Rethinking Healthcare as a Complex System

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Knowledge Area Module 3:

Principles of Organizational and Social Systems

Student: Timothy Beushausen [email protected]

Student ID # A00128233

Program: PhD in Applied Management and Decision Sciences

Specialization: Leadership & Organization Development

KAM Assessor: Dr. Steven Tippins [email protected]

Faculty Mentor: Same

Walden University

November 25, 2012

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ABSTRACT: BREADTH

SBSF 8310: Theories of Organizational & Social Systems

The purpose of this research is to trace the development of complexity thinking, as it has

emerged in the physical, biological, and social sciences. The modern concept of complexity

emerged in late 19th and early 20th Century social science even as the Cartesian/Newtonian

paradigm was being destroyed in physics by new thinking about new experimental evidence.

Beginning with Fritjof Capra1 (Capra, 1999), who started out as a physicist, I show how his

encounter with Eastern Philosophy led to a new concept of relationship, causation and function

that forms the basis for thinking about complex systems. He projected that civilization would

reach a turning point, which Jay Forrester’s2 research shows we have passed and missed.

Humanity is now descending into the chaos of overshoot, even as our leaders consider mild-

mannered espousal of the Sustainability Initiative as part of corporate propaganda for human

relations as narrowly defined by the immediate bottom line. Yaneer Bar-Yam3 analyzes the

differences between implicit expressions of a biological organism, which can enable us to create

a General Will while fully celebrating human rights, expressed as a democratic mentality, or

explicit reification of such an organism, with its ensuing fascist mentality, as expressed by

Hitler’s abuse of Social Darwinism. Although we are now floundering in our efforts to create a

1 Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and

Eastern mysticism. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

2 Georgescu, C., Meadows, D., Perccei, R., & et_al. (2012, October 2). Report to the Club of Rome

“2052 – A global forecast for the next forty years”. Retrieved October 21, 2012, from The power of the

mind: http://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.html

3 Bar-Yam, Y. (1997). Human civilization II: A complexity transition. In Y. Bar-Yam, Dynamics

of complex systems (Studies in nonlinearity). New York: Perseus Book Group.

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sustainable social order, one mentality or the other (Charny, 2006)4 will emerge as the mind of

the new social organism. We have a stark choice between New Jerusalem and Hell, and we are

pretty far down the wide road to the latter.

4 Charny, I. W. (2006). Fascism & democracy in the human mind: A bridge between mind and

society. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.

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ABSTRACT: DEPTH

AMDS 8321: Current Research in Organizational and Social Systems-Systems Engineering

The purpose of the following analysis is to examine the scope and impact of the work of Capra,

Forrester, and Bar-Yam within the context of the modern complexity thinking. Capra5 saw the

limitations of the Cartesian/Newtonian paradigm in the very physics it had founded, and found

the model of wu-wei in Chinese philosophy providing illumination between field and quantum

physics. He expanded these insights into biology and sociology, never wavering from a new

vision of complexity thinking that now informs all of the sciences. He saw the current system

reaching its turning point. Jay Forrester showed the consequences of overshooting that turning

point. His students developed the World3 mathematical model, finding as of October of 2012

that we are dangerously near a point where our social order cascades into chaos. Bar-Yam picks

up where the Social Darwinists left off, showing the way to a democratic rather than fascist

mentality for our new social organism. These theorists have generated much discussion,

culminating in the proposal to create a Learning Society through the process of public education,

which means educating all members of the public to their highest capacities. The ideas of each of

these thinkers are still generating rich new research questions and providing us with the means to

use our own eyes to see what is going on in spite of all of the apparent complexity of today’s

world, and will continue to generate research, action and discussion throughout the 21st Century,

providing fresh humus for robust new research into the foreseeable future.

5 Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and

Eastern mysticism. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

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ABSTRACT: APPLICATION

AMDS 8331: Applications of Systems Engineering and Analysis

From the standpoint of the wretched of the Earth, the Sustainability Initiative spells only

human disaster because it is being applied by way of the explicit fascism Bar-Yam warns us

against. The discredited “trickle down” theories of the University of Chicago economists that are

now being imposed on what Mao Zedong designated as the Third World can never cause all

boats to rise because they are entirely grounded in negative feedback, equilibrium economic

models that cannot reflect the complexity of today’s world. However, such theories can support

some lifeboats while all of the Irish in steerage drown (Cameron, 1997)6. America is intractably

stuck in the two-tier world social order that is emerging, and can only retain her position, for the

select few, by waging permanent warfare against her own people as well as the remainder of

those who cannot be accommodated by a few corporate lifeboats with access to economic

markets. That is the project for a new American century (PNAC) that has emerged by borrowing

real money (earned through slave labor) from China while paying interest on ersatz debts to the

Federal Reserve Bank. And all for what purpose? To create a New Millennium (Tausendjähriges

Reich), an American Century of permanent warfare on three simultaneous fronts. Orwell’s 1948

nightmare is emerging from metaphorical and interpretive to descriptive and explanatory reality

(Charny, 2006)7, which is in fact a complex transformation.

With a world-wide fascist mindset expressing an explicitly Nazi conception of the

social organism, all who survive the upcoming holocaust in all of its social, political,

6 Cameron, J. (Director). (1997). Titanic [Motion Picture].



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military and economic dimensions will be the foundation of the New World Order.

Those of us who are not among the chosen few will have to engage in the struggle for

survivability, and in fact replace the explicit, reptilian (old brain, governed by the

amygdala) Dominant Mindset with an implicit, humanistic General Will. As I have

shown in previous work (Beushausen, 2013)8, for such a social mind to be concretized,

an actual, implicit democratic rather than explicitly fascist psychology (Charny, 2006)9

must be in place. The struggle for single payer healthcare must hold all ecological,

biological, social, economic, and financial systems to accountability for the maintenance

of individual human rights. We cannot achieve adequate healthcare, education, and

employment opportunities while yet accommodated to a rank-order world system that

denigrates relationship and reflects no consensus. We analyze all of these dimensions

brought by all of the speakers to the Aurora Healthcare Speak out, including U. S.

Congressperson Dennis Kucinich; Congresspersons Mary Flowers and Mike Boland,

both members of the Illinois House of Representatives who formed the state

congressional single payer healthcare committee for IL HB 303 along with then Illinois

Rep. Barack Obama; and presidential candidates from the Libertarian, Green, and

Communist Parties.

8 Beushausen, T. (2013). Human Development. Kindle Digital Books.



7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BREADTH……………………………………………………………….…8

Principles of Complex Systems…………………………………….….8

Individual and Social Organism………………………………….….9

Capra and the Cartesian/Newtonian Paradigm………………….….11

The Turning Point……………………………………………….….32

The Puritan Work Ethic: Core of the Capitalist Value System….....44

Forrester and Systems Dynamics……………………………..........50

The Counter-intuitive Behavior of Social Systems………………...56

Networks…………………………………………………………....63

The Legacy of Donella Meadows…………………………………..65

DEPTH…………………………...……………………………………..…77

Annotated Bibliography…………………….………………..............77

Literature Review Essay…………………..……………………….....96

Bricmont on Determinism……………………………………….…96

Causality in Complex Dynamic Systems………………………....106

Complex Adaptive Systems as a Generative Metaphor…………..112

Human Health as a Complex System…………………..................114

Evaluating Complex Healthcare Systems………………………...118

Jay Forrester’s Shock to the System………………………………121

Supply Chain Management is no Beer Game…………………......124

Mathematical Modeling of Complex Biological Systems….……..127

Spirituality and Eco-culture……………………………………….130

The Sustainability Transition………………………………...........133

Improving the Effectiveness of Healthcare Delivery Systems…….135

Relationship in the Public Sphere……………………………..…...137

An Aquarium Eco-system Project for Middle School Students…...139

Emergence of Cooperation from Heterogeneity of Degree………..141

The Learning Society……………………………………..…......,...144

APPLICATION………………..………………………………….......…..148

War and Conspiracy………….…………………………………….......148

Healthcare vs. Warfare……………………………………………........165

Health, Wealth, and 9/11…………………………………………….....171

Reptilian Conspiracy Theory………...…………………………….…...175

Summary…………………………………………...…………..….......177

WORKS CITED………………………………………..……….…….......182.

8

BREADTH

PRINCIPLES OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

My purpose is to show that the 20th Century development of complexity theory by

researchers in several disciplines as diverse as economics, biology, chemistry, physics and

meteorology discovered general principles of thinking about complex systems that provide the

basis for all areas of 21st Century science, extended to philosophy and theology as well. Broad

perspectives on human concerns inherited from the 19th Century laid the groundwork for

complex systems as a discipline that includes the ethical and moral evaluation of social

phenomena. Fritjof Capra, Jay W. Forrester, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, each with varying

disciplinary backgrounds, discovered philosophical, theoretical and practical perspectives by

which all of human knowledge may be unified in terms of complex systems. The perspectives

provided by complexity thinking, from primary through secondary, graduate and post-graduate

education and research can enable us to find our way as a species through the myriad crises that

confront us.

Philosophically, the problematic of this age is to grapple with the counter-revolution that

arises from within the heart of revolutions, even revolutions in thought as important as that

represented by the Sustainability Initiative. Humanity has passed a turning point in which

sustainability must take a back seat while we grapple with survivability and the human

conditions under which we desire to make the transition to the Solar Age. We must focus the

efforts of every man, woman and child on this goal in order to achieve it, and can no longer

avoid making difficult sacrifices and going through much suffering before we arrive at this goal.

9

Individual and Social Organism

The variety of 19th and early 20th Century perspectives forged in the social and physical

sciences led to the realization that the behavior of complex systems requires philosophical and

theoretical developments that transcend all scientific disciplines, unifying social and physical

phenomena through categories such as emergence, transcendence, hierarchical embedding of

systems within systems, function, and causation. The Sustainability Initiative rose out of the

World310 model, but failure to meet critical demands at what Capra designated as the turning

point forces us to choose between humanistic and mechanistic responses to ensure survivability,

only beyond which the questions raised by sustainability may be answered. The ruling

institutions left behind by Bretton Woods now implement the Sustainability Initiative in a

manner that forces the vast majority of humanity to endure starvation and early death, even

though hundreds of millions now die from easily controlled diseases, and no country in the world

is incapable of feeding its own people. The Anti-globalization movement, which has provided us

with the imperative to act locally and think globally, provides a viable and humanistic alternative

to the austerity (only for others, not for themselves) imposed by the World Bank, the

International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Only the wretched of the Earth

themselves can lead the way forward toward humanistic solutions that transcend the University

of Chicago “trickle down” theories of Milton Friedman now being imposed in the name of

“Sustainability.”

Social science can remain the most hopeful and important intellectual endeavor we have

yet undertaken only in and through the application of complexity theory through the eyes and

10 Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J. I., & Behrens, W. W. (1974). The limits to

growth: A report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe

Publishing, Inc.

10

minds of the revolutionary subjects of today’s freedom struggles. Social knowledge must be

humanized into a spiritual awakening rather than reified into a material force. When Marx

projected the separation between science and life as “a priori” a lie (1947)11, he envisioned the

solution, which is to engage the talents of every man, woman and child in working out solutions

to myriad complex problems. No one person can provide a blueprint for the learning society

adequate to the transition from the industrial, carbon age to the information, solar age, but

billions of people tapping every last reserve of human capacity and talent could accomplish the

task. Because the problem of overshoot has now put a question mark over the survival of

humanity, nothing less than such a response is sufficient to meet the challenge, either morally or

ethically.

Together, we can create a non-reified, implicit rather than explicit (Bar-Yam Y. , 1997)12

social organism capable of reflecting the passionate concern and involvement in human history

postulated by the world’s religions as characteristic of God, who can only act in and through

human consciousness. As an approach to human liberation informed by complexity theory, social

science must put down the goal of social control for that of human freedom, in which we all

emerge as co-controllers of human destiny. This is the perspective made possible by complexity

theory, which is now expanding to embrace philosophy and religion in addition to the whole of

science. The choice is between creating a social organism with a fascist mentality

11 Marx, K. (1947). Science, society and life: Extract from private property and communism. In R.

Dunayevskaya, G. L. Boggs, C. L. James, & J.-F. Tendency of Socialist Workers' Party (Ed.), Essays by

Karl Marx selected from the economic-philosophical manuscripts (G. L. Boggs, Trans., pp. 22-23). New

York: Martin Harvey. Retrieved from Autodidact Project:

http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html



http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html

11

(Bar-Yam, 199713; Charny, 200614), and creating one that taps into the infinite reservoir of love

that lies at the source of human cooperation. When the former consolidates its power, we may no

longer have the power to choose.

Capra and the Cartesian/Newtonian Paradigm

Systems theory is a multidimensional, evolutionary approach to the sciences—physical,

biological, and social—uniting all scientific endeavor in interlocked orders of complexity, from

the leptons of quantum physics through cellular, ecological and social systems to solar systems,

systems of galaxies and even parallel universes, in at least one plausible interpretation of

quantum physics (Wolf, 1990)15. Scientists, working opaquely in a variety of disciplines (now

known as pigeonholes because they lacked common paradigms or means of interdisciplinary

communication), from forecasting weather to economic theory, quantum physics, cosmology,

electronics, and mechanical dynamics, discovered that they had common problems that could be

placed in a common theoretical framework, expressing the unification of the sciences (Gleick,

198816; Kauffman, 199517). Because systems theory generalizes from this process of scientific

unification, a plethora of mathematical models from neurological networks to weather systems

could be used as theoretical complex systems analogues for social systems, without ever looking

at biological models. However, for the purpose of exploring the commonalities of a variety of





15 Wolf, F. A. (1990). Parallel universes: The search for other worlds. New York: Touchstone div

of Simon & Schuster.

16 Gleick, J. (1988). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Penguin Group.

17 Kauffman, S. (1995). At home in the universe: The search for the laws of self-organization and

complexity. New York: Oxford University Press.

12

systems, and their transformations through the emergence of complexity in each, I will focus on

evolutionary biological models of complex systems, following Capra (1975, 1982, 2002), Bar-

Yam (2005), and Forrester (1961, 1969, 1971).

There are several reasons for using biological models rather than those from economics,

dynamics, electronics, weather, or even physics. Physical science has historically been taken as

the fundamental science to which all others can be reduced because it concerns the universal

constituents and dynamical mechanics of phenomena. Today it is well known that even physics

cannot be reduced to the elements of statics and dynamics that developed out of the scientific

Renaissance of the 16th century, through the philosophy of the 17th century, and went on to fuel

the 18th century industrial revolution in Great Britain.

Reductionism in philosophy arose out of the need to control the society, conceived as a

social machine, which developed helter-skelter out of this economic revolution. Classical physics

broke down as its methods were extended to explore ever more complex physical systems, laying

the groundwork for modern physics. New developments in the biological and social sciences

sounded the death knell for philosophic and methodological reductionism, and the original

attempts to explain biology and society in terms of mechanistic models have thereby been

rendered obsolete, creating even more demand for new mathematical and conceptual models.

The ecological web of life, resulting from 4.5 billion years of evolution, is certainly the

most complex stable system known. If humankind can ever create a basis for survivable

development (as we shall see, sustainability is yesterday’s opportunity that has gone out the

window) out of the myriad crises that are now shutting down the economics of greed, today’s

legacy from the industrial revolution, we must work within the newly emergent super-organism

13

resulting from the economic globalization (Bar-Yam Y. , 1997)18 of McLuhan & Powers’

(1989)19 “Global Village,” technologically networked through the “small world hypothesis”

(Gros, 2008)20. Someday, this socially constructed organism may become the most stable

complex system. However, this fundamentally social reality was in fact created and is sustained

by human cognition (Marx, 1988)21, and its survival is by no means certain.

Human experience, the phenomenology of mind (including self-consciousness and

reason) unique to Homo sapiens, is relatively new, accompanying the sudden emergence

(Schwartz, 1999)22 of our species within the past two million years. Capra (2002)23 suggests that,

in attempting to understand, predict, and control the emerging, highly complex, and rapidly

evolving global economy (Bar-Yam’s super-organism), we must learn from evolutionary

ecological systems. These have developed complexly for billions of years, since the origin of life

itself, and have exhibited amazing resiliency through several extinction level events (Gould,

1989)24. During the course of biological evolution, the new phenomenon of life emerged through



19 McLuhan, M., & Powers, B. (1989). The global village: Transformations in world life and

media in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press.

20 Gros, C. (2008). Complex and adaptive dynamic systems: A primer. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

21 Marx, K. (1988). The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist

manifesto. New York: Prometheus Books.

22 Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Sudden origins: Fossils, genes, and the emergence of species . New

York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

23 Capra, F. (2002). Hidden connections: A science for sustainable living. New York: Doubleday

div. of Random House.

24 Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: The Burgess shale and the nature of history. New York: W.

W. Norton.

14

molecular combinations of carbon compounds into higher hierarchical levels of complexity. As

Bar-Yam writes25 (p. 1):

“In biology, the common molecular and cellular mechanisms of a large variety of

organisms form the basis of our studies. However, even more universal than the constituents are

the dynamic processes of variation and selection that in some manner cause organisms to evolve.

Thus, all scientific endeavors are based, to a greater or lesser degree, on the existence of

universality, which manifests itself in diverse ways. In this context, the study of complex systems

as a new endeavor strives to increase our ability to understand the universality that arises when

systems are highly complex.”

Ecological modeling, applying lessons from four and a half billion years of the

sustainable evolution of eco-systems, may supply many suggestive solutions to the problem of

rebuilding human institutions that will be survivable for future generations. Although

sustainability is today’s buzzword, our decades of talk and no action have resulted in putting a

question mark over human survival. Once we meet the more draconian imperatives imposed by

this new, self-imposed regime, for lack of a better expression the “Survivability Initiative,” we

may be able to return someday to thinking about sustainability. Because a massive human

extinction caused by pollution is now in progress (Georgescu, Meadows, Perccei, & et_al,

2012)26 [for example, as of 2012, one in four people will contract cancer within their lifetimes,

and one in ten will eventually die of cancer, which has major environmental causes, including

diet and smoking, (UICC, 2012)27]. Health care delivery systems, which are grounded in systems

that are both biologically and socially complex, are a major focus in survivable development.

25 Bar-Yam, Y. (2001). Ibid.

26 Georgescu, C., Meadows, D., Perccei, R., & et_al. (2012, October 2). Report to the Club of

Rome “2052 – A global forecast for the next forty years”. Retrieved October 21, 2012, from The power of

the mind: http://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.html

27 UICC. (2012). Cancer Epidemic. Retrieved November 12, 2012, from Union for International

Cancer Control: uicc.org .

http://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.html

15

With the emergence of consciousness through the development of language and culture

(Mumford, 1970a)28 humankind began to bind time into oral, then written history (Korzybski,

1995)29, organizing hierarchical social systems. The Egyptians built the pyramids using the first

human social machinery, controlled by a religious priesthood with a God/King at the top of the

hierarchy, as depicted by the eye at the peak of the pyramid on the back of the United States

dollar bill (The Jewish Star of David is an inverted pyramid superimposed over an upright

pyramid, pictorially depicting the first revolution in recorded history). Plato was the first to

express the myth of the machine as philosophy, organizing his conceptual democracy [the real

one by the time he wrote was already in an accelerated state of historic decline (Boguslaw,

2000)30] under a republic controlled by a priesthood of philosopher/kings, perhaps halfway

between gods and modern scientists, qualified to rule by their intuitive mastery of an a priori

realm of divine forms. This ideology passed on to Rome, and culminated in western civilization,

which Mumford (1970b)31 designated as the modern pentagon of power. The rationalization of

labor under the Puritan work ethic developed into the ideology of Cartesian/Newtonian

systematics (Capra, 1999)32 (hereafter referred to the C/N paradigm, or scientism).

28 Mumford, L. (1970a). Myth of the machine: Technics and human development (Vol. 1).

Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

29 Korzybski, A. (1995). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and

general semantics. Englewood, NJ: Institute of General Semantics.

30 Boguslaw, R. (2000). Utopian analysis and design. In E. F. Borgetta, & R. J. Montgomery

(Eds.), Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Ed. (Vol. 5). New York: Gale Group.

31 Mumford, L. (1970b). Myth of the machine: The pentagon of power (Vol. 2). Orlando: Harcourt,

Brace, Jovanovich.

32 Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics

and Eastern mysticism. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

16

Auguste Comte (2009)33, the first modern social scientist, designated himself as the new

Pope of positivism (sociology, or social scientism) leading a new category of empirical

philosopher kings, and organized the new religion. In 1844, Marx (1988)34 depicted history as

the record of class struggle, and Fromm (1973)35 as that of freedom struggles (always written by

the victor):

“The history of mankind is, indeed, a history of the fight for freedom, a history

of revolutions, from the war of liberation of the Hebrews against the Egyptians, the

national uprisings against the Roman Empire, the German peasant rebellions in the

sixteenth century, to the American, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Algerian, and

Vietnamese revolutions” (p198).

The current development of decentralization (Bar-Yam Y. , 2005)36 is a continuation of this

progressive liberation from hierarchical structures. History emerges as humans become

psychologically and socially more complex.

Historically, the need for a general theory of, as well as mathematical approach to

complex systems and networks first appeared in the biological and social sciences, as insight into

the real complexity of evolutionary systems began to emerge. It started with Darwin’s simple

postulate of adaptation to environment in the struggle for existence as the cornerstone of his

theory of the progressive origin of species, which are today seen as the bases for even more

complex ecological systems. Darwin’s 1859 application of evolutionary thinking to biological

33 Comte, A. (2009). A general view of positivism, 2nd. Ed. (J. H. Bridges, Trans.) Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.



35 Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Henry Holt.

36 Bar-Yam, Y. (2005). Making things work: Solving complex problems in a complex world.

Brookline, MA: Knowledge Press.

17

systems in Origin of Species (1979)37 sounded the death knell for the Aristotelian “Great Chain

of Being” that had previously shackled the minds of intellectuals to Aquinas’ “argument from

design” (1948)38. It served as a wake-up call for a group of scientifically inclined albeit

theologically trained churchmen of Elizabethan England who, as scientists at heart, went on to

conduct the professionalization of science during the late 19th century (Ruse, 1999)39. Ludwig

Von Bertalanffy’s seminal General Systems Theory (1976)40 is the modern foundation of systems

biology, which provides a general biological framework for the way men such as Capra,

Forrester, and Bar-Yam think about social systems.

The “Great Chain of Being” still confuses some paleontologists who try to conceive of

biological and human progress as linear rather than multidimensional (Schwartz, 1999)41. As we

shall demonstrate, within critical realism (Sayer, 2010)42 there is room for causal explanations of

the apparent telos (purpose) of nature in terms other than Darwin’s, but there can be no return to

intelligent design, as Behe (2006)43 proposed, even if he has demonstrated that there could never

have been enough deep time for evolution to have followed a mathematically random walk

through all of its pathways. In fact, although Darwin’s theory of the mechanism of speciation is

37 Darwin, C. (1979). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of

favored races in the struggle for life. New York: Random House Value Publishing.

38 Aquinas, T. (1948). The summa theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. (Fathers of the English

Dominican Province, Trans.) New York: Benziger Bros.

39 Ruse, M. (1999). the Darwinian revolution: Science red in tooth and claw. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.

40 Bertalanffy, L. (1976). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. New

York: George Braziller.

41 Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Sudden origins: Fossils, genes, and the emergence of species . New


42 Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and social science. London: Sage Publications, Ltd.

43 Behe, M. J. (2006). Darwin's black box: The biochemical challenge to evolution. New York:

Simon & Schuster.

18

only one among many possible mechanistic theories of evolution, however it occurred, evolution

is universally demonstrated. Darwin’s simplified model of natural selection of fittest, random

variations through the interaction between species and environment was among the first to

exhibit a fundamental aspect of complex systems (Schoech, 2004)44: systems that seem to be

comprised of several simple elements may exhibit surprisingly complex behavior. The other side

of this discovery is that systems that we would ordinarily think of as complex can exhibit simple

behavior.

To cite Capra (2002)45 in putting it succinctly, comparing anything found in nature to a

product of human intelligence (the only known kind) is an anthropomorphic insult to Mother

Nature (to personify metaphorically). She is, if one insists on inappropriate comparisons, far

more intelligent than we are. With perhaps 15 billion years of evolutionary experience (since we

are already using a phenomenological metaphor, anyway!), through processes humans can only

glimpse fleetingly, nature is incomparably ahead of humanity in the design game. To call Mother

Nature’s innate creativity “intelligent design” expresses little more than the contempt and hubris

humans have built into our models of knowledge since we first attempted to “control,” “subdue,”

“conquer,” and otherwise rape our Earth mother [Capra, 198246; see also Brownmiller’s 197547

analysis of the psychology (pp. 31-325) and summary of the history of rape (pp 376-380); see

44 Schoech. (2004). Concept paper: Systems theory. Retrieved November 5, 2012, from University

of Texas at Arlington:

http://wweb.uta.edu/faculty/schoech/cussn/courses/5306/coursepack/theory_systems.pdf



46 Capra, F. (1982). The turning point: Science, society, and the rising culture. New York: Simon

& Schuster.

47 Brownmiller, S. (1975). Against our will: Men, women and rape. New York: Simon and

Schuster.


19

especially Sir Francis Bacon’s particularly brutal, sexist language in describing the relationship

between science and nature (2012)48 ]. As Capra argues, such sexist, brutal attitudes toward our

natural environment, cloaked in the beatific adulation of science (Bacon, 1993)49, launched the

historic period known as the first industrial revolution in Great Britain, more simply designated

as the capitalist revolution, and still characterize today’s world capitalist system.

The Great Chain of Being entered history as a Platonic ideal in Plato’s (c. 428-347 BCE)

Timaeus (2001)50 and was defined by Aristotle (c. 384—322 BCE) as “telos,” or nature’s

purpose (Metaphysics, 1998)51. This was the Peripatetic Philosopher’s revolution against Plato’s

theory of forms, his summation of Greek Ionian philosophy, and his manifesto of “first

philosophy,” establishing the time-honored tradition of killing the father in academia. Aristotle’s

concept of purpose (final cause) in nature entered St. Augustine’s (c. 354—430) neo-Platonic

argument from design in City of God (2003)52. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225—1274) used this

“mind-forged manacle” (Blake, 1982)53 as his fifth argument for the existence of God in Summa

Theologica (1948)54. The Great Chain of Being thus came to express the Prime Mover’s

48 Bacon, F. (2012). Novum Organum: True directions concerning the interpretation of nature.

Whitefish, MT: Rare Reprint Imprint of Kessinger Publishing.

49 Bacon, F. (1993, August). New Atlantis. Retrieved November 6, 2012, from Oregon State

University: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.html

50 Plato. (2001). Plato's Timaeus. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing div of R. Pullins. 51 Aristotle. (1998). Metaphysics. New York: Penguin Group.

52 Augustine, A. (2003). City of God. New York: Penguin Putnam.

53 Blake, R. (1982). London. In R. Blake, & D. V. Erdman (Ed.), The complete poetry of Robert

Blake (p. 23). New York: Random House.

54 Aquinas, T. (1948). The summa theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. (F. o. Province, Trans.) New

York: Benziger Bros.

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.html

20

(subsequently, God’s, by way of Augustine and Aquinas) purpose in nature, linking all living

things into a natural order with roots in Plato’s theory of forms (Timaeus, 2001)55.

Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. 90—168) summarized the geocentric view of nature expressed

in this great chain of being (qua being) in Amalgestum (1515)56. Within this divine purpose,

everything has its place in nature, from Earth (at the center), to water, air, and fire, with the Fifth

Essence, the realm of the crystalline, ethereal spheres, habitat of stars and planets, circling

everything in cosmic perfection, chiming away for those with ears to hear (Murchie, 1985)57.

Renee Descartes (c. 1596—1650 CE) and Sir Isaac Newton (c. 1643—1727 CE)

promulgated the revolutionary ideas of Nicholas Copernicus (c. 1473—1543 CE), whose On the

Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1995)58, published posthumously, correctly identified the

Sun as at the center of the known planetary orbits rather than the Earth. Nevertheless, the

Cartesian/Newtonian systematics (Newton, 199959; Descartes, 199160), to which I shall

henceforth refer as the C/N paradigm (Capra, 1982)61, did not go far enough in disentangling

religious dogma from science. This paradigm could live comfortably with Aquinas’ Argument

from Design precisely because it created an unbridgeable gulf between mind and matter, and

55 Plato. (2001). Plato's Timaeus. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing div of R. Pullins.

56 Ptolemaeus, Claudius (1528). Almagestum seu magnae constructionis mathematicae opus.

Trans (Gr. Into Latin): Georgius Trapezuntius. Edited by Luca Gaurico. Venice: Luc'antonio Giunta.

57 Murchie, G. (1985). Music of the spheres: The material universe from atom to quasar, simply

explained (Vol. 1 & 2). Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

58 Copernicus, N. (1995). On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres. (C. G. Wallis, Trans.)

Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

59 Newton, I. (1999). The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy. Los Angeles,

CA: University of California Press.

60 Descartes, R. (1991). Principles of philosophy. (V. R. Miller, & R. P. Miller, Trans.) Norwell,

MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.


& Schuster.

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winked at the constant miraculous interventions of God in creating new species required by

William Paley’s Natural Theology (2012)62. By the time Charles Darwin took an interest in the

origin of species, Paley’s reincarnation of the Greek demi-urge had long provided the religious

superstructure for the ostensibly “value free” C/N paradigm of scientific methodology. Paley

designated the Greek telos as “Divine Watchmaker,” whose “intelligent design” provided the

purpose for being qua being.

While co-existing with this ancient Greek notion, the C/N Paradigm actually incorporated

the Greek materialism of the Roman Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99—55 BCE), who wrote De

rerum natura in 50 BCE (Lucretius Carus, 2001)63: actually, the atomism of Epicurus (c. 341—

270 BCE), an ancient Greek acolyte of Democritus (c. 460—370 BCE), who was a pupil of

Leucippus of Miletus (c. 500-? BCE). According to Leucippus, the urstuff is made from

indivisible, identical, eternal elements, or atoms, which occupy the void. The C/N Paradigm

became the basis for the positivism of Auguste Comte (2009)64, the first modern philosopher of

science, which was then established as the new dogma of the Dominant Mindset that still

controls scientific funding (Beushausen, 2013)65.

Atomism fit in well with the dualism of Descartes, who separated mind from matter,

reducing the former to little more than a “ghost in a machine” (Ryle, 2009)66. John Locke (c.

62 Paley, W. (2012). Natural theology on the existence and attributes of the deity collected from

the appearances of nature. Holmen, WI: Suzeteo Enterprises div of Athanatos Publishing Group.

63 Lucretius Carus, T. (2001). On the nature of things. (M. F. Smith, Trans.) Indianapolis, IN:

Hackett Publishing.

64 Comte, A. (2009). A general view of positivism, 2nd. Ed. (J. H. Bridges, Trans.) Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.


66 Ryle, G. (2009). The concept of mind. New York: Routledge.

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1632—1704) was the philosopher who most influenced all succeeding British empiricists

(Harris, 2005)67, whose achievement was: “to show the way towards the replication in moral

philosophy…towards… ‘A Newtonism of the mind’” (p3). Locke’s philosophy of experience

(1979) expressed Roger Bacon’s (c. 1214—1294 CE) empiricism in Opus Majus (2005)68,

presented to Pope Clement IV in 1267. Although perhaps not the most popularly read

philosopher in England (he had a strong audience in the American Revolutionists Thomas

Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin), Locke laid the foundation of Liberalism and

Enlightenment social contract theory. He radically attacked a priori knowledge as unobservable

Platonic forms, favoring instead the experiential notion that the mind is a blank slate (Aristotle’s

“unscribed tablet” in De Anima or On the Soul, III(4) (2001)69; Avicenna’s “Tabula Rasa” in The

Book of Healing (2005)70; and the blank slate in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1948)71, on

which all human experience is written. This is the philosophy of empiricism, which disavows

any knowledge of its own preconceptions, with no self-consciousness whatsoever, postulating an

unbridgeable Manichean gulf between spirit and matter.

Along with mind, conceived as the phenomenology of observing, the new scientific

method also abolished any observation of God’s invisible Hand found in the details of creation.

The C/N paradigm left for Him only a place outside of space and time in which to create the

67 Harris, J. A. (2005). Of liberty and necessity: The free-will debate in Eighteenth-Century British

philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

68 Bacon, R. (2005). The opus majus of Roger Bacon. (J. H. Bridges, Trans.) New York: Henry

Frowde. 69 Aristotle. (2001). Aristotle's on the soul and On memory and recollection. Santa Fe, NM: Green

Lion Press.

70 Avicenna. (2005). The Metaphysics of The Healing. (Trans: Michael E. Marmura.) Provo, UT:

BYU Press.

71 Aquinas, T. (1948). The summa theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. (Fathers of the English

Dominican Province, Trans.) New York: Benziger Bros.

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universe, like a clockmaker designing a clock (More accurately, according to Dawkins (1996)72,

a blind watchmaker). God then left the mechanical clockwork universe to unwind

deterministically, without any further intervention. Although Copernicus had displaced the Earth

from the center of the universe, C/N systematics lived comfortably with humankind as the center

and focus of creation, even though it left no room whatsoever for mind or Creator. In

challenging this dogma (admitting, at best, only a mechanistic logos for the origin of species),

Darwin snatched away the pillow for intellectual sloth provided by the blissful certainty of God’s

beneficent Hand in actively working out his divine purpose in creation, thereby committing the

heresy for which he has yet to be forgiven.

