A good reason to be terrified about what happened in Japan (no, it's not the radiation)

[GliderGuider]

This article outlines the reasons why the events in Japan are probably the first rupture in a failure cascade that could have major global repercussions. It's my own analysis, so I'm posting the whole thing, not just an excerpt.

First here are some simple observations about complex systems:

1. Complex adaptive systems lose resilience as they become more efficient;
2. Failures in such systems tend to occur at their weakest points, and can cascade into the rest of the system;
3. The weakest point in such a system will probably be found where a similar situation occurs at a smaller scale;
4. The initial failure will probably occur at the weakest point of the triggering sub-system.

These lead to the following specific observations:

1. Global industrial civilization is a very efficient complex adaptive system;
2. One of the things that makes it very efficient is JIT, which requires long supply chains supported by inexpensive transportation;
3. Many of the crucial supply chains run from (or through) Japan;
4. Because Japan has no indigenous petroleum resources, they built up a large amount of nuclear power;
5. Nuclear power is also a complex, efficient system that has low inherent resilience;
6. The most vulnerable failure points in reactors are the cooling systems, that require external power to operate.

The tsunami did two things simultaneously:

1. It took out the power to to the reactor cooling systems, triggering a meltdown and release of radiation;
2. It wrecked a lot of infrastructure, including ports and factories.

The destroyed reactor has caused the evacuation of many people at enormous expense, and has made the Japanese public more reluctant to rely on nuclear power in the future. It will also interfere with the rebuilding of damaged infrastructure in the region.

The destroyed infrastructure will need to be rebuilt using oil that costs much more than the oil that was used to build it originally.

Japan has no indigenous petroleum resources, so the oil required to run the transportation on which its supply chains depend all has to be imported (aka purchased on the world market at marginal prices). That use will now have to compete with the requirement for imported oil to rebuild damaged infrastructure.

The tsunami damaged a significant amount of Japan's industry, compromising its ability to feed the world's supply chains. This problem may be exacerbated by the redirection of imported oil from commerce to reconstruction efforts, further impeding the recovery of the supply chains.

The global oil supply is static because we have apparently reached Peak Oil. That means that any additional demand will cause price elevations. Japan will be a source of increased demand for an unknown number of years as it rebuilds.

The world's economies have not recovered from the last recession, and are vulnerable to being tipped back into a second round by any number of small effects - like industrial slowdowns caused by supply chain disruptions.

What we are looking at, in my opinion, is a perfect illustration of an interlocking failure avalanche in a brittle, complex system:

1. The most vulnerable point in a vulnerable system (the power to the cooling systems of the reactors) got knocked out. The consequences have put an enormous strain on the Japanese economy, and have interacted with the industrial damage to reduce Japan's ability to service its supply chains.
2. Japan's supply chains are vulnerable to industrial damage and the loss of transportation oil. They are especially vulnerable due to their reliance on marginally-priced imported oil.
3. The world's economy is vulnerable because of its reliance on JIT supply chains, the fact that it has not yet emerged from a major recession, and the fact that oil prices are again being pressured upwards by supply limits and possibly speculation.

There is clearly a chain of vulnerabilities that leads from the backup power generators at Fukushima all the way out into the global economy. On the way the vulnerabilities pass through oil supply problems, damaged industrial infrastructure, a Japanese recovery effort that will consume a lot of time, money and effort, and the global post-recession hangover.

We are looking at the possibility that one tsunami may have started a slo-mo train wreck that could reverberate through much of the world's economy before it finally grinds to a halt.

[tavalon]

1. Sadly this is the icing

On a shit cake.

[GliderGuider]

3. You could look at it as part of the natural progression of events.

The global economy and civilization itself can be viewed as ecosystems. From that perspective, the rules that govern adaptive cycles in ecosystems also apply to economies and civilizations. Ecosystems go through cycles consisting of four phases - growth/expoitation, conservation, release and reorganization:



Growth cycles tend to come to an end with a loss of resilience leading to ecosystem breakdown. In the case of a forest that could be forest fires or pest invasions, for a civilization it could be the sorts of economic breakdowns we're seeing now.

