Social System Physics: The Physical Properties of Sustainable Systems - Part 1

A preliminary objective of social system physics is to identify the processes and conditions which must organize if a social system is to be a sustainable social system. This step is taken in order to achieve an ultimate objective to craft sustainable social systems for humanity.
I propose, through the study of the physical properties of social systems, we can develop the knowledge to be able to design and construct governments, economies, and communities that will be sustainable. One of the characteristics of these sustainable systems is they will prove beneficial to all who participate in or interact with them; there will be no winners and losers.
Social systems are prominent in the universe and are sustainable systems, though all sustainable systems are not social systems. This article is one of two which will address the general physical properties of sustainable systems as preparation to differentiate the more complex social systems and their properties.
What follows is primitive science, the initial attempt to describe observed properties of complex physical systems not yet understood. Each property described here is significant to sustainable social systems. On first reading, some may seem questionable as to relevance but, in the larger context, they will prove to be valid. The described properties may be a fundamental condition of a sustainable system (must exist in order for a sustainable system to organize) or arise in the formation of a sustainable system (serving as evidence the system under observation is a sustainable system).
Today, physics as a field of science is universally bound to mathematics. One of the premises of the institutions of physics is any serious work of physics, any proposed find of physics, to be considered for acceptance must be reducible to a mathematical expression. There’s no math in this work. A careful look at the history of science shows that a system must be acknowledged to exist and its behavior observed before it can be reduced to math.
The Greeks, in developing geometry, first played with physical triangles laid out next to and over each other. Note they created those triangles because right, isosceles and equilateral triangles do not exist in the world humankind was born into. The early mathematician scientists visually observed the fundamental relationships between angles and sides of triangles, then used a simple measurement of their set of triangles to create arrays of data to visually observe the mathematical relationships among similar but different triangles. It was only out of that body of work the geometric theorems and formulas emerged.
Newton didn’t find gravity or the laws of motion with calculus but found calculus through seeking a mathematical means of expressing what he first (only indirectly) visually observed; two unique forces acting on a body simultaneously and influencing its behavior. No scientist or mathematician wrote a mathematical formula for the vaccination against smallpox leading us into the era of disease prevention; that was found by a doctor observing an almost but not totally imperceptible interaction between a cow, a milkmaid, and disease. Until we see the phenomena that are the causes of the behavior of social, self-sustaining, and sustainable systems and then document their traits so we can glimpse the uniformity that does exist among them, there will nothing to measure and no data accumulated from which to generate mathematical formulas fitting into a known or as yet unknown genre of math.
On Sustainability
The term sustainability has been used in the context of human existence on planet earth only since the 1980s. I observe sustainability to be the current personality of the term we use to refer to a process which has been in play throughout our known history to find peace, harmony, and synchronicity with each other, nature and the universe. It’s the pursuit of the dream of life, liberty, prosperity and opportunity in a community of equals. At various times and places, this process has been described as seeking heaven, Eden, the Promised Land, New Jerusalem, the fountain of youth, nirvana, Shangri-La, happy hunting ground, Utopia, and the American Dream.
The technology of the industrial revolution was deemed the ticket to the land of milk and honey in the 18th century. Science, particularly chemistry, was foreseen in the first half of the 19th century as the doorway to the yearned after state, able to wipe out hunger, disease, and aging. We’ve now replaced chemistry with perpetually renewable energy as the key that will open the gates of paradise. In striving for sustainability we’re seeking the same destiny as our ancestors but by reason of a different technology.
In the field of ecology sustainable is the property of systems to remain productive and diverse indefinitely. In more general terms sustainability refers to the ability of systems and processes to endure. These properties are determined through observation of systems such as living cellular systems, nature and the universe. Now that we’ve observed the phenomenon of sustainability it appears to strike us the same way as seeing a bird fly. It intrigues us and invokes within us an acknowledgment that, yes, here’s what we’ve been looking for and there’s proof it’s possible. Nature experiences it and so can we.
We’re now attempting to describe the structure of sustainable systems and even claiming to build them in agriculture, businesses and manufacturing processes. We aspire to build sustainable economies and communities. To read some of the present-day descriptions of sustainable systems leads me to the conclusion they’re not a product of scientific investigation so much as speculation. There is, for example, no evidence I can find to suggest sustainable systems are all about creating energy, boast boundless energy or create no waste, attributes I’ve read some claim as characteristic of sustainable systems. These attributes certainly can’t be observed in the sustainable systems cells, nature, and the universe. Nature and cells create much waste. The universe is in a fixed state of energy, of which there is no gain or loss. There can be a condition of too much energy acting on a system causing the system to collapse. Too much energy is a problem challenging us right now in and outside of the climate problem. Consider the negative repercussions of nuclear energy production, warming oceans, and steroids with a detrimental long term effect on human physiology.
It appears in some cases rules touted about how to build sustainable systems are being made up in a process similar to the one applied when we were looking for the Promised Land. At that time we stated the obvious then hypothesized without verifiable evidence about how we must organize and behave in order to get the desired outcome. We then made rules to demand that behavior. It’s obvious we’re never going to build a peaceful community if we allow killing each other among our population. It makes sense to ban murder — although banning it has never eliminated murder.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals, though well-intended, fall into this category. One of those rules/goals relates to the eradication of poverty. Eradicating poverty makes sense as it is fairly obvious that poverty and sustainability are contradictory in the same way that murder is contradictory to peaceful co-existence. But the UN has done nothing new here. History documents that every civilization and society have both created poverty and noted the negative effects of poverty on social stability. All have tried to address it, and none have produced a solution.
What constitutes poverty? The UN chose an arbitrary monetary amount per day of income which, if a person is living on and earning less than that amount, they are living in poverty. Their goal is by a certain year in the future (in the case of the SDGs, 2030) no one will have to live on less than this amount. It’s an amount no person on the UN staff which set the value would ever voluntarily live to choose on, or even twice that much, or feel anything but impoverished if compelled to do so. That arbitrary standard is subject to manipulation and interpretation just as is ‘murder.’ Given exchange rates, the amount isn’t uniform around the earth. With a little inflation, the U.N.’s mathematical goal could be reached and the economic plight of billions be worse than it is today in the same way many people die at the hand of other people but no ‘murder’ is committed. Until we establish a standard measure of poverty (and murder) which is not arbitrary and is universal to the population within a system we won’t eradicate poverty — and won’t build a sustainable social system.
