Peace: Understanding Systemic Reality

We are faced with a huge challenge because there are no examples in nature that model how we should deal with self-destructive systems. Such a mechanism for dealing with self-destructive systems has never been developed in the nature because all natural systems work effectively and any threat to their existence always comes from outside of the system. Natural systems are not designed to shorten their lifespan. Having said that we should be quick to note that absence of such a model in nature does not prevent us from determining how to transform a self-destructive system into a self-sustaining system. The purpose of this blog is to demonstrate that through an appreciation of how natural systems work such a scheme can be developed.

In any natural system all the components of the system always works interdependently to maintain the vitality of the system. One could call this the first law of systemic reality. This is what Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the father of modern systems theory, was speaking of when he defined a system as “an entity which maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts.” The implication is that regardless of the varied roles they may play within the parent system, all the parts of any system have the same goal.

This first law can be extended to a second law of systemic reality which posits that every part of a system is itself a system. At the same time that a system is maintaining its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts it is also interacting with other systems to maintain the existence of the larger system to which it belongs. We can conclude from this that every component of a system always works to maintain the existence of the system, and any organism that is not working to maintain the existence of a system is not a member of that system regardless of its physical presence within that system.

This is important because humans are the only organisms that are capable of taking on an alternate reality, i.e. pretending that they belong to a different system than the one to which they belong. This is both exciting and problematic. It is exciting because it has allowed us to create the organization, which has been called humanity’s greatest invention. It is problematic because sometimes the assumed reality can be mistaken for the reality.

It for the latter reason that humans are both an integral part of this ecosystem yet seem to act as if they don’t belong to it in the destructive effect we have had on the world around us.