Not that Darwin did not do his best to emulate Newtonian science, while stripping away

some of the religio-teleological baggage the church had dragged into Christianity by way of

Aquinas’ and Augustine’s neo-Platonism. Specifically, he replaced the design element of telos:

intelligent design as the ultimate expression of God’s purpose in creation (Chambers, 1994)73

with blind chance as the source of variation in the evolution of species. Although the classical

education of the trained churchmen who represented science, and the orthodox clergy of England

interpreted the Argument from Design in Paley’s (1803)74 terms, requiring separate miracles for

the creation of each species; radicals, Deists, and progressives, along with increasing numbers of

the public, avidly welcomed Chambers’ view, which required God only to lay down the Natural

Law by which species evolved, whatever that law might be. This was a thoroughgoing extension

72 Dawkins, R. (1996). The blind watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe

without design. New York: W. W. Norton.

73 Chambers, R. (1994). Vestiges of the natural history of creation: With a sequel. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

74 Paley, W. (2012). Natural theology on the existence and attributes of the deity collected from

the appearances of nature. Holmen, WI: Suzeteo Enterprises div of Athanatos Publishing Group.

24

of the C/N paradigm into the world of biology (Ruse, 1999)75, philosophically rather than

scientifically arguing that material causes formulated by the Creator governed the origin and

development of life, without requiring Him to constantly intervene with a new miracle every

time a new species was created. Darwin’s cardinal sin was to abolish the Argument from Design

altogether, replacing it with a purely mechanical process that operates solely through random

variation, selected through adaptation to environment governed by the Malthusian observation

that organic proliferation easily outstrips environmental resources, creating a struggle for

existence.

Ironically, it was the increasing comfort of the British middle classes (in spite of the dire

predictions of Thomas Malthus) that provided the psychological expectation of ever increasing

material progress as the technology of Industrial Revolution continuously provided more

material wealth, even for the working classes. Because Chambers’ Vestiges retained the Great

Chain of Being, restating it for the first time in a systematic evolutionary hypothesis, with man as

the apotheosis of progressive biological evolution, it did not matter that the work was not

scientific, and in fact was reviled by the scientific community both for its heretical rejection of

miracles, which were the ultimate pillows for intellectual sloth, and for the unscientific gibberish

by which the work pilloried itself. Nevertheless, it paved the way for the eventual acceptance of

Darwinian evolution as a fact, even though scientists continued to criticize various aspects of

Darwin’s theory, especially his theory that the simple, mechanistic, Malthusian hypothesis

expressed in terms such as “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” is the only

explanation of species’ origins.

75 Ruse, M. (1999). The Darwinian revolution: Science red in tooth and claw. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.

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Although the C/N paradigm was ostensibly grounded in the empiricism of Francis Bacon

(c. 1561-1626 CE), who borrowed the scientific method outlined in Novum Organum (1620)76

from the Persian philosopher Avicenna (c. 980-1037 CE) (McGinnis, 2010)77, in fact it included

numerous unobservable and inexplicable phenomena, such as the instantaneous action at a

distance of gravity (about which Sir Isaac Newton famously “framed no hypothesis”), the

“absolute” reference frame of space (with no still point to which it could be attached), no means

to distinguish forward from backward flow of time (the concept of entropy later helped to expose

the cracks in Newtonian physics that would soon revolutionize the subject, see Highfield &

Coveney, 199278), and no explanation whatsoever for the presumption of equality between

gravitational and inertial mass (surely an embarrassing problem for even a Newtonian).

Nevertheless, Newtonian physics became the new systematics and dogma of “hard” science,

against which all other forms of scientific explanation were invidiously compared Capra

(1975)79.

Today’s multidimensional systems thinking actually developed out of the C/N Paradigm.

Descartes (1991)80 wrote Le monde and L’Homme (1630-1633), which explicated his natural

philosophy, or system of the world, and was published in 1644. Here Descartes stated as a

fundamental principle of nature that a moving object will continue to move in a straight line at a

76 Bacon, F. (2012). Novum Organum: True directions concerning the interpretation of nature.

Whitefish, MT: Rare Reprint Imprint of Kessinger Publishing.

77 Jon McGinnis. (2010). Avicenna. New York: Oxford University Press.

78 Highfield, R.; Coveney, P. (1992). The arrow of time: A voyage through science to solve time's

greatest mystery. New York: Fawcett Columbine.

79 Capra, F. (1975). The new physics, Ch. 4. In F. Capra, The tao of physics: An exploration of the

parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

80 Descartes, R. (1991). Principles of philosophy. (V. R. Miller, & R. P. Miller, Trans.) Norwell,

MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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constant speed unless it runs into an outside force. Newton borrowed this principle from

Descartes as his First Law of Motion (which he named the Law of Inertia), although it actually

originated with Avicenna (McGinnis, 2010)81. Newton grounded his Principia (1687)82 and De

mundi systemate (1728) in Descartes’ 1637 Discours de la Methode (Discourse on the Method)

(1999)83 and La Geometrie (1954)84, explicitly adapting the entire system of Descartes to a

mathematical extension of Cartesian scientific methodology, laying the foundation for C/N

systematics. This system and methodology was the Cartesian extrapolation of the scientific

methodology of Galileo Galilei (c. 1564-1642 CE) into a brand new philosophy of nature.

Galileo had clearly founded the science of physics with the publication of his years of

experiments with falling bodies (1991)85, in which he first established that the velocity of a

falling body increases uniformly with time, with constant acceleration provided by the force of

gravity.

Newton later generalized Galileo’s work in his Second Law, F = m ∙ a, that the force on

an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration, for falling objects a constant equal to

9.8 meters/second2. In conducting his original investigation of the phenomenon of gravity,

Galileo used inclined planes, which, with rolling friction minimized, produced smaller

accelerations as the inclines became more nearly horizontal. Galileo generalized this to an ideal,

81 McGinnis, J. (2010). Avicenna. New York: Oxford University Press.

82 Newton, I. (1999). The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy. Los Angeles,

CA: University of California Press.

83 Descartes, R. (1999). Discourse on method and meditations on first philosophy, 4th Ed.

Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.

84 The geometry of Renee Descartes. (1954). (Trans: Smith, D. E.; Latham, M. L.) Mineola, NY:

Dover Publications, Inc.

85 Galilei. (1991). Dialogues concerning two new sciences. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

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in which a particle moves over a frictionless plane perpendicular to the action of gravity. This

particle would never change its speed or direction unless an outside force acted on it. Galileo

thereby made one of the first statements of the law of inertia under the gravitational field of the

Earth, although the principle of momentum can also be found in the work of Avicenna

(McGinnis, 2010)86. Through the eyes of today, well trained in the methods established by

Galileo and Newton, one can easily see the Moon moving in its course around the Earth in such

an orbit, or the Earth moving in orbit around the Sun.

Galileo probably dismissed Johannes Kepler’s (c. 1571-1630 CE) Epitome of Copernican

Astronomy (1995)87 for his discovery that planetary orbits are elliptical rather than circular,

contradicting Galileo’s own mystical belief in circles, which was at least as strong as Kepler’s

Pythagorean belief that the shapes of the first five regular geometric solids underlie the average

planetary orbital distances. Galileo was never able to publish his gravitational researches until

four years before his death due to prohibition from all publication during the final decades of his

life by the Holy Roman Inquisition, which had correctly found him guilty of embracing the

Copernican Revolution. Copernicus (c. 1473-1543 CE) had published his manifesto of the

scientific revolution (1995)88 in the year of his death.

Kepler had just as surely embraced the Copernican heresy as had Galileo, but perhaps not

as blatantly, for Galileo (2001)89 had used the Socratic dialogue, a Scholastic model of critical

86 McGinnis, J. (2010). Avicenna. New York: Oxford University Press.

87 Kepler, J. (1995). Epitome of Copernican astronomy & Harmonies of the world. Amherst, NY:

Prometheus Books.

88 Copernicus, N. (1995). On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres. (C. G. Wallis, Trans.)


89 Galilei, G. (2001). Dialogues concerning the two chief world systems. New York: Random

House.

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inquiry, to expose the spokesperson for the Pope (Simplicio) as a fool. No less a sin was his

publication of the book in the Italian language, which immediately became a best seller. Had

Galileo hidden his work in the inscrutable Latin of Scholastic academic pedantry, it may never

have been put on the Papal Index of Forbidden Books. In rendering the 1633 decision that

Galileo was under “grave suspicion of heresy,” the Papacy upheld the position of Ptolemy (c. 90-

168) in The Great Thesis (1994)90, that the Earth is the center of the planetary and solar orbits,

combined with Aristotle’s (c. 384-322 BCE) (1930) 91 position in his Physics that the Earth is

the center of the universe.

Although Galileo launched the science of physics, Newton gave it a mathematical

foundation, describing the laws of motion in terms of inertial and gravitational mass, which

coincidentally and inexplicably turn out to be equal. Just as mysterious from the point of view of

the C/N paradigm is the absence of any causal explanation of gravity, simply that a relationship

exists: F = G ∙ m1 ∙ m2 / d2, where F stands for F1 or F2, the equal but opposite gravitational force

exerted by either of two masses m1 and m2 each on the other. In words, F is directly proportional

to the multiple of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance

between their centers of mass. The constant of proportionality is G, the Gravitational Constant.

In a strictly physical, causal, materialist, empirical methodology, accepting no explanation that

cannot be referenced to any of the five senses, the action at a distance supplied by gravity is a bit

embarrassing, rather like entertaining a ghost in the heart of the machine (Ryle, 1949)92.

90 Ptolemaeus, C. (1515). Almagestum seu magnae constructionis mathematicae opus. (Trans.

Trapezuntius, Georgius.) Venice, Italy: Luc'antonio Giunta.

91 Aristotle. (1930). Physica. (R. P. Hardie, & R. K. Gaye, Trans.) Oxford: Clarendon Press.

92 Ryle, G. (2009). The concept of mind. New York: Routledge.

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Further along the lines of the inexplicable in Newtonian physics, absolute space is the

absolute reference frame of Euclid’s Parallel Postulate with infinitely straight, parallel lines that

never intersect, defined by the zero point of intersection of the mutually perpendicular X, Y, and

Z axes, which, once arbitrarily established, provides the still point against which all motion

occurs. The invisible and immeasurable backdrop for this absolute space is the ether, filling it

with an elastic, uniform, Euclidian continuum that vibrates when light passes through.

Nevertheless, Newton himself entertained a corpuscular view, more in line with his philosophic

atomism, of the nature of light, which even then exhibited its particle-wave duality in a manner

determined by the experimental setup. By implication, observers A and C, moving near the speed

of light in opposite directions relative to observer B, who is at rest relative to the absolute

reference frame of the ether, must be moving at nearly twice the speed of light relative to each

other. An absolute speed limit in the C/N paradigm of the universe is inconceivable.

The Michelson/Morley experiment failed to detect predicted differences in the speed of

light emitted in different directions from an experimental station on Earth, which is hurling

through the ether at an orbital velocity of 29.8 km/sec relative to the sun, with a rotational

velocity of 0.47km/sec. Without gravity we would all go hurling into space at 44.7 km/sec. This

assumes the Sun is standing still relative to the ether, whereas Earth actually hurls through

ethereal space at a speed of 220 km/sec relative to the Galactic center, and 20 km/sec relative to

nearby stars. This means that in Newtonian theory, somehow, somewhere, there must be a

measurable difference in the speed of light relative to some observer. According to Mother

Nature, this is not the case. The only difference shows up not in the measurement of speed, but in

the Doppler red shift in the frequencies of light emissions from observable galaxies, which are all

hurling away from each other at speeds that increase with their distance relative to each other as

30

measured in light years (the distance light travels in a year at its speed in a vacuum of 186,000

miles/sec), and by which Hubble measured the realm of the nebulae (Hubble, 198293; Feynman,

Leighton & Sands, 198994).

The methodological failure of the C/N scientific paradigm to examine even its own

fundamental presumptions constitutes a contradiction easily seen from within the C/N paradigm,

which perhaps explains the absence of self-consciousness in the C/N definition of “value free”

scientific objectivity. Probably with a glance back toward the only recently concluded Holy

Roman Inquisition, Descartes tied his system of philosophy to the Great Chain of Being, as much

to placate the remaining Inquisitorial attitude of the Church that had recently prosecuted Galileo

for the very same heresy as to stem the revolutionary tides that the capitalist (Calvinist, Puritan

work ethic), industrial (empirical, materialist) revolution was about to unleash on the world. For

the same reasons dragging in more Platonic absolutes, Descartes and Newton also took space and

time as separate, independent, and perfectly uniform, presuming without question Euclid’s

Parallel Postulate, that two parallel lines meet at infinity in both directions, as an accurate

description of physical space, and that light is corpuscular, or atomic in nature. Later Newtonians

described light as a transverse vibrational wave in an elastic medium called the “ether,” with an

absolute Cartesian coordinate frame of reference.

While the C/N paradigm provided the groundwork for two centuries of technological

development, 20th Century science and technology outgrew being harnessed to an antiquated

value system that only permitted description of systems involving linear (as compared to

93 Hubble, E. (1982). The realm of the nebulae. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

94 Feynman, R., Leighton, R., & Sands, M. (1989). Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vol. 1).

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

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iterative) relationships between two variables. Henri Poincaré (c. 1854-1912 CE) (1895)95, a

founder of non-linear dynamics, showed that Newton’s elegant Law of Gravitation immediately

disintegrates into chaos as soon as it attempts to describe the orbit of a third mass, even if it is

small enough not to disturb the orbit described by the two larger bodies. This demonstrates a

fundamental principle of the new systems theory we first noticed in Darwin’s evolutionary

mechanism: that even the simplest system can exhibit behavior that is completely deterministic

yet chaotic. This is due to the fact that small changes in an independent variable, ∆X, can lead to

large changes in the dependent variable, or large ∆Y, if there is a positive feedback loop, which

makes the dependent variable Y not only a function of X, but also a function of previous values

of Y.

Later, Einstein showed that space and time are related in a mathematically complex

manner, and that simultaneity in space-time is relative to the motion of the observer, as well as

that gravitational and inertial mass are intrinsically related through the curvature of space-time

into a gravitational field. Faraday discovered a field of force (similar to Newton’s gravitation in

its inverse square law, although not in its dipole nature) between two magnetic poles, and

Maxwell showed that when this field is set to vibrating, it becomes electro-magnetic radiation

moving at C, 300,000 km/sec, which is the fastest speed at which any two coordinate frames can

move relative to each other, and the square of which Einstein demonstrated to be the constant of

proportionality between mass and energy in E = MC2. The Aristotelian values built into the

“objective” framework of C/N science had already crumbled long before Max Planck discovered

the quantum of action, as we see in the resulting discussions between Einstein and Bohr on the

95 Barrow-Green, J. (1997). Poincaré and the three body problem. Providence, RI: American

Mathematical Society.

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principle of complementarity (Bohr, 1970)96, which Bohr had discovered in the philosophy of

Henri Bergson (2010)97.

With its strong roots in computer technology, today’s systems theory is grounded in this

principle, which is today shown by the yin/yang symbol, a circle bisected into complementary

tear-drop shapes, of opposite color, each with an eye of the opposite color. The principle states

that any description of a system reflects the point of view of the observer, and that for any other

observer, the two viewpoints are complementary, rendering it impossible to entirely derive

observations of one observer from the other. This principle results from partial descriptions, and

may disappear if detailed observation is increased, in a manner similar to the convergence of

scientific observations found in the philosophy of C. S. Peirce (Beushausen, 2013)98.

Although the crisis in health care delivery systems is common knowledge, and the fact

that we are living in an era of crises in American and world institutions is well-established, I will

pay special attention to the ideological crisis, as reflected in the collapse of all human values in

the Dominant Mindset’s embrace of the C/N paradigm, which is grounded in the strict

philosophic determinism of Newtonian physics (Capra, 1975)99—and fixated on undifferentiated,

maximized economic growth.

Any realistic attempt to resolve the crisis in health care delivery systems must deal with

relationships between human health and all of the systems within which human beings are

96 Bohr, N. (1970). Discussions with Einstein on epistemological problems in atomic physics. In P.

Schilp (Ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-scientist (pp. 199-242). La Salle, IL: Open Court.

97 Bergson, H. (2010). Creative evolution. New York: Macmillan.

98 Beushausen, T. (2013). Beushausen, T. (2013). Human Development. Kindle Digital Books.



33

meshed. Capra (2002)100 argued that the opening years of the 21st Century witnessed

breakthroughs in ecological thinking that bear witness to the technical viability, feasibility,

profitability, and practicality of systems theory in defining a multitude of approaches to creating

sustainable social and economic institutions, which reflect directly in the improvement of human

health and happiness. The myriad crises in human institutions result from an economic value

system deliberately designed, in the biological analogy, for cancerous growth that is insane,

disastrous, and unsustainable (Capra, 1982)101. To resolve the crisis in health care, all human

institutions must be re-evaluated in terms of their impact on human health and healthcare, and

reformulated using principles of eco-design under the control of explicitly stated human values.

The Turning Point

Fritjof Capra wrote about the social problems facing humanity in the mid 80’s

that are still unresolved, exacerbated, and growing three decades later. He identifies a

primary reason for this disarray as the Cartesian/Newtonian (C/N) paradigm that still

rules science, even though its premises have collapsed, nowhere more fully than in

physics, which has been the model for all of the other sciences. Disastrous economic

problems, such as the inversion of the Phillips Curve, the fragmentation of knowledge in

academia, the collapse of Western healthcare, and myriad other problems dealt with in

The Turning Point have deepened. Capra sees the myriad crises of this age in terms of the

life cycle processes of civilization itself: genesis, growth, breakdown and disintegration.

Civilization based on the C/N paradigm is in the final stage of this cycle, while the new




& Schuster.

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civilization, which Capra designates as the Solar Age, grounded in systems thinking is in

fact emerging. Capra expresses the hope that we can face this turning point as the kind of

harmonious, peaceful cultural transition envisioned in the I Ching, in which yin and yang,

both active principles that refrain from acting against Nature, remain in balance.

Capra outlines current scientific and economic crises, examining the breakdown

of previous explanatory models of science and economy as insufficient to meet current

environmental needs. All of the sciences must explore models from systems theory in

terms of organic metaphors to begin to solve these problems. Capra describes the

Cartesian cognitive split between mind and body as reflecting the Newtonian world

machine.

On the crisis in economic theory, Capra traces the origin of the word property,

'privare', which means to deprive the commons of the value of a good or service. John

Locke applied the medieval concept of ‘just price’ to regulate the relationship between

supply and demand, which is the determinant of who will survive and who will die in the

turbulent times just ahead. The 'invisible hand' that guided production during the

Industrial Revolution mechanized life and labor in society, turning all human effort into

raw material for machines. Seeing people as mechanistic, rational actors, we ignore

collective values and the psychological need for community. The advantages won by

modern workers in industrial society work to the detriment of workers in the developing

world, which is precisely why the new, information-based stage of globalization is now

able to by-pass these hard-won victories to exploit third world labor directly, rather than

merely exploiting their resources.

35

Automation reduces employment while increasing inflation, which caused the

Phillips Curve to bulge outward by 1973, rather than supplying an inverse relationship

the Fed can manipulate using monetarist policies. Although there is nothing beneficent

about the Fed or its intentions, the designated US central bank has simply lost its major

means of control over the economy, as the law of decreasing returns causes interest rates

to permanently plummet. Capra takes a systems view of life that incorporates positive

feedback and the recognition of the role of cooperation in evolution, as opposed to the

Darwinian model that only sees competition. We need a model of human health that

acknowledges holistic principles and a Jungian psychology based on the collective

unconscious to provide a solid basis for a new, solar economy.

Capra explains learning in terms of categorizing new phenomena, which do not

always fit into old paradigms that suffice for what we already understand. Dissonance

results when the new information does not fit, forcing us to change paradigms to

accommodate new information. This is the basis for the evolution of knowledge, which

itself drives social change. The usefulness of the C/N paradigm for this effort has expired,

and we must acquire a systems view of a universe where everything is connected, rather

than cling to reductionism. Capra illustrates his ideas by integrating the biological and

psychological aspects of health care, as well as exploring the new eco-systems view of

the environment.

Capra’s voice was one of many contemporaneous thinkers showing how society

must be reorganized. At this time, the domestic oil production of the United States

peaked. The resulting stagnation of the economy forced reconsideration of Marx’s

projection of the permanent tendency of interest rates to fall, while aggressive

36

deregulation led to financial accumulation rather than growth in wealth, disrupting the

industrial production/consumer Keynesian infrastructure operational since World War II.

Capra’s ideas were pushed aside by an evanescent bubble of domestic growth in the

economy (primarily military), supported by the global acceptance of the US Dollar

permitting accumulation of massive trade deficits, which created the temporary illusion

of prosperity. Now that this bubble has burst, the outdated paradigm of prosperity from

growth in GNP and the losing war on microbes grounded in the specialization and

determinism of the C/N economic and biomedical paradigms have brought thinkers like

Dr. Capra back into the view of intellectuals now at a loss for adequate explanations.

As a theoretical physicist by training and practice, Capra had already offered The

Tao of Physics (1999)102, in which he turned to Chinese philosophy to explain new

developments in quantum physics. There he first integrated a holistic view of humanity

that we have yet to absorb. The deterministic paradigm of the Enlightenment no longer

works in any science, especially physics. Although human reality is socially created,

ignoring the realities of relativity, quantum mechanics, biology, and chaos theory leaves

humanity in the dark about the truth of the natural world, which is quite simply that

nature does not guarantee our existence! Providing an all-encompassing critique of

society that is thoroughly consistent with several views of critical realism, such as those

of Sayer (2010)103 and Bunge (2001)104, Capra offers a fresh approach to the re-

organization of human knowledge and social systems.



103 Sayer, A. (2010). Realism and social science. London: Sage Publications, Ltd.

104 Bunge, M. (2001). Scientific Realism: Selected Essays of Mario Bunge. (M. Mahner, Ed.)


37

Although his use of the I Ching may seem spurious to some, its concept of wu

wei, the balance of active yin and yang, is crucial to understanding the origin of today’s

human predicament. Our greatest error is that we have not refrained from action contrary

to nature. Capra quotes Chuang Tzu’s commentary, “Nonaction does not mean doing

nothing and keeping silent. Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that

its nature will be satisfied.” The classical, Cartesian world view simply will not

accommodate complexity that originates in deterministic chaos, which is how the

majority of natural systems emerge. Mechanistic and reductionist approaches must be

replaced by holistic and ecological views. Physics can no longer serve as a model for

other sciences precisely because the interaction of physical systems themselves creates

the basis for emergent systems, such as life, that cannot be reduced to physics. Holistic

frameworks are the only means to be scientific, and must be adopted in the scientific

description and explanation of physical reality as well.

Capra traces the history of the C/N Paradigm through the Copernican Revolution,

to Descartes, Bacon and Newton. Sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, along with values,

ethics, quality, feelings, intentions, motives, consciousness, soul and spirit are all thrown

out the window as secondary phenomena, excluding human experience from the realm of

science. Einstein blew this entire philosophical framework aside with his 1905

publications on the photoelectric effect and Special Theory of Relativity (1999)105. This

laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics, and the Uncertainty Principle, which places

absolute limits on knowledge. Later, Schrödinger demonstrated that electrons and protons

105 Einstein, A. (1999). On the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Albert Einstein, (trans. Jeffery,

G. B.; Perrett, W.). Accessed August 23, 2013.

http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/On_the_Electrodynamics_of_Moving_Bodies

http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/On_the_Electrodynamics_of_Moving_Bodies

38

are best described as probability clouds, placing probability at the foundation of reality.

Bell’s theorem (Shimony, 2012)106 demonstrates that physical reality is subject to non-

local phenomena… “spooky action at a distance.” Although Newtonian gravitation

always had implied that every mass-particle in the universe exerts a force on every other

mass-particle that is inversely proportional only to the distance between their centers of

mass, physicists had simply ignored the “spooky action at a distance” implication.

Memory and consciousness also exhibit such non-local connections.

The revolution in physics had little effect on other fields, where the mechanistic

C/N paradigm, no longer suitable for physics, was still dominant. In biology, life was

considered as a function of its component parts, with the assumption that by assembling

them, we could create life, even though no such phenomenon has ever been observed.

Mapping the human genome has yielded little more than terrific computer models. This

method of analyzing smaller and smaller bodily mechanisms yields a view of disease as

the malfunctioning of specific mechanisms of biological organisms, in which the doctor

must intervene to correct. Cellular and molecular biology are the guides to this

fragmented view of the biological organism rather than any holistic approach, the

ultimate test of which will be the attempt to synthesize a cell. Nevertheless, simply

reversing this analytic dissection of the living cell by reassembling the pieces, even as

modeled by computers, will yield no complete explanation of the behavior of even the

simplest living system.

106 Shimony, A. (2012, Winter). Bell's Theorem. (E. N. Zalta, Ed.) Retrieved from The Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/

39

Although this conclusion is the best interpretation of empirical evidence,

biologists who are enamored with reductionism, especially in genetic engineering,

believe that the C/N analytical approach is the only valid research methodology, deeming

any biological phenomena that cannot be so reduced as not fit for scientific investigation.

Today’s biologists are most at home in studying the non-living. This narrow,

compartmentalized approach, one historic analog of which may be seen in Stalin’s

Lysenkoism, makes it difficult to study the function of living systems as wholes and their

interactions with environment. Neuroscientists cannot even approach the question of how

neurons integrate themselves into the functioning of the entire system. Although

dissecting the body into its minute components has yielded knowledge about cellular and

molecular mechanisms, how we breathe, regulate body temperature, or digest remains a

mystery. The healing of wounds and the phenomenology of pain are also beyond the

scope of this method.

Embryonic development, by which cells replicate and specialize in an orderly

fashion to form organs and tissues, is another integrative activity beyond the description

of micro-mechanisms. The reason for this is because it involves myriad, functional

interactions between cells and genes that are more than the sum of the cellular

mechanisms involved. Embryogenesis results from the coordinating activity of the

organism as a whole, a process far beyond the analytical capabilities of reductionism, and

therefore not subject to biological research. The C/N analytic method of breaking every

subject of study down to its smallest elements has yielded success in solving many

problems that remain visible after such a procedure, but resulted in the neglect of all such

40

problems as do not, thereby stunting the science of biology, as Lysenko’s Lamarkianism,

in line with the ideology of Soviet realism, had stunted the same science in Russia.

The success of modern genetic research based on the C/N paradigm, breaking

chromosomes down to gene positions arranged in linear order, has led some to proclaim

the discovery of the atoms of heredity, explaining biological characteristics in genetic

terms, one gene per trait. Genes are now known that affect multiple traits and multiple

genes may control a single trait, such as skin color. Nevertheless, the study of the

cooperation and integrative activity of genes has been neglected. No genetic trait was

ever inherited outside of the cell structure within which genetic information is transmitted

and delivered, making cellular function a crucial element of heredity, even though such

questions are largely neglected.

Reductionism, which describes an integral whole in terms of its elements, thereby

loses its ability to understand how the entire system coordinates its activities. Even

character traits are not uniquely determined by genes. Genetic determinism results from

considering living organisms as machines in which a single cause is associated with a

specific effect. In fact, organismic systems function on multiple levels, from genes to

chromosomes, to cell nuclei, tissues, and organ systems. Mutual interactions occur at all

levels, influencing development and resulting in wide variations within the so-called

genetic blueprint.

The complexity of the evolution of species is not fully explained by the

Darwinian concepts of chance variation and natural selection, which are merely two

aspects of a larger, more complex system. Chance alone cannot be the source of all biotic

creation. Skeptics have mathematically demonstrated that even the most direct

41

evolutionary sequence would not have occurred randomly within hundreds of billions of

years (Behe, 2006)107. Biologists who consider this to be the only conceivable hypothesis

have simply limited their own cognition, thereby rendering themselves unable to

conceive of the simple truth that, however we cannot understand it, the end state of a

system has some non-local influence on not only its initial conditions, but also its

developmental pathway. Absolutely free but blind chance could never have produced the

stupendous edifice of evolution, no matter how hard we try to pound the square peg into

the round hole.

Capra argues that change will come through medicine. Those functions of a living

organism’s integrative activities and its interactions with its environment, precisely those

that remain intractable to any reductive description, are crucial for organismic health.

Physicians who follow the mechanistic program under which they were trained in treating

patients cannot understand or cure many health problems. Nurses, other health

professionals, and the general public are more inclined to recognize the methodological

problem than doctors are, and the demand for holistic health care is growing. Developing

holistic models will be a revolution in medicine, affecting both the conceptual framework

and the organization of biological research as well. All scientists who study life will find

that organisms, unlike machines, cannot be completely described in terms of their

elemental properties. Because scientists who study inorganic matter have already

abandoned the reductionist approach, life scientists will find it easier to make the

transition to complexity.

107 Behe, M. J. (2006). Darwin's black box: The biochemical challenge to evolution. New York:

Simon & Schuster.

42

Modern medicine loses sight of the patient, reducing health to mechanical

function, and can do little more than facilitate healing without understanding the healing

process. All medicine aims at facilitating healing, yet this phenomenon is beyond

scientific investigation. Health and healing are not discussed more than perfunctorily in

medical schools precisely because these phenomena cannot be understood in reductionist

terms. Whether in wounds or illnesses, healing and health involve physical,

psychological, social, and environmental elements. Because they involve complex

interactions between multiple elements with cumulative causal powers that become

elements of the system itself, incorporating healing and health into medical science must

transcend any reductionist view of health and illness. Taking this wider viewpoint will

bring medicine into consilience with recent scientific ideas of complex systems.

The narrow, biological conception of health, the reality of which is closely related

to the concept of life itself, must be broadened to include individual, society, and ecology

to create a systems view of health. The preamble to the World Health Organization

(WHO) charter is a good start: 'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social

well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’ Although this

representation of health as a static state of perfect well-being could better define health in

terms of a constantly changing, evolutionary process, it provides a holistic vision of the

nature of health that must be grappled with to understand healing.

Traditional folk healers, who still treat most of the world’s patients, see illness in

terms involving disorder of mind and body, dependent on physical and social

environments, as well as one’s relationship to the universe and the gods. Although

traditional healers use a variety of therapeutic techniques, which may or may not be

43

holistic, they never restrict their efforts to the purely physical realm, as does the

biomedical model. They use rituals and ceremonies to influence the mind, relieve

apprehension, and stimulate natural healing powers. Dr. Patch Adams, founder of the

Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia, is a trained physician who uses laughter as a

therapeutic technique. Supernatural forces channeled through the healer are generally

conceived as part of the healing process.

Capra describes the healing process as the coordinated response of the integrated

organism to stress from the environment. Because this concept quite transcends the C/N

paradigm, it does not fit within the purview of modern medicine. Biomedical researchers

therefor disregard folk healers and deny their effectiveness. The art of healing, although

ancient, is an essential aspect of all medicine, upon which even scientific medicine relied

until very recently, with the development of today’s chemical and physical treatment

methods. Chemical ingestion and complex surgery today result in ever-rising health care

costs, with our very lifestyles running counter to human nature. We have hyperactive

children rather than inadequate schools. We get treated for high blood pressure rather

than change the terms of business competition. We tolerate carcinogens in foods

poisoned by the chemical industry simply to increase food producer profits. We are a

long way from the Taoist concept of wu wei, which is the avoidance of actions contrary

to nature.

As Jung (1971)108 first noted, we must transcend the rational approach of

Freudian analysis to explore the human psyche. We must study altered states of

consciousness to yield insights into our human predicament. The C/N split between mind

108 Jung, G. G. (1971). Four Archetypes: Mother / Rebirth / Spirit / Trickster (From the Collected

Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1). (Trans. R. F. C. Hall.) New York: Routledge.

44

and body has split the practice of health care into two separate camps, dealing separately

with the two fundamental elements of a complex, living system that is more than the sum

of both. Physicians treat the body, psychiatrists and psychologists treat the mind. This

had handicapped the bio-medical model’s understanding of diseases, inhibiting the study

of the role of stress and emotion in illness. Now known as the source of many diseases

and disorders, stress links emotional states to illness. Stress still receives little attention

from the medical profession.

Psychologists widely recognize the relationship between emotions and illness.

Nevertheless, biomedical scientists rarely read psychological journals. Although well-

grounded in physiology, medical literature seldom examines the psychological aspects of

illness. Well known for more than a century, the relationship between emotional states

and cancer is widely reported in psychological literature, of which few physicians are

aware, failing to integrate psychological knowledge into medical research.

Psychiatrists study and treat psychological and behavioral problems. Although

formally trained as M.D.s, they seldom communicate with physicians outside psychiatry.

Medical practitioners even snub psychiatrists, considering mental phenomena as less

important than biological mechanisms. Psychiatrists concede to and adopt this deranged

attitude by trying to imitate biology, attempting to understand mental illness as a

derangement of underlying brain physics, thereby equating mental with physical illness.

According to this theory, mental illness is different only in that it affects the brain rather

than some other organ, exhibiting mental rather than physical symptoms. Psychiatrists,

believing that mental problems are bodily diseases, now use physical means, such as

psychotropic drugs, to treat psychological illness.

45

Seen within the holistic perspective of health, mental illness results from non-

integration and mis-evaluation of experience (Szasz, 2010109; Laing, 1967110). Symptoms

reflect the organism's attempt to heal and integrate itself, if necessary within an alternate

reality. Psychiatrists suppress these symptoms, thereby interfering with the healing

process. Good therapists, representing at most 15% of practitioners across therapeutic

disciplines, facilitate healing by providing emotional support. The symptom is permitted

to intensify, leading to its full experience rather than denial, and through that the

conscious integration of experience completes the healing. Broad knowledge of human

consciousness is required for such treatment to work, knowledge more in possession of

clinical psychologists than psychiatrists, who nevertheless maintain control of the

therapeutic process.

The Puritan Work Ethic: Core of the Capitalist Value System

Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Karl Marx were the pre-eminent

thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries whose seminal works first challenged, then

toppled the C/N paradigm of the Dominant Mindset in psychology, biology, physics, and

economics. With the exception of Einstein, they each tried to model their respective scientific

methodologies on strictly deterministic Newtonian physics; nevertheless, all were able to create

methodologies that transcended vulgar determinism. Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego were based

on a thermodynamic analogy with steam pressure blowing up from the unconscious (Fromm,

1973)111. However, his therapeutic techniques laid the groundwork for Jung’s collective

109 Szasz, T. S. (2010). The myth of mental illness: Foundations of a theory of personal conduct.

New York: HarperCollins E-Books.