In other cases, our actions suggest we’re mistaking personality for process, as when we attempted to fly prior to the work of George Cayley. Before him, some flight pioneers observed flying creatures flapped their wings and believed flapping wings was the secret to flight. It’s not. In some models of sustainable systems, the developers observe nature recycles its waste and propose that as long as we ‘reuse’ what previously was waste. By using shred worn tires, for example, to make playground bedding, we’re building a more sustainable system. We’re not. Shredded tires scattered about the city are no less toxic to the environment and us than whole tires in landfills and may be immediately more toxic.
In every prior era of sustainability-seeking, there were snake oil peddlers on the prowl, peddling solutions that won’t and can’t work. Such are still present today. Some mean well, have the best interest of others in mind, and sincerely believe they’re on to a solution while others have identified a personal economic opportunity to exploit. To identify sustainable snake oils we only need to know the physics of sustainable systems.
There’s no need to make value or moral judgments. Still, these non-solutions will remain on the market until we actually learn the art of constructing sustainable systems. They will be sought after until we truly solve the problem for the simple and practical reason that in a time of crisis one has to act and one can only implement the possible solutions available and of which one is aware — even if they won’t work.
We can’t implement the solution we don’t know of and haven’t built. We can’t build what we don’t know how to build. We couldn’t solve polio until we knew how, but once it was evident we knew how to solve polio everyone lined up for a piece of the solution, largely negating the need to worry about the snake oil sellers. The larcenous among them moved on to the next opportunity to profit through making claims to solve problems which no one is able and where evidence does not exist to certainly disprove their claim. But if we solve the social problem we’ll solve the problem of snake oil sellers.
To build sustainable systems, whether they be societies, businesses, economies or relationships with nature, we’ll have to turn from speculating on their nature to studying in detail the physics of these systems via the scientific process. This entails a direct study of sustainable systems. In a previously published paper, How and Why to Convert Social Sciences to Natural Sciences, I discussed the scientific process engaged in my work to identify the properties of sustainable systems. In this paper, I’ll make reference to the science without explanation to concentrate on reporting what I’ve observed.
Identifying Transparent Sustainable Systems
Ecosystems, the biosphere, solar systems, and the universe itself are sustainable systems, evidenced by their ability to endure as functional systems. They have the traits of being in motion with interacting components. At superficial levels, they’re constantly changing, while at fundamental levels they’re unchanging. Our sector of the material universe is atomic matter constructed of the subparts of atomic material. After any visible change takes place in our part of the universe there is only atomic material reorganized. To our eyes, the landscape of an ecosystem appears unique season to season and year to year even as it’s a composite of the same plants, animals, minerals, moisture and so on — all made of atomic matter.
Each of these sustainable systems is a finite-lived system by our assessment, but, relative to our individual lives, they may as well be infinite-lived. If the human race should achieve sustainability, or the capacity to endure (and endure as long as the earth) its climate and ecosystems are predicted to have the potential to endure as an environment capable of supporting us in our present condition, we could be looking at a future of some 1.75 billion years. That would be 60 million human generations. If this is the case, it means we’re still a system in infancy, having yet only lived out little more than 1/1000th of our potential life span. Compare that to the practical reality that our civilization may not survive another 8 generations.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility if we do discover sustainability it will result in a longer lifespan for us individually. The human physiological system is constructed in a manner as to sustain. Stress threatens its ability to sustain and is the cause of human illness, disease and, eventually, death. The system experiencing the least amount of stress is the system in equilibrium. Equilibrium is a condition of the sustainable system.
If we achieve the sustainable state we’ll achieve the state of least stress, the greatest capacity to retain equilibrium, and the greatest potential to sustain life at both the individual and system levels. How long a human being could live when resident in social and ecological environments in equilibrium is not known. I’m certain we’ll still die. The material of the universe may be forever but there is no evidence any complex material body in the universe will be forever. It’s the process, not the bodies of sustainable systems, which have the potential to endure as long as the universe.
The sustainable systems universe, atoms, and nature are also remote and dark systems with respect to sustainability — we can’t view the internal machinery of these systems and identify what processes or conditions establish the property of sustainability within them. The inability to view the systems at their mechanical level is important, and why this is so is discussed in the prior paper on the scientific process. If the universe is uniform, we’ll be required to observe those processes and conditions at the mechanical level in order to understand the phenomenon of sustainability and establish ourselves as a sustainable system or part of one. We have two choices; learn how to access those remote systems at the mechanical level which explains sustainability or find other sustainable systems which are mechanically transparent.
We can study sustainable systems through many transparent systems, a few of which are:
- mechanical clocks
- internal combustion engines
- card games (I choose hearts)
- oral and written languages
- team sports (I like to examine American football )
- traffic systems
- airplanes and air traffic systems
Each of these qualifies is a sustainable system. Each is composed of bodies and processes and able to endure, as evidenced by the fact they’re still with us after many generations doing as they’ve done in all prior generations. They’re composed of systems and subsystems with lives of varying length as is true of the natural sustainable systems — the game of hearts has survived far longer than any player of the game or any deck of cards used to play the game. Nature sustains by replacing parts and we cause these systems we’ve built to endure by replacing parts, such as a spring in the clock or the clock itself. Each has the potential to endure indefinitely, for there is nothing about these systems, per se, that indicates any have to fall apart in the future. Generations a billion years out could still keep time in the same increments as we and play the games of hearts and football we play today. Because we built these mechanically transparent systems, they have no secrets. We can examine them thoroughly and completely and discover what we inadvertently or intuitively engineered into them that resulted in sustainability.
None of these systems shows any sign of dying off though all these have undergone tremendous evolution throughout their existence. Clocks have evolved away from sand and mechanics, playing cards are commonly constructed of pixels, and we may shut down internal combustion engines. There is no evidence we’ve hit the end of the evolutionary process of clocks, card games, engines or airplanes.
Any observation made with respect to this set of systems can be verified or challenged by the study of other transparent systems. If the conclusion is reached that a property is universal to the pool of transparent sustainable systems we can then, keeping with the scientific process, experiment to verify the property does account for sustainability. Testing a property to see if it explains sustainability is simple: remove the property from the system and observe if the system continues to sustain. If the experiment validates, we may then infer that property as one which helps to explain the behavior of the remote sustainable systems, and then seek the experiment that will enable us to test that inference.
