How Systems Break: First They Slow Down
Alternatively, we can cling to a state of denial, and the dominant system will be replaced by archetypal systems that are not necessarily positive.
Understanding our current socio-economy as a system of sub-systems enables us to project how and when unsustainable sub-systems will finally unravel.
The reality that cannot be spoken within the conventional media is that all the primary financial systems we believe are permanent and indestructible are actually on borrowed time.
One way to assess this decline of resilience is to look at how long it takes systems to recover when they are stressed, and to what degree they bounce back to previous levels.
A compelling article on this topic was recently published by The Atlantic: Nature’s Warning Signal: Complex systems like ecological food webs, the brain, and the climate all give off a characteristic signal when disaster is around the corner.
“The signal, a phenomenon called “critical slowing down,” is a lengthening of the time that a system takes to recover from small disturbances, such as a disease that reduces the minnow population, in the vicinity of a critical transition. It occurs because a system’s internal stabilizing forces—whatever they might be—become weaker near the point at which they suddenly propel the system toward a different state.”
Recent email exchanges with correspondent Bart D. (Australia) clued me into theDarwinian structure of this critical slowing down and loss of snapback (what we might characterize as a loss of resilience).
Beneath the surface dominance of one system are many other systems that are suppressed by the dominant system.
As the dominant system weakens / destabilizes / slows down, these largely invisible systems compete to occupy more of the ecosystem.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