110 Laing, R. D. (1967). The politics of experience. New York: Pantheon Books Div. of Random

House.

111 Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Henry Holt.

46

unconscious, and other non-materialistic interpretations of the human psyche. Freud’s scientific

manifesto was The Interpretation of Dreams (1955)112, which first attracted an avante garde

group of artists who launched the school of Surrealism. Darwin’s blind variation has since been

replaced by a more nuanced understanding of emergence provided by the New Synthesis

(Barbieri, 2008)113, which is an emerging paradigm, although perhaps not yet the last word, in

evolutionary science. Einstein provided the theoretical framework that knocked the C/N

paradigm from center stage at the very core of physics (Einstein & Infeld, 1966114; Capra,

1975115). Marx provided a theory of value that summarized economic thought and pointed the

way forward toward a new, human society (Marx, 1957116; Meek, 1966117).

Because he grounded his theory of value in what he and Engels called a materialist

conception of history, Marx has been widely misinterpreted, although Marx was no vulgar

materialist, as was Engels. In his 1858 Grundrisse (1993)118, taking as his subject the entire

range of his theory, methodology, and philosophy: production, distribution, exchange, value,

labor, alienation, capitalism, technology, automation, primitive communalism, and revolution,

Marx referred to many potential pathways of human development, of which only one, the

112 Freud, S. (1955). The interpretation of dreams. (J. Strachey, Trans.) New York: Basic Books.

113 Barbieri, M. (2008). Introduction to biosemiotics: The new biological synthesis. Dordrecht, The

Netherlands: Springer.

114 Einstein, A., & Infeld, L. (1966). The evolution of physics from early concepts to relativity and

quanta. New York: Simon & Schuster.



116 Marx, K. (1957). Capital (Vol. 1). New York: Knopf Publications.

117 Meek, R. (1966). Studies in the labor theory of value. New York: Monthly Review Press.

118 Marx, K. (1993). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy. New York:

Penguin Putnam.

47

evolution of capitalism, was the subject of volume one of Capital. The cornerstone of his

analysis in the latter work was a theory of value: specifically, the logical distinction between use

value and exchange value. The precondition for a commodity to have exchange value is its value

in use, which means utility. The use value of labor power is its ability to produce surplus value,

over and above its exchange value. This is surely a utilitarian concept, and a precursor of

pragmatism. Furthermore, it is grounded in ethics, as any theory of human values must be.

Previously, (Beushausen, 2013)119, I discussed the rise of the Puritan Work Ethic, and its

relationship to the rationalization (division) of labor in capitalist society, as Weber (2002)120

argued, in a series of essays completed in 1905, in which he outlined the basis for modern

economic sociology. The following quote from Benjamin Franklin (The Old Quaker himself)

will serve to show how thoroughly entwined the labor theory of value is with this ethic:

“As Providence has so ordered it, that not only different countries, but even different

parts of the same country, have their peculiar most suitable productions; and likewise that different

men have geniuses adapted to a variety of different arts and manufactures; therefore commerce, or

the exchange of one commodity or manufacture for another, is highly convenient and beneficial to

mankind…To facilitate exchange, men must have invented MONEY, properly called a medium of

exchange, because through or by its means labor is exchanged for labor, or one commodity for

another…Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labor for labor, the value of all

things is…most justly measured by labor” (cited in Meek, 1956, p41).

As Rodgers (1978)121 pointed out in tracing the development of the work ethic from the artisans,

tradesmen, and workshops of the 1850s through the industrialization that had set in by the second

decade of the 20th Century, to ask which came first, the rationalization of labor or the Puritan

work ethic, is a pointless chicken/egg question that entirely misses the complex manner in which

ideas influence history. Everyone learns The Franklin Close in corporate-sponsored sales


120 Weber, M. (2002). The Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism: and other writings.

(Trans: Baehr, P.; Wells, G. C.). New York: Penguin Books.

121 Rodgers, D. (1978). The work ethic in industrial America: 1850-1920. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

48

training, which is the primary method by which the Puritan Work Ethic is marketed today (Hill,

2005)122.

In his Paris Manuscripts of 1844, Marx (1988)123 formulated his New Humanism as a

philosophic alternative to idealism and materialism, transcending both, and subsequently worked

these notebooks into Capital, his three volume magnum opus. In fact, Marx himself truncated

from volume one of Capital the intermediate result of the Paris manuscripts, which he later

published as Theories of Surplus Value (2000)124 in three volumes, examining the serious

deficiencies in all previous theoretical work in economics, especially that of the Scottish

School’s Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations (1999)125 is the only significant pre-Marxian

analysis that has survived the test of time. Marx was still polishing volume one of Capital when

he died, and it was left to his vulgar materialist partner, Frederick Engels, to assemble and edit

his notes into volumes two and three. Although Marx considered the first volume of Capital to

be his masterpiece, Stalin truncated the philosophical scaffolding of Chapter 1 from the Moscow

editions of the work, thereby culminating and consolidating the vulgar materialism of all of

Marx’s epigones, beginning with Engels.

The editing of Engels notwithstanding, Marx seems to have lost his way in the

complexities of economics in volumes two and three of Capital, as he stated in his letter of

January 11, 1858 to Engels (cited in Marx, 1983, pviii)126:

122 Hill, N. (2005). Think and grow rich. New York: Penguin Group.



124 Marx, K. (2000). Theories of surplus value. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

125 Smith, A. (1999). The wealth of nations. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.

126 Marx, K. (1983). Mathematical manuscripts. London: New Park Publications.

49

“I am so damnedly held up by mistakes in calculations in the working out of the

economic principles that out of despair I intend to master algebra promptly. Arithmetic remains

foreign to me. I am again shooting my way rapidly along the algebraic route.”

Nevertheless, his grappling researches resulted in the publication of the only serious

mathematical critique of the linear techniques of the calculus of Newton/Liebnitz. What is not

true is that Marx ever lost the grounding of his labor theory of value in ethics as the

philosophical framework for his entire analysis. He was able to demonstrate (Marx, 2000)127 that

Adam Smith’s, Wealth of Nations (2007) presented the only rational theory of value that

emerged from economic thought, and argued that only by taking conscious control of production,

with explicit recognition of the values that underlie the objectivity of the C/N paradigm (which

he designated as “bourgeois” objectivity, as opposed to working class objectivity, the only true

form because it transcends class-divided society), can workers as the thinking, breathing subject

of labor power transform these bourgeois into human values (Marx, 1957)128.

We have previously traced the evolution of the Puritan work ethic (Beushausen, 2013)129

from its early root in the deterministic theology of John Calvin, through the rationalization of

labor in the First and Second Industrial Revolutions in Great Britain and America, and into

Herbert Spencer’s pseudo-scientific vulgarization of Darwin’s biological theory of evolution in

popularizing the term “survival of the fittest,” finally influencing the social Darwinism of men

like Andrew Carnegie (Hofstadter, 1992)130 and Napoleon Hill (2005)131. Of all the philosophers

127 Marx, K. (2000). Ibid.

128 Marx, K. (1957). Capital (Vol. 1). New York: Knopf Publications.

129 Beushausen, T. (2013). Kindle Digital Editions.

130 Hofstadter, R. (1992). Social Darwinism in American thought. Boston: Beacon Press.

131 Hill, N. (2005). Think and grow rich. New York: Penguin Group.

50

who ever took up the labor theory of value, which we have shown by way of Benjamin Franklin

to be thoroughly grounded in the Puritan Work Ethic, only Marx demonstrated how it not only

provides the steel for mind-forged manacles, but also can point the way to “freely associated

labor” in a new society grounded in human rather than technological values, which Capra

(2002)132 has identified as our point of entry into the Solar Age.

In evaluating the role that human values must play in redefining the Social Darwinism of

our current medical practice (Chase, 1977)133, it is important to maintain a solid grasp of Marx’s

labor theory of value for guidance through the theoretical obfuscations that now cloud the

problem. Herbert Spencer (2005)134 derived the term “survival of the fittest” from Thomas

Malthus’ Essay on Population (1993)135, which the Industrial Revolution in agriculture had

already out dated by the time Sir Frances Galton and Herbert Spencer seized it’s concept of

absolute economic paucity relative to the life of the workingman, which is necessarily “nasty,

brutish, and short,” to support their respective founding of Eugenics (Galton, 2010)136, and

Social Darwinism (Spencer, 2005)137. Nevertheless, economic thought and its various other

applications in pseudo-science have carried the burden of an over-arching concept of scarcity

from Malthus’ day to this.



133 Chase, A. (1977). The legacy of Malthus: The social costs of the new scientific racism. New

York: Knopf Publishing Group.

134 Spencer, H. (2005). The study of sociology. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.

135 Malthus, T. (1993). An essay on the principle of population. New York: Oxford University

Press.

136 Galton, F. (2010). Hereditary genius: An inquiry into its laws and consequences. London:

Macmillan.

137 Spencer (2005). Ibid.

51

We now know from the work of Jay Forrester (1971)138 that sustainable population

growth is possible. Nevertheless, half of the current adult population of the United States has “no

economic future” (Gould & Endres, 2010)139. Because this is an emerging trend, the future must

be even bleaker for today’s youth. Viewing labor-power as the source, substance, and subject of

wealth (as did Marx, uniquely), which is grounded in human values, one would begin to suspect

that our “nasty, brutish, and short” lives do not result of necessity, but simply from the fact that

the socially irresponsible class of investors, who are more interested in reaping the fast returns of

criminal enterprises (such as oil, Heroin, and cocaine production and distribution) than in

maximizing human values (Capra, 2002)140, simply do not invest in the solar technologies that

would most quickly liberate the infinite abundance of Mother Nature, herself. To put it

succinctly, they just won’t put us to work undermining the very source of their “proprietary

wealth” in invidious distinctions. Marx unabashedly predicted the emergence of this “reserve

army of the unemployed,” and also predicted that we would be the “gravediggers of capitalism.”

The second prediction remains yet to be seen. However, Marx (Capital, 1894)141 also wrote:

“The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction

process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labour, but upon its productivity

and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed. In fact, the

realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and

mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual

material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain

and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all

possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a

result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also

increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers,

138 Forrester, J. (1971). Counter-intuitive behavior of social systems. Technology Review. 73(3)

52-68.

139 Gould, D., & Endres, A. (2010). Management issues in the 21st. Century. Closing colloquium,

Ph. D. in Management Residency. Minneapolis, MN: Walden University.

140 Capra (2002). Ibid.

141 Marx, K. (1894). The process of capitalist production as a whole: Revenues and their sources.

Retrieved August 13, 2010, from Marxist Archives: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-

c3/ch48.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm

52

rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead

of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure

of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it

nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it (necessity) begins that development of

human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom (italics and parenthesis mine),

which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of

the working-day is its basic prerequisite.”

To say the least, the last word on the idea of freedom has not yet been spoken, any self-

proclaimed “capitalist” monopoly on the subject notwithstanding.

Forrester and Systems Dynamics

Schoech (2004, p. 1)142 defines a system as “elements in interaction.” The assumption

that any group of objects can be understood simply as the totality of attributes of each member is

reductionism, which easily describes many collections. For instance, the mass of a collection of

objects is the sum of the mass of each object in the collection. Here, it is assumed that the masses

do not interact. Systems complexity results from emergence of new phenomena from synthetic

interactions between elements. For example, the mass of the sun is the sum of the masses of the

particles from which it formed. When enough particles enter into gravitational proximity, they

begin to interact. An accretion disk is formed, which eventually results in the formation of the

Sun and all of its planets, life on earth, and me sitting at this keyboard. The Sun still has

essentially the same mass that it started with, less that minute mass deficit which was

transformed into energy when the crush of gravitational attraction between hydrogen atoms

resulted in the formation of helium. Some of the energy released fueled the evolution of life on

Earth, and continues to fuel the biosphere of Earth as well as the globalization of human society.

142 Schoech. (2004). Concept paper: Systems theory. Retrieved November 5, 2012, from

University of Texas at Arlington:



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Complex systems are those from which new phenomena emerge as a result of interaction

between many elements, whether they are stellar hydrogen atoms, amino acids in the early seas

of Earth (4.3 billion years ago), human beings competing and cooperating to survive, or

subsystems within larger systems, such as political and economic subsystems within the social

system, or private and public insurance systems, drug development systems, and medical

knowledge research systems within the medical services delivery system. Lacking such

interaction, the collection would not be a system.

Reductionist thinking is primarily deductive, and works very well when the dynamics of

interaction only involve two elements, exerting force on each other either through gravitational

attraction or elastic collision. When Sir Isaac Newton first applied geometric methods to the time

rate of change of velocity between two masses in gravitational attraction, and in collision, the

result was completely deterministic. Taking any particular state of a simple, two element system,

such as the Earth/Moon, Sun/Earth gravitational systems, or collision between masses taken two

at a time, whether billiard balls or molecules, all past and future states of the system could be

determined. Because any two velocity vectors can be resolved into a single vector, it was thought

that the past and future states of any system of particles, however numerous (including the entire

universe), could be completely determined in the same manner, assuming total knowledge of any

set of initial conditions.

Poincaré (Barrow-Green, 1997)143 discovered that the mutual gravitational orbits of a

three body system are too complex to calculate, even if the third body is a point mass, with no

effect on the orbits of the other two bodies. Any small variance in the initial conditions creates

major change in the final state of the system, contrary to the Newtonian assumption that the final



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effect of minute differences in initial conditions can be made small enough to disregard by

sufficient reduction in the change in the initial state. Even the oscillation of a pendulum becomes

chaotic when it swings too wide. Newton’s laws of motion cannot predict the result of the

simultaneous collision of three particles. Poincaré (1895)144 founded the mathematical discipline

of topology to simplify the description of such unpredictable dynamic behavior.

Whether simple or complex, the dynamic behavior of any system that becomes chaotic

cannot be easily predicted or controlled, which are two of the major goals (not forgetting

description and explanation) of scientific investigation. Systems thinking is any theoretical

approach that is characterized by focusing on the whole, which cannot be analyzed as the

incremental sum of its parts. Systems thinking deals with phenomena involving emergent

behavior that are resistant to reductionism. The new paradigm considers multiple, probabilistic

causation, over and above functional relationships between two variables. Systems theory

considers systematic adaptation to change, or evolution, over and above static solutions. Systems

thinking considers the interdependence of dynamic elements, rather than merely categorizing the

attributes of static objects. Reductionism is primarily deductive, whereas systems thinking

involves inductive, empirical investigation as well (Schoech, 2004)145.

The characteristics of systems can be generalized, following basic rules, whether they

consist of chemical, physical, or human elements. The hierarchy of systems consists of a nesting

of subsystems that operate within environments. Boundaries are the interface between

system/subsystem, or system/environment. Friction occurs at the boundaries of a system, where

144 Poincaré, H. (1895). Analysis situs. Journal de l'École Polytechnique, 2(1), 1-123.

145 Schoech. (2004). Concept paper: Systems theory. Retrieved November 5, 2012, from

University of Texas at Arlington:



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it can be isolated and its causes identified. Cycles of inputs, processes, and outputs can be

identified and mapped for all systems, and the behavior of the system determined. Adaptive

systems are goal seeking, moving in a given direction, with survival as the ultimate goal. Control

mechanisms must feed information about system outputs back into the system, where results can

be evaluated and used as further inputs.

Closed systems receive no input from their environments, which results in equilibrium, or

entropy, as the energy of the system ultimately becomes unavailable. Open, dissipative systems

operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium, with a constant flow of new inputs resulting in an

increase of order within the system’s boundaries, even though increased entropy in its

environment results from operation of the system. A constant flow of new inputs from the

environment is thus needed to reenergize the system, helping it to maintain order. No system

would change without new inputs. A system whose survival is threatened, or one that can afford

to take risks, is most amenable to change. Synergy results when the system outputs are greater

than its inputs. Teamwork, or cooperation between subsystems, for the good of the whole, rather

than conflict, or friction, to the detriment of all, is the basis of synergistics (Forrester, 1968)146.

“Complex system theory deals with dynamic systems containing a very large number of

variables, showing a plethora of emergent features, arising in a broad range of contexts,” (Gros,

2008, p.1)147.

Since the discoveries of Darwin/Wallace, Marx, Einstein and Freud, the Enlightenment

view of science, which was reductionistic and atomistic, has been crumbling because the

phenomena of evolution, human society, and the mind are neither. Although the new science of

146 Forrester, J. W. (1968). Principles of Systems. New York: Pegasus Books.


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complexity is still in its infancy, most of what scientists designate as empirical knowledge cannot

be reduced to systems that are no more than the sum of their elements, and even atoms do not

behave atomistically, as hypothesized by Hume (Noonan, 1999)148. Open systems, far from

equilibrium, exhibit complex causal feedback relationships between their elements, from which

new phenomena emerge in quantum leaps, rather than stepwise, predictable and controllable

increments.

Physical science, as formulated by Newton, was considered to be the criterion of absolute

knowledge, by which all other methodologies and empirical sciences must be judged wanting.

Prior to the Newton/Leibnitz summarization and extension of the methods of calculus, there was

no precise, mathematical way to describe even the simplest dynamic system in which one

quantity changes as a function of another over time. The new mathematical technique of

differentiation and its inverse, integration, could consider a myriad of phenomena involving

closed systems, and consisting of two variables, one dependent on the other. In engineering

disciplines involving more than one dependent variable, partial differentiation could be

successively applied by letting one dependent quantity vary while the others are held constant.

Statistical techniques could be used to separate out the effects of multiple independent variables.

However, as Poincaré (Barrow-Green, 1997)149 glimpsed, to his horror, when he

attempted to extend Newton’s gravitational law to a system involving a third body that does

more than perturb the orbits of the other two (as Neptune was discovered through its influence on

the orbit of Saturn), any three body gravitational problem rapidly becomes chaotic and

148 Noonan, H. W. (1999). Hume: On knowledge. London: Routledge.



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unpredictable. Even the motion of a particle mass is unstable when caught within a gravitational

field of two giants. Newton’s F = MA cannot predict the resulting motion of three billiard balls

that collide simultaneously, and Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative to the speed of

light. Einstein’s development of field theory rapidly led to quantum theory, and now even

physical science is not the deterministic realm of absolute knowledge, from which all previous

and subsequent system-states can be predicted, in principle, by fully describing an initial state.

The probabilistic nature of the quantum theory he unleashed disturbed Einstein greatly, who was

never at all convinced that the only thing that is certain is that, if God did play the dice, he would

win.

From today’s perspective, it is simply astonishing that scientists ever did believe in a

closed, deterministic cosmos. The history of scientific thought is replete with cautionary tales

that show it is better to examine one’s own presumptions than to laugh at those of one’s

predecessors. From the moment he was forced by a letter from Wallace to announce his

discovery that species evolve from each other, Darwin tried to fit the facts of evolution into a

simple, incremental theory of adaptation to environment and survival of the fittest derived from

the observation of Thomas Malthus that population increases geometrically, whereas economic

resources are finite. Although world population today still faces the Malthusian dilemma, even

he did not account for the geometric evolution of technology, which still defeats all efforts to

reduce economics and human development to simple, incremental descriptions.

In his speculations on the origin of humankind, even Darwin could not escape from his

Aristotelian preconception about the Great Chain of Being, which still confounds paleo-

anthropology (Schwartz, 1999)150 in the retention of Chambers’ illusion of humankind as the

150 Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Sudden origins: Fossils, genes, and the emergence of species. New


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telos of progressive evolution, rather than as the right tail of a distribution of species that is

modally microbial (Gould, 1996)151. Even the most enlightened scientists find it difficult to

escape from the delusion that we, as a species, result from a progressive, incremental realization

of some divine, predetermined plan, as the summit of creation. If scientists thought that all

systems, however open and complex, could be reduced the summation of closed, simple, two-

variable systems, it was because they closed their eyes to all problems that were, prior to

computers, incalculable.

The Counter-intuitive Behavior of Social Systems

Forrester (1971)152 addressed social concerns regarding the future impact of

current trends in population growth, pollution and resource utilization, capital investment,

and urbanization on quality of life, using a mathematical model of social systems that

reflects the dynamic interaction of multiple variables in terms of positive feedback loops,

which often produce unexpected results for unwary policy makers, whose models may be

vague and based on oversimplified assumptions. When well-meant policies, such as

building low-income housing and providing free medical care, result in accelerating

social problems the policies were meant to ameliorate, they thereby render the effort to

improve social conditions ineffective. Systems dynamics can produce models to help

evaluate the effect of positive feedback loops which have a dynamic and unpredictable

effect on future system behavior. Human experience may fail in predicting the behavior

of complex and highly interacting systems. Corrective programs to address social

151 Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: The Burgess shale and the nature of history. New York: W.

W. Norton.


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problems will continue to produce disappointing results until policy-makers can develop

models adequate to predict the future behavior of social systems.

Intellectuals first began to grapple with social systems as the Industrial

Revolution advanced, producing positive expectations for progressive social change even

while revolutionizing all previously existing human relationships. However, the

intellectual apparatus of C/N science, adequate to describing linear (non-iterative)

dynamic systems in equilibrium under conditions of negative feedback, such as economic

markets regulated by supply and demand, was ill equipped to comprehend nonlinear (F

depends upon X, and the previous value of F(x)) systems with multiple positive feedback

loops, even as simple as inventory control systems (Forrester, Principles of Systems,

1968)153. The complex behavior of social systems has largely eluded the grasp of human

intellect, thereby producing the illusion that social science is somehow inferior to

physical science, whereas in fact the real problem arises from the complexity of social

systems, which generally defeats efforts to isolate two variables, identifying cause and

effect in a controlled, laboratory experiment with all other factors remaining equal, such

as measuring the pressure and volume of a gas while maintaining a constant temperature.

Attempts to depict social phenomena in such terms generally results in bad science,

lacking theoretical validity or empirical integrity.

Forrester explored the value of concepts of feedback systems ideas first applied in

engineering, now used in modeling social systems as applications of system dynamics to

corporate policy, urban growth, population, industrialization, pollution, depletion of

natural resources, and food supply. He argued that no one would apply a new technology

153 Forrester, J. W. (1968). Principles of Systems. New York: Pegasus Books.

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without first testing it, often with computer simulations. Because social systems are so

much more complex than technology, that much more caution should be taken to

represent multiple feedback interactions between such variables as those listed above,

which produce counterintuitive behavior that may otherwise defeat the most well-

intentioned effort to produce positive social change.

If we know enough about social systems to create new programs and laws to

regulate them, then surely we know enough to construct useful models. Programs and

laws can be substantially improved by subjecting the social constructs on which they are

modeled to an experimental phase, using computer simulations. Although computer

models represent considerable abstraction from an actual social situation, they are far

more comprehensive than the vague mental models that currently govern policy. We all

use social models in making decisions. We select concepts and relationships to represent

social reality, even though they may not reveal the actual complexity of the interactions

between positive feedback loops. Political discussions of social policy may involve

participants with fundamentally different assumptions and goals. Even consensus may be

based on false assumptions that lead to failed efforts to ameliorate serious social

problems. When mental models are incorporated into computer simulations, they often

produce results that are not anticipated. Internal contradictions between the assumed

structure and future behavior of the system may lead to results that are exactly opposite to

expectations.

A simulated system dynamics model makes explicit the governing assumptions

and their relationships, forcing obscure ideas to be clarified and subject to debate. A

computer model can reliably predict future behavior of a system that results from the

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policies and assumptions incorporated in the model. The mathematical statement of the

problem to be solved by the computer is clear, unambiguous, and more precise than the

mental model from which it is derived. Some computer models may omit major

psychological factors of known significance. The key to mathematical modeling is to

properly represent the system, which is the goal of systems dynamics. The structures of

the system and of decision policies are the bases for such models, which are only as good

as the assumptions and expertise used in their construction. To the degree that a model

captures the essence of the system on which it is based, it is a good model. Models that

do not accept multiple positive feedback loops and exhibit nonlinear dynamics cannot

adequately represent real systems.

Good computer models of system dynamics reflect the way real systems behave,

often revealing how problems with actual social systems arise, and why over-simplified

policies to deal with them fail. National social programs are now based on inadequate and

failed models. The problem with understanding social systems does not lie in inadequate

data, but rather in its misinterpretation. Systems dynamics begins with concepts and

information sufficient to show the behavior of part of a system, assembled into a

mathematical model, which often predicts future systemic behavior contrary to assumed

expectations.

Three counterintuitive aspects of social systems behavior are especially

dangerous. Attention may often be focused on the very point at which intervention is sure

to fail. Cause and effect may have little relation in terms of space and time, with true

causation arising far back in time and from points in the system far removed from the

effect, even though apparent cause and effect meet normal expectations arising from

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experience with simple systems. Such apparent causes may be mere coincidences,

produced, like the problem itself, by the larger system’s feedback-loop dynamics. For

instance, efforts to build low income housing in urban areas may lead to increased

population, resulting in a Malthusian dilemma trapping even more people into a

downward spiral of poverty and urban decay. Worldwide, urban crowding, and resulting

social pressure such as crime and delinquency, may spark partial solutions that only

intensify the problem, such as hiring more police, thereby lowering the overall quality of

life.

The second dangerous aspect of social systems is that there may be few sensitive

points at which their behavior can be influenced for the better, and the points at which

they can be influenced in a major way may not be as expected. Furthermore, efforts to

influence the system may lead to results opposite to expectations. For instance, less rather

than more low income housing may be needed to make the city a better place to live for

all income groups. Worldwide, quality of life in poor nations may best be improved by

restricting capital investment and food production rather than through expansion. For

example, starvation may be caused by enclosure of the land for production of export

crops, rather than meeting the dietary needs of people. More capital expansion in food

production facilities may thus intensify dietary deficiencies.

Finally, a social system may show temporary improvement as the result of a new

policy, whereas the long term effect of that policy may be to degrade the system overall.

Policies that are beneficial in the long run may produce short term dislocations. Policies

designed to ameliorate social problems in the short run may produce cumulative social

problems, such as those we face today.

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Forrester organized an international conference for the Club of Rome to help

improve understanding of worldwide social problems. The question addressed by a

systems dynamics model presented to the conference was “How do population growth,

depletion of natural resources, industrialization, agriculture, and pollution interact and

affect the world’s future (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1974)154?”

Significant differences in outcome depended upon whether population growth is limited

while it is still possible to provide a high standard of living for all or whether pollution,

crowding, shortages, disease, hunger and conflict are permitted to provide the limits of

growth. The greatest challenge of humanity at that time was to provide a viable transition

from unsustainable growth to sustainable equilibrium.

Because we did not act to meet that challenge four decades ago, we now face a

more serious challenge: that of transitioning from spiraling collapse to creating

survivable preconditions for sustainable growth. Sustainability implies that natural

resources are not consumed or degraded in a manner that will deprive future generations

of their benefit, which further implies the immediate cessation of fossil-fuel burning

world-wide. Our failure to limit growth through favorable processes is resulting in

catastrophic consequences as humanity is overwhelmed by social forces we cannot

control. As a species, we are well into a state of permanent emergency from which we

will not re-emerge for centuries: dealing with super storms, drought, coastal inundation,

food shortages, population collapse, and rampant emergence of pandemic diseases once

thought conquered, such as Bubonic Plague, Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis,

Salmonella, E. Coli, Yellow Fever, SARS, Ebola, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus

154 Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens. (1974). The limits to growth: A report for the Club

of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Publishing, Inc.

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Aureus, Dengue Fever, Enterovirus 71, Influenza, Avian Flu, Vibrio Cholerae, Smallpox,

Typhoid Fever, Anthrax, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS, according to the CDC.

The assumptions in the World3 model presented to the Club of Rome show

reasonable rates of flow depending on the variables of population, agricultural and

investment capital, natural resources, and pollution. Pressures are today simultaneously

arising from all of these growth limiting factors. If industrialization and population are

suppressed by the depletion of natural resources, quality of life falls far enough to halt

population growth, and world population will accelerate in decline due to limited

resources and reduced capital investment. To date, this is exactly the path that we are on.

If we conserve our resources, a population crisis is created in which massive pollution

reduces births, increases mortality, and reduces food production. World population will

decrease by 85% in two decades. A desirable policy of 75% reduction in the depletion of

natural resources through effective green technologies produces a pollution crisis that hits

the industrialized world hardest of all. Technology itself cannot be blamed in the event of

such a disaster, but only our management of it. Such partial solutions have defeated many

government programs by creating more massive problems than they resolve, and will

continue to do so until we better understand social systems dynamics.

In another scenario, the rate of capital investment is raised by 20%, fundamentally

overtaxing the environment and accelerating the pollution crisis, which now appears long

before resources are depleted. Again, a program that appears to be beneficial produces

disastrous results. This happens when programs address symptoms rather than causes, at

points that appear to offer but actually possess little leverage for positive social change.

Short term amelioration of a social problem may produce even greater problems over a

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longer period. The effect of a program can be very different from the expected outcome,

causing even worse problems to break out at a different point in the system, in this case

accumulated pollution.

Networks:

Because many complex, adaptive systems can be characterized as networks of

interacting elements, network theory is the best place to start in understanding complexity

(Gros, 2008)155. Milgram and Travers (1969)156 discovered the “small world effect” in a

1960s study of social networks, showing that the longest direct path between any two

nodes in a network (its diameter) varies logarithmically (rather than proportionately, as in

a lattice) with the number of elements in the network. This is a basic principle used by

Internet routers, each of which can only communicate with a limited number of

neighboring routers, that nevertheless can connect any two out of millions of computers

in a very few jumps between routers. Artificial neural networks, social networks,

epidemics and rumors all function the same way. Erdos–Renyi random graphs are the

simplest kind of connected network, with each connection linking two randomly selected

nodes. Such networks can be characterized by N, the number of connected nodes, and the

coordination number, z, which is the average number of connections per node. Nz/2 =

number of network connections. The probability of occurrence of a connection is p. p = z

/(N-1).

At the thermodynamic limit, the number of elements in a physical system approaches

infinity. Extensive quantities are proportional to N, whereas intensive quantities scale to a


156 Milgram, S.; Travers, J. (1969). An experimental study of the small world problem.

Sociometry, 32(4). 425-443.

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constant at the thermodynamic limit. The network diameter is the maximum number of degrees

of separation between nodes in a network. For each additional degree of separation between

nodes, the number of neighbors increases by a factor of z: z2, z3, etc. Thus, zD≈ N, D = logN/log

z, and we can see that the diameter of the network increases logarithmically with the number of

elements. This is the reason for the small world effect. The average distance, l, is the average

minimal length of the path between all pairs of nodes in the network. This distance is closely

related to the diameter of the network, and scales to N. The exponential growth of the Internet is

reflected in the 1999 statistic for the number of web pages, N = .8 billion, with the average

distance between pages created by hyperlinks, l = 19. For 2007 the number of web pages was 25

billion, with the number of servers constituting the Internet backbone estimated at 100 million

(Gros, 2008)157.

Strong local recurrent connections form clusters, for which the cluster coefficient, C = the

average fraction of neighboring pairs of nodes that are also neighbors of each other. In a fully

connected network, C = 1. A random graph has [z(z – 1)]/2 neighboring pairs. The probability

that a given pair of neighbors is connected, p = z/(N – 1). For a random graph, Crand = z/N. The

clustering coefficient is a measure of the number of triples of fully connected nodes. A clique is a

fully connected subgraph, such that any node within the clique is fully connected to every other

node, whereas no node outside the clique is connected to all members of the clique. The number

of cliques of size K in an Erdos–Renyi graph of N elements, linked with probability = pK(K –

1)/2 (1 – pK)N – K. A collection of overlapping cliques is a community. Most real world

networks have a clustering coefficient C which is orders of magnitude above Crand, the

157 Gros. (2008). Ibid.

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clustering coefficient of a random graph, which means that communities and cliques can be

found among networks of actors, proteins, computers, and penguins.

The Legacy of Donella Meadows

Donella Meadows, who collaborated with Dennis Meadows and Jergen Randers

in creating the World3 model discussed above, defined a system as “an interconnected set

of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something;” that is, some

function, purpose, or goal (Meadows D. , 2008, Kindle Location 347)158. A system has

elements, interconnections, and some common function. Seen from a static rather than

dynamic view, any network of elements also constitutes a system, with interconnections

between nodes. Teams, trees, forests, animals, schools, companies, and criminal justice

are all systems, each with a variety of elements and a multiplicity of purposes, goals, or

functions. Earth, planetary, and galactic systems also exist, with smaller systems

embedded in larger. Any group of elements lacking interconnections from which

functional relationships arise is merely a collection. Death transforms a living system into

a collection of cells governed only by the law of entropy, which is the tendency of all

closed systems toward dynamic equilibrium with their environment.

The openness of a system to a flow of material and energy that it transforms into

functional elements while maintaining thermodynamic flows far from equilibrium is what

keeps it working as a whole. The functional relationships between two or more elements,

arising at nodal points, create new elements of the system, which may then form

hierarchies of interaction. For this reason, no system can be analyzed as merely the sum

of its parts, which does not account for their active interactions, forming mechanisms to

158 Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green

Publishing.

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maintain the integrity, or “wholeness” of the system through dynamic, adaptive,

purposeful, self-replicating and even evolving behavior.

Systems may seem to have a life of their own in changing and adapting, achieving

goals over time in ways that cannot be ascribed to random mutation, yet can neither be

ascribed to any anthropomorphic concept of “intelligent design.” In fact, the non-local

and sometimes reverse-temporal causation, first discovered in quantum physics (Capra F.