Circularity
One of the widely recognized and referenced processes of sustainability is circularity. It’s evident in the four seasons of nature, the life cycle of annual plants, the migratory patterns of many birds, the hydrogen/oxygen exchange process between ocean and atmosphere, and earth’s orbits about its axis and the sun. It’s been commented on throughout human history–‘wheels within wheels’. Circularity is as blatant a trait of sustainable systems as the bird’s flapping wing relative to the phenomenon of flight. A system expressing circularity is one like the four seasons which make up the year, with no ‘beginning’ and no ‘ending’, for its ending is where it begins again to repeat its process or processes.
An examination of the selected transparent sustainable systems confirms each possesses the circularity characteristic. The twelve-hour clock is nothing but circular process and it returns to its original condition (arbitrarily identified as 12:00) twice a day — but if we couple it with a calendar — another circular system — it never truly returns to where it began. An eight cylinder engine fires all eight cylinders in an established and rigorous succession and then repeats and repeats. When that engine drives a tractor pulling a plow, hay baler, combine or other farm implement it drives another circular process in the circular annual farming cycle, which is an annual cycle by reason of the fact of nature’s predominantly annual cycle of plant growth to fruit and then termination before returning to growth.
There is a difference between the identified dark and transparent sustainable systems and it relates to how the systems are sustained. The transparent systems all degrade — the works of the clock wear out. The dark systems also show evidence of their parts wearing out, and some entire systems such as solar systems come to an end. A difference is the dark systems do not give evidence of degrading as a system over time even though they are each predicted to terminate. They are not wearing out. The universe and atomic system are as robust today as they were billions of years ago. Evidence suggests nature could also be it not for our detrimental-to-nature actions.
Each of the identified transparent sustainable systems shows no evidence that it of itself as a process must eventually collapse. However, the complex system of human civilization — our social systems, the universe in which all of these systems are actually subsystems — are not sustainable. Our social systems are incapable of enduring for a few centuries let alone as long as the universe, and when they collapse each of the contributory mechanical systems does also, as evidenced by the demise of the great civilizations of the past, e.g. Egypt and Maya.
There are faults in many of the sustainable systems we’ve built, and they can be directly attributed as the cause of the demise of our social systems. When we understand the dynamics and mechanics of sustainable systems we’ll be able to correct the faults in our social systems, and that will enable us to alleviate the threats to them that arise out of our infrastructure. It’s much like flight; we built machines to fly that didn’t, then we learned the laws of aerodynamics and found ourselves able to build machines which could fly but not very high, far, safely, or do much work. However, the longer we flew the more we learned about the laws of aerodynamics and increased the potential, load, security and distance of our flights.
The dark systems are also self-sustaining or self-maintaining. Clocks neither repair nor replace themselves. There is no evidence of external processes working on the dark systems to keep them in working order, as we work on and replace clocks. An external process is one which explains a system’s sustained behavior but is not engaged when the system is expressing its sustained behavior. We build clocks and keep them in operation by lubricating works or replacing springs and other parts. It’s when we take our hands off the clock and it keeps time without our direct involvement that the clock is said to be functioning or working in a self-sustaining state, perpetuating its behavior by its own actions. There are examples of external processes in nature. The beaver is an external process relative to the dam it builds that changes the flow of waters, altering the ecology above and below, within and without the river.
The difference between self-sustaining and other-sustaining systems is, ultimately, of great importance, but it isn’t relevant to this consideration of fundamental physics of sustainable systems in the same way the question of how an airplane sustains with autopilot is irrelevant to a discussion of the fundamental laws of aerodynamics. The need or opportunity to build an auto-piloting flying machine would never arise if we didn’t first learn how to build a flying machine. Sustainable systems can and must be understood independent of the more complex self-sustaining systems, thus that characteristic will not be investigated in this paper.
Circularity can be observed in all the identified transparent systems. The game of hearts, at the end of every hand, returns to the condition at the beginning of the first hand; a deck of 52 cards needing to be shuffled then dealt as the first processes to be carried out in the playing of the next hand. Every hand in every game played will end/begin at the same point but every hand is also different. An individual or even several generations can play hearts for a lifetime and never encounter two hands where the cards are dealt in the identical order and played in the same order resulting in the same score for each of four players who are the same and in the same position in each game. Without meticulous records, it would be extremely difficult to recall and verify the two events as identical.
Language is circular and loopy. Conversations are a back and forth and conversations of a morning are the stimulus for conversations with different parties in an afternoon. Written and oral communications will be built of the same pool of processes; topics, phonemes, words, nouns, verbs, adverbs, accent, inflections, gestures, expressions etc.
A football team moves the ball down the field by process until it either scores or relinquishes the ball, after which the opposing team takes its turn to move the ball in the opposite direction via the same processes. At some point, the game clock will expire, and the football game will be terminated until it springs to life on another clock on a different field with different teams and different players executing the same back and forth by the same processes.
As a general rule, people who use a traffic system daily return to the point from which they entered the traffic system — their residence. Behavior in the traffic system is acted out by a finite pool of objects existing in multiples — walking humans, cars, busses, trains, etc. all expressing a repetition of a pool of processes — accelerating, braking, turning and so on.
In all these systems processes do repeat, even though the circumstances about the circular process have changed. The years change, the scores and players in the games change, the participants and subject of the conversation changes, and the motor in the car induces changes about the car for it operates on different roads as the destinations of circular trips are changed. Even the rules of the systems change in different environments; the rules for peewee, high school, college and professional football differ, but the processes of each these systems are indeed circular.
Relative to the clock and the engine and traffic systems, we’re an external force, in that once the system is set in motion, it’s considered properly functioning if it operates independently of us. With respect to the card game, football, car, planes, and language we’re both an external and internal force. We organize these systems but we’re also a component of the system without which these systems cannot function or sustain. The football doesn’t move unless we carry, pass or kick it. Words don’t manifest except one of us puts them in air or on paper. Here’s observable evidence we have the potential to exist within and as part of sustainable systems.
The set of varied systems chosen for examination are sustainable, do exhibit circularity and are representative of the variety of transparent systems around us. If traits are universal to these systems and shown to contribute to sustainability — which can be established using scientific process — the greater the likelihood the traits are universal to dark systems.
How circularity relates to sustainability
When we see the bird or plane flying we observe it achieving the complex process of flight but we can never truly ‘see’ the process of flight any more than we can see gravity, lift or thrust. We only know a system is in flight because we observe its position relative to the environment (suspended in the air above a solid surface by its own power) and observe changes in its position relative to the other systems in its environment (passing clouds, moving away or nearer to us).