The length of the conservation phase depends on the nature of the ecosystem and the rapidity of its expansion in the growth phase. In the case of our civilization, it may not exist at all - we may be going straight from growth to release.

The release phase is where the resources that have been attached during the growth phase are released (possibly in a higher-entropy state as waste) for re-use in the subsequent reorganization phase. In the case of our civilization this release could manifest as the flight from suburbia, the abandonment of factory belts, the disintegration of national infrastructure like road, sanitation and communications systems - a process that John Michael Greer calls "catabolic collapse".

The reorganization phase is whatever the next cycle of civilization will be, depending in large measure on how much of the world's resource base this cycle has converted into unrecoverable waste. For example, the fact that we will have turned most accessible fossil fuels into carbon dioxide may pose a significant constraint on the growth phase of the next round of civilization.

The point I'm trying to make is that, all appearances to the contrary, the current situation is completely normal if you take an ecosystem view of civilization. It tastes like a shit sandwich for two reasons. First, release is an uncomfortable process, whether it's due to a forest fire or an economic breakdown. The second reason is that we thought the rules didn't apply to human beings and their creations. As a result we have been blindsided by the obvious, and perhaps outraged to discover that we're not special in any real way.

[bemildred]

2. You make an interesting argument.

I do agree that "Efficiency" is a false god, stability is far more important "in the long run", and stable systems do not have single points of failure.

And I do agree that we are in deep shit "in the long run".

[GliderGuider]

4. Stability is only possible if we forgo all material growth.

If growth is as inherent to human activities as it is to other ecosystems, then stability may be as much of a chimera as "sustained growth" is. All natural processes are dynamic, and human activities do not have a dispensation.

[bemildred]

5. Indeed.

Growth is (intrinsically) unstable. Stable growth is an oxymoron, but a very popular one. It is difficult to become wealthy and lord it over ones peers in a low/no growth environment, you would have to come up with some other way to support our hierarchical tendencies.

However, growth is not inherent to ecosystems, ecosystems either stabilize or die.

[GliderGuider]

6. Stability is a long way off.

There is no possibility of stabilizing the human endeavour at its current level of activity. That means we need to achieve a lower level before anything else is possible. Unfortunatly, the value of growth is embedded too deeply in our culture to permit us to consider the idea of voluntary decline. Those who try are labelled Luddites and Kaczynskis. That means the only way out will be through the debris.

Some of us who hold this vision are waking up to the idea that the only effective response is orthogonal to the problem space. That's why I now promote philosopies like Buddhism, Taoism and Advaita as appropriate responses to the situation. People like Carolyn Baker and Joanna Macy take the same approach. The non-dual philosophies offer unique advantages, in that they give the practitioner a sense of "peace, place and purpose" during times of stress and upheaval, and also promote re-connection with nature and other people. If a new truly sustainable civilization is to emerge from the wreckage of this one, it will have to be founded on such principles. We might as well all get a jump on events and begin now.

[bemildred]

7. Indeed.

The problem is that for some millions of years now human biological and cultural evolution has been driven by competition with other humans, and in that context, Luddites were and are toast. It's a classic arms race, a "Red Queen" situation, and I see no good solutions.

If you grow, eventually you grow outside the scale at which your culture and technology is feasible, and you get cultural collapse. If you don't grow, you get wiped out by the cultures that do, or internal squabbles tear you apart. There is a very real thread of historical development in global human culture and technology, the bright spot in it all, but there is not the slightest sign that human cultures, humans in groups, can think and react in the ways that individual humans do, as my brother says politically we are about as smart as reptiles, all reaction, very little foresight or ability to exercise intellectual control. But in fact, in our society, as you mention, the ideological foundations run all the other way, and for good reasons, historically authoritarian rulers have not behaved well either, so we dogmatize individual economic "freedom".

So I think we're stuck. But we live in one of the most interesting moments in all of history, so far.