, 1999)159, that links the beginning state of a system to its end-state is not well

understood, with many anthropomorphic notions about systems, such as their “intelligent

design” (speaking of systems that are not artifacts) resulting from thinking about them in

an analytic rather than systemic manner. Systems of elements organize and repair

themselves, and can spawn entirely new species of systems.

Because the elements of a system may be visible and tangible, they are easier to

pinpoint than the relationships, or multiple causation that may exist between elements.

Elements of a system may themselves be intangibles, such as “due process of law” as an

element of the 14th Amendment. A system is characterized by the relationships between

its elements. No one understands all of the relationships between elements of living

systems, especially that quality known as life, precisely because life itself emerges from

the biochemistry and genetic structure of the cell, as well as from the interaction between

the cell’s epigenetic network and its chemical and physical environment (Capra, 2002)160.

Information flows between systems elements to decision, or action points, providing

feedback loops, which when positive may result in nonlinear dynamics.

159 Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc.



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Nonlinearity means the system responds disproportionately to initial conditions,

exhibiting chaotic behavior classically characterized as sensitive dependence on initial

conditions. A chaotic system is not random, but exhibits constraints characterized by

strange attractors when displayed in appropriate phase space (Gleick, 1988)161. Fractals,

or self-similarities across time scales, often result from a positive feedback loop, one in

which the new value of the dependent variable amplifies the input, the mathematical sign

of the net gain being positive for each iteration around the loop (Harte, 1996)162. Positive

feedback is in phase with the input because it adds to make the input larger.

The function or purpose of a system must be inferred from its actual behavior,

rather than from any goal statement, published or otherwise avowed. For instance, the

function of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is to provide polluters

with a fig leaf of respectability while they introduce toxins into the ecosystem, cannot be

inferred from the name of the agency, which is part of the cover. In the 1990s the EPA

rubber-stamped as “harmless” the environmental toxins neonicotinoid insecticides

(Kelland, 2012)163, thereby endangering the honey bee, which is responsible for

pollinating corn, almond, and other staple crops. Such an environmental catastrophe as

the loss of honey bees from the eco-system will result in crop failure, food shortages, and

subsequent cancellation of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) food

161 Gleick, J, (1988). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Penguin Group.

162 Harte, J. (1996). On the Sustainability of resource use: Population as a dynamic factor. In B.

Zuckerman, Jefferson (Eds.), Human population and the environmental crisis (2nd ed.). Burlington, MA:

Jones & Bartlett Learning.

163 Kelland, K. (2012, March 29). Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved November 1, 2012, from

Are bees threatened by insecticide use? New studies say yes.:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0329/Are-bees-threatened-by-insecticide-use-New-studies-say-

yes.-video

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0329/Are-bees-threatened-by-insecticide-use-New-studies-say-yes.-video

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0329/Are-bees-threatened-by-insecticide-use-New-studies-say-yes.-video

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stamp program, an agricultural price support system that will no longer be needed when

food surpluses turn into food shortages. From its behavior one can reasonably infer the

EPA’s actual purpose, just as from the behavior of a criminal one can reasonably infer

her motive. The EPA routinely rubber-stamps the introduction of potentially harmful

genetic modifications into food-crops that have demonstrably caused the degradation of

the environment and of the seed stock as well (Smith J. M., 2003)164. To say the most that

can be said for the EPA, this agency supports and protects the environment in the same

manner that a rope supports and protects a hanging woman.

An artifact is a group of elements shaped to some purpose through human design.

A natural system, contrasted to an artificial system, adapts through a process of natural

selection, and is thereby shaped by interaction with environment to perform some

function. The distinction between purpose and function is indefinite because many

artificial systems contain natural elements and subsystems, and also because natural

selection of living species is not fully understood. Nature has created designs of such

elegance and complexity, including that of intelligence itself, that calling this process

“intelligent design” is to anthropomorphize Mother Nature herself in an act of extreme

hubris, as Orion learned when slain by Artemis’ arrow for seeing her beauty in the wrong

light. Any system deficient in the function of self-perpetuation or self-replication can

neither survive nor reproduce. Systems may behave in a manner not intended by any

actor or agent within the system (Forester, 1971)165, or that no one wants, which puts

164 Smith, J. M. (2003). Seeds of deception: Exposing industry and government lies about the

safety of the genetically engineered foods you're eating. Fairfield, IA: Yes! Books.


52-68.

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systemic function at cross-purposes with human designers. The discovery of this

principle of complex social systems earned Jay W. Forester (Donella Meadows’ mentor)

the title, “The apostle of unexpected results.”

Systems nested within systems create purposes within purposes. Keeping these

sub-functions aligned with the primary purpose of the system is a fundamental strategic

goal. Although the elements of a system may change, such as its members, the system

will remain intact as long as its interconnections and their functional relationships remain

stable. Although perhaps the most difficult to observe because it must be inferred from

the behavior of the system, its function is the crucial determinant of systemic behavior.

When the connections between elements change, the system’s functionality may change

greatly, perhaps beyond recognition.

Systems thinking holds elements, interconnections, and purposes as essential,

especially in their interactions. Although the purpose, or telos of the system may emerge

from the combined causal powers of its elemental interactions, any change in these

relationships, which may result from changing an element, will change its overall

function. A change in leadership, such as the emergence of Reagan as the face of the

Counter-revolution in America, threw the entire nation into retrogression, changing

America’s primary political objective to militarization in permanence, a new dominant

goal that supplants all ideals of social justice and transforms “The business of America is

business,” into “The business of America is suppressing democratic movements wherever

they challenge the authority or property of the super-rich.” Although this process began

with the 19th Century’s geo-political interpretation of America’s “manifest destiny,”

received its ideological rationale with the inception of the Cold War in the terrorist

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bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and was greatly accelerated by the Carter

Administration’s paralyzing obsession with the fall of America’s Iranian proxy, Reagan’s

election heralded a new epoch of counterrevolution, even more surely than did the

accession of Stalin, Mussolini, or Hitler to power in their respective versions of fascism.

Since Reagan’s counter-revolution, none of the faces who actually exercise power have

changed, and today the Reagan retrogression survives in the Obama Administration as

“Reaganism without Reagan.”

Because of the social inertia of America’s people, there is a limit to the rate at

which a leader can actually change things, either for the better or for worse. However, a

system going through a phase transition, such as world markets globalizing, can be

pushed past a “tipping point” (Gladwell, 2002)166 into rapid transformation, which is

where the world is at today with respect to pollution and population, both interacting

elements. Donella Meadows lead the Forester team that published the first “Report to the

Club of Rome on the Predicament of Humanity” (Meadows, et al., 1974)167, which was

revised shortly after her death to answer scurrilous criticisms for a thirty year update

(Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, Limits to growth: The 30 year update, 2004)168 and

most recently updated on October 1, 2012 (Georgescu, Meadows, Perccei, & et_al,

166 Gladwell, M. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. New

York: Little, Brown & Co.



168 Meadows, D., Randers, J., & Meadows, D. (2004). Limits to growth: The 30 year update

(synopsis). Retrieved October 12, 2012, from Minnesotans for Sustainability:

http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_limits_to_growth_30_year_update_2004.htm

http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_limits_to_growth_30_year_update_2004.htm

73

2012)169. This cumulative body of work sounded the tocsin for an era of global warming

and has now sounded the death knell for billions of human beings. Even if Big Oil were

suddenly stricken by the righteousness of God and humanity ceased and desisted

altogether from the insane burning of carbon fuels, NASA atmospheric scientists have

demonstrated that we have already entered a state of permanent emergency (Hansen, et

al., 2012)170. The last credible global warming skeptic has folded his tent (Muller,

2012)171 , finding that anthropocentric global warming since the Industrial Revolution to

be 1.5◦ C. (Rohde, 2012)172, 40% higher than the previous consensus (IPCC 31st.

Session, 2009)173. Earth’s current population of 7 billion is expected to collapse by a

factor of 50% to 90% (Zuckerman & Jefferson, 1996)174.

This is a done deal. Even if every last man, woman, and child on Eaarth

(McKibben, 2011)175 takes up the cudgel for human survival, humanity’s most optimistic

outlook, which is dismal at best, is that beyond 2030 our species has a 15% probability of




170 Hansen, J., Sato, M., & Ruedy, R. (2012, September 11). Perception of cliamte change.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(37), 14726-14727.

171 Muller, R. A. (2012, July 28). The conversion of a climate-change skeptic. New York Times, p.

1. 172 Rohde, R. (2012, July 29). Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study. (R. Muller, Producer, &

Berkeley Earth Team) Retrieved September 12, 2012, from Berkeley Earth surface temperature:

http://berkeleyearth.org/

173 IPCC 31st. Session. (2009). Scoping of the IPCC 5th assessment report. Geneva, Switzerland:

IPCC Secretariat.

174 Zuckerman, B., & Jefferson, D. (Eds.). (1996). Human population and the environmental

crisis, 2nd ed. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

175 McKibben. (2011). Eaarth: Making a life on a tough new planet. New York: Henry Holt and

Company.


http://berkeleyearth.org/

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extinction (McKibben, 2012)176, which is an unacceptable risk in anybody’s language.

We nevertheless remain with our heads buried in the sand (of “terrorist” propaganda and

infotainment), and the human inertia that prevents action has been described as Giddens’

Paradox (Giddens, 2009, p. 2)177:

“Since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible in the

course of day-to-day life, however awesome they appear, many will sit on their hands and do

nothing of a concrete nature about them. Yet waiting until they become visible and acute before

being stirred to serious action will, by definition, be too late.”

This paradox, reflecting the attitude of the general public, has contributed greatly the

ability of corporate interests in burning carbon fuels to politicize the issue. Big Oil has

spent hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda to sell the Big Lie that the entire

issue is the result of a conspiracy between anti-corporate Democratic voters and

atmospheric scientists (McCright & Dunlap, 2011)178.

After the hottest summer on record, the worst Midwestern drought, and the largest

storm in American history, with high winds spreading a swath of destruction 800 miles

wide over the American East Coast, perhaps Americans have finally snapped out of our

torpor. It is far too late to take serious action to avert simultaneous, ongoing major

catastrophes from disrupting the entire New World Order. We should have done that four

decades ago, when the first Limits to Growth Report (Meadows, et al., 1974)179 sounded

the alarm. The Giddens Paradox has already cost us our lives, our fortunes, and our

sacred honor. However, it is never too late to take serious action that may save some of

176 McKibben, B. (2012, July 19). Global warming's terrifying new math. The Rolling Stone, p. 5.

177 Giddens, A. (2009). The politics of climate change. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

178 McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011). The politicization of climate change and polarization

in the American public's views of global warming, 2001-2010. The Sociological Quarterly, 52, 155-194.



75

us, perhaps a few more than the wealthiest 1% who already know what is coming, and

expect to live in gated communities, even if underground, in space suits, and out of the

weather. We the living must make every conceivable effort to support each other, and

save as many of our progeny as possible. Positive social change in this direction can only

begin with a wave of public anger sufficient to shut down oil production altogether and

initiate entry into the Solar Age of free energy.

Predicting the future behavior of any system, as fraught with error as such an

endeavor must be, is largely a matter of extrapolating from the stock of information it has

accumulated during the past. Information preserved in starlight has taught us that the Sun

is about 5 billion years old, and will explode in another 5 billion years, about the time the

Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies collide. The expanding universe, which is the

largest and most complex observable system, is about 16 billion years old, and will

collapse on itself in some even more unimaginably distant future. If that were not the

case, as a closed system the laws of thermodynamics dictate that it will otherwise meet

the fate of “heat death,” which is the uniform distribution of matter and energy.

Its preserved stock of information, the sensible, measurable elements, is the

system’s foundation: the accumulated material or information that constitutes the

memory of its changing flows of matter, energy, or information. A deterministic system

experiencing a phase transition may have an incalculable future, which is nevertheless

visible as alternate possibilities in strange attractors when properly displayed in phase

space, as Lorenz (1963)180 demonstrated. His weather system consisted of three, simple

deterministic equations that interacted in a complex manner, producing information flows

180 Lorenz, E. N. (1963, March). Deterministic nonperiodic flow. Journal of the Atmospheric

Sciences, 20(2), 130-141.

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that exhibited sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Although the study of such

systems has a long history dating back to Henri Poincaré (1895)181, Lorenz (1993)182

dubbed sensitive dependence on initial conditions “The Butterfly Effect” in a 1972

presentation, to illustrate the meaning and because the Lorenz attractors on his phase

space chart look like butterfly wings.

Although the initial Report to the Club of Rome on the Predicament of Humanity

(Meadows, et al., 1974)183 was properly qualified, based on the best mathematical models

available at the time, and insisted that any variations in the stock of information flows

might dramatically change outcomes, nevertheless the decades-long time delays between

cause and effect that the “Butterfly Effect” best illustrates created enough divergence

between expected and actual results to present an easy target for carbon-fuel financed

corporate propaganda, which is why we see so many expensive commercials about the

ersatz love affair between these monstrous entities and the environment. To answer the

well-financed, spurious criticisms of their findings, Forester’s team issued a 30-year

update of their report (Meadows, et al. 2004)184, for which they upgraded their World3

simulation, including actual rather than predicted information from the history of matter

and energy flows within the system, largely to deflect the well-financed, scurrilous

criticism of their work.

181 Poincaré, H. (1895). Analysis situs. Journal de l'École Polytechnique, 2(1), 1-123.

182 Lorenz, E. N. (1993). The essence of chaos. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

183 Meadows, Et al. (1974). Ibid.

184 Meadows, D., Randers, J., & Meadows, D. (2004). Limits to growth: The 30 year update

(synopsis). Retrieved October 12, 2012, from Minnesotans for Sustainability:

77

In 1974, when the Earth was younger and greener with respect to the depredations

of its primary runaway species, Homo sapiens sapiens (perhaps now an oxymoron), the

Forester team had concluded that we were perilously balanced on the edge of overshoot,

but that there was still time to correct this problem. By 2004, this was no longer the case.

For almost a decade we have known that we are plunging into the abyss by overshooting

the use of Earth’s carrying capacity of natural resources, a situation identified in the new

report as driven by the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. The new

World3 model presented last year’s most recent Report to the Club of Rome (2012)185,

examining 10 different future scenarios for the 21st Century, with tweaks in resource

utilization to test the results of "real world" parameters, incorporating optimistic

predictions of technological developments, and examining results from variations in

goals and policies. Already in overshoot, by the end of this Century humanity faces food

shortages, resource depletion, industrial decline, and population collapse.

If we did nothing after the interim report (as of 8 years later, we have done

nothing yet), the World3 scenario predicts that world population will top seven billion by

2030. In 2012 we have already been there and done that. Now, rather than in two more

decades, economic growth stops abruptly and changes into continuous, ruinous decline.

More capital must be diverted to extract more value from declining natural resources,

leaving a smaller capital base for investment in industrial output. Agricultural and service

sectors of the economy will continue to decline along with its industrial sectors. Today

(rather than in 2030), U. S. population has already peaked, and will decline through





78

starvation from its current peak of 314 million as food shortages hit the American

population. The result is even further accelerated industrial decline, which forces crashes

in the service and agricultural sectors. The death rate will skyrocket as hunger and

disease stalk what was once a land of plenty. According to the most recent report released

ten months ago (Georgescu, Meadows, Perccei, & et_al, 2012)186, we, rather than our

children or grandchildren, already face this prospect.

186 Georgescu, Et al. (2012). Ibid.

79

DEPTH

DEPTH: Current Research in systems theory

Annotated Bibliography

Bricmont, J. (2002, September). Determinism, Chaos and Quantum Mechanics. Retrieved

October 19, 2012, from Dogma: Journal of Philosophy of Social Science.

http://www.dogma.lu/epistemologie.php

SUMMARY:

Bricmont discusses the concept of determinism, then examines frequent

misunderstandings concerning the implications of chaos theory. The interpretation hinges

on the status of probabilistic reasoning in classical physics, and misunderstandings

occurring in the context of quantum mechanics. Bricmont defends LaPlace’s concept of

determinism, and argues that the deterministic structure of chaos, defined as sensitive

dependence on initial conditions, presents nothing new to the philosophy of science.

Bricmont interprets the science of chaos as representing the chaos in scientific reasoning,

rather than the ontological structure of reality.

Implications:

Bricmont argues that determinism, as conceived in science, is alive and well,

despite new discoveries in Chaos theory, and that confusion in concepts of determinism,

complexity, and chaos have contributed largely to current misunderstandings of the

relationships between these subjects. This implies that the new challenges presented by

systems theory are nothing new to science, and that nothing has really changed other than

the way we think about science. That much is certain, but Bricmont does not establish his


80

implication that the ability to create pseudo-random sequences that are indistinguishable

from randomly generated numbers establishes determinism as the ultimate description of

reality, rather than indeterminacy. Bricmont seems to argue that God throws the dice, but

that he always wins his bets. I argue here that the problem is in philosophy, precisely

since Aristotle defined “possibility” in terms of what has already occurred or will happen.

This circular definition lies at the source of our problems conceiving of “free will,”

“choice,” and “chance,” but should not be taken as the omniscience of Laplace’s demon.

Although the universe may be unfolding as it should, that is not necessarily so.

Raia, Federica. (2008). Causality in Complex Dynamic Systems: A Challenge in Earth Systems

Science Education. Journal of Geoscience Education, 56(1).

SUMMARY

Understanding self-organization, adaptation and emergence, all important

characteristics of complex systems, is crucial to science instruction. Early research has

shown that students do not understand dynamic systems, using linear-mono-causal

misconceptions that are static and disjointed. The problem is even worse if C/N concepts

of process are presented as models. Because understanding causality is crucial to

understanding complexity, undergraduate science students were here interviewed to

document their existing knowledge of complex natural phenomena, and also document

changes in how they think about such phenomena after being introduced to a modified

Aristotelian framework of principles of causality. With this framework for understanding

emergence, downward causation, and self-organization, they are better able to

conceptualize complexity.

81

Implications:

When analyzing and teaching natural science, the questions of what, how, and

why events occur are crucial to understanding. Scientists and students alike start with

these questions to explore phenomena and seek explanations in terms of causal

determinants of observed phenomena. Non-linearity, self-organization and evolution of

systems occur at different levels of complexity. Crystallization, plate tectonics, and

global warming are all self-organizing processes that occur in Earth science. The causal

principles and couplings that regulate emergence and self-organization, from the

formation of a crystal to understanding of how plate tectonics arises, do not lend

themselves to description by any linear chain of causes and effects, and cannot be defined

within any deterministic framework.

Brown, C. (2008). The use of complex adaptive systems as a generative metaphor in an

action research study of an organization. The Qualitative Report, 13(3).

SUMMARY:

The study of the dynamic behavior of organizations is here undertaken using a

model of complex adaptive systems as a generative metaphor. The research question is:

How might a conceptual model of complex adaptive systems be used to assist in

understanding the dynamic nature of organizations? Internal management consulting

teams were introduced to overlapping attributes of complex adaptive systems. The study

found that participants used these attributes in understanding organization dynamics,

once the cognitive challenges were met. Perception occurs through visualization and

cognition, using learning and experience to construct the whole.

82

Implications:

Management experience and research literature show that organizational

interventions undertaken without considering the effects on the organization as a whole

may or may not be effective. While possibly leading to short term improvements, these

may not recognize the dynamic aspect of organizations. The complexity of an

organizational system may defeat any narrow attempt to understand it, thereby also

defeating any apparently obvious attempt to correct perceived problems. Complexity

theory is useful to understanding in many academic disciplines, embracing universal

elements of interdisciplinary studies. A complex adaptive systems involves phenomena

characterized by the interactions of numerous individual agents or elements, self-

organizing at a higher systems level, into new systems that exhibit emergent and adaptive

properties that did not pre-exist among the individual agents. An organization must

remain adaptive to its rapidly changing technological environment. This paper uses one

model of complex adaptive systems as a generative metaphor to enable organizational

agents to better understand its dynamic nature.

Topolski, Stefan. (2009). Understanding health as a complex system. Journal of Evaluation in

Clinical Practice. (May) Vol. 15

SUMMARY:

Theory from thermo- and non-linear dynamics, complex systems science and

chaos can inform the bio-psycho-social model of health with theoretical rigor and

vigorous new research. Human health, illness and disease all involve complex systems.

Curves representing human health potential may be used to represent probabilities

projected over time, with maximization of health as maximized functional complexity.

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This function can be placed in relation to energy and entropy to map out a complex

surface modeling human health and illness from cradle to grave. Uniting complexity and

entropy into a potential health trajectory expands existing theories of health, permitting

unusual predictions, and opportunities to test and validate this model of human health.

Implications:

The traditional definition of health in Western medicine is the absence of disease,

seen as the steadiest homeostatic function of the body. With its focus on relieving human

suffering, allopathy is the treatment of a disease by using remedies whose effects differ

from those produced by that disease. Such an orientation appears to define life in terms of

death. This is the principle of mainstream medical practice, as opposed to homeopathy, a

complementary disease-treatment system starting with minute doses of natural substances

that, if administered in larger doses, would produce symptoms of the disease itself. The

nineteenth century allopathic biomedical model relied heavily on Cartesian reductionism

to replace earlier theories of spirits, humors, meridians and others. In this view, the body

is seen as a machine. Each part is affected directly by its interaction with other parts, and

can be analyzed in terms of its own structure and function. George Engel noticed the

breakdown of this model in his psychiatric practice, completely out of consonance with

his patients’ experience of mental illness. Engel expanded upon the biomedical model to

include psychological and sociological aspects, which family doctors and other

specialists adopted as a new bio-psycho-social model. Engel’s model adds empirical and

descriptive elements to the limitations of the one-dimensional biomedical model,

connecting various domains of human experience and improving clinical guidance, but

taking no account of time, thus making it impossible to test medical prognoses. In this

84

paper, Topolski (2009) adds observations from the theory of chaos and complex systems

science to render Engel’s model of health and disease more realistic.

Boon, H., MacPherson, H., Fleishman, S., Grimsgaard, S., Koithan, M., Norheim, N. J.,

et al. (2007, September). Evaluating complex healthcare systems: A critique of

four approaches. Evidence Based Complementary Alternative Medicine, 4(3),

279-285.

SUMMARY:

How do we understand and evaluate the complex nature of healthcare systems?

As the result of a meta-analysis of healthcare literature from interdisciplinary groups

describing a variety of evaluations of complex healthcare systems, we have identified

four key approaches: whole systems research, whole medical systems research described

by NCCAM (USA), a framework from the MRC (UK), and a model from NAFKAM

(Norway). All approaches acknowledge the inherent complexity of and the need to

evaluate healthcare interventions, taking them in context as actually practiced; the utility

of mixed methods, including randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and qualitative

approaches; the benefits of interdisciplinary team research; and that methodology applies

to conventional therapies and complementary alternative medicine (CAM). Approaches

differ in terminology used; application to both CAM and conventional medical

interventions; priorities of research questions, including how ‘definitive’ RCTs fit into

the assessment process; and the need for a staged approach. The need for a new

perspective on assessing complex healthcare systems is widely recognized.

Implications:

There are many complex treatment systems and interventions within those

systems, forming an important part of worldwide healthcare. Palliative care, integrative

85

medicine, rehabilitative medicine, public health, and traditional Chinese medicine are not

well served by the biomedical model, with its emphasis on the evaluation of single-

component interventions. The applicability of the standard biomedical model for

investigating the actual practice of healthcare is limited, implying the need for a broader

perspective.

Kleiner, A. (2009). Jay Forrester's shock to the system. MIT Sloan Management Review.

SUMMARY:

Forrester overturned conventional management thinking, redefined the meaning

of growth, and founded system dynamics. As the inventor of the addressing system for

digital computer memory, without which we would all be literally lost, his voice could

not be ignored when he loudly and publicly questioned the values of the industrial age,

thereby helping to usher in the digital era. He managed Project Whirlwind at MIT, which

built one of the world’s first digital computers. Forrester himself worked out how to

organize magnetic information storage locations for purposes of retrieval. As Forrester

explains, he spent seven years convincing the industry that random-access memory was

the solution to their problems, then seven more years defending his patents in court.

Implications:

After leaving computer design because the exciting pioneering days were over,

Forrester joined the School of Management at MIT. Operations research did not suit him,

as aimed at finding “little efficiencies in the corners.” He preferred to take on issues that

define the difference between corporate success and failure. Production managers from

General Electric’s household appliance division presented him with a manufacturing

86

problem no one had been able to solve: why do orders rise and fall, defying all efforts to

keep up a steady flow of production? This is the very problem on which the DeLorean

Motor Company foundered, sans help from the Thatcher regime. Business cycles had

traditionally been defined as the usual suspect, but Forrester was suspicious of this

explanation. The problem looked similar to that of servomechanism controllers,

automatic control devices from which the field of cybernetics was born, as

thermodynamics was born from steam engines a hundred years earlier. Systems

Dynamics, the fundamental science of the information age, was born out of the practical

needs of engineers, just as thermodynamics provided theoretical models for the machines

of the industrial revolution.

Sprague, L. G., & Callarman, T. E. (2010, Winter). Supply management is not a beer

game. Journal of Supply Chain Management., 46(1).

SUMMARY:

The Bullwhip Effect is part of The Beer Game, derived from Jay W. Forrester’s

mathematical model of a supply chain, the foundation of System Dynamics, as described

in his Industrial Dynamics (1961). The idea is that physical flows within a logistics

system represent only half of the situation, with equally vital information flows driving

the whole system. Incorporating ordering practices to determine how much and when to

order inventory replacement can result in the Bullwhip Effect. Inventories can amplify

the effect of decisions made at specific links in the supply chain, resulting in wide

oscillation of inventories and systemic disruption of production and distribution initiated

from within the supply chain itself.

87

Implications:

Economists often see inventories as liquid cash assets, even though they are not

easy to liquidate, or as a ready reserve of production capacity, even though it is rarely

immediately available. Each agent in this supply chain system is denied any data beyond

the specific order requirements of immediate customers, with no information about why

or how these requirements originated. The moment decision-makers in the system are

permitted to talk to each other, dramatic improvements result in inventory levels and

stock outs. The Bullwhip Effect is known to have played a role in the worldwide

economic downturn of 2009, contributing dramatically to its speed and style.

Peter, H. (2008). Mathematical modeling of complex biological systems: From parts lists

to understanding systems behavior. Alcohol Research and Health, 31(1).

SUMMARY:

Identification and characterization of individual molecules in complex biological

systems is insufficient for understanding their interactions with each other and with

higher levels of the system. Behaviors and characteristics transactions of the system as a

whole with its environment emerge that cannot be predicated on or predicted from any of

its elements. Molecular interactions and their pathways must be thoroughly understood.

Complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and alcoholism are especially resistant to

any simplistic breakdown. Data generated by mathematical models permit investigation

of connections between complex regulatory processes and their disruption by the disease

process. Systems perturbations may also be systematically analyzed, and hypotheses

developed to help design new experimental tests, and identify new molecules as

therapeutic targets.

88

Implications:

A variety of new mathematical methods address different biological processes,

such as metabolism or regulatory and signaling mechanisms. Biologists now model

complex physiological processes, which provides grist for the pharmaceutical industry,

supporting the discovery of new drugs and development of new therapies. Tremendous

advances in DNA-sequencing technologies over the past decade have enabled complete

sequencing of the human genome, which is a major milestone in human biology. The

human genome consists of all human genes and molecules required for embryogenesis

and human development. Having this parts list of DNA, proteins, and RNA cannot

answer all questions into the complex phenomena of human biology. Many projected

benefits of knowing the human genome sequence have only been partially realized.

Learning the full human genome sequence is a prerequisite for understanding the origins

of complex human diseases, but is by no means sufficient to answer all questions of

treatment and therapeutics for such diseases as alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity,

and cancer.

Costigan, P. (2007, Third Quarter). The role of spirituality in the development of an eco-

centric culture. Social Alternatives, 26(3).

SUMMARY:

A spirituality which sees the Sacred as intimately embodied in the earth and the

cosmos is the basis for reverence for all life and commitment to justice for all people on

earth. This reflects a return to the most ancient religion, one that permeates and informs

any spirituality that may have survived into modernity, and does full justice to the

89

fundamental agreement among Western religions that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and

omnipresent. This primarily negative perception, that the infinite source of being has no

limitations either in power, knowledge, or presence is consonant with Trinitarian

Doctrine, neither does it conflict with ancient, patriarchal interpretations of God other

than on male dominance, which was not part of the legacy of hunter gathering culture’s

Mother-centered spirit of worship. Today, this spirituality can only be expressed as Gaia

(Lovelock, Gaia: A new look at life on Earth, 2000), which is a full image of God in both

the feminine and masculine aspects of the act of creation. The resulting deep bonding

with nature, with recognition that humanity is only one element in the whole

interdependent web of life, which is itself more than just the sum of its elements, informs

this type of spirituality. The eco-spirituality of Earth Link offers a solid philosophical,

methodological, ideological and theological base in theory and practice of complex

systems thinking for the current environmental movement.

Implications:

This kind of spiritual insight, expressing deep-rooted survival motivations and

commitments, with empowerment is able to radically and fundamentally alter the

destructive culture of exploitation, rape, and domination that has accompanied

humanity’s scientific advances for the past four centuries; transforming “progress” to

embrace rather than destroy life, and foster rather than abort that which is struggling to be

born. Born of a unified vision of science and life, which, in Marx’s words, is a priori

truth, it expresses experience, belief, rituals and actions for living in ways that are more

ecologically sensitive, creating a sustainable rather than eco-destructive culture.

90

Matson, P. (2009). The sustainability transition: Meeting basic human needs without degrading

the planet's vital systems. Issues in Science and Technology, 25(4).

SUMMARY:

The over-arching imperative of our generation is to make the sustainability

transition, providing for basic human needs without degrading the planet’s life-support

infrastructure, despoiling atmospheric and water resources, tipping the climate system,

and decimating ocean and land ecosystems on which we and future generations must rely.

Throughout the discussion and debate about sustainability, some general agreement on

action priorities has emerged, and some are taking action in all of them. The problem

with the illusion of sustainability is that we have already been there and done most of

that. We have already overshot Earth’s carrying capacity (Georgescu, Meadows, Perccei,

& et_al, 2012), and are way past having any sustainability options. After the train wreck

of humanity we have witnessed over the past several decades, we are only too late

beginning to make decisions that show concern for people and life support systems. As of

today, we must place the transition toward sustainability on hold, and work out a

preliminary transition toward survivability.

Implications:

Whereas we are already drowning in our own garbage, we have come to the

sustainability table a day late and a dollar short. Human population, although still

growing, is about to collapse. Rapidly increasing consumption and ever-increasing

stresses on environmental services may be momentarily alleviated as we pass peak

population and oil production, but not without generating massive human suffering. To

minimize the quotidian of man’s inhumanity to man, we must accelerate the transition to

the Solar Age. Involvement of scientists and engineers will be crucial to achieve this

91

acceleration, but not sufficient to this effort, because they cannot define for us the values

necessary to make the tough choices that are being forced upon us.

Bar-Yam, Y. (2006). Improving the effectiveness of health care and public health: A

multi-scale complex systems analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 96(3),

459-466.

SUMMARY:

The large, simple flow of financial information is mismatched to the complex

flow of medical treatment delivered to individual patients. The poor quality of care

results largely from efforts to control costs and efficiency that would be appropriate for

repetitive, but not high-complexity tasks. Under multi-scale complex systems analysis,

two distinct tasks, that of caring for the medical needs of individuals, and maintenance of

public health emerge. Qualitatively different organizational structures are required for

each task, under which responsibility should be separated. Using care providers and

organizations for both purposes creates organizational compromises that reduce quality of

service in both market sectors. To resolve this problem, a high-efficiency system that

performs repetitive screening, inoculation, and generic healthcare tasks should be

separately administered from a high complexity system to treat complex medical

problems of individual patients.

Implications:

American healthcare processes have been structured around the need to respond

to individuals who seek care. Because the importance of prevention and population health

is widely recognized, the existing system has been pummeled to respond to these needs.

Imposing on the same organization the requirement that it respond to such radically

92

different tasks creates inefficiency in the system resulting in ineffective care. A distinct

subsystem for disease prevention and the provision of population health services would

be much more effective and efficient at those tasks, thereby solving many existing

problems in the healthcare delivery system. The need for public health may be better met

through the development of organizations that serve these needs directly and only.

Dartington, T. (2009, Summer). Relationship and dependency in the public sphere: The

importance of relationship is devalued in contemporary culture - Even in health and

welfare systems, where people are necessarily dependent. Soundings(42).

SUMMARY:

Since the Reagan/Thatcher Counterrevolution, dependency has become a word of

contempt, used to demonize non-corporate recipients of public welfare benefits, but never

poorly managed banking institutions, deemed in the same media “too big to fail.”

Dependency is also denigrated within public welfare systems, which attempt to

implement social policies embracing independence and self-sufficiency, resulting in such

horrors as providing independent budgets for patients with dementia. The post-dependent

society initiated by the counter-revolutions of the 1970s has also dismantled institutions

that can cater to long-term material and psychological needs. Next up for dismantling is

the Social Security system, which although well-financed and planned, only aimed at

supplementing primarily private retirement programs, is nevertheless under attack

because it involves governmental responsibility for part of an individual’s retirement

planning. Rationalistic explanations cloying to an ideology of individual self-interest

have become sufficient for socio-economic theory bought and paid by socially

irresponsible interests.

93

Implications:

The view of self embedded in contemporary, narcissistic culture can be best

expressed as, “I feel therefore I am.” This expresses an individualism that denies

relationships. As with the Nazi ideology introduced by Hermann Göring (Beushausen,

2013) into German psychotherapeutics during World War II, this shallow conception of

individuality, which is not distinct from the mass psychology of fascism, provides for

quick fixes, such as claims identical to those of Göring that a short period of controlled

behavioral therapy can turn someone’s life around. Healthcare and social reforms can

then claim to offer people opportunities to cure themselves as a cover for resorting to

behaviorist forms of intervention.

Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Jordan, R., Liu, L., Gray, S., Demeter, M., Rugaber, S., et al. (2008).

Focusing on function: Thinking below the surface of complex systems. Science Scope,

31(9).

SUMMARY:

Asking such questions as: ‘What do we do with oxygen?’, ‘How is it delivered to

cells?’, ‘How do ecosystems stay balance?,’ and ‘What roles do different organisms

play?’; systems thinking pushes students to look beneath the surface of phenomena, to

see functional relationships as well as elements within systems. Systems thinking is now

integrated into National Science Education Standards as NRC 1996. A system is a group

of interdependent parts that perform some function that cannot be reduced to the

individual parts. For this reason systems thinking explores dynamics, dependencies, and

feedback loops within the system. How do the parts function within the whole, and how

do we understand global function? Complex systems are composed of multiple levels that

94

interact with each other. For ease of understanding, we may focus isolated parts or

structures, thereby failing to understand how things work or what they do. Understanding

multiple levels of function is crucial to understanding complex systems.

Implications:

Students of the human body may understand anatomical and physiological levels

of functionality, but respiration occurs at a cellular and at the organ-system level.

Interrelationships between structures, mechanisms, and functions of a system may be

quite intricate. Comprehension of ecological systems requires students to understand how

genes, individuals, populations, and communities are related. For instance, in an

aquarium ecosystem, animals provide carbon dioxide for plants to photosynthesize, and

plants provide oxygen for fish to use in respiration. Disturbing the system at one level can

easily affect others. We are ourselves complex, dissipative systems operating far from

equilibrium, with positive feedback loops providing self-consciousness, operating within

systems and with systems within, with non-local relationships to unknown systems

throughout the universe, which means that we need complexity thinking even to think, or

for that matter to cultivate science literacy skills.

Jones, G. T. (2008, October 1). Heterogeneity of degree and the emergence of cooperation in

complex social networks. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 10(4).

SUMMARY:

How cooperative, social behavior evolved under circumstances of conflicting

individual vs. group interests is an unsolved puzzle. Evolutionary game theory has been

applied to this problem. Applying complexity thinking to the study of such social

dilemmas sheds light on the emergence of cooperation. This study situates agents

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engaging in games involving social dilemmas on complex social networks, permitting the

investigation of how average degree and degree variance, or heterogeneity, impacts the

evolution of pro-social behavior. The study shows that increasing homogeneity of degree

creates effects on the social network that render pro-social behaviors more likely to

emerge. Because it increases overall social welfare, homogeneity of degree is properly

considered as a collective good.

Implications:

Since the first single-celled organism, cooperation has been a crucial factor in the

evolution of living things, including fish, birds, canines, felines, non-human primates,

and humans. The evolution of pro-social behavior when individual and common interests

clash has only been modeled by evolutionary game theory and iconic games such as

Prisoner’s Dilemma, employed as metaphors. Networks, complex systems, and nonlinear

dynamics now pervade scientific thinking: from cell biology to ecology, to all of science,

the challenge is to accurately and completely describe complex networks. Scientists now

know most of the elements and forces involved. Now, mathematical models that replicate

the primary properties of networks must be developed. Applying the tools and

methodologies of complex systems and network analysis to the study of social dilemmas

will shed new light on the problem of cooperation.

96

Davies, K. (2010, September). Sustainable minds: The next step human evolution must

take environmental learning from schools to the realities of society. Alternatives

Journal, 36(5).

SUMMARY:

Human evolution depends on the ability of communities and groups to learn. The

earliest bands of our hominid progenitors survived by learning how to cooperate in

finding food. When hunter-gatherers shared information about cultivation of crops and

the domestication of animals, they made the agricultural revolution possible. Right

through today’s technological revolution, human progress has always depended on

collaborative learning. Our challenge is to build an entire learning society so humankind

can once again evolve after learning how to live sustainably on Earth.

At this point, we face an unprecedented ecological crisis that threatens our well-

being, now putting a question mark over human survival (Georgescu, Meadows, Perccei,

& et. al, 2012)187. Our addiction to economic growth and consumerism has generated a

crisis of many interconnected facets: climate change, natural resource depletion, mass

extinctions, and pollution from toxic wastes. We are already living with the catastrophic

results of overshoot, with survivability now trumping sustainability as the immediate

goal, but until we learn to think and act sustainably, we have run out of future.

Implications:

For learners to gain literacy in sustainability, we must reform the educational

system to serve the needs of an information based, rather than an industrial society, which

is in decline. Training in consumerism, competition and individualism merely renders





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compliant cogs in a vast dysfunctional economic machine. Education emphasizes theory

over ethics, detachment over relationship, and quick fix answers over seeing past the

surface of things. Arrogating to ourselves unmerited superiority over other species, as any

self-conscious runaway species might do while destroying its ecosphere, mainstream

education perpetuates the thought and behavioral patterns that caused the ecological crisis

in the first place.

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Literature Review Essay

Bricmont on Determinism:

Bricmont (2002)188 offers two definitions of determinism, one trivial, and both

uninteresting. Nevertheless, he deems it necessary to dispel reasons for public hostility to the

notion of determinism. Equating determinism with predictability is the trivial definition,

rendering a process deterministic if humans can, or will someday be able to predict its outcome.

Laplace, who provided the classic definition of determinism, never meant to equate it with

predictability. Even a mechanical clock can be made unpredictable if access to it is denied,

making it impossible to determine its initial conditions. This is the basis for the trivial definition:

a process may be unpredictable for accidental reasons. Can we show that unpredictability is in

fact non-deterministic, rather than due to our limited knowledge? Bricmont quotes Jaynes in

identifying the source of this ‘fallacy’ as the projection of private thoughts onto a map of reality,

supposing them to be real properties of Nature, and supposing that personal ignorance reflects

indecision on the part of Nature. Bricmont further quotes Sir James Lighthill in apologizing to

the public for physical scientists “(over-) generalizing in the area of predictability prior to 1960

(Parenthesis mine),…spreading ideas…that…were later proven to be incorrect.”

Bricmont’s second definition of determinism considers a physical system that changes its

state, as reflected numerically, over time. If the values of a set of variables taken at T1 can be

uniquely mapped to their values at T2, T2 to T3, etc., we have Laplace’s conception of the

fundamental principle of determinism, for any arbitrarily taken function F. If the function ever

188 Bricmont, J. (2002, September). Determinism, Chaos and Quantum Mechanics. Accessed

October 19, 2012. Dogma: Journal of Philosophy of Social Science.



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happens to cycle back into a pre-existing state Tj, and from there to an entirely different state

than previously, Tj+1, then the values of the dependent variables are not unique. However, one

could always expand the data set to ensure non-repetition. Nevertheless, this function F is trivial,

because for any sequence of non-repeating numbers multiple functions that map each set into the

next one could always be found. Even if we describe the system in sufficient detail to arrive at

function F, sticking to Laplace’s definition of determinism rather than confusing it with the

criterion of predictability, it is nevertheless difficult to refute determinism because there is only

one reality, and no system, if described in sufficient detail, ever occurs twice in precisely the

same state.

Scientists do look for functions like F, provided they possess explanatory power,

simplicity, and can be used to make predictions. As so defined, the question of determinism is

scientifically irrelevant. As previously defined, it is trivially false. Nevertheless, the cultural

hostility to the concept of determinism is interesting in terms of its effect on science itself. It is

obvious that human behavior is not predictable. Since our descriptions of social systems are

always incomplete, not even a well-tested theory of a specific social phenomenon would lead to

deterministic conclusions. This does not imply that a more detailed, deterministic description

could not be developed. Macroscopic physics describes random processes, which use a reduced

number of variables to describe systems that could be described, in more detail, in deterministic

fashion. In social science, we project free will into the system. This is not an inappropriate

projection of private thoughts onto a map of reality precisely because that map, intrinsically,

includes our private thoughts.

The clearest intuition that springs from our stream of consciousness is that we make

choices. We summons possibilities into existence, creating social reality even as we attempt to

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describe it. If everything is caused by previous events, all the way back to Creation, then we

never really exercise choice because that which we considered to be possible never did and never

will take place, and free will, as known to morals, law, and political life, is thus an illusion.

Within physics, however, the only alternative to determinism is pure randomness. No event has

any cause. Free will does not imply this, but rather that we make conscious choices, not

accounted for by any physical theory. “I” am the causal agent in free will, the denial of which in

political discourse is most complete in totalitarianism, which only permits one “I” to exist: the

will of the sovereign.

The free will of conscious life is simply ‘above’ all physical laws. That is why William

James presumed a dualistic view of the world, for practical purposes whatever the difficulty. If

free will is taken to be an illusion, it is nevertheless a necessary one; whereas, say, the doctrine

of the Trinity is not. Bricmont offers no solution to this conundrum, but merely asks us not to

permit it to support a widespread prejudice for indeterminacy in physical science. Moral and

political science is not physical science because we presume, with James, that the latter is not, in

principle self-reflexive. In physics, deterministic laws yield both better control over processes

and explanations of how they work. Seeking order in chaos is precisely what science is about.

Structure, both physical and mental, determines the success or failure of this enterprise. Fear of

failure based on the presumption that chaos reigns is counter-productive to the entire project of

science.

Chaos theory, far from rendering determinism untenable, actually establishes how order

arises, in a deterministic fashion, at the edge of chaos. The idea is that an arbitrarily small error

in measuring initial conditions makes a difference to the final state of the system after enough

time. Two different systems at a given moment in time, although in very similar (but not

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identical) states, will evolve differently over time. This is the notorious “Butterfly Effect,” which

we have discussed elsewhere. Bricmont adopts the common misinterpretation of this, that had

the butterfly died rather than flapping its wings, the storm elsewhere and later would never have

resulted. Interpreting this deterministically, one might presume, with Bricmont, that with enough

computational power (say, that of Laplace’s Demon), one could cope with the problem. Bar-

Yam’s (2011)189 point, however, is that no amount of drilling down into the initial conditions

will suffice, precisely because the resulting storm emerges from multiple causation, including

perhaps millions of butterflies flapping their wings and cancelling each other out, and also

because the “sensitivity to initial conditions” leads very quickly to exponentially different

results.

Bricmont argues that, in principle, any process will reflect an error in stating its initial

conditions after enough time has elapsed. Since measurements are always made with a known

error, predictions will always fail to some extent at some point. In some systems, this divergence

is slow, whereas in others it is immediate. In non-chaotic systems, increasing the precision of the

initial measurement provides a proportionate increase in the accuracy of the prediction. With

chaotic systems, the increase in accuracy is only fixed rather than proportional. To Bricmont,

there is little to distinguish these two systems in terms of their determinacy, and that is true. Both

systems, chaotic and classical, are in fact determinate. Determinate chaos, however, results from

the repeated iteration of an initial condition in the calculated resulting state, such that a small

change in the control variable creates an exponential change in the calculation. This sort of self-

reflection always occurs in fractals, the mathematical theory of which describes the behavior of

189 Bar-Yam, Y. (2011). Butterfly Effect. Retrieved October 24, 2012, from New England

Complex Systems Institute: http://www.necsi.edu/guide/concepts/butterflyeffect.html

http://www.necsi.edu/guide/concepts/butterflyeffect.html

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such a system. To answer Bricmont, yes this system is chaotic, and yes, it is also determinate.

Nevertheless, it is fundamentally different from a classical system, in which small changes in

initial conditions result in proportionately small changes (even though increasing over time) in

the final systemic state.

Bricmont is not surprised that complex systems, such as the Earth’s atmosphere, are

difficult to predict. Lorenz’s point (1963)190 was that his computerized model of weather

actually consisted of three, rather simple equations that nevertheless exhibited the Lorenz

attractor, shown in an appropriate phase-space diagram as “The Butterfly Effect.” Bricmont

warns against jumping to hasty philosophical conclusions. Chaos theory has not shown the limits

of science, but rather extended science into new realms previously shunned by classical theorists.

These new fields and objects of study enable scientific thought to transcend prior limitations.

Perhaps advance prediction of weather will always remain extremely limited, but even 200 years

ago scientists knew that they could never hope to calculate all the positions of atmospheric

molecules. From this limitation, statistical physics was born, which aids in the study of

atmosphere. The same statistical methods may be applied to other chaotic systems.

Although Laplace introduced the concept of universal determinism, he also emphasized

that humans are and must remain infinitely removed from perfect knowledge of the precise initial

conditions of all particles. Citing Laplace (1902, p9)191:

“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the

forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who

compose it — an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis

— it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies

190 Lorenz, E. N. (1963, March). Deterministic nonperiodic flow. Journal of the Atmospheric

Sciences, 20(2), 130-141.

191 Laplace, P. S. (1902). A philosophical essay on probabilities. (F. W. Truscott, & F. L. Emory,

Trans.) New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain

and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.”

Here, he distinguished clearly between Nature and our knowledge of it. At the beginning of a

seminal essay on probability theory, Laplace presents probability as a method for reasoning from

partial ignorance. The question might be asked as to whether or not any intelligence, demonic or

otherwise, could have such perfect knowledge. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (1962)192

seems to demand a fundamental principle of indeterminacy at the very heart of Natural Law.

Nevertheless, deterministic chaos is distinguishable from simple chaos precisely by the laws that

govern the emergence of order from the edge of chaos, subject to deterministic dynamics.

Certain deterministic chaotic systems generate pseudo-random sequences of numbers,

indistinguishable from those generated from intrinsically random processes, raising a question

mark over whether it is possible to prove the difference.

The description of Newton’s mechanics as “linear” is perhaps unfortunate, considering

the “nonlinearity” of his equations. What is being described here are not exponential equations,

such as F(x) = xn, but rather equations in which the value of F(x) is reiterated in further

calculations of F’(x). This self-replication is found in all fractal calculations, but never in

Newtonian dynamics. One could argue that the extension of Newtonian dynamics to chaotic

systems (such as two pendulums, one of which has its fulcrum placed at the tip of the other,

three-body gravitational or collision problems, etc.) reflects the reemergence of Newtonism at

the cutting edge of science, now embracing the study of problems that were previously too

complex to calculate. Here, again, we find that there is some truth to Bricmont’s argument.

192 Heisenberg, W. (1962). Physics and philosophy: The revolution in modern science. New York:

Harper & Row.

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However, it cannot be the whole truth. Atomicity of cause and effect is at the core of his

arguments: the idea that every phenomenon has a single, efficient cause. The entire power of his

argument fails in the light of multiple causation, which results from the combined causal powers

of more than one system element. When two or more system elements interact at a nodal point,

to say that what emerges is determinate, precisely because completely determined by the

interaction is one thing. However, to say that the characteristics of the emergent phenomenon are

completely determined by the properties of the interacting elements is not to say that the whole is

not greater than the sum of its parts. Atomism fails to account for the emergence of new

properties and characteristics, which cannot be said to have pre-existed in the elements prior to

their interaction. It may not be possible to prove that a sequence of random numbers emerged

from a purely random process, but why would it be necessary to presume that the process itself,

such as, for instance, the radioactive decay of particles or the existence of white background

noise, from which the random sequence is generated, is anything other than indeterminate?

Because it is difficult to refute atomistic determinism, which presumes that there is

nothing new under the sun, does not mean that it is necessary to presume it in the first place.

Aristotle made the fundamental error in Western logic on which this is based in his treatment of

modal logic. He not only defined what is possible as what is not necessary not to be, but further

defined that which is possible as that which either has been, or will be (Kenny, 2004)193. This is a

circular argument, defining possibility in terms of necessity. If Bricmont finds determinacy to be

uninteresting from this viewpoint, I concur with him wholeheartedly. There is no reason to

193 Kenny, A. (2004). A new history of Western Philosophy (Vol. 1): Ancient philosophy. Oxford:

Clarendon Press of Oxford University.

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presume that two or more elements of a system would ever interact under such circumstances as

to realize their cumulative causal powers in the first place.

Atomistic causation created the idea of the homunculus, the tiny human being that was I

contained in the seeds of the seeds of my primordial forefathers. There is no reason to presume

that my parents would ever meet, much less that the particular, random gene combinations from

which my genetic code was formed would ever occur. Even at that, someone other than “I” may

have emerged from the process of embryogenesis. To say that life is determinately generated

from pre-existing life under current environmental conditions is one thing. To say that my

existence was predetermined from the original conformation of the universe is quite another.

With this in mind, Laplacean universal determinism stands and falls, both at the same

time. Yes, everything that exists is in some sense determined by its pre-existing conditions.

However, the universal knowledge needed by Laplace’s demon is precisely God’s

foreknowledge in creation itself, with which even John Calvin considered it foolish to meddle

(1975)194. Whenever applying mathematical models to concrete systems, devising a

mathematical model simple enough to analyze yet adequate to describe some part of the system’s

dynamics can be extremely difficult. First, one must have some pre-conception as to which

variables are relevant and how they evolve. Chaos theory, the mathematics for which is already

well-developed, is not to be confused with complexity and self-organization. The technical

meaning of the word “chaos” in nonlinear dynamics does not expand to its meaning of

“disorder” in the social and philosophical sciences.

194 Calvin, J. (1975). Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition. (F. L. Battles, Trans.)

Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Erdman's Publishing Co.

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Bricmont takes up two notions of probability, the classical and Bayesian models, then

ends in discussing the Copenhagen interpretation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. As

previously, he dispels much of the confusion that results from logic poorly applied to these

questions. For instance, he shows the scientific approach to certainty through the law of large

numbers to be a process by which the effect of human ignorance is progressively marginalized,

to within arbitrarily small limits. Bricmont holds tightly to Einstein’s hope that some theory

might be found that shows the fundamentally statistical character of quanta to be grounded in

incomplete descriptions of physical systems, rather than in the fabric of reality itself. In any

complete description, quantum statistics would take the same position as statistical within the

framework of classical mechanics.

Physicists who believe that God does not roll the dice, such as Einstein and Bricmont,

argue that quantum mechanics does not provide a complete description of a physical system, for

which a corrected theory would provide descriptions of all observable behavior, thereby

exposing the operation of the hidden variables that lie unobserved at the heart of the system. The

Copenhagen interpretation insists on the intrinsic indeterminacy of some measurements, for

which quantitative bounds can be set. In their famous Gedankenexperiment, Einstein, Podolsky,

and Rosen (Afriat & Selleri, 1999)195 argued that any adequate explanation of nonlocal

entanglement must involve hidden variables to avoid spooky action at a distance (Newton’s

fundamental presumption about gravity).

In his 1932 book, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1955)196, John von

195 Afriat, A., & Selleri, F. (1999). The Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen paradox: In atomic, nuclear

and particle physics. New York: Plenum Publishing Corp.

196 von Neumann, J. (1955). Mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. (R. T. Beyer,

Trans.) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Neumann confronted the issue of determinism vs. non-determinism, presenting proof that

quantum mechanics could not possibly be derived by statistical approximation from a

deterministic theory of the type used in classical mechanics. In 1982, Alain Aspect (2004)197

demonstrated that quantum physics requires a notion of reality substantially different from that

of classical physics, implying a complete revision of the concept of determinism,

notwithstanding Bricmont’s conclusion that “not the slightest argument in favor of the idea that

determinism is refuted is to be found in modern physics, whether in chaos theory or in quantum

mechanics.” (Bricmont, 2002)198

John Bell's theorem, born out in actual experimental results, demonstrated the

impossibility of local hidden variables, leaving only nonlocal hidden variable theories as

potentially viable. The de Broglie-Bohm theory supports Bell’s theorem, and clarifies the

apparent paradox. The theory specifies no hidden variables, other than particle positions, such as

spin and angular momentum, determined prior to measurements. How measurement interactions

occur does not depend only on the complete state of the system (ψ,Q), but also on the

experimental set up. Every measurement other than position reflects interaction between the

system and the measuring apparatus rather than revealing pre-existent properties of the system.

The fact that non-local action at a distance is permitted supports Bell’s Theorem.

Colbeck and Renner (2011)199 proved that no extension of quantum mechanical theory,

with or without hidden variables, whether local or non-local, can more accurately predict

197 Aspect, A. (2004). John Bell and the second quantum revolution (foreword). In J. Bell,

Speakable and unspeakble in quantum Mechanics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

198 Bricmont, J. (2002, September). Determinism, Chaos and Quantum Mechanics. Accessed

October 19, 2012. Dogma: Journal of Philosophy of Social Science.


199 Colbeck, R., & Renner, R. (2011). No extension of quantum theory can have improved

predictive power. Nature Communications, 2(8).


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quantum mechanical outcomes, permitting free observer choice of measurement settings. If, as

they specifically state, quantum theory really is complete, requiring as Aspect showed in 1982 a

fundamentally different view of reality from the atomistic, C/N view, one may be forgiven for

suspecting Aristotle’s circular definition of possibility as lying at the heart of the matter. One

plausible interpretation of quantum theory, the Many-Worlds view (Wolf, 1990)200, actually

restates this definition, presuming that all possible quantum states must branch into alternate

realities. Arising as this circular definition does from the very discussion of causation and

determinism sparked by Einstein’s 1905 work itself (On the electrodynamics of moving bodies,

1905a201; On a heuristic point of view about the creation and conversion of light, 1905b202), one

suspects that the new concept of reality required by any attempt to explain QED (the most

successful predictive paradigm in the history of science) also requires us to re-examine our

concepts of causality, probability, possibility and determinism as well.

Causality in Complex Dynamic Systems

Students and teachers may use different philosophical frameworks for describing

and explaining complex phenomena that involve emergence, self-organization, and

stochastic processes than those used by experts who construct explanatory models and

solve problems involving complex systems (Raia, 2008)203. For this reason, students in

200 Wolf, F. A. (1990). Parallel universes: The search for other worlds. New York: Touchstone

div of Simon & Schuster.

201 Einstein, A. (1905a). On the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Annals of Physics, 17(1), 891-

921.

202 Einstein, A. (1905b). On a heuristic point of view about the creation and conversion of light.

Annals of Physics, 17(6), 132-148.

203 Raia, F. (2008, January). Causality in complex dynamic systems: A challenge in Earth systems

science education. Journal of Geoscience Education, 56(1).

109

entry level earth science classes may experience difficulties in achieving an Earth

Systems Science perspective. Cognition of mechanisms that cause Earth systems to

evolve remains at a preliminary, formative state, unable to explain what evolution

actually is. They imagine some unique cause of observed patterns as the basis of a linear

chain of cause and effect. An example of such faulty understanding is provided by V-

shape flight pattern of migrating geese. This pattern, which no individual goose knows

anything about, originates in the spontaneous collective behavior of the geese, not with

some “leader” goose whipping the flock into formation, or some “flight gene.” The

emergent V-shape probably reduces air resistance, increases visibility, or provides some

other advantage, resulting only from the position each bird maintains relative to its

neighbors.

The same linear mono-causal approach (LMC-A) explains Northern Hemispheric

glaciations as resulting from average temperature changes caused by meteorites. This approach

tends to conceptualize the dynamics of complex systems in static, disjointed terms rather than

resulting from the complex interactions between elements of the system, and of the system with

its environment. Focusing on the isolated behavior of system elements, rather than how these

interactions evolve, a single causal force is then mistakenly identified, operating within a linear

chain of unique causal events. This is the atomistic causation implied by C/N systematics, but it

does little to explain complex natural phenomena, which exhibit processes such as emergence

and self-organization in which the entire pattern or behavior is more than just the sum of its

parts. Narrow concepts of causality must be replaced by an enriched repertoire of causality

principles to enhance understanding of natural phenomena.

110

Aristotle’s formulation (c. 350 BCE) distinguished between formal, material, efficient,

and teleological causes. Since Galileo this concept has been narrowed to efficient, mechanistic

causation. A caused B, which cannot cause or even have an effect on A because B came later

than A. The atomism of Leucippus was later added by C/N systematics to obscure any concept of

multiple causation. Mechanistic explanations also imply that the system is fully determined by

earlier stages of its own inherent process. All phenomena are reduced to a set of initial conditions

sufficient for it to occur. In C/N systematics, time is reversible, cause and effect occur in nuclear

chains, and physical science is taught in these terms. Because all sciences are thereby reduced to

adjuncts to physical-mathematical science in a systematic, reductionist formula no longer even

applicable to physical-mathematical systems, students are provided no means for grappling with

complexity.

This linear causal structure of thought is often found in students’ reasoning about science.

For instance, atoms and molecules are formed by attractive and repulsive forces. Rather than a

self-organizing phenomenon, crystallization of a mineral is seen as caused by initial conditions

determined by earlier process stages. The real hierarchical nature of the process, with several

interacting levels, is completely missed. Specific rules of molecular interaction are non-linear,

with shape emerging on a higher level, just like the V-shape of geese in flight. This shape defines

boundary conditions that constrain molecular behavior. Crystalline structure cannot be reduced

to fluid molecular density or to their interactions, but is determined by properties of the higher

level structure that are neither present in nor deducible from molecular properties. The system as

a whole emerges from rules of interactions between elements that also continuously evolve.

Emergent phenomena control various interactions, continuously defining new boundary

conditions. Crystalline structure thus emerges from while simultaneously influencing molecular

111

behavior. The systems concept of positive feedback describes this process: with upward and

downward causation.

So, if the emergent phenomenon is fully determined by boundary conditions, we have a

system whose boundary conditions continuously change. In the example above it is necessary to

note that the distributions of the molecules and their properties are conceived as causal

determinants because they influence and control the evolution of the system. The emergent

boundary conditions control systemic evolution as well and, therefore, they are also conceived as

causal determinants. These causal determinants and their relations control and influence each

other, giving rise to complex couplings. Raia cites Basca and Grotzer as having shown that a

simple linear model of causality that establishes a one-to-one correspondence between cause and

effect is instead often utilized by students. They also found that students do not consider that a

cause can emerge from an evolving system. In the example above, the emergent boundary

conditions, and the varied interactions of components could be ignored by students as causal

determinants, impeding a deeper understanding of the system's behavior as a whole (Perkins and

Grotzer, cited in Raia, 2008)204.

Upward and downward causation are simultaneous precisely because the molecules are

part of the crystal’s structure, participating in emergent boundary conditions. Aristotle’s

abstraction of efficient cause does not describe this kind of causal relationship. Simultaneous

causal interactions arise in many situations, including human relations. Students often construct a

one-way linear chain that does not describe them.

The system is also coupled at the environmental level in a similar manner, like a feedback

loop that amplifies a small change until all components are affected and a new configuration

204 Raia, F. (2008, January). Causality in complex dynamic systems: A challenge in Earth systems

science education. Journal of Geoscience Education, 56(1).

112

forms. The intrinsic properties of couplings between elements, their distribution, and rules of

interaction amplify the change during each iteration of the loop. Classical equilibrium systems

generally exhibit negative feedbacks, suppressing behavior that deviates from homeostasis. The

emergent configuration is an equilibrium state when minimum energy function is reached. It is a

dissipative structure when the system exchanges energy and matter with its environment,

decreasing its own entropy while nevertheless increasing that of its environment.

Transformations, recursive adaptations, and coupling of the emergent system with its

environment are all processes of causal interactions in self-organization, rather than of a linear,

atomistic cause-effect nature. These changes regulate the survival of the system over time,

maintaining systemic coherence within its range of dynamic behavior in an integrated, holistic

process. A simplistic conception of causality does not permit recognition of the continual

evolution of causal control, providing only a superficial knowledge of natural phenomena

insufficient for college level work.

The reduction of explanation to atomistic causes, or even “joint” causes in the C/N

paradigm restricts Aristotle’s four ways of answering the question of why something happens.

Reviewing Aristotelian causality actually aids in understanding complex systems, providing a

formal basis for a non-reductionist system theoretical paradigm. Aristotle argues that complex

relations exist among four principles of causation: efficient, material, formal, and teleological.

Although all of these ways of answering the question “Why?” may not be required in every case,

they are all important in explaining the complex patterns of life. As an original philosophical

naturalist, he derived these concepts of causality from the study of life itself. Four basic types of

controls in the context of Earth Systems Science may be distinguished utilizing and

reinterpreting the four Aristotelian principles of causality: 1) Efficient causation, the standard,

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material sense, may be a force or agent acting in a temporal cause-effect relation, resulting in an

interrelated temporal sequence of states or phenomena. Here we may observe an interactional

exchange of energy between molecules as described in the example of crystal formation;

2) Material causation is the role of material properties at a given level in the evolution of a

system. Potential energy, or the specific energy of state is provided by the type of molecules or

their density distribution throughout a fluid, as in the example of crystal formation. Material

causation in plate tectonics is greatly influenced by the atmospheric presence of small quantities

of dissolved water. Oceans modify lithospheric strength that controls plate tectonics, establishing

causal relations among different systemic levels; 3) Formal Causation is the pattern of

organization, or structure of a system: for instance, the crystalline structure that emerges through

interactions defining boundary conditions while constraining the crystal growth behavior.

Different hierarchical levels may be simultaneously involved, such as the lower level of

interacting molecules exchanging energy with the emergent level of crystal structure. Plate

tectonics provides an example of formal causation as surface boundary condition change,

exerting formal control on mantle dynamics; 4) Functional Causation does not refer to an

external purpose or intention, or plan, but rather describes regulatory function that maintains

system coherence within its dynamic range of behavior, influencing its chance of survival. This

is a function of coupling between emergent properties of the system and environmental inputs.

Such couplings control complex behavior.

This expanded principle of causality can describe adaptation and self-organization.

Considering the system lithosphere as a dissipative structure (self-organizing by exporting

entropy), the minimization of dissipation in the lithosphere may be the organizing rule for global

reorganization. This explanation is on the level of functional causality. Expert understanding of a

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system correlates with the experts' reality maps that represent phenomena and their

interrelationships in terms of a network of concepts and principles. A student may describe an

organizing rule without fully understanding its meaning.

The level of description and analysis will determine how distinctions are made among

the types of causality. Absolute differences between lower and higher levels do not exist,

depending on the chosen level of observation. Varied interpretation of causal principles may be

expected as intrinsic to the analysis of complex dynamic systems. Nevertheless, causal

relationships in Earth Systems Science cannot be restricted to mechanistic causality. Complex

systems can best be explained through the complementary use of different types of causality, as

derived from a modified Aristotelian framework.

Complex Adaptive Systems as a Generative Metaphor

We all have a natural tendency to interpret each event as having a cause, in an

unending sequence (Brown, 2008)205. This open-loop worldview is the basis for a

reactionary approach to problem-solving. Usually, when we identify a single cause for an

event, we search no further for explanations of it. Non-linearity, however, implies that

cause and effect are distant in space-time. A false cause may be identified simply because

it is near the event we seek to explain. Symptoms rather than the underlying cause of

problems draw our attention. Whereas intuition results from observing and interpreting

subtle clues, complex systems may nevertheless be counter-intuitive.

With respect to such systems, intuition enables one to grasp needed changes

without dissecting all the parts of the system. However, to fully understand complex

205 Brown, C. (2008, September). The use of complex adaptive systems as a generative metaphor

in an actuon research study of an organization. The Qualitative Report, 13(3).

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adaptive systems, we need to develop new ways of thinking. These depart from

traditional methods by which we understand events, such as taking the external

environment as static. We may need to stand back from the details of a system, and take

an overall view of the whole. The C/N approach requires us to split systems into their

constituent parts for analysis, making it impossible to understand complex issues that

emerge from the functioning of the system as a whole.

Complex adaptive systems are non-linear and unpredictable. Such complexity

should not be confused with complicated. A complicated system can be fully understood

in terms of its details and parts. A system in a complex state cannot be fully explained in

terms of its details, without taking into account a functional explanation of interactions

between its elements. The whole may be best perceived in terms of pattern recognition.

Even if we fully understand a complex system, it may not be possible to predict what will

happen next, due to the presence of stochastic processes. In a non-linear system, the

whole may be greater than the sum of its parts, exhibiting behaviors that cannot be

described by a parts inventory.

For complex systems, we take in data from their environments, look for

regularities, and create internal models that may describe and predict some aspect of their

future behavior. Adaptive organizations under appropriate leadership demonstrate

cultural competency, know how to manage knowledge, and create synergy through

diversity while holding to a holistic vision. Organizational adaptability is always in flux

because the environment is dynamic. Leaders who understand the organization’s history

and how it has succeeded in the past must plan adaptive strategies for possible future

scenarios. Adaptive leadership is open to changes going on around us, effective decision-

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making must harmonize with these changes, and decisions must be implemented

appropriately.

According to the rational decision-making model, a single individual must have

enough information to direct all aspects of a complex, evolving system. If the system

itself is more complex than any given individual (Bar-Yam Y. , 1997)206, that is not

possible. The effective approach is to push control downward, decentralizing decision-

making while clearly articulating a corporate vision and providing the information

resources needed to effect local changes. Management consultants have adopted adaptive

systems as a metaphor for the behavior of complex organizations. As a generative

metaphor, the concept cultivates fresh perspectives and acquisition of new schemas.

Metaphors make comparisons between systems that are not literally alike, by which

nevertheless new understandings may be developed.

Human Health as a Complex System

Human health is best seen as a complex concept involving many different but

interconnected factors resulting in the experience of health construct (Topolski, 2009)207. Being

non-linear, any change in the input of one factor will exert a disproportionate effect on the output

of the whole. The nature of health, bio-medically defined in terms of death, is actually close to

that of life itself, both of which are non-linear systems. Increased genetic diversity and

complexity generally increases the maximum function and survival potential for species,



207 Topolski, S. (2009, May 2). Understanding health from a complex systems perspective. Journal

of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 15, 749-754.

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enabling competitive advantage in an environment requiring non-linear dynamics. Because our

life and culture are complex, so are health care systems.

