts we are able to store and regurgitate. Trust is built on the experience of predictable behaviors. We reward and withhold the signals of acceptance and may even punish with the signals of rejection based upon how we hear each other present concepts.

Our cultures can be seen as the rules of our colonies. The governance of both roles and resources will be allocated based, less upon skills and increasingly upon the understanding of concepts. This is actually very good and has propagated our collective knowledge astronomically.

So why are our ecologies moving away from the fractal increase in biodiversity? Why are our oceans filling with plastic and our most productive lands being poisoned to produce low nutrient dense outputs?
Are we missing something in the way we qualify the patterns we have agreed to use through social governance? Does the problem lie within the way we value each other or the way we value the costs and benefits of our infrastructure projects?

If we all share the same reality, why is it so hard to reach consensus? Why do we waste so much energy in conflict? Is it because of the way we qualify the concepts that we embed into our memory?

Specialization is personal, but nothing else is. When we adopt a concept for personal gain or security, we become biased in the way we view it. If it is anchored with one of the emotions of threat - shame, guilt, envy, greed (fear of missing out), anger. Then it will trigger a stress response and we will be left with feelings of even greater insecurity.
When we are insecure, we turn to experts, to provide us with a pattern update. If the pattern update conflicts with one we have taken personally - we will feel insecure again. We can either drop the pattern or find another expert who can re-assure us. This is called information bias.

Now experts are under enormous pressure to provide answers. To relieve anxiety and return people to a state of productivity or at least to calm them down and prevent them from interrupting the “progress” of others.
A true expert has great experience of applying his talents and getting real world feedback - remembering that direct experience of gravity, electromagnetic and the weak and strong nuclear forces are only ever available through the senses. Such experience may take a lifetime to build and lets face it, we are only able to focus on parts of the total spectrum of information available anyway.

The best shot we have at seeing the whole picture is as a group of experts in consensus. This is the beauty of the scientific method.

What if the expert we turn to is insecure? What if he has no one he can turn to for support? What if he can not access the scientific instruments required to attain sensitive readings from the environment? What if the environment is constantly changing, effected by infinite variables and that the emotions one is experiencing when we observe it may alter our perception anyway?

Can we recognize the memories we have anchored with fear? Are they different from other memories? If, collectively we supported each other in routinely checking ourselves and each other for such “idea viruses” how would this effect the way we invested?

Can healing our personal relationship to the four forces of the universe, alter the way we relate to each other? How would that effect the quality of our competitions, our social governance? How would that effect the infrastructure projects that we chose to work together on?

How would that effect biodiversity? Would it resume expanding or continue, to contract?

I hope that this has been an interesting read, I will probably go back to painting for a while now.
I recognise that opinions are different to ideas, opinions are concepts we have identified with and become emotionally attached to. This is not a healthy practice as it makes me more easily upset. I have become attached to these ideas, even though the whole point was to remain open and curious. So I will give it a break and let it drift away like smoke..

Thank you for reading,

=8-P

Ecology to Economics Series
Part 1 - Jelly Brains
Part 2 - Colonies
Part 3 - Consensus
Part 4 - Memory
Part 5 - Decentralising the nervous system
Part 6 - Embracing Change
Part 7 - Summary