"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Globalization Through the Looking Glass
"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass
The Red Queen hypothesis (the name was taken from Carroll's book) is a simple concept from evolutionary biology that describes the evolutionary arms race between competitive species -- predator/prey and parasite/host. It was found by the evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen via extensive analysis of marine biological record. In short, it posits that the probability of extinction isn't a function of how long the species exists. It doesn't get easier or harder as time goes on. It's random. Which implies:
Constant evolution is necessary just to stay competitive.
If your rate of evolution falls behind your competitors: You die (become extinct).
Your evolution must be relative to the evolution of your competitor.
If they zig, you must zag (if not, you die).
Since the treaties of Westphalia nearly 400 years ago, competition between
nation-states was the primary driver of social evolution. The method or model
of competition was between predator and prey and between predators,
made stable through creeping global expansion (new competition) and
a wide diversity of competitive models. That competition narrowed during
WW2 and again through the cold war down to two keystone competitors,
each with a different model/ecosystem.
The US and the USSR. With the elimination of USSR as a competitor,
the US social and economic ecosystem became dominant and now blankets
the world through globalization.
However, as a result of this victory, the US lost it's drive/imperative to evolve.
It has became increasingly stagnant as a social and economic system,
and it is now merely a participant in the much larger global capitalist system.
The flaw in this set-up is that evolutionary competition NEVER stops.
It just changes its form. In this case, since the global social system is now
a singular entity -- capitalist -- evolutionary competition changed into a model
of parasite and host (conflicts, reflecting traditional state vs. state
predator vs. prey competitions, like those with Iran and N. Korea are a sideshow joke).
Worse, the global system is becoming increasingly h***geneous --
it expands via cloning itself and improves itself merely through incremental
innovation and not evolution. In short, it has become a h***geneous static
target for parasites (the most vulnerable type of target).
So, what are the parasites to this h***geneous global system? Networks.
They range from financial/corporate networks AKA Banksters to terrorist networks
("al Qaeda", etc.) to "criminal networks" (narco-gangs, MEND, etc.).
Adaptation?
The only likely process of evolutionary competition against globally systemic parasites is to decentralize core functions of the global system (resilience through scale invariance). The process of decentralization, manufactures geographic and social heterogeneity.
Heterogeneity makes it possible for the host to develop solutions to parasitic predation (be it financial, criminal, biological, technological, or purely violent disruption).
In this way, any potential extinction event visited on the global system would be met by solutions emerging out of systems hidden in a socially/economically heterogeneous geography.
It's only in this way that a stable relationship between parasite and host can develop.
Views: 20
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Comment by Michele Baron on April 20, 2010 at 4:49pm
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symbiosis might be better, but I guess that is not in the nature of the parasite...Thanks for the post
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noted.
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Comment by nomadHAR on April 20, 2010 at 8:52pm
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you have actually hit upon a point that i have wondered about for a long time.
have we, the human race, evolved over these millennia? i'm not so sure. we keep making the same mistakes, ignoring the lessons of history. concern for the environment seems to be worsening. hatred, bigotry and greed have only increased and taken new forms. apathy is at an all time high. mass entertainment is hollow and unintelligent. i see cycles; the only thing that is evolving is technology.
the way i see it, i do what i can to try to wake people up and educate them. if people as a wh*** do not evolve and choose to destroy the earth with their ignorance and violence, they destroy themselves. nature and the earth will revive; it will just go on without humans.
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Comment by michael driscol on April 21, 2010 at 2:00am
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Beautiful! What about when species cooperate? Such as when one bird gives a warning and all kinds of different birds fly away for whatever the threat is?
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symbiosis
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Comment by Zip Heed on April 21, 2010 at 3:01am
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Very interesting! Evolving economic parasitic entities... Unfortunately this kind of evolution is very much under the control of the more "conservative" parties found in the world. I've always wondered what the politically conservative has to say about evolution, or the future?
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Comment by Benjamin Michael Jones on April 21, 2010 at 10:16pm
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Some really fantastic arguments put across here very compelling and a lot of truth present. As always I have some alternative perspectives I'd like to raise.
The idea presented that Competition, or lack of, is the reason for many global problems is very compelling, but if we look at some of the restrictions it causes it itself we find that this system is also rather old and perhaps we as a species in the next step of evolution also change our mindset to evolve. As a possible candidate - Co-operation. ^_^
Your points on how the gap being closed did in itself speed up the process of many global advancements, if fact conflict like war usually does create an instinctive need to move on and the main reason for it's rapid success is normally because the issues of survival out ranked funding and restrictions normally in place by establishments are removed. So is it really competition that cause us to evolve or is it simply freedom. Also the funding for both sides of most conflicts are usually the same group of people, the people that want to consolidate their power and control either through the most common form of 'Debt Management' or by weakening two sides then allowing a third party to enter and eliminate or adapt both by removing them or by absorbing them. Since this is the case as the Rothchilds sponsored both sides of WW2 that the idea of competition is in fact, a fallacy. A perceived competition. What really promoted evolution was the unity of a nation within a period of distress combined with a removal of most barriers that exist today - not all bad, but some are heavily restrictive. To illustrate this point Ethics can be good and can be bad depends on what issues is being dealt with, but with war the bigger picture is what is being looked at and so many times the individual is shelved in order the who species to evolve through individual sacrifice.
Furthermore, there is a massive concept that has been overlooked on this idea of competition, which I encourage a look into. The human body is an excellent blue print with applications that can be either copied into society or principles can be very closely mimicked. The body doesn't compete as such, in fact a natural flow, Homeostasis keeps order in balance. If we apply competition to the body what do we have . . . Cancer. Or another pathological issue. We one aspect of the body tries to enhance it's position the body responds by correcting the balance. Much like the USA being less competitive a way of the earth as organism balancing out from an internal conflict. To illustrate this point, if the USA after WW2 continued unrelenting growth the world would have become increasingly concern that perhaps the USA was mimicking the Third Reich this would have globally tried to prevent this either through direct intervention [Conflict], or sanctions in a passive manner. When the body reaches a perfect homeostasis an optimum energy efficiency is reach upon which all functions normally work either quicker or with much less energy expenditure. Thus we conclude that co-operation without restriction allows for the most rapid evolutional gains capable for that moment.
A point worth noting is that the US presidents and politicians and probably others have always implied and insinuated, that a external threat would probably unify a fractured planet. And I have believed that for years. Even if the event is manufactured behind the scenes perhaps by those said politicians, our history proves very strongly that our animalistic behaviour can not only at times be predicted, but worse still follows distinct patterns. I wanted to bring this up because you made such a great point about competition and felt it was worth noting in the future our species has only one evolutionary choice - Unity. Failure to do so will result in self-extinction, much like beehive, only by functioning as a unit, even if specialist areas occur if the direction for the benefit of the species and not a part of the organism the inevitable growth would be experiential - imagine all scientists and engineers all working on the same problems instead of competing for funding in order to make ends meet, Imagine that they can work on any area of research not what a nation feels is appropriate. In reference to 'nomadHAR' he is exactly right, the universe functions on cycles, just the same as every cell, every species and even our own bodies. Now we really need to embrace the next evolutionary gap - Competition has worked fine, but now it needs to progress - without restriction. I only hope that humanity decide to do this by choice and not because people in places of false power initiate moves on the chess board forcing our predictable natures into play. What makes humans so powerful is their unpredictability as this allows the to solve almost any problem in a variety of ways making them truly a dangerous, but also benevolent if guided correctly, tool and functioning being.
Going to stop their before I head into philosophy. ^_^
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hey, good word :)
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