“The maintenance of organization in nature is not — and cannot be — achieved by central management; order can only be maintained by self-organization. Self-organizing systems allow adaptation to the prevailing environment, i.e., they react to changes in the environment with a thermodynamic response which makes the system extraordinarily flexible and…

“When you bow deeply to the Universe, it bows back.”

— Morihei Ueshiba (founder of Aikido), The Art of Peace

“It is well known among cryptography and computer security experts that closed-source software and algorithms are less secure than their Free and Open Source counterpart…. The very existence of non-free software and hardware puts humanity at a greater risk, it can foster or accelerate the process of the creation of an artificial entity that can…

Every Decrease in Power Is an Open Invitation to Violence

“Again, we do not know where these developments will lead us, but we know, or should know, that every decrease in power is an open invitation to violence — if only because those who hold power and feel it slipping from their…

“A member of an archaic culture who acknowledges the limits of his own model and compares it to the one that is being formed as an alternative, from inside or outside his model, is creating…. in a positive sense, ‘counter-culture.’ Counter-culture is thus the active critique or transformation of the existing social, scientific or aesthetic paradigm……

“Reduction does not tell us about construction. This is the fundamental insight of the study of complex systems.”

— Miller, John H., A Crude Look at the Whole: The Science of Complex Systems in Business, Life, and Society. Basic Books.

“The postmodern condition is characterized by the co-existence of a multiplicity of heterogeneous discourses — a state of affairs assessed differently by different parties. Those who have a nostalgia for a unifying metanarrative — a dream central to the history of Western metaphysics — experience the postmodern condition as fragmented, full of…

“The eminence of a scientist is measured by the length of time that he holds up progress in his field.”

— James Lovelock, Gaia, 2000 reissue, p. 65.

“Consider organized anarchies.”

— Michael Cohen

“A certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of cooperation, or social stage….”

— Karl Marx, The German Ideology