I think that the more we learn about self organizing systems, the more we realize that all of the systems that we depend on (our ecology, our economy, our society, and our bodies) function the same way, through feedback loops. Because they organize themselves around inputs, and use feedback to stabilize themselves, they are very adaptable and also exquisitely sensitive.

But they aren't unbreakable. Unfortunately, we have had a historical tendency to denigrate nature, to denigrate the product of these self organizing systems as "chaotic", or "uncivilized". We tend to see nature as a lack of organization, not realizing that the inability to recognize organized complexity is our failing, not nature's.

Because we see nature as chaos, we tend to see ourselves as heroic banishers of chaos, see ourselves as wading into the breech of nature "red in tooth and claw" and imposing our beneficent order on things. And we expect predictability and benevolence to flow from this imposition.

But that's not the way any of the systems work. Because our imposition of "order" consists of cutting feedback loops and attempting to deny causality its due by simply forbidding an outcome, we break the system rather than improve it. We create a huge bubble of disruption, not seeing that life is a circle, and that this bubble will circle around and then unseat us from the train in due time. At which point the train will continue on its way undisturbed, rid of its pestilent passengers.

All of life, ourselves included, is technology -- organized intelligence. Dissipative systems that emerge spontaneously, feeding off energy marching past us from big bang to heat death. And if we are to survive for any significant length of time, we need to learn and accept how these systems function. The universe is designed to foster the emergence of self organizing systems. And it rids itself pretty quickly of systems that think they can outsmart causality, and replaces them with systems that understand and play by the rules.

Next step is to see that permaculture applies to everything, from sociology to farming, from medicine to economics.

Great to see people promoting permaculture, thanks for the post!