When we see the bodies of a system evidencing circularity we see sustainability as directly as we ever will. If we can’t see circularity we won’t be viewing a system we can verifiably describe as sustainable. Caution is in order because we do construct systems that look like birds and airplanes but won’t fly and we can and do construct systems which we describe as circular but which aren’t and won’t sustain. Circularity, like flight, is a complex process which can only arise when a specific set of conditions or processes exist.
The physicist can reduce flight to a phenomenon achieved by the organization of three fundamental conditions; lift, thrust, and control. Still, to achieve flight requires a vast pool of knowledge and skill that enables one to build the complex machinery that achieves flight. Sustainable systems can likewise be reduced to the organization of a set of fundamental conditions: control, motility, will, and chaos. These terms will not be discussed here. A purpose of these papers is to begin building the pool of knowledge required to understand these conditions so as to build systems that express these conditions in the relationship required to build a sustainable social system.
Some of the transparent systems under study here do qualify as sustainable systems within a segment of time, but do not qualify over a longer period of time or increased volume. An engine in isolation is able to demonstrate sustainability across a billion and more repetitions of its circular process. Engines wear out, but many of their parts won’t degrade rapidly enough to prevent those parts from accumulating in the environment as a toxic material. Millions upon millions of internal combustion engines exhausting into the environment produced much of the atmospheric changes threatening climate stability. The causes of atmospheric changes exist in each individual engine in the time segment where it exhibits circularity, but their negative impact only becomes significant when compounded. Original decks of cards made of paper and ink eventually degrad and disappear. Turn off the computer and the pixel desk disappears but the computer finds its way to a junk pile where its deadspan is multiples of its useful lifespan.
The two views in the same system — sustainability and a threat to sustainability — allows for greater clarity with respect to the phenomenon of sustainability. Through the study of these systems, we can gain insight on both what must occur for a system to sustain and what cannot occur if it is to sustain. Still, the starting point for identifying the properties of sustainability is observing any sustainable system across a million or billion cycles of it circular process — during the period it’s sustainable.
Properties of sustainable systems
On the basis of years of study, I’ve identified the following as properties of sustainable systems, in no particular order or importance. This partial list and the one in the second paper to follow are no doubt still incomplete. Some or all of these properties may not be stated as elegantly as they eventually will. A few may feel redundant after being understood but are stated as they are based on my experience of what was not initially obvious. Some may be puzzling as to their relevance. Feel free to suggest evidence-based refinements, improvements, and additions. Or present the evidence to correct or disprove.
- A system expressing circularity is one in which the processes of the system creates the conditions that enables the processes of the system to repeat
A sustainable system is one which carries out its processes and in doing so not only returns to its beginning but leaves the entire system in the condition such that it is able to reenact the precise same and entire process. We can see this in the dark systems — no matter what transpires in the universe there is no gain or loss of energy. The annual plants which died in the fall are decomposed over winter and returned to the soil as building blocks for the next generation of plants. By our perspective, the sun repeatedly and consistently travels back and forth across the sky within predictable limits.
In some sustainable systems the order of the processes is the same in each iteration of circularity, as in a motor or the four seasons. In others, such as the traffic system, there is an activity. Driving, for instance, is reducible to a finite pool of processes; acceleration, braking, and turning. There is no strict repetitive order to these actions but the order of their expression is not arbitrary, rather it is dictated by a combination of the intent of the driver modified by a reaction to circumstances in the environment, which is often the action of other drivers.
In card games and football we can observe both the strict order of action/reaction as in the engine and the pool of processes for which there is no strict order. In hearts, play proceeds clockwise around the table but each player, at his turn, chooses which card from those in her hand she will play even as her choice is limited by rules of the game and/or by the play of another player. In the terminology of the game, a player may not lead hearts if hearts have not yet been broken. If hearts haven’t been played on a previous trick they can’t be led, so the leader is forced to choose any card in her hand but a heart, except if she has nothing but hearts. Another rule states a player must follow the led suit unless she has no card of that suit. The card limits but does not dictate the next player’s choices, for that player first has to follow suit, and if he has more than one card of that suit he’s free to choose which one to play.
- The circular system’s processes alter conditions within the system but also undo the alterations in order to restore original conditions
In the mechanical clock, the fundamental process of the clock is complete with the ticking off of a second, but, in the process, the mechanism resets to its original position and condition to tick off the next second. Seconds accumulate uniformly, but we add additional processes which accumulate seconds to minutes, then hours, then twelve or twenty-four hours, eventually returning minutes and hours to the count of one minute past midnight or 000001 hours in military time. Traffic wear coupled with freezing and thawing damages roadway surfaces, but soon enough a paving crew will undo the damage so the system can continue. In football, every play is terminated at some point and the teams return to setting up on the line of scrimmage to execute the next play. In every hand of hearts and game of football, points are earned but every hand/game terminates and every new hand/game starts with all teams or players at zero points.
If one proposes to have built a circular system, one must by definition identify an ‘end point’ of the circular system which transitions to the ‘beginning point’ of the next iteration of the circular system. If, at the point where the previous cycle terminates and the future cycle initiates, it’s possible to identify conditions about the system which will modify the processes and outcomes originally present in the system (now or at some point in the future) with no mechanism to return them to their original state, one has not established a sustainable system. If an inconsistency is identified one can predict the collapse of the system though not necessarily the nature or the timing of collapse. Mechanics often hear noises in cars, or observe smoke or fluids where none should appear, and are able to predict what failure in the system will occur if the issue is not addressed, but they can’t predict with the same certainty how long a car with the issue may be driven before the predicted failure will occur.
In many systems expressing circularity there is often a practically obvious ending/beginning point, such as 12:00 on the face of the clock, the start of growth marking spring in the four seasons, or shuffling to deal the deck of cards. However, in a truly circular system, one will able to establish any point/state in the process as the ending/beginning point and follow the system from this state back around to this state.
- To remain a sustainable system, any nth cycle of the system must express the same processes and in the same sequence as the 1st complete iteration of the process
If the first and second property is true, this one must follow. No matter how far in the future the system advances, the conditions and characteristics of the first iteration of the process will remain intact because the circular process repeatedly restores them. The clock, assuming a continuous source of energy, will continue to tick off seconds until the iteration where a mechanical part of the clock fails, at which time the clock will fail to tick off the next second accurately or at all.
