“It’s the system, stupid” or “It’s the stupid system"

I may be uncharacteristically optimistic in my thinking about this, but it seems to me that the world and its inhabitants may be in better shape than we realize. Here’s my rationale:

• The world is a complex, self-organizing, emergent system.
• Most folks aren’t prepared to think about how such systems function.
• Mass media is focused on mass audiences that include most folks.
• Therefore, mass media rarely, if ever, reports on the complex, self-organizing, emergent system in which we all live interdependently. (See: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Also the movie “Network.”)
• Consequently, much of the world is adjusting and adapting in ways that rarely get reported and the implications of the emergent properties of those adjustments and adaptations won’t be evident for some time.

Earth
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Examples of such changes include the removal of dams from the Klamath and other rivers; the inclusion of Native Americans in the management of some public lands. (If Ed Abbey were still with US, I’d love to read what he’d have to say about that.) The quantity and quality of pushback to business as usual is growing rapidly. It may be that Artificial Intelligence, and its implications, will be the straw that breaks the technology camel’s back. Let me know in the comments if you think I need to cut down my dosage of happy pills.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

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