{"id":17593,"date":"2016-02-10T12:15:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17593"},"modified":"2016-02-10T12:15:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:15:54","slug":"how-systems-break-first-they-slow-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17593","title":{"rendered":"How Systems Break: First They Slow Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oftwominds.com\/blogfeb16\/system-slows2-16.html\" target=\"_blank\">How Systems Break: First They Slow Down<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><i>Alternatively, we can cling to a state of denial, and the dominant system will be replaced by archetypal systems that are not necessarily positive.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Understanding our current socio-economy as a system of sub-systems enables us to project how and when unsustainable sub-systems will finally unravel.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The reality that cannot be spoken within the conventional media is that\u00a0<b>all the primary financial systems we believe are permanent and indestructible are actually on borrowed time.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>One way to assess this decline of resilience is to look at how long it takes systems to recover when they are stressed<\/b>, and to what degree they bounce back to previous levels.<\/p>\n<p>A compelling article on this topic was recently published by\u00a0<i>The Atlantic<\/i>:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2015\/12\/a-warning-system-built-into-nature\/421836\/\" target=\"resource\">Nature&#8217;s Warning Signal:<\/a>\u00a0<i>Complex systems like ecological food webs, the brain, and the climate all give off a characteristic signal when disaster is around the corner.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;The signal, a phenomenon called \u201ccritical slowing down,\u201d 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\u2019s internal stabilizing forces\u2014whatever they might be\u2014become weaker near the point at which they suddenly propel the system toward a different state.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Recent email exchanges with correspondent Bart D. (Australia) clued me into the<b>Darwinian structure of this critical slowing down and loss of snapback<\/b>\u00a0(what we might characterize as a loss of resilience).<\/p>\n<p>Beneath the surface dominance of one system are many other systems that are suppressed by the dominant system.<\/p>\n<p>As the dominant system weakens \/ destabilizes \/ slows down, these largely invisible systems compete to occupy more of the ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[150,154,12029,1057,680,769,6856,3721,7474],"class_list":["post-17593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-collapse","tag-complexity","tag-destabalisation","tag-ecosystems","tag-resilience","tag-sustainability","tag-systemic-collapse","tag-systems","tag-unsustainable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17594,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17593\/revisions\/17594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}