From qualitative factor analysis and independent consensus emerge six key, interacting

factors that determine human health. In related pairs, they are physical and environmental,

emotional and social, cognitive and semiotic, which reflects the meaning of health in terms of the

experience of pathology. From these, we derive our experience of health as a feeling of well-

being. The dynamic tension between these opposites creates interaction and exchange. All of

these elements taken together describe one’s theoretical maximum health potential. Although

limited resources and other constraints may prevent health maximization, a minimal sum must be

maintained for survival. Health is both a measurable physical state and a subjective patient health

experience. A small negative change in one health variable may produce catastrophic changes in

health resulting in death.

Harvey’s original model of the circulatory system over three hundred years ago was the

first medical model, and since then modeling has achieved status as a valid and vital research

method. Complex systems researchers have many modeling tools, including network dynamics

to track and predict the spread of epidemics. Time series are sequences of data points taken

randomly and at uniform intervals. This may reveal signs of disease in real time that were

previously unknown, from physiological data such as that produced by the electrocardiogram,

electroencephalogram, and human gait studies. Cellular automata consist of grids of cells, each

exhibiting one of a finite number of states. These can model complex patterns in heart

conduction, behavior, and other phenomena. The relationship of complexity to entropy and chaos

is defined by information theory and Shannon entropy. Patient behavior may exhibit catastrophe

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cusps, which are large and sudden changes. Complex patterns frequently emerge from a very few

simple rules reiterated over time.

Unlike the many closed systems near equilibrium seen in physics or chemistry, living,

adaptive systems are very open to their environment, which they must be to consume energy and

maintain equilibrium far from the entropy level. Log-normal and other logarithmic distributions

with long tails characterize data produced by living systems. Such curves represent the

cumulative probability of many developmental events multiplied together because independent.

For instance, Simonton observed that human productivity distributed across average lifetimes

rises rapidly to maximum productivity and professional function, declining slowly after mid-

adulthood. Such curves provide means to measure function over time, possibly forming the basis

for a model to describe and measure healthy physiological function and biological survival over

time.

The limited data measuring the six parameters of health follow a similar log-normal

pattern. Robustness and entropy must be included in the complex systems health model.

Organisms increase robustness by building structure while losing pluripotent flexibility in the

process. This development increases the capacity to withstand environmental challenges and to

reproduce, limited by the entropy of ageing which reduces flexibility and robustness through

death. Every closed system (no longer processing energy from its environment) tends at

equilibrium to move from higher energy and order states to low, which measured as entropy

appears as increase. Complex systems also exhibit asymmetric growth far from equilibrium. At

first chaotic and unpredictable, these states self-organize into calmer and more complex systems

as excess energy disperses. Too much energy dispersal may reduce a complex system’s available

energy to do work, causing the system to run down and become less complex, more

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homogeneous, and eventually unchanging, which is entropic death. The relationship between

order and entropy can be represented as an inverted U curve with a long right tail in the direction

of increasing entropy.

Living organisms begin at lower entropy, growing towards greater order and complexity,

removing entropy from their own system as they absorb energy from their environment. Thereby

they increase overall entropy, increasing in organization and complexity until their energy flow

stops or exceeds the ability to create more complex structure and function. Energy inflow

continuing beyond this point reduces complexity to simpler and more chaotic patterns. Age

reverses the growth process, decreasing complexity towards dispersion in death and equilibrium

with the environment, when entropy regains the upper hand. It is reasonable to measure human

health as maximum functional ability because it reflects a widely reported pattern of peak human

physical function versus environmental stimulation that is identical to the inverted U curve of

ability plotted against entropy. Peak physical function occurs at optimum stimulation with

optimal available energy. Health is maximized with complexity a maximum near the edge of

chaos with ideal entropy for the system’s survival.

This new health model, grounded in the probability of the six parameters of health,

postulates that maximum health results from a dynamic process in which each component

contributes a characteristic pattern to the maximum health achievable, viewed as maximal

complexity. Health is the sum of all six curves and is unique for each individual across their life

stages. Curve summation produces a more robust model of health, whereas summing multiple

curves makes each of n curves’ effect on total human health potential 1/n, depending on the

normalization, of what it would be independently. This reflects the diversity, uniqueness, and

equality of all human beings, created with the same human potential.

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Complex systems thinking provides an excellent means to describe and measure the

many dimensions of human health. While yet in need of further experimental validation, this

model suggests a better means to describe health at one point in time and over a lifetime. The

level of an organism’s healthy interconnectedness is measured by complexity, and entropy may

reflect the amount of available energy for health. Taken together, these two measures concisely

correlate diverse clinical observations while permitting humanistic concerns for a patient’s

personal experience of health and illness. Holism, diversity, robustness and flexibility are what

we would expect from a robust health model, not discarding the old while suggesting better ways

to understand and measure new aspects of health. Here, the concepts of identifiable pathologies

and subjective illness are united into one conceptual health model, and possibly contribute to

further discussion, study and promotion of human health.

Evaluating Complex Healthcare Systems

To meet the standards of ‘evidence-based medicine,’ demanding proof of effectiveness

and efficacy in treatment, researchers in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) have a

particular interest in the question of how best to assess complex healthcare systems, as they

struggle with demands from providers, insurers, purchasers, regulators and patients (Boon,

MacPherson, Fleishman, et al., 2007)208. Four basic CAM approaches are evaluated: Complex

interventions research, the approach of the Medical Research Council (MRC), UK; Whole

Systems Research (WSR), the approach of the International Group, Vancouver, CA 2002; CAM

systems research, the approach of the Norwegian National Research Center in Complementary

and Alternative Medicine (NAFKAM); Whole Medical Systems Research, the approach of the

208 Boon, H., MacPherson, H., Fleishman, S., Grimsgaard, S., Koithan, M., Norheim, N. J., &

Walach, H. (2007, September). Evaluating complex healthcare systems: A critique of four approaches.

Evidence Based Complementary Alternative Medicine, 4(3), 279-285.

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National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), US. All four

approaches describe randomized clinical trials (RCTs) as one tool available among many

methodologies.

The conventional medical debate over research design issues occurs in parallel with a

new focus on integrative medical teams and the increasing complexity of treatment interventions.

Explanatory RCTs are insufficient to assess these interventions and their outcomes. Such

controlled trials involve administration of a placebo to the control to hold all causal elements

constant, leaving only the intervention under investigation to explain any differences in outcome.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria are standardized, as is also the intervention under investigation.

Randomized assignment of participants to the intervention or the control group(s), and double

blinding of the participants and investigators are also used to eliminate internal threats to validity

of trial results.

Complex interventions are difficult to assess. Each approach has its own language and

conceptual descriptions of the phenomena, making it difficult to communicate and build

consensus across approaches. Different terms may be used to describe essentially the same

phenomenon. Here ‘complex healthcare systems’ are defined as complex interventions to

improve health and prevent disease. ‘Complex’ denotes interactions between active components

of the intervention, with the effects of the ‘whole’ intervention or system more than the sum of

its parts. This derives from the inherent self-organizing property of complex systems, with

emergence of new properties that cannot be observed when investigating only the component

parts. Both the human body and systems of healthcare are complex, self-organizing systems from

which emerge new properties through interactions between component elements.

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All four approaches consider many healthcare interventions to be complex, and recognize

that the pharmacological RCT research model is insufficient to assess these. Components of

complex interventions must be described and understood as actually practiced. All explicitly

recommend using mixed research methods, including RCTs and qualitative methods. An

interdisciplinary team is needed to achieve the range of methodological techniques required to

conduct the research programs. Developments in methodology can be applied to both CAM and

conventional therapies. All four approaches describe ways to investigate complex systems,

irrespective of content.

All four perspectives use different terms to describe overlapping concepts. All recognize

that the effects of multiple interacting components are not merely additive. Some linearity is

found in the MRC statement, but it is not decisive over underlying, multiplicative assumptions.

This is a relatively superficial difference because the underlying assumptions are similar for all

four perspectives. Some emphasize conventional medical over CAM interventions, but all four

approaches include both. All four approaches differ on the priority of specific medical research

questions, and whether a staged approach is needed, with WSR specifically refuting the need for

a step-wise approach to clinical evaluation, but arguing for a cyclical and flexible research

program. According to NCCAM, the effects of the whole intervention should be studied first,

followed by investigation of the contribution of individual components, with final study of the

mechanisms of action. On the other hand, the MRC focused on pilot studies to specify a

definitive RCT, with long-term implementation and surveillance.

This highlights a related difference: how the ‘definitive’ RCT fits into the process of

assessing complex healthcare systems. WSR, NCCAM and the NAFKAM all describe RCTs as

one tool available among many methodologies; whereas the MRC insists on designing and

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carrying out a ‘definitive’ RCT, although it does encourage using a range of other methods in

other phases of the research. Among the other three, there is consensus that the classical RCT is

not sufficient, although there are no suggestions as to what is to replace it.

All four perspectives shed some light on how to asses complex healing systems; however,

only the NAFKAM and the MRC provided specific models using distinct steps to develop a

research program. Only general statements about how to proceed with research were proposed by

the others. More discussion of how to actually conduct this research appropriately is still

required.

Jay Forrester’s Shock to the System

Using mechanical analogues for deeper processes, just as Sigmund Freud had founded

his model of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego on an analogy to the hydraulic pump, Forrester

built a modeling language on servomechanisms, which is a mechanical device hooked to a

control sensor (Kleiner, 2009)209. The first signals from temperature sensors to a building’s

heating unit cause it to dispense heat, which may continue after the building becomes too hot.

The thermostatic signals for cooling again take time to change the temperature, and building

temperature again oscillates in fluctuations that have nothing to do with actual temperatures,

but rather with asynchronous time delays between the heating and measuring devices.

Forrester identified wild production cycles as resulting from the same problem. His

manual calculations of the behavior of production, employment, inventories and order backlogs

as dictated by then current GE management policies revealed that, even with steady demand

from consumers, the same instabilities in production would still exist. He traced a series of order

209 Kleiner, A. (2009, February 4). Jay Forrester's shock to the system. Retrieved May 8, 2010,

from The Sustainability Webpage: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/beyond-green/jay-forrester-shock-to-the-

system/

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/beyond-green/jay-forrester-shock-to-the-system/

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/beyond-green/jay-forrester-shock-to-the-system/

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fluctuations that piled up at the factory back to the retail stores, plotting inventories to goods

on order, weekly, at every point in the distribution chain. Crunching these numbers into a

computer model that translated policies into algorithms to demonstrate their effects over time,

he showed that his model exhibited the same wild oscillations observed in the distribution

chain. Forrester’s model incorporated feedback in the same way that any system will regulate

itself to achieve stability. The influence of feedback is cyclical. The effect always influences the

cause. Feedback relationships in a distribution chain could interact for years, producing complex

results completely mysterious to one who fails to understand the way policies interact over

time.

During the first quarter of GE’s data, retail appliance sales increased by 10%. Retailers then

ordered more appliances to refill their inventories. Because it took weeks for orders to work their way

through channels and then for the GE factories to ship products, retailers panicked, piling on more

orders than they needed. Distributors and wholesalers then piled on orders accordingly, jumping orders

at the factory by 51%. By the time all the orders finally arrived on the showroom floor, appliance stores

had too many, so they cut orders and returned extra stock to their warehouses. Distributors then sent

them back to GE, causing factory production to drop 3% percent below where it had started, which was

disastrous. Orders rose and crashed in succession. A 10% percent jump in sales was amplified again and

again along the distribution chain, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of excess

appliances on warehouse skids. Managers’ reactions to outside problems, such as seasonal demand and

competitors’ actions, exacerbated the situation because they had no understanding of how the system

worked. To smooth out the fluctuation, they needed to eliminate levels of distribution, or perhaps react

more slowly to surges in orders.

Forrester’s computer model of GE’s supply chain was transformed by MIT students into the

“MIT Beer Game.” Forrester did more than streamline the production-distribution cycle. Engineering

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concepts such as irrelevant signals and the application of nonlinear equations all had implications for

management. Rather than resulting from outside forces such as the actions of competitors, market

trends, and regulatory agencies, most of the problems faced by managers derive from the unintended

consequences of the leaders’ own ideas and efforts. Forrester further refined his model into a computer

modeling language called DYNAMO. It represented managerial decisions in terms of the stocks and flows

of fluid dynamics. These simulations explained how gradual accumulations and accelerations of forces

may creep up slowly and unnoticed, until one day the entire system shifts when it reaches a cascade, or

tipping point. These models require nonlinear calculus, with thousands of iterative calculations that

could only be performed by computers.

Corporate bosses often lost interest when Forrester’s models indicated the need for

fundamental change, simply paying his consulting fees and then ignoring his suggestions. Forrester

considered managers’ self-images to be so deeply embedded they could not appreciate alternatives. By

1970, the Club of Rome had invited Forrester to use system dynamics to model the entire world

economic system. Organized in 1968 to investigate the human predicament, they sensed that world

population, pollution, poverty, resource depletion, crime, terrorism, and youth rebellion were all

interrelated. If so, it might not be possible to fix any of the problems piecemeal, but rather a holistic

approach to solutions may be needed.

With a $400,000 grant pledge from Volkswagen Foundation for a viable research project,

Forrester finally brought them to agreement. He told them it would take two full weeks for any of them

to understand his model. They agreed, leaving him only days to organize a massive conference. He

began designing a model of the problem on the flight home, converted by the end of the week into a

computer model, which he dubbed “World.”

World was a computerized network of interrelated policies, all affecting each other over time, as

the model evolved. Various parameters affected each other, a rise in population, for instance, causing

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increases in demand, employment and capital investment, exacerbating even further population growth

until other forces intervened. The model contained many such interactions, which all came to life when

researchers ran the simulation. It would then calculate simulations of the fate of the world over two

centuries, based on varying parameters. Forrester could not devote full time to refining, testing, and

reporting on the model, so he delegated the job to a team of MIT-based researchers led by Donella and

Dennis Meadows. Donella’s background was in biophysics and ecology, with a view toward the second

law of thermodynamics. Dennis had modeled pork belly futures. They both volunteered for the job.

Meanwhile, Jay Forrester completed his third book, World Dynamics (1973)210. It attracted attention

because it projected interrelationships between economic growth, pollution, and resource

consumption. With no corrective action, the book projected that industrial civilization would overshoot

its ecological and population limits, bringing in its wake painful collapse.

That is the nature of exponential growth, which accelerates as it builds on itself, leading to

serious problems not seen until after the fact. The MIT researchers tracked five key variables: food and

industrial production, population, pollution, and depletion of natural resources. Mutual growth in these

variables affected each other, to a dangerous degree. A variety of proposed fixes, such as more

investment, increasing agricultural yield, and raising prices, did little to head off calamitous decreases in

population, and rising pollution as industrial civilization faltered. Nevertheless, unchecked industrial

growth will soon drown in its own toxic pollution. The presumed solution to every problem, continued

industrial growth, simply will not work.

Supply Chain Management is no Beer Game

The economic crisis of 2009 resulted when Just-In-Time practices within manufacturing

supply chains led to the rapid and worldwide decline of business as orders declined or

210 Forrester, J. W. (1973). World dynamics. Cambridge, MA: Wright-Allen Press.

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disappeared (Sprague & Callarman, 2010)211. Racing down the supply chain, the contraction

amplified, resulting in an 8% decline in consumer purchases of electronic goods during the final

quarter of 2009, while product shipments fell 10% and chip shipments dropped 20%. Here, the

information flow was speedy and predictably downward. As one CEO reported, demand shrank

so rapidly he wasn't even sure how much to cut orders, with no knowledge whatsoever because

nobody knew what was going on. For the quarter ended November 29, 2009 Best Buy's net

income fell 77%. Best Buy’s suppliers knew even less about consumer demand. The slashing

began. Manufacturers slashed production, then cut even more, while Best Buy fourth-quarter

revenue fell by 42%.

The information flow within any supply chain is dominated by critical management

forecasts which drive the physical flows. This is a problem even with Supply Chain Management

(SCM) systems linked to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The further up the supply

stream one goes (meaning offshore to the United States), the more serious problems become as

their nature changes.

China Daily, The National English Language Newspaper, reported on September 10,

2009 that China was "to lead world out of global economic gloom, says Schwab (Klaus Schwab,

founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum)… (China) will emerge from the depths of

the global downturn first and in better shape than any other country. ..." Since promulgating

China's Reform & Opening Up program in 1980, The People's Republic of China's Five Year

Plans (including the current one) include infrastructure improvements to increase their logistics

capacity. Improvements in transportation capacity make it easier to move goods and people from

211 Sprague, L. G., & Callarman, T. E. (2010, Winter). Supply management is not a beer game.

Journal of Supply Chain Management., 46(1).

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eastern to far western provinces of the country. Reduction of logistics time and cost within China

will expand domestic markets, and improve average incomes.

According to A.T. Kearney, China’s 2007 logistics efficiency in electronics and food

incurred 40-50% greater costs than the United States, with Chinese average logistics inventories

of 51 days in China compared to seven days in the United States, and trucks averaged 50%

empty miles. During China’s recent 2008 New Year holiday, ten days during which huge

numbers of people move back to their home bases, widespread severe snow and ice storms

marked the beginning of the holiday, with concomitant major power failures. Although rolling

stock was adjusted to cope with the annual surge in demand, the storms knocked out the

increased rail capacity, stranding tens of thousands of travelers in Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and

other major rail hubs. This lasted for a week, interrupting travel plans for more than 150 million

people. The government apologized for the serious inconvenience, promising that the situation

would not happen again. A critical factor causing the severity of the crisis was that no one had

timely and accurate information about the status of rail and power backup capacity throughout

the system, leaving bottlenecks jammed with no exit.

Necessary improvements in physical flows are underway, but China must also develop

and implement supporting information flows to beef China’s passenger and freight carrying

capacity to world-class status. China has weak experience with management information

systems. It has been only several years since the entire Central Planning System was closed

down, with Ministries to disburse detailed plans no longer in existence. Accounting systems are

slowly being implemented through joint ventures that sprang up during the 1980s; nevertheless

the theory and practice of modern management are new to the country. China has never had any

management education. Texts that may have been on library shelves in 1966 were destroyed

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during the Cultural Revolution. Information systems that support data generation, capture,

retrieval and analysis are not yet state-of-the-art throughout China.

China is experiencing reductions in demand, followed by rapid decreases in the size of

labor forces, with migrant workers taking sharp blows in massive layoffs. To improve demand

and employment, the Chinese government is expanding and upgrading its rail, highway and river

systems, improving the quality and availability of passenger and freight traffic. Decision making

is accomplished throughout a supply chain, with people "trying to help" who lack knowledge and

information of the quality needed to avoid upward and/or downward fluctuations resulting in a

Bullwhip Effect. What information is available and how it is used at critical decision points

within the supply chain may degrade overall performance of the chain if inappropriate. The

Bullwhip Effect delivers the bite of Forrester’s unintended results with a vengeance.

Physical flows result from actions within the supporting information flows. Both flows

must be managed properly for a successful outcome. Although China is working hard to expand

physical flows of goods and people throughout the country, success will be elusive if China does

not implement the required information flows. This is an important challenge for China, as they

improve management education and prepare to execute the tasks of successful supply chain

management. For China, supply chain management is not a beer game.

Mathematical Modeling of Complex Biological Systems

Advances in medical technology have increased understanding of the normal workings of

the human body, and in various disease states: transcriptomic studies reveal which genes are

active in a given cell at a given time; proteomic studies reveal which proteins are present and in

what quantities; and metabolome analyses show metabolic processes and the conditions under

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which they occur (Peter, 2008)212. Genes and proteins are connected at various levels in complex

networks and pathways of interaction. We need to understand these interactions better to know

how diseases disrupt them and how to develop therapeutic approaches appropriate to each.

Mathematical models often capture unexpected features of complex biological systems. From

these models experimenters generate data using various strategies. Peter briefly reviews the

challenges presented by the study of complex biological systems, the benefits of systems

thinking in biology, and how interpretation of data is consolidated using mathematical models.

The human body consists of approximately 1014 individual cells, each a complex system

made up of thousands of proteins and biomolecules. Information specifying how and when to

build all of these molecules is encoded in the DNA. Even with information about the entire

human genome, researchers still do not understand functions that arise through interactions

between many different components. Dynamic regulatory feedback loops control this interplay.

Interrelated growth, metabolism, and cellular regulatory functions are also are subject to such

control mechanisms. Characteristics of a complex system that arise from these interactions are

the emergent properties of the system. These characteristics do not exist outside of the

interactions from which they emerge. Alcoholism, for instance, is not caused by a single gene,

although a specific gene may be necessary for the disease to develop. Systems are irreducible in

this sense, that they cannot be fully understood by analyzing each element. How the elements

function within the system as a whole must also be studied.

Knowledge of the human genome sequence provided a biological parts list for the human

body. Without functional knowledge of how all of these genomic sequences work and interact

212 Peter, H. (2008). Mathematical modeling of complex biological systems: From parts lists to

understanding systems behavior. Alcohol Research and Health, 31(1).

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with their products, no one knows how they function as a system. Recent advances in

transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics permitting monitoring of cellular biological

responses are enabling whole physiological systems to be studied, with identification of higher-

level biological mechanisms related to function that are also encoded in the human genome.

Only recently have molecular analyses of the cell on a large scale become feasible. By

identifying and quantifying DNA, mRNA, protein, and metabolite molecules, researchers may

now systematically collect comprehensive data on the molecular state of a given biological

system. These are the "-omics" technologies. Manipulating cells in a directed manner provides

controlled, experimental conditions. Single gene removal can be followed by observing the

global response of the cell in producing proteins, transcripts, and metabolites. The specific

function of the removed gene can then be inferred. These experimental data are then used to test

and develop mathematical models of biological processes, with data produced by -omics

technologies leading the way to new and more complex models.

These new technologies permit analyses on different molecular levels, specifically DNA,

RNA, protein or metabolite. These different molecular levels may behave in unexpected ways,

such as proteins that are abundant while the mRNA from which they are produced is low.

Produced by complex regulatory interactions, such behavior may result from presence and

synchronization of the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome. Metabolites may provide

feedback on key enzymes by modifying gene expression of enzyme encoding. The -omics

technologies lead to systematic discovery of such interactions and their incorporation into

models of essential regulatory pathways.

Because the -omics technologies are parallel, a variety of biological "readouts" can be

measured at the same time. A microarrays researcher can study gene expression of all genes of

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the organism, rather than performing separate experiments on each different gene. Scientists can

thereby observe unforeseen responses as well. Microarrays used in toxicology research enable

broad screening for unknown side effects of new drugs. Researchers may also look at functional

interactions between proteins and genes to comprehensively examine emergent cellular or

organismic properties. Complex processes, such as cell growth and division, death, response to

infection, etc. may involve hundreds of different kinds of molecules that must be accounted for.

Standardization of -omics technologies renders a high degree of automation possible,

enabling researchers to process large numbers of biological samples. Experimental studies have

been particularly facilitated by the ease of sample processing and experimentation permitted by

automation. Researchers can validate biological effects to a predefined degree of statistical

certainty by replicating experiments. This easy replication is especially valuable in clinical

studies involving large patient test populations that must be examined to validate the efficacy of

a drug and identify side effects. Large volumes of data must be processed using computerized

data analysis strategies, and then compared and interpreted automatically, identifying the most

relevant information that can be used to create mathematical models.

Spirituality and Eco-culture

At the beginning of the 21st Century, on no less authority than that of the 30 year update

of the Limits to Growth study (Meadows, Et al. 2004)213, we are now witnessing the effects of

ecological destruction as the human environment begins to cascade into degradation. We must

move with all possible haste from an industrial age where the forces exerted by all human

institutions collectively on the environment were primarily destructive, to a sustainable, solar age

in which we affirm and exercise our responsibility to preserve rather than destroy the commons,

213 Meadows, D., Randers, J., & Meadows, D. (2004). Limits to growth: The 30 year update.

White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co.

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so that our children will not be faced with depleted resources and exhausted entropic waste

(Costigan P., 2007)214. This new (actually, ancient, from the Ancient of Days) spirituality can

save both humanity and the planet, but we must be realistic about our current chances of

survival. McKibben (2012)215 reports that, with the best case scenario, humanity has about a 15%

chance of extinction by 2042. There can be little doubt that humanity, under its current,

calculated leadership, is not following any “best practices,” in this case, but only paying lip

service to “The Green Revolution.” This dismal outlook, forecasting unacceptable risk, is

consonant with other estimates, such as that of Dr. Endres (Gould & Endres, 2010)216 that 50%

of Americans have no economic future. The mass die-off predicted by the Meadows study

(Randers, 2012)217 has already commenced. The human population of Earth peaked at 7 billion

during the summer of 2012, which brought the worst drought in decades to the Midwest, and a

“super storm” to the U. S. East Coast that may accelerate the great awakening that is now

occurring. For the first time, a state governor has actually made an appearance in mass media,

warning people that they must prepare for far worse. The way human institutions have begun to

cascade, it is quite safe to predict that 7 billion is humanity’s population peak, arrived at decades

earlier than predicted. Most observers believe we have already hit and passed peak oil

production. The latest report to the Club of Rome218 projects that we have already overshot our

214 Costigan, P. (2007, Third Quarter). The role of spirituality in the development of an eco-centric

culture. Social Alternatives, 26(3).

215 McKibben, B. (2012, July 19). Global warming's terrifying new math. The Rolling Stone, p. 5.

216 Gould, D., & Endres, A. (2010). Management issues in the 21st. Century. Closing colloquium,

Ph. D. in Management Residency. Minneapolis, MN: Walden University.

217 Randers, J. (2012). 2052: A global forecast for the next forty years. White River Junction, VT:

Chelsea Green Publishing Co.

218 Randers, J. (2012). Ibid.

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resources, and are in the resulting general decline. They clearly view the sustainability initiative

as dead, precisely because no one is responsible for the state of the Commons. The focus of the

Club of Rome is now on survivability, emphasizing problems than can be ameliorated by small,

influential groups.

In the Solar Age, which we must initiate with all deliberate speed, and at all costs,

humanity must cease and desist from devastating Earth’s environment, and seize the opportunity

to utilize resources in a manner that preserves the Commons for future generations. The new

Spirituality of this great awakening experiences our innate connections with each other and with

the systemic, self-organizing, self-healing powers yet extant within the web of life, enlivening

and motivating us to help create a sustainable civilization. When Nietzsche announced that “God

is dead” (2012)219, he was speaking of the God of Deism, whose only creative activity permitted

within the C/N Paradigm was to arrange the initial conditions of creation, from which all

subsequent events flowed in deterministic order. This God is not imminent in creation, which is

the meaning of “omnipresence.” Neither is He passionately engaged with concern for the fate of

humanity. It was not necessary for this God to die. He was stillborn. Humans must assume our

God-ordained roles as caretakers of this third rock from the Sun, rather than exploiting

everything in our path. We must abandon the exploitative, consumerist ideology, theology,

philosophy and hermeneutics that is the legacy of the patriarchal Dominant Mindset that

currently determines priorities and makes decisions. We must never again face the absolute

horror of another “George Bush” designating himself as “the decider,” and blatantly giving his

finger to a world conference on sustainability.

219 Nietzsche, F. (2012). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New York: Simon & Brown.

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Through spirituality we actually reach for our aspirations for the good life, and truth,

expressing our highest values, and tap the motivating source of creative power that transforms

both individual and society. Beginning with an overpowering experience of love and fear, which

is the fundamental message of Biblical Wisdom literature, we can actually tap that infinite source

of wisdom in Nature herself. This is a delicate subject, and must be approached with all of the

knowledge about God’s creation that we can gather through our senses and interpret through our

reason. Only then will be granted access to her feminine aspect: the wisdom of balance and

action within rather than contrary to the laws of nature.

Fritjof Capra (2002)220, who documented his discovery of Eastern Mysticism while

exploring the heart of nature in Tao of Physics (1999)221, declared that deep ecological awareness

is spiritual in its deepest sense. Eco-spirituality unites spirituality's awe confronting Nature with

ecology's capacity to explore and describe her reality. According to John Cobb (cited in

(Costigan, 2007)222, the ecosystem as a whole has an interdependent and unified character, with

which a strong sense of the sacred comes attached. Violating nature is evil, avoiding such

violation is what Capra means by wu-wei, “The way of heaven,” (Ivanhoe & van Norden,

2001)223 The attitude of science and industry toward nature must be ecologically sound, humble,

and reverential. The only way to express this attitude is in a focus on political, social, and ethical





222 Costigan, P. (2007, Third Quarter). The role of spirituality in the development of an eco-centric

culture. Social Alternatives, 26(3).

223 Ivanhoe, P. J., & van Norden, B. W. (Eds.). (2001). Readings in classical Chinese philosophy.

Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc.

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action, through all human institutions, transforming in the process all of society’s core values.

Spiritually, basic values such as life and death, affirming the life instinct for all humanity, must

inform our prophetic political demands. That is an important message as we enter an era of

survivability concerns, in which life and death decisions are unavoidably already being made,

without informed discussion or consensus, in a fascist rather than democratic manner.

The Sustainability Transition

Think about it from the point of view of the “deciders,” the top 1% of the population who

make the decisions. The rapid collapse of Earth’s human population, to between 15% and 50%

of the current 7 x 109, relieves pressure on resources, environment, eco-systems, and just about

every other aspect of the worldwide crisis. It is also a quick, short-term solution to the

survivability question, which must be answered before we can once again focus on sustainability.

A holocaust of 6 or 7 billion people can really clear the decks for those of us who consider

themselves to be the continuators. Pulling us out of overshoot, population collapse will ensure

that prices skyrocket for 99% of us, but that will not matter to those who can easily afford to eat

and purchase necessities. New necessities may emerge, such as clean air and potable water,

which can now be acquired for a premium price in places like Mexico City, one of the most

polluted environments on Earth. Remaining behind the gates of enclosed communities,

purchasing clean air and water as needed, and protecting themselves during food riots will be

their major concerns. To the extent that production of goods and services goes on at some

nominal level, they will have the access to markets required to acquire their necessities from the

remaining food and supply chains.

At the end of this path, population will once again stabilize, and the drive for

sustainability will once again commence, still under the same leaders, who will be almost the

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only ones left, but this time with far less complexity. Command and control structures will once

again become viable ways to run smaller organizations, and survivors will cobble some sort of a

Spartan civilization out of the ruins. The human remnant will be more easily able to solve the

problems of survivability, and return to efforts to create a sustainable, solar world (Matson,

2009)224. The entire process will be controlled by markets and circumstances, with little more

than an enhanced need to consolidate a police state, which is already available. The human

values of the “Lifeboat Ethic” will determine the outcome of the entire process, putting no

pressure on those who survive in their protected environments to rescue anyone else. Given our

current attitude toward action, which is too little, too late, that is the only conceivable outcome,

and it surely reflects an agenda acceptable to the “deciders,” such as the self-designated decider

who gave his finger to the world, whose own progeny will prosper in any event.

Sustainability science is focused on the complex dynamics of the human/environment

system, which will not be nearly so complex with drastically reduced population numbers.

Relevant scholarship on the character of human interactions, technologies, and environments will

be far less difficult for decision-makers to utilize in addressing their own, reduced and therefore

less urgent problems of economic development and environmental and resource conservation. So

long as 50% to 90% of us remain willing to fade quietly into the darkness, the field of

sustainability research is not quite yet in need of a detailed action plan engaging the research,

educational, and funding communities. Such a plan initiated prematurely (before the “useless

eaters” disappear) would be much more difficult to implement, with far greater problems of

survivability to address first. So, our mass media pay lip service to Sustainability from all of the

224 Matson, P. (2009, Summer). The sustainability transition: Meeting basic human needs without

degrading the planet's vital systems. Issues in Science and Technology, 25(4).

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primary polluters while the world oil reserve goes up in abysmal flame, reminiscent of an insane

Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. Lacking some potent and undeniable divine

intervention, on which no one can safely rely, this scenario reflects the course of human

development as it is unfolding before our eyes.

Improving the Effectiveness of Healthcare Delivery Systems

Yaneer Bar-Yam’s question is not one of public or private financing and delivery of

services, but rather outlines an organizational approach of separating the healthcare tasks

(2006)225. Large scale tasks that are numerous and repetitive, such as screening and inoculation,

are fundamentally different from highly complex tasks, such as diagnosis and cure. Separating

these kinds of tasks creates an important distinction, in which the concepts of scalability and

complexity can be used in the analysis of requisite organizational structure. For an organization

to be effective, the scale and complexity of its functional capacities and the tasks to be performed

must be matched. Serial coupling of large-scale financial flows and complex medical decisions is

responsible for turbulence and ineffectiveness in health care delivery systems. Organizing tasks

at different scales is essential to resolve the structural problems of healthcare systems. This will

relieve the financial and organizational turbulence on systems designed for individual healthcare,

and improve the effectiveness of complex medical care; while socially providing for disease

control and population health services.

Broad consensus exists that the healthcare system suffers from low quality and high

medical error rates. Measuring quality of care as a return on expenses vs. the incidence of

medical errors shows a system that underperforms despite new medical knowledge and

expanding medical technologies. The role of complexity and scale in the healthcare system can

225 Bar-Yam, Y. (2006). Improving the effectiveness of health care and public health: A multi-

scale complex systems analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 96(3), 459-466.

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be better understood by looking also at insurance and financial flows that control the services

provided. Managed care has significantly affected the structure of the healthcare system,

separating money flow from patient/physician interaction. Employers’ regular premium

payments to health insurance companies provide the primary financial flow. Medicare and

Medicaid payments depend upon the actual services provided during the specified time period of

coverage. What it comes down to is a monthly electronic funds transfer. Salary deductions and

employer contributions pay for the private, group coverage. Monthly payment amounts remain

constant until rates change, typically every year. This amount has no information about the

services it supports as a function of scale, specifying how many distinct tasks can be performed

at each scale. Such information can enable analysis to understand the relationship between

organizational structure and effectiveness, a transparency totally unwanted by the obscurantist

American insurance industry that crafted the Affordable Healthcare Act, which like Christian

Science, is neither.