The game of hearts continues so long as the circular process is held to. At some point, a hand of hearts will be played and the process will be interrupted. At that time the game will be suspended until someone takes up a deck of cards and shuffles it again before dealing, and the game will carry on the same as in the past.
The genius of a sustainable system is one doesn’t need to plan the future for it is taken care of by the design of the system. One only needs plan a single and complete iteration of the process. If it meets these first two conditions the system has the potential to run forever — as long as it is able to repeat that initial iteration of complex process. The clockmaker doesn’t need to think how to get thirty years of time out of clock but one second repeating, then one minute repeating to 60, then one hour repeating to twelve. In London, Big Ben, with maintenance, has been keeping time 157 years. That’s 4 billion sustained primary circular processes. Ben doesn’t keep time perfectly but there is a very specific external process engaged weekly to return the clock to correct time such that it never deviates by more than a few seconds.
- A sustainable system can be observed to achieve an objective in every iteration of its process, even as it has no greater objective to attain
The mechanical clock achieves the objective of ticking off seconds, and though it does mark minutes and hours and in the context of the year the clock is not operating to a achieve a sum of seconds, one special second, an ultimate second after which there will be no remaining second to tick off or the point in time there is no reason to tick off another second. No second is more meaningful or more important than another.
There will never be a football game played that causes there to be nothing left to achieve with a football, no reason to play the game. Each time a person speaks words to another they are using language to achieve the purpose for which language exists, to communicate. This is true regardless of whether or not the message gets through. Words, like time and football plays, cannot be ‘used up.’ There is no final sentence where it will be evident the ultimate purpose of language has now been achieved. There is no ‘finished’ in the future of a sustainable system.
Sustainable systems aren’t going anywhere, they just are, and yet they take all of us where we desire to go within the limitations of the system– though our ambitions are not always achieved. Perhaps we write a letter but fail to communicate clearly our message or fail to complete the pass. That doesn’t threaten the system. Sustainable systems are not goal-oriented systems but objective-achieving systems.
Anyone who builds a system to achieve an objective in the future which it cannot achieve today in one iteration of its circular process has already failed
- Sustainable systems are utilizable but never consumable nor exclusive
We’ve long understood the concept of the sustainable system as the system which keeps on doing as it did before, if only through observing the times when systems quit acting sustainably or ceased to perform as they did in the past. We may have first made the distinction when we began tilling the soil to sow crops and enjoyed a fine harvest for several years. Being ignorant of the cycle of soils we failed to replicate entirely the natural process of growing so we then experienced harvest decline to the point we were required to abandon the field and plow new ground, whereupon the natural soil cycles could regenerate the soil we abandoned. We compared that experience to the wild nut trees or the fish in the ocean, where no matter how many we took there were always more to be taken. We longed for the field that would stay bountiful as the sea. Instead, the fish and oceans are behaving like plants and fields.
There is a characteristic of universality to sustainable systems, meaning they are equally available in the same condition to all humanity operating within the scope of the system. Any human being can plow the ground and sow it to infertility. There are different languages used in different parts of the world. Any normal-brained person existing within the scope of a language has the potential to learn that language and use it just as any other person in the region. If a clock is telling time, any seeing human being, within range of the clock, has the potential to see the clock and will see the same time as any person other looking at it at the same time.
Once a traffic system is built, anyone with access to that system can use that traffic system to go where they wish to go, assuming it continues to be maintained. They won’t, however, be able to use the traffic to physically go anyplace which another human being would be physically unable — it will be a social barrier that bars one from going where another may. Each traveler requires a means of locomotion, whether that is walking, riding or driving but all are able to go where they wish to go even as everyone is able to go where they wish to go; much the same as everyone can speak even as everyone is speaking. If traffic is heavy we might all go slower. If the mall is busy we might have trouble finding a parking space but eventually, we will.
The traffic system can’t be used up any more than words or football games. If the roads become degraded and we didn’t repair them we would still find ways to use them to take us where we desired to go, although where we could go under the new conditions would be limited.
My use of a traffic system does not prevent you from using it, my use of a word doesn’t prevent you from saying it, although my utilization might influence yours. My applying a definition to a word does not impose a limitation on you, per se. I can use the word bear in the context of a heavy load and you can use the same word in the context of a large ferocious animal. I may even define bear in a new and unique way — it’s a new dance. But, in order for it to be useful to me in my communication, I’m required to make the word universal with the universe of my communication — I have to share the definition within anyone I speak the word to in order for them to understand what I mean when I use the term. Your team winning this football game will prevent my team from winning the same game, but the primary purpose of the game is to play the game so anyone who plays the game has experienced the primary objective for which the game exists.
The benefits, limitations or dangers of a sustainable system are never exclusive to a portion of the population existing in proximity to it, except for arbitrary social law that may discriminate against some. Anyone can win or lose any given game. We used to think we could make a garbage heap of some portions of the earth and keep some pristine. It didn’t and doesn’t work that way.
Sometimes the words we organize fail to communicate, the plays we execute fail to advance the football, we oversleep the alarm, the route we take fails to get us to our destination, and the garden fails to grow. But we never hit the dead end, the point where there is no place left to travel to, no words left to communicate with, no use for the engine, no game-winning touchdown to make, no need or benefit to keeping track of time.
There is never a shortage of climate events, and climate events give no evidence of being headed toward an ultimate and final climate event. There’s never been a shortage of atoms in the universe that shut down a process of the universe. There are localized shortages of atoms necessary to a process, as when the garden fails because the soil is alkaline, or lacking sufficient hydrogen. That shortage only occurs when natural process is interrupted, as when human beings who take over the growing process in an environment fail to replicate completely the sustainable process.
No matter what gets constructed in the universe, there is always something else being constructed and there is no evidence the construction of the universe is oriented toward any structural goal except to remain a place where matter organizes and disorganizes in order to be available to reorganize. And just as there is no direction to communication, no point in time to be reached, no one special game of football to be played, there is no evidence whatsoever there is a pre-established object goal to the universe. The universe doesn’t appear to be going anyplace except where it is. It has no evidence of destination or finish about it.
