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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