[bemildred]

8. PS: I am fond of Buddhism too.

The only solution I have been able to come up with lies in the direction of an ecology of human cultures that balance each other and keep each other in check, materially, while still allowing for growth in intellectual and technological spheres. But there again, you run into the fact that such development is itself potentially very destabilizing. I have read many SciFi fictional pieces centered around that issue, how to develop technically without the destabilizing effects of such development. How to change "just right", not too much and not too little.

The truth is we have a bootstrap problem, we need a better version of humans, adapted to our new situation, but that takes geological time to happen.

[GliderGuider]

9. Good insights! Here are a couple more...

There's a very interesting essay by Andrew Schmookler called "The Parable of the Tribes" that addresses the issue of competing societies from the POV of the use of force.

Imagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, then all may live in peace. But what if all but one choose peace, and that one is ambitious for expansion and conquest? What can happen to the others when confronted by an ambitious and potent neighbor? Perhaps one tribe is attacked and defeated, its people destroyed and its lands seized for the use of the victors. Another is defeated, but this one is not exterminated; rather, it is subjugated and transformed to serve the conqueror. A third seeking to avoid such disaster flees from the area into some inaccessible (and undesirable) place, and its former homeland becomes part of the growing empire of the power-seeking tribe. Let us suppose that others observing these developments decide to defend themselves in order to preserve themselves and their autonomy. But the irony is that successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires a society to become more like the society that threatens it. Power can be stopped only by power, and if the threatening society has discovered ways to magnify its power through innovations in organization or technology (or whatever), the defensive society will have to transform itself into something more like its foe in order to resist the external force.

If "growth=power" then the future doesn't look good for stable, sustainable societies.

Regarding the difference in human behaviour in groups vs. individually, the "triune brain" theory holds a lot of insights. In the simplest terms, the oldest reptilian part of the brain governs power and survival, the intermediate limbic system governs hierarchy and herding behaviour, and the neocortex gives us our ability to reason. As we ascend the historical layers of the brain, their connections to our emotions become weaker: reptilian urges give the strongest emotional reactions, the limbic ones come next, but the thoughts generated by the neocortex prompt very little emotional reaction. Since emotions are the strongest drivers of behaviour, the concerns of the lower levels of the brain are the most motivating. Thoughts generated by the neocortex are significant motivators only when survival is not threatened and no hierarchic/group herding issues are in play. To the degree that either of those levels are activated (as they are in most human interactions), rational thought loses its power to direct our behaviour.

Here's hoping h. Sapiens v2 is truly sapient. Version 1 is pretty much a fail.

[bemildred]

10. I have read Mr Schmookler before, didn't know about his book.

I think I'll have to look up a copy. I have things to do, I'll see about continuing this tomorrow.
:hi:

[bemildred]

11. "the problem of civilization, that its achievements are more reliably impressive than benign"

I like that turn of phrase.

A few short comments on Mr Schmookler's piece:

1.) Hunter gatherers think homicide is a perfectly sound way to solve disputes, what they lack is the means of coercion which we enjoy today.

2.) Hobbes did indeed assume the conclusion he wished to arrive at, the Hobbesian world he imagined is just what was needed to justify his authoritarian political vision.

3.) Population growth and our failure to manage it or even think about it lies behind all of our troubles. What is problematic for millions is no trouble at all for thousands or hundreds.

4.) In the state of nature humans live in societies and are captives of those societies, a child's first job is to learn how to behave so as to be accepted by the society it is born into, the consequences of failure can be most severe.

5.) The thing that strikes me most about civilized ruling elites, consistently, is the delusional nature of their views of themselves and the world. The USA today fits right in, for example, all that bullshit about "American Exceptionalism".

6. "In such circumstances, a Hobbesian struggle for power among societies becomes inevitable." Yes, exactly. The Hobbesian world is the result of the rise of civilization and large scale agriculture, and of the Hobbesian views of vainglorious ruling elites.

7.) Hannah Ahrendt disagrees with Mr Schmookler's definition of power, she goes into the question in "On Violence", I don't really know which I agree with. See item #4 above. It is an issue I have not been able to disentangle, I suspect we need a better nomenclature to describe the different types of coercion. As Schmookler says: "'The meaning of "power', a concept central to this entire work, needs to be explored."