- Every sustainable system is also a component process in one or more systems of greater complexity
The atomic system is sustainable. It emerges out of the sustainable system of sub-atomic particles and it is a component system and process in every other system constructed in our subdivision of the universe. Atomic material builds the spider, its web, and the clock. The clock is a sustainable system but it’s also a component process in establishing working hours, ages, scientific experiments, etc. We play football (and there are clocks in the game of football) as a means of developing athletic or teamwork skills, competition, entertainment or friendly social interaction. Bees are atom-crafted structures and are a physiological system but they’re also a process (pollination) in the much more complex ecosystem, which is the undergirding of the human race. The traffic system is a subsystem of the human process, a subsystem which we often use as a tool in conjunction with clocks to achieve a variety of ambitions such as to have dinner with grandma, go shopping or attend university in order to pursue a degree.
- A sustainable system is congruent with (not antagonist toward) all other sustainable systems which together are organized into a more complex sustainable system.
A sustainable system, in executing its processes, must not disturb or disrupt the conditions of another sustainable system upon which it is dependent.
Within the complex of sustainable systems, systems don’t change the processes or conditions of other systems. Changes in behavior or appearance are only explained by the interaction of stable sustainable systems in a given environment. In the construction of a rain forest no atoms ever behave differently before or after they’re drawn into the liver of a bird in that forest, but how those atoms appear to our eyes when we dissect the bird is absolutely dependent on the immediate environment in which the atoms exist; are they liver or tendon? The ants living in an ancient, undisturbed-by-humans rain forest are the same ants carrying out the same activities as their ancestors of thousands and thousands of years past and they may be constructed of atoms which previously constructed bird liver.
Last Friday night there was a football game played by two teams in a chilly rain with 4,835 subdued people in attendance. The game transpired over 195 minutes though it only lasted 60 minutes by the game clock. The final score was 14–0.
Yesterday, Saturday, there a different football game played by the same rules within the same league in a different stadium but by two different teams composed of different players. This game transpired over 163 minutes. It was hot and sunny, and 10,384 screaming fans were treated to a raucous game in which the final score was 38–45 with the tie broken with 3 seconds left in the game.
Both games are complexes of sustainable systems and were essentially identical but very different at the same time. Cheering spectators are a sustainable system; you’ll find one at literally all sporting events. Spectator behavior can influence the momentum on the field so are integral to the game. The spectators were different at each game and there were more at the second game but in the end, they’re a fungible process in the game of football.
All that changed in either system is the personality of each of the component systems — no person saw both of these games but the spectators were all people. The most noticeable difference in the games was the weather. The games were played in two different personalities of the same climate due to different localized conditions within that climate at game time. Those climates were not unique to the location; games at both locations have been played in both sets of climate conditions at different times in the past.
Some of the differences weren’t noticeable — the same ball wasn’t used, yet it was. If we cleaned all the balls used during the games and sat them on a table no one would be able to identify which balls were used in which game. The games were played on two different fields which were exactly the same length, width, etc. They were also different in that one was a muddy, slippery mess; one was located in Illinois and the other in Minnesota. One stadium had bleacher seats, the other had stadium seating.
Each team had the same number of players but they, like the crowds, were populated by different players.
Every play had its own unique personality and when it was executed there was a unique configuration of players on the field relative to other plays, not only of the individual players themselves but where those players positioned themselves on the field at the beginning of and throughout the play. The plays were the same — passes, rushes, kicks — and yet each was unique in its outcome — some passes were incomplete, while others were caught or intercepted. The game clock ticked off the same amount of time but the combination of events which were common to both games that caused it to stop and start dictated how long each game lasted.
The two games are complexes of sustainable systems and not one of those systems was changed in any way between games or as a result of the game. Everything could be used again to play another game. It would be used exactly as it was in this game but the game would be unique when compared to these.
If we altered the sustained condition of any of the subsystems of the game — deflated the ball, broke the clock, let one team play by one set of rules and the other by a completely different set of rules, erratically marked the field, changed the environment of one field to match the one found in the Marianas Trench, eliminated fans or allowed one team to field three more players than the other — how long would the sustainable system of league play as we know it continue?
- Sustainable systems are peer-to-peer systems
There is order to the processes of a sustainable system. The behavior can’t be haphazard. In all sustainable systems there is a first action or process which sets the system in motion; thereafter there’s an order to processes, but there is no ‘leader’ dictating the behavior of the components of the system, instructing them when to act and wane. Once underway, the system activity is law-ordered and action/reaction.
There’s no hierarchy in the atomic system, no ranking of more and less important no distinct classes of actors and reactors. There’s no observed hierarchy in nature either; the lion king of the jungle and the queen bee ruler of the colony has no basis in physical reality. These are myths, plain and simple. So, too, is the newer myth that bees are democratic. There may be what we describe as keystone species, but that gives them no special privilege, rank or recognition among the species. The pistons may be keystone to the engine but that doesn’t accord them any rank over the bolts that hold the engine on its mount or the spark plugs. Keystone species have a job to do, and they do it alongside every other species.
There is order and processes at play within the herd, pack, flock and school, but the roles of the ‘leaders’ of these systems are as predictable, defined and limited as the role of the player to lead a trick in the game of hearts, the quarterback to instigate the execution of a play, the person at the front of the line waiting for the traffic light to turn green, the piston in the engine or hydrogen relative to creating acid. The animal leaders of packs and herds are doing nothing different than the millions of leaders of the similar packs and herds that co-exist or pre-existed them and for millions of years.
There is structure to the atomic system and nature. There’s interaction but there are no commanders, deciders or ordering bureaucrats. There is structure to the clock and the automobile which are also void of authority figures. This idea may sound silly, but what a system lacks will explain its behavior as much as what it possesses when one is comparing two systems observed to behave differently and asking what is the cause of the difference in behavior.
In an engine, the sleeve of a piston is injected with fuel; the fuel is compressed by the movement of the piston, ignited and exploded; the explosion reverses the momentum of the piston causing it to propel the crankshaft shaft in the same direction it’s been traveling, resulting in the next piston compressing gases… There is no bearer of a megaphone within that system calling the next piston to be alert because she’s up next.
In football, there’s a quarterback who’s described as a ‘leader’ but all he does is announce a play given him by a coach, one which the team has previously practiced and then, when the players are set, announces a signal which ignites the play. Thereafter, each player is on his own. The quarterback has a keystone role to play but so does every other player; remove one of the linemen and watch how long the quarterback excels. Execution of the play depends on all the players on the team executing their individual role. Each has to find his position on the field and be ready when the signal to action is sounded.
On the opposite side of the line of scrimmage is the defense, an equal number of players whose roles are to disrupt the offense’s execution of its play. Each team has a plan as does each player on the team, in principle, but once the play is set in motion, no player’s behavior is directed by another player or coach — only influenced. Every player is in charge of his own movement, but he’ll be required to react in response to the actions of others around him and his actions will, in turn, impel others to react to his behavior.
