[FRIAM] Power Laws and the Human Condition...

[Steve Smith]

Power Law Diversity is just a heuristic, not an actual final goal IMO.

Permaculture principles grant (and cultivate/manage) a certain intrinsic 
complexity to wildland/urban interfaces which are thereby similar to 
estuarial zones.   Whether that complexity is good or not is somewhat a 
matter of perspective.  Swamps and bogs are incredibly rich, but a lot 
of humans prefer not to live in that miasma of diversity (crocs and 
gators and mosquitos, and (an)aerobic bacterial cultures and .... ).  
The frogs, turtles, water-birds, and midges LOVE it!  So we filled many 
of them in (most of Santa Fe proper was a cienega on what we channelized 
to become "the Santa Fe River" when the Spaniards first moved their 
headquarters there from Ohkay Owingeh) or drained them (Everglades) to 
suit our preferences and lost something of 2nd or 3rd or nth order 
utility (to us) if not 1st order (else we would not have "fixed" it).

I think there are complexity inversions that can happen a bit like 
thermal inversions.   The global urbanization might be an example.   The 
myriad farmsteads and villages that all but collapsed as those living 
on/amongst them flocked to cities for "opportunity" is an example... 
more ethnically/culturally diverse neighborhoods grew up in the cities 
as the countryside collapsed into somewhat homogenous decay.

I think it is inevitable that humanity will experience qualitatively 
complex phase changes and it is incumbent on "us" (whoever/whatever the 
hell that means) to decide when and how we can do that more smoothly 
rather than A) let the neoliberal "free" market decide for us who should 
thrive and who should suffer; B) pick a Utopian Fantasy and build an 
arbitrarily narrow fitness function to characterize it and optimize 
THAT.    Widespread neo-electrification is one such example of the 
present-future. Middle Class home-ownership and private vehicle 
transportation are another from the near-past present.   Hubville and 
Arcosanti are examples of trying to manage or exploit or acknowledge 
some of that complexity distribution.

Your rants/raves about the (human) microbiome have moved me to be more 
aware of THAT tail of the power-law distribution (not to mention my 
gut-health and neurophysiological consequences).  Just above that scale, 
Tardigrades and Diatoms have each had their 15 minutes of fame in 
history.   Musk (and others) are pushing the other tail of the power-law 
toward Trillionaire Robber Barons who own planets or sections of the 
asteroid belt in the way that Railroad Robber Barons came to own huge 
swaths of land across this country.