8.) His parable points to the "Red Queen" situation I mentioned, and I agree with his view.

9.) "Wisdom is often less a matter of choosing a particular view as the truth than of combining different truths in a balanced way." Indeed.

[GliderGuider]

12. Kicking the can down the road

Here are some comments prompted in turn by your comments (with which I agree pretty much down the line).

1.) Hunter gatherers think homicide is a perfectly sound way to solve disputes, what they lack is the means of coercion which we enjoy today.

To be flip, homicide at least addresses the “excess reproduction” problem…

To be a bit less glib, I’ve read that the majority of H-G homicide happened in the context of sexual competition, not in the general enforcement of social norms. I’d like to think that one less-violent means of enforcement they used might have been an approach I’d call “partial ostracism in place”. In a society that is as interdependent as an H-G tribe, each person depends on the others to accomplish much of what needs to be done during the day. A simple communal decision to reduce the help offered to an offender would make their life enough harder that they would normalize pretty quickly. It’s a form of punishment that could be very finely tuned and ramped up as needed to correct the behaviour – with the ultimate threat being physical expulsion from the tribe. I have no idea if such techniques were used or not, but it’s an interesting idea. Of course, it works best in a highly interdependent tribal setting. The less interdependent a society becomes, the more impersonal and punitive the coercion becomes.

2.) Hobbes did indeed assume the conclusion he wished to arrive at, the Hobbesian world he imagined is just what was needed to justify his authoritarian political vision.

The Hobbesian view of society in terms of authoritarian hierarchy has become utterly entrenched in our civilization, and that entrenchment is reflected (perhaps unconsciously) throughout Schmookler’s essay. See my comment on power below.

7.) Hannah Ahrendt disagrees with Mr Schmookler's definition of power, she goes into the question in "On Violence", I don't really know which I agree with. See item #4 above. It is an issue I have not been able to disentangle, I suspect we need a better nomenclature to describe the different types of coercion. As Schmookler says: "'The meaning of "power', a concept central to this entire work, needs to be explored."

Interestingly, I see almost no real difference between Schmookler’s and Arendt’s definitions of “power”. In both cases it seems to reflect the ability of a one level in a social hierarchy to coerce the behaviour of those at lower levels, with violence being the ultimate tool of coercion. I think that both of them tend to confuse core concept of “power” with the cultural expressions of it (like governments) and the tools used to implement it (laws and law enforcement).

“Power” just means the ability to effect change. The word itself doesn’t carry any hint of how that change is to be put in motion. There is a distinction that makes another usage of the word “power” possible. That is the distinction between “power over” and “power with” – coercive versus cooperative power. The reflexive assumption that “power” implies “power over” is an artefact of our hierarchic culture, which has developed a pervasive and finely honed usage of the word that closes the door on the idea that there might be non-coercive ways to “exercise power”.

That brings up another language issue I had while reading Schmookler this time. It’s over the use of the word “anarchy”. He repeatedly uses the word “anarchy” as though it was exactly synonymous with “chaos”. He makes his assumptions clear when he says, “The living order of nature, though it has no ruler, is not in the least anarchic.” That’s amusing, because “having no ruler” is precisely the definition of anarchy, and nature is completely and utterly anarchic in the correct usage of the word.

Of course Schmookler is merely reflecting colloquial usage – when we say “anarchy” in conversation, the connotation is always one of chaos and disorder. This prompts the question, “How did a perfectly respectable word acquire such an unsavoury popular meaning?” It all comes down to the fact that our civilization is organized around authoritarian, hierarchical principles. In such a system, life without rulers is impossible – at least from the rulers’ point of view. So the meaning of the word was morphed and shaped – deliberately – to reinforce the idea that ruler-less societies are inherently dangerous. Whether this is true or not depends very much on who you ask. If you ask a ruler (or at least someone comfortable in a hierarchy with authoritarian leaders), the implications of chaos and danger from anarchy will be self-evident to them. Someone who thinks things might run better if people were encouraged to be autonomous and cooperative might demur.