There are line judges and referees involved in the game but they don’t impose their will on players, taking control of players, manipulating the quarterback’s hands so he either catches or fumbles the snap. The process of the game is laid out in advance and the task of referees is to make sure the game is played according to the rules. The actions of a fair referee are tightly dictated by the rules that existed before the game began and he has no personal influence on the outcome of the game. He doesn’t make up rules and he doesn’t make up punishments. The referee observes a rule infraction and throws his flag. He doesn’t then play Solomon and render a punishment which he deems appropriate based on his appraisal of the character of the player but announces the penalty which is organized into the rules of the game. The system is peer-to-peer, even though there’s a variety of roles in the game which must be executed and some, like the position of quarterback, can be classified as keystone roles.
Sustainable systems are driven by the principle of every action compels a reaction and every reaction is an action. Football, studied carefully, behaves like that — what happens when a touchdown is scored? An extra point try is attempted. And after that? The scoring team kicks off. The results of every action dictate the next action to be taken in the game. There is spontaneity and improvisation in a game of football, but is it constrained within a very tight script.
This is true of the game of hearts and language. How is a written sentence ended? With punctuation. What follows sentence-ending punctuation? A space. And following that space? A capital letter. What capital letter? The one that begins the first word of the sentence you choose to write.
Under normal conditions, there are no leaders in a traffic system. Behavior is governed by the traffic system’s lights, signs, lanes, etc. When the traffic light changes generally everyone responds appropriately and independently. There is no prejudice in traffic jams; everyone ensnared is everyone on the road where the jam occurs.
Sustainable systems offer no privileges to some they do not offer to all, although circumstances can be such that the ‘benefit’ that accrues is disproportionate. One team will win the game. The person caught in the traffic jam is bound up in a way the person who avoided the impaired roads is not, but the traffic system never created a tie-up to punish anyone. Such inconveniences are only temporary in a sustainable system because the systems work their way back to an equilibrium where the wins and losses of yesterday mean nothing.
- Every sustainable system is a system in equilibrium
In mechanical physics, equilibrium is the condition where all the forces acting on a system are netted to zero. This is evident in the engine, where each iteration of the engine recreates initial conditions — all the action that transpired brought it back to the original state, whether that original state is the position of all the parts in every cycle or the inert state of the system prior to ignition and after being shut down. In its function, the system in motion will exhibit an unstable equilibrium, but within clear limits. If the forces in the systems are allowed to transgress the limits for lack of an opposing force, the engine will exit the sustainable state.
In football, every iteration of the fundamental cycle of football — the play — begins with two teams lined up facing each other. A signal initiates the play and, for a few seconds, players erupt into intense activity. Another signal will bring the play to a halt and a process will transpire bringing both teams back to where they began: at rest, facing each other, awaiting the signal to act. Hours before the game began the stadium was an empty field and empty stands. When the game is finally over all that remains is an empty stadium with empty stands. All the forces net to zero. It’s the same spring to winter cycle we see in nature, where the stadium comes alive and then goes back to sleep.
The same is true of the traffic system — everyone who enters it exits. The vehicles must maintain their system equilibrium in order to sustain on the roads. The roadway is lying on the ground in equilibrium.
- Every sustainable system must begin as a system in stable equilibrium, must possess the potential to remain in equilibrium when activated, and when activated must at all times remain within a range of behavior which is known as unstable equilibrium
Engines, like watches, don’t begin as active systems. They begin as inert objects, designed and constructed to achieve an objective. When activated they achieve that objective. As long as the engine can behave as designed it will sustain. The engine which is not built in a way that will sustain unstable equilibrium, once put in motion, will collapse — and that collapse will push it right back into equilibrium. All engines have mechanisms which allow for adjustment to ensure they maintain the unstable equilibrium. If the machine deviates from equilibrium in a way which cannot be corrected by the built-in controls, in order to preserve the sustainable system, the system must be shut down, rebuilt to reestablish equilibrium, and restarted. If allowed to continue beyond the parameters of instability engineered into the system, the system will collapse.
We have much evidence if we destroy an ecological environment, it will not recover its original condition of its own volition. We have to go in and manually recreate the conditions which, when activated, will recreate the ecology before the environment can begin to replicate those conditions. We may have to remove invasive species, reestablish vanished species, replicate original ground conditions, etc. Then we have to step back and let the system demonstrate its ability to re-establish and maintain its prior demonstrated potential. If we’ve altered the geosphere such that climate conditions have changed about the ecosystem, given today we have no ability to restore historically normal rainfall or temperature patterns, that ecological system will likely not re-attain its original state even if we prime it to do so. The ecological system which is destroyed, if abandoned to its own devices, will reorganize into something because the universe is a scheme of constant organization and reorganization but most often it will fail to re-attain the previous state, and the new ecology which emerges will be less complex, less energetic.
The momentum of a system in disequilibrium will always drive a system to a greater state of disequilibrium except the mechanisms are engineered into the system to restore the system to its original state of equilibrium. The furnace in a building, once fired up, would continue to heat the building except for the fact that the mechanisms are engineered into it that establish a point of equilibrium for the system and alter the behavior of the system to cause it produce heat or not produce heat in order to maintain the point established as system equilibrium.
- Sustainable systems are closed systems and stable within their universe
The atomic system within the context of the earth is apparently a closed system. There are 97 naturally occurring elements found on earth and a 98th which is assumed by scientist that it should be here. Anything we can touch, see, taste or smell is composed of these 97 elements. The laws of physics apply everywhere and always in the universe. The same laws govern all the atoms all the time. There are no exceptions.
We can and have generated 20 other elements through events such as nuclear explosions. These are unstable, and most quickly dissemble into natural elements. There is no evidence yet, these manufactured elements can exist without threatening otherwise sustainable systems.
It’s possible to take one model of engine and modify it in order to put it to work as a subsystem in a system driving cars, limb shredders, trucks, tractors, generators, skid steers, boats and whatever one can imagine. But the process of the engine must be a closed process first as an engine and then within the context of its specific usage. If the radiator fails one can’t simply spray the engine with a stream of water to substitute for the radiator. Ketchup cannot be used in lieu of diesel fuel or face cream for oil. The conditions of sustained operations are closed.