On 2/8/22 11:55 AM, glen wrote:
> Yeah, to some extent, we're already going that way. (See attached.) 
> But I'm ignorant of how much of the wilderness is being paved over by 
> city. I may have mentioned this in this forum already. But one of the 
> recent arguments was about the epistemic status of the assumption that 
> biodiversity in the wild is higher than that of the city. My 
> adversaries, being [macro|meso]biologists, focus on big complex 
> animals and plants, whereas my focus was on the rate of evolution in 
> micro-animals and plants ... you know, where *we* are food and "hive" 
> for some of those little guys. It just seems so obvious that rather 
> than homogenize the wilderness, we should be diversifying the city. 
> Hence bringing compressed air to the (residentially zoned) home seems 
> regressive, not progressive.
>
> Thanks. I'll look up Kimmerer and Hubville.
>
> On 2/8/22 10:43, Steve Smith wrote:
>> Glen -
>>
>> No, I think you are spot on, and I can credit you with helping to 
>> have moved my perspective some over the many years you have been 
>> shadow-boxing at me (and others) on this list.
>>
>> I am acutely aware that my 1800 sq ft home IS a mcMansion by 
>> many,many standards, and that my myriad microprojects are one of my 
>> ways of allowing myself some slack on living as remotely as I do when 
>> my instincts and semi-formal understanding of the power-law 
>> distribution challenge/opportunity.     If I am part of the 99% in 
>> this country (first world), it does me well to remember that I (we) 
>> are part of the 1% to the third world  (or pick another ratio if you 
>> think 2 orders of magnitude is too much/little).
>>
>> I was hugely conflicted by Paolo Soleri's Arcology 
>> <https://www.arcosanti.org/arcology/#:~:text=Arcology%20is%20the%20fusion%20of,functioning%20as%20a%20living%20system.> 
>> vision when I first encountered it (I was in college 60 miles north 
>> of Arcosanti <https://www.arcosanti.org/>as it was being built in the 
>> 70s) and was drawn to the ideation of "right scaling" and "low 
>> impact" living for humans, but offended by implications that I *must* 
>> become /homo hiveus/ to be happy/healthy/survive.   I have visited 
>> Arcosanti every few years as an adult and befriended Tomiaki Tamura 
>> (architect/archivist at Arcosanti) after a number of us made the 
>> effort to do a digital 3D capture of the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in 
>> Santa Fe when it was in threat of being bulldozed.   I still think it 
>> isn't the ideal Utopian vision it wants to be, but it provides some 
>> very good parallax in several dimensions.
>>
>> Whilst in Stockholm 2 years ago with Merle, SteveG and I met the 
>> folks behind Hubville <https://hubville.org/>which is a Swedish 
>> project to try to re-envision mesoscale development... to fill in 
>> thoughtfully and efficiently at the scale of Village to relieve both 
>> rural and urban (esp. suburban) problems in development.... as the 
>> name suggests, to become (yet more of) a Hub or return to fill the 
>> scaling niche they filled when they emerged 100 or 1000 years ago.   
>> They were not only working in Sweden but also with partners in Africa 
>> whose development challenges were somewhat complementary to those in 
>> Europe.
>>
>> Your point about our processes being perverted by our "delusional 
>> identity as individuals..." and ".. delusional conception of private 
>> property" is also well taken, in spite of my being highly charged up 
>> with that conception and rhetoric both as a child and throughout my 
>> adult life (and ongoing).    I recently (1 year hence) read Robin 
>> Wall Kimmerer's book "Braiding Sweetgrass 
>> <https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass>" which addressed 
>> human society/nature from a more ecosystem point of view.  She is a 
>> trained botanist but also a Native American and manages (IMO) to 
>> balance those two perspectives very effectively.  She talks a lot 
>> about pioneer/frontier culture/species and succession growth in 
>> ecological recovery. I was left with a strong feeling that we (/homo 
>> faber/) really need to recognize that we are a (highly effective) 
>> invasive species over most of the planet and that if what drew us to 
>> those ecosystems/niches is at all valuable to us, we need to back the 
>> hell off and recognize that we need to yield to a more robust/stable 
>> order that comes with mature ecosystems, and be part of them, not the 
>> dominators of the landscape where they once thrived.   This applies 
>> not only to the biosphere but to the cultural milieu where we 
>> (Western Civ Heroes) colonized the hell out of those who *had* found 
>> a more mature balance.   I reject the literality of "/homo hiveus"/ 
>> as an aspiration, but acknowledge that we are not even a little bit 
>> "right scaled" in our participation in the human-sphere, much less 
>> the biosphere.
>>
>> Kimmerer also introduced me to the idea of a Gratitude Economy which 
>> is the next step along a chain of evolution beyond Gift Economies.  I 
>> was raised with an ideal of "generosity" but more in the way a 
>> hardcore Liberatarian or even Republican might hold it (pride, ego, 
>> obligation, fealty).  This made it easy for me to embrace ideas like 
>> "Gift Economy" and "Pay it Forward" variants... but it was really 
>> poignant when she began to give examples of applying that 
>> "generosity" in a slightly different context of "gratitude".   I burn 
>> my firewood  and even bask in the sun with a very different 
>> perspective than I did when I felt like I *deserved* those things.  
>> I'm less focused on getting a subsistence garden to grow than 
>> nurturing/expanding proto-food-forests  in existing the microclimates 
>> already in place in and around trees and shrubs that were already 
>> here when I came or volunteer (thank you birds!).
>>
>> I only wish I had been more of this awareness when my daughters were 
>> growing up.  They benefited significantly from the Equal/Civil Rights 
>> movements of my era, and Hippy-cum-Yuppie ideals of the bulk of my 
>> professional/personal circle, but they are still stuck in rat races 
>> when (if your vision were more fully elaborated and generated) they 
>> could be living in a more peaceful/gratitude-filled "nest" or 
>> "ecosystem" ("Hive" still carries too much 
>> specialization/non-power-law for me).   We talk about this some when 
>> we get together, but it is hard when you are a rat trying to keep up 
>> in the race.   The elder turned me onto Kimmerer and I in turn turned 
>> her sister onto her... Kimmerer's "Gathering Moss" wasn't as poignant 
>> for me, but for anyone who lives where moss thrives, it might be 
>> perfect.
>>
>> In the spirit of gratitude, I definitely gain a lot from your 
>> oppositional instincts/style in this forum (and sometimes offlist).   
>> I'm guessing your Saloon-Salon compatriots in Olympia groan (with 
>> gratitude) when you show up for verbal fisticuffs and beer.
>
>
>
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