Civilizations, Complexity and Compassion

[Paul Paryski]

A quick response from a former historian and ex UN guy:  China and  Japan are
examples of societies that have not collapsed but have gone through  waves of
change.  As Jared Diamond so eloquently wrote in his seminal book  Collapse
what determines whether a civilization collapses or mostly  collapse (no or few
societies have totally disappeared; most re-emerge in a  different form) is
its ability to adopt adaptive management strategies to  changing conditions.  
Complexity can be used as a somewhat  imperfect tool to rationally determine
what the best adaptive management  strategies are.
 
There is a book, 1421, that describes China's  great effort to explore and
map the world well before the Europeans and why  their effort ultimately was
abandoned and partially lost, although the  Venetians used the Chinese maps. The
Chinese actually explored the Americas  and Africa and started trading in
these places.  Basically the mandarins  decided to isolate China from the rest of
the world to improve their own power  base, a bad adaptive strategy.  Perhaps
had they used the complexity  tools devised by Confucius they would have not
so.  
 
Paul



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[Phil Henshaw-2]

Former energy secretary
<http://www7.nationalacademies.org/energysummit/energy_summit_agenda.html#P5
41_52569#P541_52569> James R. Schlesinger quoted Arnold Toynbee recently
with the best general statement I've run across.  That civilizations
collapse when they run into problems they can't solve.   Needing growing
returns from diminishing resources is one of those kinds of problems, but
there are others.  


The kind of flexible approach you suggest could be effective in responding
to reality change, whatever your attachments to old traditions might be, if
you are capable of perceiving the change.   Cutting the analysis a little
short, I think that means the real problem is when people become stuck on
one idea and the world turns out different.   So, the question is what might
it be that seems to make us prone to fixation.   One obvious prerequisite
seems to be representing the world with culturally maintained images, rather
that representing it with questions.


Phil


 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of PPARYSKI at aol.com
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 11:07 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Civilizations, Complexity and Compassion

 

A quick response from a former historian and ex UN guy:  China and Japan are
examples of societies that have not collapsed but have gone through waves of
change.  As Jared Diamond so eloquently wrote in his seminal book Collapse
what determines whether a civilization collapses or mostly collapse (no or
few societies have totally disappeared; most re-emerge in a different form)
is its ability to adopt adaptive management strategies to changing
conditions.  Complexity can be used as a somewhat imperfect tool to
rationally determine what the best adaptive management strategies are.

 

There is a book, 1421, that describes China's great effort to explore and
map the world well before the Europeans and why their effort ultimately was
abandoned and partially lost, although the Venetians used the Chinese maps.
The Chinese actually explored the Americas and Africa and started trading in
these places.  Basically the mandarins decided to isolate China from the
rest of the world to improve their own power base, a bad adaptive strategy.
Perhaps had they used the complexity tools devised by Confucius they would
have not so.  

 

Paul





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