We can make billions of unique sentences with an alphabet. The number of different words used to make those sentences is far less. The written English alphabet is a closed system, consisting of 26 letters. Those 26 letters can be used to spell any English word, and the spelling is generally based on the sound of the word, although sometimes quirkily requiring special rules to justify. All English words are composed of sounds, and it’s agreed there are only 44 sounds, or phonemes, used in creating all words of the English language. There is a limited number of unique phonemes human beings are capable of making but decidedly more than the 44 used in English. Other languages use a different subset of phonemes to create their oral words, and many use different alphabets to write their words. But each oral and written system is a closed system. Even hieroglyphics, to be useful as means of communication, needed to be a closed system.
It’s possible to create a dozen variations of a card game. But in all cases when a group is playing a card game, the rules of the game are fixed throughout the game, applying universally to every hand and with respect to every player in the game. The deck used in the game is a closed system. Even if the game is poker where every dealer calls the game to be played in the hand, the rules are universal that the dealer calls the game and within that game the rules will be universal.
- Sustainable systems under threat experience unseverable outcomes within the system
In our physiological systems, when one organ fails the ramifications will be felt throughout our system. We can’t send our liver to the hospital while we continue working and playing golf. If the liver needs the attention of doctors in the hospital all of us has to go. If our eyes fail, our fingers no longer have the ability to use smooth-surfaced keyboards on telephones.
An engine either operates correctly, not at all, or someplace in between — say 6 of 8 cylinders firing. If it’s firing only 6 cylinders the result is going to be a reduction of potential. The 6 firing cylinders can’t go anyplace or have a different experience than the two firing cylinders. Engines don’t express bigotry, producing more power for person x than person y. It is possible, if person x is more knowledgeable than person y of the engine, she may cause it to generate more power but never as much when the engine is operating correctly. But such differences are never explained by a change of behavior of the engine relative to a person.
If an ecosystem encounters stress, every system in the ecosystem must contend with the stress in its unique way.
In a game of hearts, if one person gets mad and quits, the game ceases. The remaining players may reorganize into a new game with a new fourth player or reorganize into a new system to play a different game — 3 handed hearts — but the 3 remaining players can’t continue the game which was initially set in motion.
In football, when the game ends for one team it ends for the other. Both teams have a score, even if it is zero. If it rains on one team it will be raining on the other. In an airplane, everyone on board goes where the plane goes, for better or worse.
- No sustainable system has an external environment
Any football coach knows the events in players’ lives leading up to the game, the stadium, the crowd, and weather are not externalities. They can have a great impact on the outcome of any game.
This property is an implication of the first and third properties: a system expressing circularity is one in which the processes of the system creates the conditions that enables the processes of the system to repeat; and to remain a sustainable system, any nth cycle of the system must express the same processes and in the same sequence as the 1st complete iteration of process. For a system to sustain, every condition everywhere must remain the same.
Any system or process that is changed by the action of a system must be unchanged by that system if that system is to endure as a sustainable system. There is no external environment which a system may change without adversely affecting its own behavior because there is no system which is not directly connected to every other system in the universe through the chains of actions and reactions all of which occur within the atomic system and trace back to the big bang.
There is only one system in our part of the universe; the atomic system. Everything which exists is a composition of, within and part of, the atomic system. Our ability to study or organize systems is facilitated by our capacity to carve the universe into discrete segments and study a segment in isolation. We describe these discrete units as systems. We have no common nomenclature to describe the atomic system as a supersystem. We don’t formally acknowledge by definition, any system is a subsystem of the supersystem. This absence helps to reinforce the misperception of many independent systems occupying the same space. It creates the illusion our systems do not interact or impact each other. The physical reality is there is no segment within the universe that exists independent of, apart from, or in isolation from any other segment in the universe.
The car I drive is a composition of metals mined from the earth. Those metals in the earth are the result of cooling gases and those gases can be traced back to the big bang.
I wouldn’t have my car if weren’t for the men and women who manufactured it. Humans couldn’t exist but for the development of the living cell, given that we are composed of cells.
My car would be of little use to me if there were no gas stations. Gas stations as we know them wouldn’t exist without electricity, the massive pools of oil underground, and our knowledge of the phenomenon of hydraulics that allows us to pump fluids up and down.
We wouldn’t be able to manufacture cars if the people who built them weren’t sustained by water, air, and the plants and animals of the ecosystem; if there weren’t farmers growing their food, machinists making their tools, textile workers sewing their clothes, shopkeepers acting as the middlemen exchanging and accepting money in return for goods, and teachers teaching their children.
Cars wouldn’t exist if someone hadn’t invented the wheel and smelting and others hadn’t invented oral language and then written languages that let us accumulate all the knowledge of physics, chemistry, and engineering in ways that empower us to use that information to organize a system as complex as a car.
I wouldn’t have been able to attend the schools I did without a car. Without that education and a car, I would be unable to work where I do, which enables me to afford the car I own.
In this universe there is no beginning to anything anywhere — it all began on the back side of the big bang. And perhaps has no ending.
Fortunately, when I need to repair my car engine I don’t need to think everything forward from the big bang to revisit the entire process; how the metal was formed, covered over, mined and converted to alloy then cast into engine; how the pools of crude amassed; who transported the engine to the assembly line, and who bolted the engine to the frame; what each had for breakfast on the morning they built my car and what effect that breakfast had on their energy and ability to focus when my car moved down the assembly line; what they slept through during training for the job. I can focus all my investigation on one small segment of the universe — the car itself. Everything that explains its behavior and misbehavior is right there in the car or adjacent to it (air and fuel).
My ability to solve the issue in the auto is wholly contingent on my knowledge of how cars work, and that knowledge is far removed from the physics and chemistry that is its foundation. All the science is objectified and I only need know how these objects should look and how they should interact and be able to identify the ones which don’t look as they should or aren’t acting as they should. But when I change the oil in my engine and then toss the dirty oil in the storm sewer I just threatened the viability of every system on planet earth. My 6 quarts of dirty oil alone probably won’t impair the viability of any system, but when 7 billion of me are acting similarly in treating the world as if there is an external environment which can be imposed upon by damaging my experience…
There is no external environment. Any system built assuming the existence of an external environment whose conditions can be changed and not restored cannot sustain. The universe is filled with evidence that sustainable systems can be built but like the plays in football. They are improvisations acted out in a very tight script.
This concludes part 1. In part 2, I’ll discuss properties of sustainable systems which are not observable when the system is in the sustainable state.
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