Thanks, David, I'll look again. I admit I read the essay a little quickly and
in a soporiphic late afternoon state.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: David Delaney
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Ottawadissenters] Empires on the Edge of Chaos
Ed
You're not disagreeing with NF. You're agreeing violently with him.
He also (And not just him, his thesis is one that literally hundreds of
people have either invented or repeated on the web for at least a dozen years.
It's amazing how these academics get to put ideas forward as original just
because they haven't been published in their professional literature. And yes,
H-D is another one. ) posits that it is the condition of critical complexity
that puts a system at risk. The sand pile doesn't collapse just because one
grain of sand has been added to it unless it has achieved a very particular
state. The single grain is only the proximate and incidental "cause" of the
collapse, just as the final precipitating event of societal collapse is only
proximate and incidental. (Collapsing sand piles are used as analogies for
complex societies at risk of collapse by both NF in the essay in question and
H-D (and a hundred(?) others) because they were in fact the subject of an
famous experiment in self organizing complexity and collapse.) NF is explicit
in emphasizing that it is no single event or important sequence of events that
causes societal collapse (or WW I) but the same overextension that you like as
a cause. Once in the vulnerable state state of critical complexity any of
hundreds or thousands of different events might the single one that
precipitates the collapse. Read the essay again and you'll see this.
David
At 08:06 PM 02/03/2010, Ed Weick wrote:
[ Attachment(s) from Ed Weick included below]
The Ferguson paper (
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24874.htm ) that David Delaney
posted is interesting, but in my opinion its emphasis is too much on short term
events that bring empires down and not nearly enough on the longer term factors
that make them vulnerable to collapse.
In many cases, the reason that empires are brought down is because they have
so overextended themselves that they can no longer really work. At that point
any little event can prove fatal to them. An important factor is that EROI
(energy return on investment) has become negative, so negative that the empire
lacks the resources to keep itself going. Another is complexity. In many cases,
empires have become so complex that they can no longer function as coherent
systems. This is what Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in the case of Rome (see my
review of his book "The Upside of Down", attached). While the Roman Empire
might have muddled on in a peaceful world, the world was not peaceful. Any
number of minor events could then move it into a state of collapse.
One might also look at the collapse of the Soviet Union. After spending a
month at a university level institution in Moscow in 1994, shortly after the
collapse of communism , I concluded that the Soviet Union had, like Rome,
greatly overextended itself and had become so complex as to be ungovernable.
Two things had played major roles. First, with the war in Afghanistan and the
suppression of rebels in Chechnya and other states, it had taken on more than
its economy could handle. Secondly, the planning system that had been
installed to run the Soviet economy after the revolution was no longer
manageable. Initially intended to provide for modernization and growth, it had
become a vast, inflexible and static bureaucratic machine, a true drag on
economic activity. You had to use it, for example, to get a spare part for an
oil rig or an engine. Months later, when the spare part finally arrived, it
wasn't the right kind and the process had to be repeated, perhaps several
times. You had to use the system because there was no market economy, at least
not on the surface.
So, while I agree with Ferguson that when an empire (nation, economy,
whatever) is ready to collapse, almost anything can bring it down. Yet I would
put far more emphasis than he has on the long process that brings the empire to
the threshold of collapse.
Ed
Attachment(s) from Ed Weick
1 of 1 File(s)
weick30homer_dixon11.pdf
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