[bemildred]

14. In order:

1.) OK. I would only add that an increase in the size of social units naturally leads to increase in expectations of and methods for social control, changes in scale necessarily entail changes in form. A lot of that revolves around the issues arising from agriculture and "private property", and the desire to pass ones property on to relatives or descendants, to keep property in the family. Prior to the advent of agriculture and private property, of propertied classes, these issues simply don't arise, at least in the forms we consider "natural". If there is little or no property, which is easily replaced, then one need not defend it.

And yes, as Alan Watts said, all sensible wars are over women and food, and in the absence of scarcity, there is little reason for collective action. War in the pre-civilized world is more in the nature of sport than what we consider it to be.

2.) Yes.

7.) Ahrendt in "On Revolution" (1963) sketches in a nomenclature distinguishing "power", "strength", "force", "authority", and "violence". She elaborates it further in "On Violence" (1968). Those are the only two of her works I have read so far. In that nomenclature "power" equates more or less with "power with" as you just used it. She sees "power" as the collective form of what in the individual is "strength", that is the ability to act collectively is "power", whereas the ability to act individually is "strength"; "force" should be reserved for "forces of nature" or "forces of circumstances", that is something not subject to human will; "authority" is the expectation of being obeyed, with the implication that coercion is not needed, something related to having legitimacy, and which may attach to social norms or individual persons; and "violence" as the physical means of coercion, war and police action, and she distinguishes by it's "instrumental character", it's dependence on weapons and technical means.

The point seems to be to distinguish between collective action that is voluntary and collective action that is coerced, with the intent to valorize the former as superior to the latter, so that voluntarily willed collective action is superior in a number of ways to coerced collective action. She makes the point, which I agree with, that a violent government is a weak government because it cannot rely on it's members to carry out its will without coercion. The USA today is a perfect case, we are governed by the masters of violence, and yet they cannot effect their will. Some of that is because what they will is stupid, and some of that is because "violence" is not really the same thing as "power", and it lacks the creative energy which collectively willed action possesses.

Schmookler seems to accept the equation of power with coercion, as you note, although I confess I will have to read further to be sure what I think of his views.

I quite agree about the debasement of usage of the word "anarchy", equating it with "chaos". The universe we live in has always existed in a state of "anarchy", and still does, and it managed to produce us along the way, which hardly holds up as a complete lack of order.

[GliderGuider]

15. Very nice. We seem to be in violent agreement!

:thumbsup:

[GliderGuider]

17. About Arendt

I will own up to not having read Arendt deeply, and not her 1968 book. My comments were based mainly on a 1969 article Reflections on Violence from the NYT in which she doesn't really flesh out her views on cooperative power. I'll dig up her book, because she's one of the authors like Victor Frankl that I feel guilty for not having read yet...

[bemildred]

18. I think it would be worth the trouble of anyone interested in these issues.

The edition of "On Revolution" that I have (Penguin Classics) has a nice introduction by Jonathan Schell that relates her work to recent events, but that is more work to get through.

[bemildred]

16. PS:

I find Wikileaks, with Mr Assange's stated intent to throw some spanners into the works of government by propaganda, interesting because he seems to be aiming directly at the distinction Ahrendt makes between "power" and "violence"; he seems to want to force government to choose between the use of more coercion, thus weakening it, or greater "transparency", thus strengthening it, making it more legitimate, more democratic, and more subject to the will and consent of the governed.

[GliderGuider]

19. Yes!

That's precisely what I found most intriguing and valuable about Assange and Wikileaks as well. Everybody got so wrapped up in the "design on the cover" that they didn't read the book that Assange is actually trying to (re)write.

He's trying to apply the sort of leverage that Donella Meadows of "Limits to Growth" fame talked about (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points), especially points 6 (Structure of information flow) and 5 (Rules of the system), but also 3 (Goal of the system) and 2 (Mindset or paradigm that the system arises out of).

[abelenkpe]

13. K&R nt