Glen -
My hatred of the term "landscape" is partly because your question is
ill-formed. It implies a natural "up" and "down".
Sure, the source domain of the "landscape" metaphor on first observation
is that of a single-valued function over two dimensions. Of course,
said "landscape" can have more features than mere "height" and "up"
needn't be considered "good" whilst "down" is bad. When siting a home
or seeking a good location for hunting, gathering, or farming registered
on such a "landscape" many features are of interest ranging from soil
type to exposure, to view, to vegetation to flood-risk to water-access.
I prefer your term manifold in it's
multi-valued/multivariate/multidimensional implications but I don't
expect it to be very useful with anyone without at least modest
mathematical exposure.
But in our reality, there are lots of different ways to define
success. What we need to do is embrace these definitions and provide
a clear explication of an individual's options _early_ on ... like
when they're 2 years old or so... at least before the pruning.
We don't do that because we _can't_ do that. We're so caught up in
our own myopia about the limited ways to define success.... mostly
_money_ because without money, at least in our country, you can't do
sh!t. You can't even keep yourself alive when there's perfectly good
medicine just down the street.
Yes, this is precisely the point I'm trying to stir up... like the Sufi
story of Mullah Nasrudin encountered on the street under the lamp
seeking his lost keys. When asked by a helpful passerby "so you lost
your keys here?" and replying "no, I lost them in that dark alley over
there, but the light is better here!", We tend to seek easy/simple
solutions. To the extent we are optimizers, we like a single-valued
fitness function to optimize on and are often too happy to get caught in
a local minima at that! And yes, money, the universal solvent, seems to
be a very common one, and yes, to follow the metaphor, it does seem to
"dissolve" most everything it touches.
So, the first part of the alternative is to take away that harsh
pressure toward the single solution of money. We need to work harder
to ensure that everyone has enough to eat and access to healthcare.
In parallel, we need to work harder to understand the range of ways we
can reward ourselves for productive work.
Yes, a more complex fitness function seems desirable as a "good start"
and more complex models perhaps than simple single valued functions and
a gradient descent method? Maybe some less simple ideas like
"satisficing" vs "optimising"? Some acknowledgement of ideas such as
linear and nonlinear feedback, canalization, basins of attraction,
punctuated equilibrium, etc.?
Personally, I'd work the rest of my life for just enough food, an
internet connection, and a cabin in the woods. (which is probably all
my artifacts are worth, anyway... if that)
That is pretty much what I am reducing my own life to... though my
"cabin" is an adobe and the "woods" is high desert and If I weren't so
damned lazy/incompetent, I think I could probably grow at least half of
my food... people in these parts used to grow *all* of their food not
that long ago! I'm not sure if Gary Schlitz is that far off this track
with his own "home at the edge of the rainforest" in Columbia? Carl in
his "shack behind the Dojo" shares a few features. I am sure there are
more here living a humble and relatively simple existence!
I have a friend who lives full-time aboard her 24' sailboat on Lake Mead
who insists she "hasn't smelled asphalt in 10 years" and never docks at
a marina. She depends on a "gift economy" for her basic needs (oats,
corn, beans, rice, eggs etc.), she has had no cash income for 10
years... people seek her out by boat and 4x4 in the coves and channels
where she tends to anchor between excursions up and down the lake... for
her mystical and often retrograde ideas and company for which in
exchange, they bring her "care packages" most of which she turns around
and re-gifts to her friends living in various homeless camps at the ends
of roads at aforementioned "coves".
She gets her connection with the outside world through these visits and
*yes* the magic of technology. A young couple who she once helped to
nurture a struggling business now provides her with a "friends and
family" cell phone with unlimited data and SMS. Her laptop is fritzed
and she occasionally wishes it weren't and contemplates if it isn't time
to ask Santa for an Android Tablet... She's considered sorting out
getting her (backup?) internet over ham radio... she does have a small
ham set onboard, her small bank of lead-acid batteries being kept topped
by solar and drained really only by the radio, her cell charger... and
the occasional cabin light (go to bed when the sun goes down if you
don't have things to do by star/moonlight!).
Keeping her (non-motorized) sailboat shipshape is mostly a matter of
thoughtful care and maintenance but at some point, she will need larger
"care packages" with a new sail or a few square feet of fiberglass and a
pot of epoxy resin to make repairs if her "fiberglass tub" ever gets
grounded on a rock or something.
Nope, there is not room on all of lake Mead (or Powell or EB or Victoria
or the Marin headlands or ..) for more than a few dozen/thousand of us,
nor can the forests (or deserts) handle us all trying to live a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle... but the image is still romantic and there
*IS* room for a few of us. For now.
Wax Off!
- Steve
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