Multi-scale analysis and the accompanying complexity profile break down the capacity

of the system to scale. This is an application of information theory to depict the relationship

between the possible behaviors of the system and its interdependencies and communication

channels. This is a new formalism to characterize the function and desirability of organizational

forms. Multi-scale analysis generalizes statistical analysis, incorporating correlations of multiple

rather than pairs of variables, considering the degree of correlation between system components.

When multiple variables are correlated, the same information can be obtained from any of the

variables, and multi-scale analysis quantifies how many variables contain information or are

engaged in the same activity.

Relationship in the Public Sphere

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The bipartisan agenda for social policy now focuses on ersatz opportunities for self-help

rather than attempting to deal with inequality, envy or hatred, preferring to inflame rather than

ameliorate such passions against dependent social groups (Dartington, 2009)226. Although

offering concrete and positive promises about treatment outcomes, this agenda takes no notion of

inequality. Initial disadvantages simply do not matter to people who can buy anything they want

to become. For instance, those who tell us to 'have a nice day' are merely using the appearance of

relationship to achieve a business objective, like smile buttons or iconic smileys. Products and

services are oriented toward person-centered value added. Acting as though we care does not

constitute a relationship, and the universality of such management techniques merely serves to

further undermine how we understand social relations.

The language of mental health care reflects the post-dependency therapeutic approach.

Patients are encouraged to see themselves as capable of recovery rather than as passive recipients

of professional interventions. Neither approach is valid. This self-management approach

diminishes the importance of relationships, including respect for authority based on competence

and experience. Who knows me better than I? As the customer, am I not always right?

Silo thinking shows up in the post-relationship image of parenting, separating child from

adult rather than examining their relationship. Children do have rights and parents surely have

responsibilities, but no child ever existed on its own, like Topsy, who just growed. Relationships

and communications with family, whether conscious or repressed, are inseparable from human

development. The psychoanalytic approach to underage drinking may focus on mutuality,

226 Dartington, T. (2009, Summer). Relationship and dependency in the public sphere: The

importance of relationship is devalued in contemporary culture - Even in health and welfare systems, where

people are necessarily dependent. Soundings(42).

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understood as exchange rather than relationship, such as that of authority, between parent and

child.

Public services are now instrumental and economically driven, as we become customers

of health and social welfare. A culture that emphasizes measurable outcomes places powerful

constraints on relationships within public service. For instance, local authority employs a home

care team, working in the community, contracting staff to work for a specific amount of time

with each service user, timing each home visit to the minute. This provides a ruse of flexibility,

presumably enabling the care-giver to spend more time with the patient as necessary, subtracting

time from future visits. This is in fact a means of control, in which the human relationship

between care-giver and service-user vanishes. Anyone who thinks this is more cost effective

need only peruse the exorbitant bills submitted to the local authorities, who cheerfully pay them

thinking they have saved money.

Left to themselves, many care-givers would do a lot more than they are contracted to do,

precisely because of their relationship with the service-user. Other care-givers may exploit any

lack of surveillance in the system to cut services. This may be human nature, but the problem lies

in the response subjecting both to a single national standard of vocational qualification for

service. Although benign in intent, the process is Orwellian: only if mis-applied does this system

introduce humanity and respect into human relationships. Excellent care may upon occasion be

provided, despite rather than because of these safeguards, with a quotidian of bad care remaining

undetected by the monitoring system. Regulation does not help the complex task of creating

human relationships. Permitting care-givers to build significant relationships with service users

introduces an element of spontaneous, idiosyncratic uncertainty unfit for regulation by national

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standards. The imposition of control mechanisms cannot replace the competence of average

people in caring for others.

An Aquarium Eco-system Project for Middle School Students

Helping students understand the interrelated levels of complex systems is itself a complex

and complicated task (Hmelo-Silver, et al., 2008)227. Teachers must explicate the system’s

hierarchical levels, and how interactions occur between elements at different interfaces to

contribute to the workings of the system as a whole. How can thinking in terms of structure-

behavior-function be used to create opportunities for students to engage with complex systems?

Students are focused on identifying more than merely complicated structures, but thinking also at

functional and behavioral levels.

Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) thinking is the ground for thinking about complex

systems, considering different systemic levels in these terms. Too many approaches to science

instruction have students learn the vocabulary of structures with no concept of how structures

behave and perform the processes that accomplish their function. Structures are the parts, or

elements of a system, as filters and air pump are elements in aquarium ecosystems. Elements

vary in size, kind, and organization. Fish and lungs present visible structures, but structures can

also be invisibly small, like decomposing bacteria. Behaviors are the activities of structures in

achieving their outcome, processes performed within the system. Bacteria that convert ammonia

to less toxic chemicals in an aquarium help maintain a balanced ecosystem, the function of

homeostasis. The output of the system or subsystem is its function. The function of an aquarium

filter is to remove the waste.

227 Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Jordan, R., et. Al. (2008). Focusing on function: Thinking below the

surface of complex systems. Science Scope, 31(9).

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SBF thinking can opens up important functional and behavioral aspects of the system to

explicit discussion. Teachers who have themselves mastered SBF thinking can help students

transfer their understanding to other complex systems by explicating the scaffold of the SBF

mode of complexity thinking. Simulations, models, and multimedia organized around SBF

questions are available. Here, middle school students use SBF thinking to understand ecosystems

in the concrete terms of an aquarium. This model of a natural system can help students who ask

questions and run simulations to use SBF thinking to enhance their understanding of systems.

The complexity of natural environments forces ecologists and environmental scientists to rely on

models and simulations, testing ideas and generating questions that cannot otherwise be tested in

the field.

An aquarium has all of the complexity of any natural system, yet is relatively

inexpensive, can be maintained throughout the school year under normal classroom conditions,

and motivates students to take ownership by setting goals and making decisions. The problems to

be solved managing natural systems require systematic maintenance and clear management

goals. Goals for the aquarium might be to model an ecosystem, provide an example of

sustainability, maximize diversity of species, focus on a single species, or aesthetics. To meet

these goals, students must consider structures, behaviors, and functions in an aquarium and how

they are related. Healthy fish and plants must be included in any aesthetic goal. This requires

paying close attention to micro-level functions and behaviors.

Emergence of Cooperation from Heterogeneity of Degree

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With players engaged in social dilemma games situated on complex social networks,

Jones removed artificial limitations imposed by early architectures on the number of cooperative

partners each player may have (Jones, 2008)228. With a full range of degree, generalized

networks permit full investigation of the impact of this variable on the evolution of pro-social

behavior. Statistically analyzed simulations address primary research concerns to investigate the

effect of heterogeneity of degree on cooperative behavior, separating this effect from other

explanatory factors. Beginning with detailed models, Jones conducted simulations in this

framework, varying certain aspects of network architecture and measuring how cooperative

behavior then evolves.

Jones started with a population of N players playing a prisoner's dilemma game within a

neighborhood of other players defined by network architectures. After a generation of g games,

an adaptive score is generated for each player based on a standard payoff matrix. Each player

then updates her strategy to a higher probability of that of the neighbor with the highest score.

During each period t, each player either chooses to cooperate C or defect D with each of its

neighbors, deciding to cooperate with some neighbors and defect with others, and making

symmetrical decisions with a standard payoff matrix. Defection is a dominant strategy, resulting

in a higher payoff as compared to cooperation, regardless of the strategy chosen by the neighbor,

with mutual cooperation providing maximum aggregate outcomes. The unique equilibrium of

mutual defection leads to a Pareto-suboptimal solution. Each player accumulates an adaptive

score in g games for all of her neighbors. Since maintaining networks with more neighbors

involves higher costs, adaptive scores are reduced by total cost of interaction with the network of

228 Jones, G. T. (2008, October 1). Heterogeneity of degree and the emergence of cooperation in

complex social networks. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 10(4).

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neighbors. After each generation, each player imitates the strategy of the most successful

neighbor. Ties are broken by random decision.

For each simulation, consisting of sufficient generations to arrive at equilibrium in the

strategy population, the variables of population, average degree, heterogeneity, architecture, and

cooperation are recorded. The architecture of the network may be lattice, small world, random,

or scale-free. Cooperation is the ratio of decisions to cooperate to the total number decisions.

During 1,000 runs of the simulation, researchers uniformly drew network architecture from

available options to create a stochastic picture, with population ranging uniformly from 10 to

100, an average degree uniformly ranging from 2 to 10, and heterogeneity of degree ranging

from 0 to 4 as a function of network architecture. For each run of 1,000 generations, the

cooperation ratio was measured in the last 100.

Generalized models of social dilemmas help us to better understand phenomena related to

a variety of important socio-economic circumstances. Social architecture may even dominate

individual preference, as correlated associations drive cooperative outcomes contrary to those

predicted by Nash equilibria. The universality of these results are significant for all social

species. These studies confirm the importance of local interaction. With increasing average

degree and decreasing correlated association, pro-social behavior is less likely to evolve. As

heterogeneity of degree increases, pro-social strategy evolves in a negative correlation.

As a real world application Putnam sees declining membership in civic organizations as

undermining the civil engagement which is necessary for a strong democracy (cited in Jones,

2008)229. This research suggests that the nature of social connections, rather than their magnitude

only, is of more concern. Promoting dense social networks may lead to social decline. Designing

229 Jones. (2008). Ibid.

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institutions that increase the homogeneity of degree renders pro-social behaviors more likely to

emerge, thereby increasing overall social welfare. Homogeneity of degree is thus seen as a

collective good. Conflict managers hereby have a reasonably simple way to promote group

cooperation by increasing the homogeneity of social connectedness. Such homogeneity may be

obtained through suppression of highly connected individuals as well as increasing the

connectedness of relative social isolates. However, cooperation is not the most important goal,

which may be trumped by freedom of association, limiting restrictions on individual social

capital. Helping to integrate social isolates into social networks may benefit all. The EU views

poverty as resulting from reduced access to social capital, offering transportation, Internet

access, job training and education, or social inclusion, as a better solution than merely providing

maintenance.

Another example offering a living laboratory for easy manipulation of social architecture

are the many on-line Internet social network communities that have recently appeared.

Membership categories and incentive structures might permit operators to influence the structure

of networks and sub-networks, facilitating gathering information on cooperation. Such

experiments could help conflict managers intervene in real world disputes, especially as real and

virtual worlds continue to merge.

The Learning Society

Fritjof Capra (2002)230 calls for radical educational reform, pointing to the highest

purpose of education as developing an ecologically literate society, using ecological principles to

design sustainable human systems. David Orr's 1992 book Ecological Literacy (cited in Davies,



147

2010)231 presented an entire educational agenda grounded in the principle that "all education is

environmental education." Laurie Lane-Zucker, John Elder and David Sobel coined the phrase

"place-based education," grounding the best learning in familiar local communities and

ecosystems. Ed O'Sullivan has advocated education in cosmology, which only during the past

several decades has become a science. Transformative Learning proposes that education be

based on the grand narrative of the cosmos, first developed by Brian Swimme and Thomas

Berry. These are all excellent suggestions, but they do not capture that the sustainability

transition requires creating a learning society in which people gain sustainability literacy skills

by working together.

No one has all the answers. The entire corpus of human experience, from knowledge of

Indigenous peoples to the expertise of farmers, the curiosity of children to the wisdom of elders

must be engaged (Davies, 2010)232. Everyone’s creativity and ingenuity is crucial to this project.

When we listen to each other and share knowledge we may develop the capability to evolve into

a truly sustainable society. As a social phenomenon, education must be extended beyond schools,

colleges and universities, becoming an active, lifelong process involving everyone and extended

into the fabric of life.

American educational philosopher Robert Hutchins first proposed the idea of a learning

society in his 1968 book titled The Learning Society (cited in Davies, 2010)233. He advocated

that society adopt a primary goal of “continuous learning, active citizenship and social well-

being…The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for

231 Davies, K. (2010). Sustainable minds: The next step human evolution must take environmental

learning from schools to the realities of society. Alternatives Journal, 36(5).

232 Davies, K. (2010). Ibid.

233 Davies, K. (2010). Ibid.

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industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens."

Education should improve society by helping learners understand, participate in, and change the

world. This idea has almost disappeared from public discourse.

How can we develop a learning society to assist humanity’s evolution toward

sustainability? How do we assist learners in gaining the sustainability literacy skills that will be

needed to survive in the 21st century while building a more sustainable world? How can a

learning society support ecological literacy, place-based education and a cosmological approach

to learning? Six strategies suggested here are to:

1. Create learning communities, which now involve many collaborative efforts. The idea

is to bring a diverse range of participants together to share perspectives on

sustainability issues.

2. Learn from experience. Although books and experts can be helpful, there is no more

powerful teacher than our own lived experience. John Dewey, who with Horace

Mann fathered experiential education, showed in his University of Chicago learning

laboratory that learning from experience can equip students to become responsible

and engaged citizens through development of knowledge based on their own

experiences of the world. Experience may involve historical, place-based experience

of living sustainably in local communities, which is passed on through the

generations.

3. Foster a new cultural worldview: Such a learning society could foster the

development of a cultural worldview based on respect for the Earth and its

magnificent diversity of life. Humans have no reason to overshoot the planet’s

resources, thereby threatening all life on Earth. We must develop a shared

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understanding of the destructive consequences of our previous worldview, and create

a respectful, long-term relationship with the Earth.

4. Think Systemically: The parts of a system can best be understood within the context

of their relationships with each other. Phenomena are seen in terms of patterns, trends

and feedback loops. The learning society would focus systemic thinking on

understanding interactions between human and ecological systems, rebuilding human

systems to become sustainable.

5. Embrace diversity: A learning society must foster diversity in ideas, beliefs and ways

of knowing. People who do not think like us challenge our assumptions, beliefs and

expectations. Worldwide there exist peoples and communities that have proved their

sustainability over thousands of years. Cultural diversity in ideas and practice is a

fundamental principle of sustainable human systems.

6. Whole person learning: Enable students to develop personhood and authenticity as

human beings. We cannot continue to pursue intellect while ignoring ethical values,

emotions, and experience embodied and grounded in place. We must build practical

skills for sensitive engagement with others, for interacting with our local

environment, and for dealing with world complexity. The learning society must

engage and integrate hearts, minds, hands and spirits.

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APPLICATION

War and Conspiracy

“It was a moment when the entire world was behind us,” according to Joseph Cirinicione

of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. “… a million people demonstrate(ed) in the streets of

Tehran, in favor of the United States. We had the world behind us. Now, kids are dying, billions

are being spent every month. Animosity against the United States is stronger now than it ever has

been in history. What happened here? Is it just that—the experience of September 11th? Or is

there something else going on here. When something like this happens, you’ve got to take stock

of this. You’ve got to understand what went wrong here” (BBC, 2005)234.

“Blowback does not simply mean the unintended consequences of foreign operations,”

states Chalmers Johnson, CIA consultant from 1967—1973. “It means the unintended

consequences of foreign operations that were deliberately kept secret from the American public.

So that when the retaliation comes, the American public is not able to put it in context. To put

cause and effect questions together, to come up with questions like, “’Why do they hate us?’

…..That is the question everybody is asking. Our government did not want the forensic question

asked, ‘What were their motives?’, and instead, chose to say, ‘They were just evil doers.’”

On September 10, 2001, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld announced that $3 trillion

had simply vanished from the Pentagon budget. One day later, the record keeping department of

the Pentagon was vaporized by a mysterious, disappearing Boeing 747. The very next day,

September 12, 2001, President George W. Bush declared the criminal attack an “act of war”

without ever, from that day to this, producing a shred of evidence that any state power, from

234 BBC, Storyville (Producer), & Jarecki, E. (Director). (2005). Why We Fight [Motion Picture].

Mette Hoffmann Meyer, TV 2 World Sales. Charlotte street Films, Ltd.

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Syria to North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Russia, or any other entity with state rather than criminal power

had anything to do with the attack. A state of war can only exist between two state powers, not

between a state power and a criminal conspiracy. Iraq’s non-responsibility for the unspeakable

brutality of September 11th was reflected in the convenient presidential designation on

September 12, 2001, after the same meeting of his National Security Team from which the “act

of war” lie emerged, of a proposed US attack on Iraq as “pre-emptive” warfare.

From just war ethical theory, this means a war initiated against an enemy that has

assumed a posture of attack, for the purpose of preventing it. For instance, the Japanese attack on

the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, which destroyed the entire US Pacific Fleet, was to prevent

these same battleships and destroyers from implementing an embargo of the Sea of Japan, which

the US had already announced as its intention if Japan continued its imperial military domination

of the Far East. To pre-empt means to launch a first strike when attack is imminent, justified

under the rationale of self-defense. Chalmers Johnson (cited in BBC, 2005)235 elaborated

(parenthesis mine):

“September 11, 2001 provided a group of people who were deeply committed to the

expansion of the American empire the opportunity to implement plans they had been laying since

1992. At that time a young Paul Wolfowitz was working in a subordinate position under Dick

Cheney, then Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,

Cheney orders Wolfowitz to write a plan, to write a grand strategy that it is now our destiny (to

rule over a “New World Order”), that without the Soviet Union there is no one who could possibly

approach us in military terms. He said, ‘That’s the way things ought to be, and we must maintain

and expand that. We are the new Rome. That’s their strategy. On 9/11, they began to implement

it.”

If Iraq were accused of already having started a war, the US/Iraq war would have been

merely defensive, with no need of a “pre-emptive” first strike, and would have been designated

as the Iraq/US war, like the original Iraq/Kuwait war, in retaliation for which the Iraqi people

had already been forced to suffer under a decade-long regime of sanctions. The Iraqi view of this

235 BBC. (2005). Ibid.

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entire history was expressed by a common saying in Iraq at the time, “We had hoped the United

States would destroy Saddam and save Iraq. Instead, they destroyed Iraq, and saved Saddam.”

Had the United States been the least bit interested in helping Iraq build a strong, democratic

government, it would have aided the Shiites and Kurds in their spontaneous rebellion against

Saddam Hussein’s regime of terror at the end of the Gulf War. Instead, US forces opened up a

ten mile wide corridor for Saddam’s Republican Guard to drive its crack Tiger Tank Corp back

to Baghdad to put down the rebellion in civilian blood. Any Obama Administration claim that

US troops remain in Iraq, or Afghanistan, on a “nation building” mission must be seen in the

context of historic and ongoing events, which render all such claims irrelevant, meaningless, and

hypocritical.

William Kristol, mouthpiece for the Project for a New American Century, stated that

September 11th was the event that changed American foreign policy. It was certainly the event

that fully exposed a policy that had existed since the end of World War II, when American state

planners decided that, having acquired control over 95% of the world’s capital resources, and

with 6% of its population, America would henceforth adopt the paranoid stance of a democracy

under siege (Kennan, 1962)236. Truman launched the Cold War against democratic movements

worldwide with a nuclear attack on Japan’s civilian population under cover of “anti-

communism” as the Orwellian ideology of oppression (Chomsky, 1992)237. The decision was

made to permanently militarize the United States, according to Johnson (BBC, 2005)238. “The

236 Kennan, G. F. (1962). Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. New York: Signet Books

imprint of New American Library.

237 Chomsky, N. (1992). What Uncle Sam Really Wants. Retrieved November 24, 2012, from

Third World Traveler: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/WhatUncleSamWants.html


Mette Hoffmann Meyer, TV 2 World Sales. Charlotte Street Films, Ltd.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/WhatUncleSamWants.html

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invasion of Iraq in 2003 is all about repositioning the United States as the country that must be

obeyed,” according to Gwynne Dyer, military historian. “It’s an easy way to send signals to the

planet that the United States is in charge, that it will do what it wants, and that anybody who

defies the United States will be punished…” “The point …..was not merely to topple Saddam, it

was to transform the Middle East. They want to take the US military in and go in and shore up

American interests in this key area of the world. That’s their vision. They want to spread

democracy around the world upon the point of our bayonets,” Joseph Cirinicione summarized.

On October 10, 2002, Congress passed Joint Resolution 114, granting the president the

right to use force against Iraq at his discretion. This violates Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of

the United States Constitution, which grants the US Congress sole power to declare war.

Granting the president carte blanche power to wage war without Congressional debate subverts

the ‘separation of powers,’ designed into the Constitution, a crucial element of democracy.

Congress was cognizant that they had erred grievously in making the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,

which was the inception of the undeclared US/Vietnam War. The War Powers Resolution of

1973 (50 U.S.C. 1541—1548) insured that such an egregious abdication of authority could not

happen again. Neither this resolution nor the Constitutional provision on which it is based has

ever been overturned by the Supreme Court. Both seriously limit the power of the president to

deploy US troops to situations in which the US is already under attack or serious threat, unless

otherwise authorized by Congress. It forbids deployment of any such forces for more than 60

days, with a 30 day withdrawal period, in the absence of Congressional authorization or

declaration of war. Nowhere do any of these laws imply that Congress may, without discussion,

simply abdicate its responsibility to discuss any and all US acts of warfare, whether defensive or

otherwise. In fact, Article 1, sec. 8, clause 12 of the US Constitution further stipulates that no

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appropriation to support a standing army shall last more than two years during peacetime, which

ipso facto is any period during which Congress has not declared war.

The permanent militarization of the United States under Eisenhower’s Military-Medical-

Prison-Industrial-Congressional (MMPIC) Conplex clearly violates the intent of the Constitution

to establish a permanent, peaceful, democratic government rather than a permanent military-

industrial state. Although he presided over it, fighting what he considered to be the undue power

of the military all the way, President Eisenhower warned us against such a development in his

farewell address:

“We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major

wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. We have been compelled to

create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Three and a half million men and

women (1960) are directly engaged in the defense establishment. Now this conjunction of an

immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. We

recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave

implications.”

The grave implications of maintaining a standing army during peacetime were certainly

recognized by the framers of the US Constitution, who inserted a clause prohibiting such a

development. The same grave implications had also been recognized by President George

Washington, organizer of the First Virginia Army Regiment, who in his own farewell address to

the nation warned us that such an army would constitute a mortal threat to democracy and the

Republic. With the accession of the PNAC, a right-wing think tank, to power under the

Reagan/Bush Administrations, a new dimension in lack of accountability of policy makers to the

American public has been achieved. With all of their faces still occupying top Cabinet positions

under the Obama Administration, there can be no doubt that they are here to stay. Everyone in

Congress who voted for Joint Resolution 114 is legally, morally and ethically required to recuse

herself from office for violating her sworn oath to uphold, defend and protect the United States

Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

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The CIA overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of the Democratic Republic

of Iran in 1953, replacing him with pro-American strong-arm Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah. At

the time, CIA analysts predicted eventual blowback from this covert action. Ayatollah

Khomeini’s violently repressive, anti-American regime subsequently overthrew the Shah in the

Iranian Revolution of 1979. In the wake of this epochal counterrevolution, the CIA immediately

and covertly appointed Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī, who was then serving as vice

president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, as the new president of Iraq. He was

not chosen because he was not a socialist, which his national-socialist (fascist) Ba’ath Party

certainly was, or because he had not spearheaded the nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum

Company, which he had. Saddam was a key player in the 1968 coup by which the Ba’ath Party

had acceded to power. At that time, General Ahmed confessed, “We rode into Baghdad on a CIA

train.”

After seizing power for himself, using his tightly controlled Republican Guard security

forces and with eventual CIA assistance, Saddam Hussein then conducted the correctly named

Iraq/Iran war, for which American arms dealers such as Cheney and Halliburton sold him

weapons of mass destruction (the infamous WMDs which, to Bush’s lament, he never managed

to relocate after the initial point of sale). The US only demonized Saddam Hussein as a terrorist

after he invaded Kuwait, which, in the minds of security analysts, could lead to an invasion of

Saudi oil fields. Saddam Hussein, former American puppet, was out of control. This is blowback,

in the CIA language of Chalmers Johnson (2000)239, otherwise identified by Jay Forrester as the

239 Johnson, C. (2000). Blowback. New York: Henry Holt & Co., LLC.

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unintended, counter-intuitive consequences of superficial analysis of complex systems (Forester,

1971)240.

The Iranian Revolution was indeed blowback, the unintended consequence of CIA

operations kept secret from the American public. It resulted in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, 444

days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, when American President Jimmy Carter

refused to run for reelection while fruitlessly and inanely refusing to negotiate the return of the

Shah, who was on his deathbed, to Iran for prosecution, and repatriate Iranian assets frozen in

US banks since Khomeini’s accession to power. Although the US eventually acceded to both of

these demands, it was not soon enough to prevent the election of Ronald Reagan, premier

spokesperson for America’s corporate elite, and the human face of America’s Counterrevolution

from that day to this. In retaining Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Kristol’s PNAC control over

American foreign policy, the Obama Administration has given us nothing other than Reaganism

without Reagan, which was not interrupted by Clinton’s intervening Democratic administration.

The rise of the MMPIC Complex, against which President Eisenhower warned us in his

1961 Farewell Address, has reached new dimensions under the Cheney/Halliburton privatization

of warfare since 9/11. The Cold War state planners have continuously waged unending war

against democracy, conveniently labeling every person they murdered (over 200 million since

the end of WWII, and counting) for getting in their way as a communist. The Big Lie under

which this conspiracy against the American people has been conducted at the highest level of

policy through all presidential administrations originated in the Truman Administration. It is that

America wants to export democracy at the point of a bayonet. What America wants is better


52-68.

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described by Noam Chomsky (1992)241, which is nothing less than total control over a world-

wide empire. The bin Laden branch of the Bush/bin Laden terrorists (collectively doing business

as the Carlyle Group) may not have orchestrated the 9/11 attack, as told by Osama bin Laden

himself in a statement withheld from American ears

(http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/bin_laden_ties.html ):

"I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have

knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United

States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the

people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity.

That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. ... The American system

is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States."

What we do know is that the Bush Administration used this tragic event as a pretext to

breathe life into his pre-existing PNAC plans to attack Iraq (BBC, 2005)242. Furthermore,

Halliburton Co. became the recipient of trillions of dollars for the concomitant privatization of

warfare, while Vice President Dick Cheney’s assets sky-rocketed from those of a millionaire to

those of a billionaire while serving as Vice President, a job which he took after resigning as CEO

of Halliburton from 1995—2000. We also know that US security and police agencies had their

wish lists immediately fulfilled in the legislative aftermath of the 9/11 conspiracy, in the hurried

passage of the Homeland Security Act and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, both of which were

rubber-stamped by a terrified Congress. Nothing less than the rollback of civil liberties

accomplished in these acts reflects the militarization of life and labor in the United States since

2001. Howard Zinn (2003)243 added a new last chapter to his American history book, analyzing

241 Chomsky, N. (1992). What Uncle Sam really wants. Retrieved November 24, 2012, from Third

World Traveler: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/WhatUncleSamWants.html 242 BBC, Storyville (Producer), & Jarecki, E. (Director). (2005). Why We Fight [Motion Picture].


243 Zinn, H. (2003). A people's history of the United States: 1492 to present. New York:

HarperCollins Publishers.

http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/bin_laden_ties.html

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/WhatUncleSamWants.html

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the 2000 election and subsequent September 11th, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center

and attack on the Pentagon as the dawn of a new era, grounded in conspiracy.

On September 11, 1973, American clone General Pinochet bombed the presidential

palace of democratically elected, mild reformist President of the Republic of Chile, Salvador

Allende Gossens, whose last words, before he shot himself rather than abandon the burning

building, were, “Workers, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Go forward, knowing that sooner

rather than later, avenues will be open along which free men will walk, to build a better society.

Long live Chile, the people and the workers!” (BBC, 2005)244. Henry Kissinger’s mendacious

denial of US contact with Pinochet is flatly exposed and contradicted by CIA documents later

released under the FOIA, after elisions that can only be considered appropriate to a continuing

cover-up. Victor Harra, Chile’s greatest balladeer, was subsequently rounded up and confined

with over two thousands others (the first of Chile’s disappeared) suspected of supporting the

Allende government, then herded into Santiago’s National Stadium by fascist General Augusto

Pinochet, with full CIA support (Agee, 1975)245. His last words were smuggled out of the

stadium after the fascists murdered him:

“What horror the face of fascism creates. They carry out their plans with knife-like

precision. To them, blood equals medals. How hard it is to sing, when I must sing of horror, in

which silence and screams are the end of my song.”

Allende’s crime was the attempt to build a just, equitable democracy, taking control of

Chile’s economy from the United States and its proxies.

244 BBC, (2005). Ibid.

245 Agee, P. (1975). Inside the company: CIA diary. New York: Penguin Books.

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Duane R. Clarridge (1997)246, chief of the CIA’s Latin American Division from 1981-

1984, shows the world view of the enlightened ones, those people John F. Kennedy called

“America’s best and brightest.” He is one of many policy-making Cold Warriors who took the

anti-communist crusade seriously, exhibiting the Dominant Mindset in his denial that the Latin

American democratic movements America crushed were anything other than communist fronts,

and claiming that neither Pinochet, nor any other South American fascist murdered anyone in

significant numbers. In his Jesuitical casuistry, he reduces the numbers murdered by several

orders of magnitude, and for the small residue he admits, claims that they were guilty

communists who deserved no mercy. To him, Amnesty International is nothing more than a

communist front.

To deny that the thousands of people, whose names were documented by myriad Chilean

human rights organizations on the Memorial Wall for the Detained, Disappeared, and Executed

in Santiago’s General Cemetery, and at countless memorial sites throughout Chile, ever lived is

as superficial as to deny that the 58,267 American Soldiers memorialized on the Vietnam

Veteran’s Memorial Wall (completed in 1982 and located in Washington DC’s Constitution

Gardens, adjacent to the National Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial and within clear

view of the Washington Monument) ever lived. The only difference is that the former actually

did die for freedom, whereas the latter were brain-washed by our “enlightened” intelligentsia into

dying for American Cold War propaganda. The true heroes of the US/Vietnam war, and those

most qualified to speak for their fallen comrades-in-arms, conducted the Winter Soldier

246 Clarridge, D. R. (1997). A spy for all seasons: My life in the CIA. New York: Scribner div. of

Simon & Schuster.

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Investigation (1972)247, threw their medals in the Potomac river, and formed Vietnam Veterans

Against the War, which now has government funding and continues to fight for the rights of

veterans still being poisoned by America’s continuing use of chemical weapons of mass

destruction.

While denying that the CIA murdered thousands, whether by proxy or policy, Clarridge

freely admits CIA involvement in overthrowing democratic governments, pursuant to America’s

“national security interests.” To quote Clarridge, “Sometimes, unfortunately, things have to be

changed in a rather ugly way (BBC, 2005)248. I use Clarridge to illustrate the difference between

the world view of the awakened and that of the enlightened. Allende’s murder was a wake-up

call to the people of Latin America, and they have been fighting American fascism ever since. As

an American, I heard the cries for freedom from Latin America through the Solidarity

movement, branded by America’s “enlightened” propagandists, who dominate our written and

electronic mass-media, as communists.

The Spanish language press in America carried full coverage of America’s brutality

throughout the entire period of the ‘70s and the ‘80s. Thousands of patriotic Americans went to

places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, where American-engineered, state-sanction

death squads were most brutal, and brought back eye-witness accounts. Many did not survive the

violence. Although it began to germinate in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam Era, the

Great Awakening that is now spreading throughout American culture swept up through Central

and South America to keep the struggle for freedom alive. This is the reason even America’s

247 Vietnam Veterans Against the War. (1972). The winter soldier investigation: An inquiry into

American war crimes. Boston: Beacon Press.



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most benighted cannot find any rationale for the continuing US/Iraq or US/Afghanistan war.

Allende’s death, murdered by CIA puppet Pinochet on September 11, 1973 was a harbinger of

the event of September 11, 2001, which constituted a coup over the government of the United

States (actually a false flag operation, like Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag, a pivotal event in

the consolidation of US fascism).

“America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal

instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own

way.” No doubt former President George W. Bush was completely unconscious of the real

meaning of these words, which he uttered in his second inaugural address on January 20, 2005 to

rationalize his Administration’s policies. Perhaps he was referring (by denial) to his own attempt

to overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez, the voice of

the barrios, which was foiled only by a conscious and united people, the wretched of the Earth,

who voted again with their feet. Perhaps Americans should have voted with our own feet on

January, 20, 2005 when for the second time unelected President George W. Bush was appointed

(for lack of a better word) to office.

However, we must not take Bush administration wars as the first manifestation of

American imperialism. USMC Major General Smedley Butler, former commandant of the

United States Marines, tells how his branch of the service was used to further American big

business interests from the time of the US/Spain through the First World War (Butler, 2012)249.

Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Equador, El Salvador, French Guiana,

Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam,

Uruguay, and Venezuela, to name only those countries in America’s “back yard” since 1945, and

249 Butler, S. (2012). War is a racket. New York: Aristeus Books.

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over thirty more worldwide since the rise of American imperialism in the US/Spain War, have

had their governments overthrown by direct American intervention under all presidents, not one

of whom ever obtained a Congressional declaration of war, as required by the US Constitution.

Branded a Communist by a Congressional committee before whom he testified that Prescott

Bush, WWII Nazi financier and grandfather to “W,” came to him as USMC Commandant with a

proposal to depose Franklin D. Roosevelt in a military coup d'état, Butler nevertheless remains

the most decorated Marine in military history.

One of the first Cold War interventions was against the Arbenz government of

Guatemala, which attempted moderate land reform in 1953. Acting in the interests of John Foster

and Alan Dulles, United Fruit Company magnates, who respectively served the Eisenhower

Administration as Secretary of State and Director of the CIA, the United States waged a war of

terrorism against the Arbenz government, using techniques of social psychology. E. Howard

Hunt (2007)250, CIA agent from 1949-1970, wrote:

“So they said a decision has been made at the highest levels of our government (to get

rid) of the Arbenz regime, and we would like you to participate in it. You will be the chief of

propaganda and political action…What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign, to terrify

Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops, much as the German Stukka bombers terrified the

populations of Holland, Belgium and Poland at the onset of World War II.”

