JOURNAL: Why use the Thermodynamic Crisis as a framework?

Posted: 14 May 2008 11:49 AM CDT

As many of you already know, a large part of what I do is to provide people with useful frameworks for thinking through difficult or complex problems. To the extent that these frameworks get you thinking (even if you disagree with me, which is encouraged), they are a success.

The benefit of using the "Thermodynamic Crisis" as a framework is that it is a relatively complete and simple explanation for many of the global trends we are currently seeing. It also appeals to a scale that is beyond the noise generated by cycles of introspection (at the political, social, and economic levels) that forces analysis paralysis. As John Boyd points out in "Destruction and Creation":

...we find that the uncertainty and disorder generated by an inward-oriented system talking to itself can be offset by going outside and creating a new system. Simply stated, uncertainty and related disorder can be diminished by the direct artifice of creating a higher and broader more general concept to represent reality.

To repeat by moving up the scale to a global thermodynamic systems approach, we can start to see the outlines of the real situation. A situation not adequately modeled by global and (even less) national political/economic analysis. Keep this in mind when I begin to expand this framework in the next months.

THE THERMODYNAMIC CRISIS

Posted: 13 May 2008 05:04 PM CDT

Globalization has catalyzed the decline of the nation-state and spawned decentralized violence/opposition (which is increasingly effective due to innovations in theory and DIY technology). The result has been an ongoing crisis in the global control system we use to mitigate the impact of emerging challenges -- our responses/efforts are therefore slower, less effective, and more divisive. Much of this has been documented in this blog and the book, Brave New War.

The Other Crisis
This "Control System Crisis" is particularly unfortunate since globalization has also created a "Thermodynamic Crisis" characterized by increasingly expensive energy (demand growth that far exceeds supply growth as well as expensive/inefficient substitution for declining sources) and ecosystem overload (global warming, pandemics, water/soil depletion, etc.).* The reason for this is that our global scale civilization has exceeded:

The production capacity of stored solar (oil, natural gas, etc.) energy resources. As demand (driven by 2 billion more people, a 3x gain, becoming middle class consumers) continues to outstrip supply, we will see energy inputs become increasingly expensive.
The carrying capacity and natural defenses of our ecosystem. More specifically, our civilization's entropy production has exceeded the baseline negative entropy of our environmental systems.
Our global system's capacity for evolutionary change. Incremental changes to the global system through technological innovation, economic restructuring, and social reengineering can't produce the results needed to reverse or slow this crisis.

The Impact
Worse, there are signs that these crises are coupling into a global scale positive feedback loop that threatens increasingly frequent disasters (of a wide variety of types).

*I'll provide a MUCH more detailed examination of this in my new book, "The Resilient Community."