What is important for our purposes is to remember that Arbenz was no more a Communist than

was Franklin D. Roosevelt. His administration embodied the hopes of the Guatemalan people in

a series of New Deal style reforms, grounded in moderate land reform, which deprived the

United Fruit Company of some of its stolen property.

250 Hunt, E. H., Aunapu, G., & Jr., W. F. (2007). American spy: My secret history in the CIA,

Watergate and beyond. Hoboken, NJ: John Wilen & Sons.

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The common denominator with today is the bottom line truth that American state

planners oppose any government, anywhere, that takes any responsibility for the good and

welfare of its people. We have witnessed their continuous and for the most part successful

attempts to dismantle every trace of the New Deal in America since it was enacted. Medicare is

the major remaining New Deal entitlement. How can anyone expect fascist rulers who will not

permit any government, anywhere in the world, to take any responsibility for its people to permit

the US extension of single payer healthcare to all? We can only expect them to dismantle this

program, along with all other remaining vestiges of the New Deal.

It is interesting that the National Geographic documentary 9/11, Science and Conspiracy

(NGC, 2012)251, conducted tests with the chemical explosive thermite to confront major non-

official 9/11 conspiracy theories, but never addressed the documentary evidence by a

professional association of architects that the molecular signature of a military variant of that

explosive was found in debris scattered all over ground zero. At this point, we can only expect

disinformation from official sources, but it is difficult to sort out the real “debunkers” from the

fakes in a field of inquiry that is, as Jacques Vallee (1992)252 said about UFO research,

“permeated with a principle of disinformation.” The scientific community stopped pooh-poohing

the idea that the dinosaurs were extinguished 65 million years ago by a meteor that crashed into

the Gulf of Mexico after a thin layer of iridium was found covering Cretaceous rock world-wide,

as would be expected if a major meteorite impact had been the primary cause of the Cretaceous-

Tertiary extinction event. Wouldn’t it be more to the point to explain how the thermite signature

251 NGC (Director). (2012). 9/11 Science and Conspiracy [Motion Picture]. Retrieved from

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/911-science-and-conspiracy/

252 Vallee, J. (1992). Forbidden science: Journals 1957-1969. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic

Books.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/911-science-and-conspiracy/

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got into the molecular structure of the debris, rather than simply dismissing the forensic evidence

as irrelevant?

I can think of a scenario other than that proposed as preposterous by the National

Geographic documentary, that a work crew of 100 demolition experts ripped out tons of material

to expose key structural supports. If I wanted to destroy the Twin Towers of the New York

World Trade Center, but thought either of them might survive the impact of an enormous, fully

fueled jetliner, would I need to use enough explosives to accomplish the entire task, or would I

simply apply enough to ensure a vertical rather than sidewise collapse? We have already seen the

evidence that the PNAC hoped and prayed for a major terrorist attack more than a year in

advance of the 9/11 event. On September 10, 2001, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld

announced that the Pentagon had misplaced three trillion dollars. On September 12, 2001, they

were already discussing the “pre-emptive” invasion of Iraq. The very fact that they immediately

applied this defensive rationale from just war theory shows that it had nothing to do with the

attack. Why would one need to “pre-empt” an enemy who has already attacked? The thousands

of pages of the Homeland Security and PATRIOT Acts of 2001 had already been written to

destroy American Constitutional government, way before 9/11, as long fascist wish lists of the

architects of America’s Department of Homeland Security (the literal English translation of

Russia’s KGB), waiting for the opportunity to terrify Santa into delivering each and every one

them, and were simply ratified en-masse by a terrified Congress without discussion.

Congresspersons have a long history of violating their oath of office, which is to defend

and protect the Constitution of the United States. In 1913 they permitted imposition of the never

ratified 16th Amendment, with its unconstitutional income tax, and the creation of the Federal

Reserve Bank, the stronghold of corporate, fascist rule, on the American people. The Bankers

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had introduced the 16th Amendment in 1910 in anticipation of guaranteeing payments to the soon

to be created Federal Reserve System. The forensic, question (applying systems thinking) is,

“Why do so many conspiracy theories exist in the first place?” The only evidence for many of

these fabrications is that they actually tell the truth about our government and its laws. Office

holders in Congress, the executive, and the judicial branches of the Federal government should

all recuse themselves from elected office for the very reason that they have failed to uphold or

defend the Constitution of the United States.

It certainly is conceivable that Americans could ratify an income tax on our labor, just as

we could ratify a tax on religious institutions. The income from our labor is legally and in fact

our personal property, which we no doubt do not mind parting with merely to pay interest on fiat

money the American government borrows from a private corporation, the Federal Reserve Bank,

which the bank prints willy-nilly sans reserves just for the purpose. On the other hand, why

would the American people want to pay interest set by me on IOUs signed by me with nothing to

back them as collateral other than my signature on them? The real question is, “Would we

consent to this twin arrangement if fully informed?” If we did ratify the 16th Amendment, where

is the proof? Which states voted for it? No one who has looked into these questions can find any

documentation (other than flimsy fabrications) that these questions were resolved by due process

of Constitutional law.

Congress simply stands in line for handouts from these self-created multi-trillionaires,

who stole the world’s wealth by printing promissory notes, imposing them as legal tender, then

lending the counterfeit (fiat) paper at interest to governments while buying off legislators with

kickbacks. These are the same bankers who throughout Western history have financed all sides

of every war simultaneously, including the Russian Revolution. As John Reed replied when

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asked for the reason for World War I: “Profits, gentlemen, profits!” (Beatty, 1981)253. Congress,

which by Constitutional mandate must discuss reasons for any war before declaring it, simply

delegated its war power to Dick Cheney, the corporate face of American home-grown fascism.

We should depose all of them, the way the people of Venezuela deposed the CIA financed fascist

dictator who overthrew Hugo Chavez. The fact that Bush/Cheney no longer rule is irrelevant,

because the PNAC still dominates the foreign policy of the Obama Administration.

There are two major reasons for the proliferation of conspiracy theories all over the

Internet. The main reason is the awakening of the average American to the fact that our

government is lying to us. They do it every day through the mass media, reserving discussion of

the truth for enlightened eyes only. This looks like a conspiracy from any angle. What is worse,

as Jacques Vallee (1992)254 wrote, a principle of disinformation permeates the atmosphere, even

in the Internet world of conspiracy theories. My ten year old niece received a homework

assignment to Google Ronald Reagan, then write a report on his presidency. Try it sometime.

Ninety-nine percent of the hits you get are pure garbage. What are the odds she will find the

truth, which is also out there? Internet conspiracy theories are suffused with propaganda, as well

as with wonderful documentaries that have been marginalized by mass media pundits, but which

capture the exact essence of the world I have lived in for the past six decades.

The only way to tell the difference between awakening and enlightenment is to be awake

in the first place, or to wake up while attempting to decipher the truth. How are we ever going to

get and keep any reasonably good health care reform act if those who dominate the financial and

political system are determined to dismantle democracy wherever it raises its ugly head,

253 Beatty, W. (Director). (1981). Reds [Motion Picture].

254 Vallee, J. (1992). Forbidden science: Journals 1957-1969. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic

Books.

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especially American democracy? Obama’s healthcare reforms, which simply met a wish list of

the major insurers to generate more pork-barrel profits, will not fund anyone’s healthcare past

2014, which means that the same tens of millions of Americans who were not covered prior to

the new act will all fall back on the tender mercies of their own State governments to pay the

bills.

What state government could afford to do so, knowing full well that Forrester’s counter-

intuitive behavior of social systems will result in its own bankruptcy when millions in need of

medical care will migrate to any new Mecca of healing hope that emerges? Why have I spent so

much time on the murderous, militaristic nature of the American government in dealing with the

question of single-payer medical coverage? Expecting Congress to help poor people stay alive is

just about as ludicrous as expecting Adolf Hitler to protect the Jews, from a systems thinking

point of view. All institutional sub-systems of America, creatures of the Military-Medical-

Prison-Industrial-Congressional Complex, will adapt the propaganda emerging therefrom into

their own rationale.

Healthcare vs. Warfare

My practical demonstration for this analysis involved flying Congressman Dennis

Kucinich into Aurora, IL from Washington DC on August 5, 2009, to make a rare appearance

outside of his congressional district since the 2004 election (He has since retired). He came at the

request of my wife, Rev. Geri Solomon, who served as state coordinator for his presidential

campaign in Illinois, making the extra stop on his way home from a congressional session

President Obama had hijacked into overtime, and we were very fortunate to get him for the

weekend. His primary message was to be leery of the Congressional decision to discuss his

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proposal for single payer healthcare, or Medicare for everybody. His instinct, which was true,

was that they only wanted to discuss the matter to table it.

Part of his message was about personal responsibility for one’s own health, and he

recounted his decision to become a Vegan, which is a vegetarian who does not eat animal

products such as eggs, milk, or cheese. At that time, he was suffering from a serious digestive

disorder called Crohn’s Disease, which would have blighted the rest of his life. He recounted

drinking a particularly nasty Chinese herbal remedy offered by a holistic healer, and following

the shaman’s advice to become a Vegan. He never experienced any symptoms of Crohn’s

disease again, is in the prime of health, and is far more energetic than most of his Congressional

colleagues.

His primary message for the single-payer movement was that we are going to have to

take it to a state level, and that he would oppose the current healthcare law, which was at the

time still under discussion in both houses of Congress, unless he could live with it, which meant

including the Kucinich Amendment, to clear the way for the single payer movement to resume

the struggle at a state level. When Congressman Kucinich got off of Air Force One from a

private meeting with President Obama, he had dropped his insistence on the Kucinich

Amendment, and supported the program. What I would give to have been a fly on the inside

window of Air Force 1 for that flight!

The new healthcare law is nothing more than a plan made up by and for corporate shills.

The corporations now have 35 million new customers for their junk policies, paid for by the

United States government, and they will certainly renege on any agreements to end their most

disgusting practices, which are being implemented in advance. We have already looked at the

unpleasant aspects of massive population collapse from the point of view of corporations touting

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the Sustainability Initiative. Can we expect our rulers, who want nothing less than for us to die,

to keep the major insurers in business? In my assessment, 2014 may well signal the end of any

healthcare, because the financial structure needed to fund the insurance industry will be in ruins

once the Federal government withdraws financial support. The important thing to remember here

is what Obama told Kucinich to force him into alignment with the Party to lead: “It’s us, or

them.” That, in fact, does not mean Democrats or Republicans. It means the enlightened ones, or

the awakened, the rulers or the masses.

This analysis is complex because the systems and subsystems involved are complex. To

those of us who have awakened within the Matrix (Wachowski, 2007)255, certain matters are

becoming very clear. We had several speakers after Kucinich at our August 5, 2009 Aurora

Healthcare speak out, Including spokespersons for the Green Party, an analyst from the People’s

Daily World, and two of Obama’s former Illinois House of Representatives colleagues,

Congresswoman Mary Flowers and Congressman Mike Boland, both of whom sat on the Illinois

House Committee for Single Payer Healthcare (IL HB 303) with Illinois Congressman Barack

Obama just prior to his meteoric rise in the Democratic Party. All of them had important

messages about the System, and what must be done to implement healthcare reform. We must

tread carefully here, remembering that “right” and “left” wings both belong to the same bird, a

close raptor relative of the vulture, and that Democrat and Republican are both controlled by the

same actual rulers, who not only finance their elections but provide them with extraordinarily

lucrative positions in the private sector when they retire from public life.

Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate for Governor of Illinois, outlined for us the

function of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is to control the creation of new money in the

255 Wachowski, B. (Director). (2007). The Matrix [Motion Picture].

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domestic economy. Through its ability to print up new money in any quantity whatsoever,

charging interest for any money the Federal Government “borrows” from it, the rate for which

they also control, the owners of this private company maintain a corporate stranglehold over the

US economy, even though it is not possible to find out exactly who sits on its board, or which

companies own the stock. What we do know is that, until 1973, economists determined monetary

policy through use of the Phillip’s Curve, a simple Guns and Butter type chart that relates high

inflation to low unemployment and low inflation to high unemployment, thereby giving

economic policy makers the ability to fine tune the economy by controlling the prime rate.

Then, one fine day in 1973, Karl Marx sat up in his grave, and the stable economy

collapsed permanently. The major mass media trumpeted the news that the interest rate has a

permanent tendency to decline, astonishingly just as Marx had predicted. The stabilizing

Phillips Curve, previously a depiction of negative feedback, was now bowed out, showing

positive feedback between inflation and unemployment, the hallmark of exponential instability.

Raise inflation, and unemployment skyrockets, which then causes inflation to rise even more.

The financial system had become too complex to control through monetary policy.

The Green Party, which, unlike either of the dominant parties, actually has a platform,

proposes dismantling the Federal Reserve Bank, and placing the power to create money back

into the hands of the US Government, which actually provides the mandate that it be legal

tender, for all debts public and private, as inscribed on each promissory note. New money would

be created in the economy whenever the government rebuilds infrastructure, such as providing

roads, public works projects, and public healthcare. This would permit us to consider the benefits

of healthcare in lieu of warfare, and would make us more productive to the limits of our

newfound health using the resources provided through public financing of all education.

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Like roads and bridges, public financing of health and education would enable them to

pay for themselves. This would obviate the necessity for the entire working class to pay the

interest charged by the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation that actually controls, rather

than being controlled by the Federal Government. Because the illegal income tax which the

government collects on our labor is used only to pay interest to the Federal Reserve Bank to

borrow money that same company manufactures and sets interest rates for without restriction, the

Green Party seems to have a pretty good idea, but we have to be careful with that one, too.

Legally, our labor, which Adam Smith designated as the real wealth of nations (Smith,

1999)256, is our personal property, and cannot be taxed because the Federal Income Tax meets

neither the Constitutional requirement of being apportioned equally among the populace, nor that

of being indirect. Equal apportionment means we each pay the same amount, such as $200.00.

The gasoline tax is indirect. It pays for the roads, but one may decline paying it simply by not

buying gasoline. The US Supreme Court has ruled several times that the 16th Amendment,

which was never ratified at any rate, confers upon the Federal no new powers of taxation, such as

the power to tax personal property, or income produced by labor. It was enacted by the banking

cartels in 1913 because they needed to provide the Federal Government with some means by

which the bankers could plunder our national wealth, which is our labor. The ratification process

failed to pass two-thirds of the states, which means that it failed, period.

The bankers, who had by this time already fired up the new printing press in their

basement, stuffed bundles of cash into the pockets of everyone in Congress to ensure their code

of silence, and the Secretary of State mendaciously certified that the 16th Amendment had

passed. Nowhere in the Internal Revenue Tax Code is there any stipulation whatsoever that

256 Smith, A. (1999). The wealth of nations. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.

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anyone is required to pay income tax. That is why the IRS functions more like the Gestapo than

like a legally created administrative agency. They use brute force to enforce compliance

whenever and wherever they want to. Anyone with means enough to fight them, which is very

difficult after they seize all of your assets, can usually get a ruling from a jury that they have

violated no law, although juries are remarkably fickle, as Al Capone found out to his own

personal lament.

Anyone worried about paying for US Imperial wars need not be concerned. Corporate

earnings are legally not defined as personal property, but rather as capital gain. That makes the

corporate income tax legal. The corporate income tax, such as is left of it, raises revenues

sufficient to pay off the Chinese the interest on the money America borrows from them to

finance the monstrous Pentagon “budget.” Pentagon spending functions more like a black hole

than a budget, which is the reason for the quotation marks. Its function is to fund corporate

technological research and to provide sufficient military force to control major, widespread

urban rioting, which Forrester’s studies have shown will span at least three decades, as the

population of the world, with America as no exception, is reduced by a factor of 67%--90%.

These facts have now become widely known, which is perhaps why most Americans now think

their own government is conspiring against them.

One thing about the bosses you can always be sure of: They control the wealth of the

centuries of capitalist accumulation, which is enormous. Think of the useful, socially necessary

labor of billions of people, condemned to wage slavery under the Malthusian imperative,

crystallized. That is wealth. For access to this, our real rulers can hire any number of intellectuals

necessary to work out all possible scenarios. They have an offering for every flavor of mindset

that could get in their way. The Republicans sure shot down Ron Paul in a hurry, their bright,

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new presidential candidate who supports dismantling of the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the

CIA. Dismantling these agencies is one of the greatest ideas most Americans would support.

Before we get carried away with populist campaign promises, remember that Obama really did

support healthcare for all, before he left the Illinois legislature. The fact that the Republican

Party dismantled Paul’s campaign leads one to suspect that Ron Paul would not dismantle all of

the institutions of the US Federal government, especially those the Obama Administration has

painstakingly tried to piece back together after decades of dysfunctional decay under all of the

inheritors of “Reaganism without Reagan.”

Whoever gets elected, it will be by black box. Perhaps the bosses were so mad at Paul

because the very Federal governmental functions he wants to dismantle are the only federal

institutions they want to preserve. Surely, the purpose of neither major party is to empower

ordinary people, for instance, by helping to finance their health insurance. The purpose of the

food stamp program is to provide welfare for corporate farmers, also known as USDA price

supports. Similarly, the purpose of the Affordable Healthcare Act of 2010 was to feed the wish

list of insurance lobbies rather than help anyone stay healthy, as well as to deflect revolutionary

demands for free healthcare.

At least one widely accepted 9/11 conspiracy theory (other than the official version)

holds that, by design, this was a false flag operation that occurred on the very day in 2001 when

the World Court ordered the resignation of the entire federal government, almost all of whom

were by then demonstrably guilty of treason. To say what we know, the first part of that

statement is ridiculous (why would the World Court keep such an order a secret, or care about

treason?), while last part of it is true (even dupes can be convicted of treason). Nevertheless, the

widespread popularity of conspiracy theories has yet to be explained by any of the debunkers. In

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the world I live in, it could very well have happened that way, with the reservation that most

conspiracy theories, like the Cold War, the Communist plots of McCarthyism, and far-right

allegations that everyone who opposes them is a criminal conspirator of some sort, are just too

simple to really embrace complexity. Such a conspiracy theory nevertheless has more truth to it

than the official version.

Health, Wealth, and 9/11

The 9/11 conspiracy, whatever its unfathomable dimensions, was, in fact, the beginning

of a new historic epoch, “The War on Terror” as Howard Zinn wrote (2003)257, in a last minute

revision to the 25th anniversary edition of a book that is arguably the most revealing narrative

ever written by an academic historian. Zinn accomplished his monumental task simply by

looking at the system from the viewpoint of those who have been and are still being oppressed,

silenced, and murdered in the name of progress. To include the voices of history’s victims, he

quotes the words of Amber Amundson, wife of an Army pilot who was killed in the 9/11 attack

on the Pentagon: (p. 681):

“I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation’s leaders,

who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear

that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this

incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you

may not do so in the name of justice for my husband.”

A victim’s voice was actually heard over the “fog of war” cranked out by mass media, which

replayed the filmed footage of the aircraft hitting the building ad nauseam until outraged callers

clogged their telephone switchboards with angry protest. This lone voice of a victim that was

somehow not filtered out of mass media went on to say that, to get to the root of this conspiracy,

we must ask the forensic question, “Why are they so mad at us in the first place?”, and

257 Zinn, H. (2003). A people's history of the United States: 1492 to present. New York:

HarperCollins Publishers.

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reexamine the roots of our diplomacy and foreign policy. In the decade of terrorizing propaganda

since that lone voice cried out in the wilderness of destruction, I have never heard that question

addressed in the mass media from that day to this.

CIA analysts have coined the term ‘blowback’ for this, and other such events, which

means the unintended consequences of covert operations specifically aimed at toppling

governments. Osama bin Laden, billionaire ruler of a Saudi Arabia based construction empire,

was in fact the leader of Afghanistan’s Mujahideen, recipient of massive CIA aid for leading the

rebellion against the Soviet invasion of that country, as well as a major player in the world opium

trade, in which the CIA has had a hand since the end of WWII (McCoy, 1972)258. Osama bin

Laden’s brutality can only be a vague reflection of the brutality of his CIA mentors, who only

considered him dangerous when he threatened their perceived US National Security Interests.

Saddam Hussein, iron fisted ruler of Iraq, had thrived on the Anti-American propaganda he

generated in Iraq during the previous ten years of sanctions, which only hurt the Iraqi people. He

had bought weapons of mass destruction from Dick Cheney, who undoubtedly had embarrassing

signed purchase orders and shipment invoices in his pocket. Cheney was the real boss for whom

the nominally selected President Bush worked as the public relations mouthpiece for the

Military-Medical-Prison-Industrial-Congressional (MMPIC) Complex.

Saddam Hussein’s immediate Ba’ath Party predecessor had publicly stated: “We rode

into Baghdad on a CIA train.” As the mass murderer of his own people, his regime fit well into

the mosaic of America’s regional “security interests.” When Saddam’s delusions of grandeur led

him to step out on his own, he became a threat, the next target for US imperialism in the region.

258 McCoy, A. W. (2003). The politics of heroin: CIA complicity in the global drug trade.

Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books Division of Chicago Review Press.

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When the US military targeted him personally for the first missile strike of the US/Iraq war, a

dead baby was found on top of the rubble (Fisk, 2007)259. Children have always been and will

continue to be the primary victims of America’s misnamed “War on Terror,” which is actually a

war against democracy, whether they appear as “collateral damage” in a missile attack on a

restaurant, or have their brains bashed in by Thalidomide “freedom fighters,” such as the CIA

trained and US-backed contras in countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and many,

many more.

To see the American future that is implied by the hatred our rulers have for democracy,

we need only look at Chile under Pinochet, cited by mainstream economists as an unparalleled

“Economic Miracle,” the result of Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago School of

Economics social engineers, who ground Chile’s poor into the dust imposing economic reforms.

This two-tiered society is not a fluke, consisting as it does of millions of poor living on garbage

heaps that are not even as sanitary as the Hoovervilles of America’s Great Depression, eking out

a starvation haunted existence within sight of gleaming cities built by city planners from

blueprints, and populated by a comprador bourgeoisie willing to sell out their own people.

These economic policies do not stem from discredited “trickle-down” theorists such as

Friedman, who has now been put back on a shelf. They are the actual policies of the World

Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the other agreements

and secret protocols stemming from the Bretton Woods Agreement, in which the enlightened

ones planned the world’s future. Garbage and excrement, not wealth, is what they are trickling

down on us. They must have laughed at Friedman’s delusions, but they know full-well that

259 Fisk, R. (2007). The great war for civilisation: The conquest of the Middle East. New York:

Vintage Books div. of Random House, Inc.

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getting those of us who write books, control mass media, and conduct research to go along with

them is crucial to the success of their venture: “He has approved of the undertakings,” as

inscribed in Latin over the all-seeing eye atop the pyramid inscribed on the dollar bill.

Single payer healthcare is the battle cry of the Great Awakening in America, because the

destruction of America’s industrial backbone, and the subsequent loss of the wealth of our so-

called middle class, actually the muddled (befuddled) working class, has forced millions of

Americans into the untenable position of having to forfeit healthcare benefits historically tied to

union-negotiated group healthcare plans. Can anyone doubt that the military-medical-prison-

industrial-congressional (MMPIC) Complex Eisenhower imposed on America, then warned us

about, will stop at nothing to prevent the American government from taking responsibility for the

good and welfare of the people it represents by implementing single payer healthcare, Medicare

for all, no matter how many trillions of dollars it would flush out of hyper-inflated healthcare

costs? They are expecting major rioting in America’s cities precisely because we are waking up

as a people on the brink of pre-planned destruction. We will not go quietly into the night, and

that is why we fight for a single payer medical services delivery system. We will dump the IRS

and the Federal Reserve Bank off of our backs, but not by following some corporate shill such as

Ron Paul, or Barack Obama like lemmings over the cliff.

Reptilian Conspiracy Theory

The bald eagle, with its right and left wing, like all other birds (in this case, a raptor

related to vultures, that eats live, helpless mammals rather than carrion) is classified as a reptile

descendant of the ancient dinosaur theropods. For that matter, all vertebrates descend from

reptiles, including humans, for it was they who produced the marsupial rats that preceded the

mammals. We all have reptile brains, called the “old brain,” otherwise known as the

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hypothalamus, which can completely take over our behavior through the amygdala in emergency

situations and cause us to commit unspeakable violence to survive. According to Shaman Credo

Mutwa (Icke, 2004)260, last of the Zulu shamans and one of the only two remaining shamans of

Africa, African religion and culture has known about intelligent reptiles since ancient times,

although there are only two mentions of them in Genesis, one in the Garden of Eden myth, and

the other in the Genesis reference to the giants who took the daughters of men.

Mutwa thinks they are of this earth, which seems likely from the ancient portrayals of

them as huge, green, horned, and above all, bipedal with bilateral symmetry and a spinal column.

These are the morphological signatures of indigenous Earth-beings, unlikely to be found in any

alien, although that does not mean that aliens have not also visited Earth, however unlikely that

may seem in the Einstein/QED paradigm. Mutwa recounts his own abduction experience, which

is in every particular detail very similar to the abduction experiences of thousands of Americans,

as documented by Carl Sagan, himself a believer in intelligent aliens, but an arch skeptic of any

allegation that they have ever visited Earth (Sagan & Druyan, 1997)261, when he reluctantly

organized the first ever convention of alien abductees.

Mutwa has a lot to say about these creatures, whom he identifies as having edible

(although potentially poisonous) flesh, and no discernible ethics or morals. He observed that, the

wealthier human beings become, the more like the reptiles they often act. His ancient religion

and culture, which believes in God (Achebe, 1994)262, also believes the reptiles rule Europe, in

and through the royal European bloodlines. Whether these stories are factual or totally

260 Icke, D. (Director). (2004). The Reptilian Agenda [Motion Picture].

261 Sagan, C., & Druyan, A. (1997). The demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark.

New York: Ballantine Books.

262 Achebe, C. (1994). Things fall apart. New Yori: Anchor Books div. of Random House, Inc.

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fabricated, they are very, very old. Could it be coincidental that the reification of corporate greed

in Christian ethics cannot be considered as anything other than one of the seven deadly sins, the

love of money, and never for a moment as the capitalist’s holy calling of “Doing God’s Will, as

efficiently and effectively as possible, on Earth” (Beushausen, 2013)263.

If a global society is really emerging, as Bar-Yam, Forester, and Capra all point toward,

that is too complex to be predicted, controlled, or perhaps even understood by human

intelligence, we cannot permit the super-organism so created to possess a lizard mentality,

whatever the ontological status of Mutwah’s lizards. Yes, we all have an old brain, and every last

one of us is descended from lizards; but the human mind, with its knowledge and human culture,

is the most complex phenomenon of all complex systems, and we cannot permit the super-

organism we create to be modeled on a 200 million year old structure geared only toward self-

defense. If we must create a dragon for our first super-organism, it will devour us and we will go

the way of the Neanderthals. That is why the development of universal consciousness is

absolutely crucial to human survival. When we all become simultaneously aware of ourselves as

co-creators of our own reality, with immediate access to infinite knowledge and wisdom, the idea

of one human being controlling another will be as repugnant to each and every one of us as

cannibalism.

Summary

I am optimistic. Despair is the ultimate reactionary stance none can afford. I have always

been optimistic. My philosophy, which many thousands of people who designate themselves as

Christians share, is the humanism of Marx, who projected freely associated labor as the

successor to any final form of class divided society, and the birth pang of humanity. That is a

263 Beushausen, T. (2013). Kindle Digital Editions.

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very optimistic viewpoint, expressed in the revolutions of 1848, which were put down in blood.

The idea of freedom cannot be put down in blood, precisely because it is a spiritual idea. Neither

can it be owned or monopolized. As Hegel wrote, the idea of freedom is the universal of this age.

It is just that some men think they have a natural right to more freedom than others.

The corporate rationale for never hiring people with low credit ratings is that a bad credit

rating presents a security risk to the corporate information network. With even the best jobs

requiring six months to a year to land, who can maintain their credit rating while living on

nothing? My suspicion is that the biggest dummies are showing up as “America’s best and

brightest” only because the majority of us have been locked out by arbitrary fiat. When the

major-league football teams began to induct Black athletes right out of high-school, and the top

ten collegiate football teams (under cover of academics) began to offer them football

scholarships, it was not because the racists who rule the corporate structure of higher education

suddenly fell in love with male Black youth. If you can believe that, you can believe that Obama

did not take an oath to these rulers, which supersedes any other oath, before he took his oath of

office as president, or even as US Senator from Illinois. In that Illinois election, I was the only

one who ran with a platform, or even a coherent message. When you arbitrarily exclude far better

than half of the population from management and leadership jobs, you cannot expect to find the

brightest bulbs lighting the way. That is part of the reason we got George Bush II twice without

ever electing him even once. In fact, he never won any election, including governor of

California. He was selected.

He is qualified to be a member of the Illuminati because of his oath of loyalty, not

because of his innate intelligence. President Bill Clinton was also one of the enlightened ones,

and no one can doubt his brilliance as a Rhodes Scholar. Jimmy Carter was a nuclear physicist,

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certainly no dumb peanut farmer. What our newest corporate shill has in common with all of the

rest of these men is that he is loyal, above all others, to the rulers of the political and corporate

world, which is dominated by a “life boat” credo that could only be taken seriously by someone

with no more than a lizard’s brains, presuming there actually are no human-lizard hybrids. Such

are those who dominate the command and control, rank and file, corporate leadership.

However, like the reptiles that dominated Earth 65 million years ago (ending a 165

million year reign as the dominant vertebrates), their rule is on the verge of complete collapse.

Their rule, which coincides with the accession of the Puritan work ethic, which I outlined

elsewhere (Beushausen, 2013)264, will come to an abrupt and immediate end. Of those selected

for leadership positions in the struggle to maintain control as things really do fall apart, if they

are intrinsically brilliant, as was John F. Kennedy, they must hide their personal brilliance

because of their vow to shine only with the reflected light of the illuminated ones, which is what

it means to be enlightened.

The bosses claim to be the hands down winners in the battle for the minds of (wo)men.

This is the Big Lie, which takes different forms in various contexts, and can only be true by our

default. My intrinsic optimism, which hopefully shines through all of my writing, is based on the

belief that humanity will soon achieve universal consciousness. The fall of Enron marked the

beginning of the age of corporate ethics. Up until that point, the ‘60s Counter-culture concept of

the “corporation with a heart” had been laughed to oblivion. Enron was the most corrupt of the

dinosaurs, which is why it was the first to fall, along with Arthur Anderson Consultants, who had

helped to create this monstrosity.

264 Beushausen (2013). Ibid.

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With the development of e-commerce, it has become crucial for corporate survival to be

able to demonstrate ethical behavior. Without a myriad of such audits and certifications, no one

is going to permit any other corporate entity to have access to their corporate network, much less

to trade with them. In the race for hegemony over global markets, which e-trade vastly

accelerated, knowledge management has become the key word in maintaining a competitive

edge. In their application of complex, biological, adaptive paradigms to organizational theory,

corporations have found that they can create a permanent, and even accelerating competitive

advantage by leveraging the knowledge of knowledge workers to the level of corporate strategy.

In this process of discovery, they learned that putting people from different backgrounds

together to work on creating knowledge yields a synergistic effect, through positive feedback in

the spiral of knowledge. What those addicted to command and control could not anticipate is that

this will be the proximate cause of their organizational transformation away from Taylorism

toward “freely associated labor.” That is because knowledge workers have minds of our own,

and our minds are much brighter than any reflection of their ‘enlightenment’ could possibly

provide. Imagine the light from ten thousand suns. Now, try to manage knowledge from such a

source. In universal consciousness, knowledge management is an oxymoron! Whether or not this

happens on any given date is irrelevant to the fact that this has been the direction of the evolution

of consciousness ever since the first stirrings of life.

Teilhard de Chardin (Bedogne, 2008)265 is the theologian who got the evolution of

consciousness right. Whatever unfortunate role he played in the Piltdown Man scandal, his

association with this fraud cannot detract from his achievement. If the spiritual evolution of

265 Bedogne, V. F. (2008). Evolution of consciousness: The philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de

Chardin and the evolutionary transformation unfolding within us. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers.

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humanity to universal consciousness be the “Will of God,” or final manifestation of His divine

purpose, who am I to argue? This is not some sort of enlightenment, as the moon is enlightened

by the Sun, but rather an awakening. It is autonomous self-empowerment, a self-actualization

that we can participate in even if we are deprived of material necessities. Whether or not we will

all be caught up into the sky, we will become co-conscious of ourselves as co-creators of our

own reality. This is the exciting part. This is not about living in one of God’s Son’s many

mansions.

When the blind man touched by Jesus washed his eyes in the river of filth and the scales

fell from them, he could see! He no longer needed anyone to enlighten him. Like the blind man

opening his eyes to vision, this is a great awakening, on a spiritual level that renders 19th

Century revivalism obsolete. In terms of human health, on which my writings on systems theory

nevertheless focus although we have toured an extremely complex system, we will discover that

we have all of the spiritual, mental and physical energy necessary to cure all of our maladies

through nutrition. We will ultimately leave the molds behind, thereby rendering useless their

monopoly by the most powerful union in existence, the American Medical Association. We will

be able to move with the speed of thought precisely because we have transcended the physical

universe, in which the speed of light relative to two space-time reference frames is the absolute

limit. We will acquire our true identity as sons and daughters of God.

This is the meaning of Christ consciousness. Although all religious institutions have

attempted to shroud this in enlightenment, Christ was brighter than the “enlightened” ones in the

same degree that the Sun is brighter than our “enlightened” moon. Humanity has learned that we

do not need a king, a ruler, a charismatic leader, a Moses, a Pope, any cleric, or anyone else to

stand between ourselves and universal consciousness as an intercessor. When the obscurantists

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of His day posed a trick question, Jesus held up a coin, with a picture of Caesar stamped on it,

and said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s!” Forget

about being caught up into the clouds. It is much easier than that. Wake up and smell the coffee.

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