An ecological famework to Recovery's current faliures

Like many people, I am following the economic disruptions and the attempts of our administration and the administrations of other countries attempt to "recover"  and "stabilize" the economy.  I don't think what we are doing will work.  I'm also not as pessimistic about what is occurring as many of the fanboys of collapse who seemingly desire to be witness to catastrophe.  That phenomena is amusing,   as though some are searching for an "I told you so" style vindication for not having gotten things their way in the past, or alternately, as if momentous events give meaning, even if they are rotten and foul and bring misery and suffering, and are therefore the basis for looking forward to a catharsis that will wake the collective soul from the numb sleep of a mentality crafted in the 80's.

I am somewhat optimistic.  We have a chance to come out of this better formed, more agile and with less pain than many, though it likely won't be because of what governments, and systems of governance, are trying to do (at least not as of yet).  I think it will be because we will have a surprising ability to support a process of "demassfication" and at the same time to plug into mechanisms of "generativity".

Part of this somewhat optimistic view may be a bit fatalistic.  I mean, I read Collapse.  Scarry stuff.  None of us want to end up like the Aztecs.  But I have also been reading Panarchy, and finding the points made there a useful reference (which Im sure I've bastardized and trivialized!) for understanding the transformations the economy is undergoing.

Holling and Gunderson begin Panarchy by discussing a few different "myths" about how we view ecological systems. The focus on four and try and define a fifth.  They are:

• Nature Flat
• Nature Balanced
• Nature Anarchic
• Nature Resilient
• Nature Evolving

Nature Flat is state in which there are few or no forces affecting stability, and therefore few limitations on the ability of humans to change nature.

Nature Balanced is a view of nature existing at or near an equilibrium condition.  This view often leads to maximum sustainable yield and of achieving fixed carrying capacities.  It may lead to a "balanced worlder" view.

Nature Anarchic is a view defined by seeing the world as globally unstable.  It is a view where persistence is only possible in a decentralized system with minimal demands on Nature.-

Nature Resilient is a view of multi-stable states, some irreversible, others alternating and are experienced as part of the internal dynamics resultant from cycles of discontinuous events and non linear processes.  IN this model instabilities reorganize behaviors as much as stabilities due.  In economic theory these can be associated with Schumpeter's view of "creative destruction".

Nature Evolving is  a view that is evolutionary and adaptive.  This is an emergent view based in understanding complex adaptive systems and integrative approaches.  It is still being defined, but can be thought of as a view of abrupt and transforming change.  It is a view that "exposes a need for understanding unpredictable dynamics in  ecosystems and a corollary focus on instructional and political flexibility".

Holling and Gunderson go out of their way to explain that none of the theories or myths are wrong, simply incomplete, with the last an attempt to reconcile the paradoxes left by the previous myths.  I think in each of these things we can see corollaries for our existing situation.

In nature flat we, we can recognize hubris, will and imposition.  

In Nature Balanced we can see a desire to view what we assumed to be our current state as a permanent, and we were impervious to the coming together of forces that overwhelmed our institutions.  In many ways part of our current challenge is fighting this deeply seeded belief that we can somehow "fix" and "repair" in order to return to the state of equilibrium we once had, and for which we are now nostalgic.  It seems as though much of our thinking  in terms of "recovery"  is one of resetting the configuration of the system to lead to the types of "balanced" arrangements that happened before this disruption.  It is understandable, as that nature is our only tangible model.  But this also explains why even the experts are stumped looking at the humpty dumpty economy and wishing it back onto the wall.

In Nature Anarchic we see the countervailing anarchic view.  One that wants complete decentralization, or views the collapse as a response to the lack of decentralization that existed before.  I think this view fails to recognize the interconnectedness of all things, as Dirk Gently would say.  In many ways it presumes that this decentralization can provide for a type of stability and wealth that is detached from any social construct, and views social constructs as innate corruptions.  In this view, any system of governance, and potentially any technology, is regarded as something that will eventual do harm.  But this perspective becomes increasingly untenable when it gets worked backwards to its foundational constructs.  It ignores clustering and connectedness as fabric of interactions, and poses little alternative.  It seems to me a view defined only by reactive freedoms. Yet it does have merit in its ability to support the local and innovative.

Fourth, there is Nature Resilient, which I think is much more like the situation we are in.  We're not going to unscramble this egg, to borrow Prigogine's example of irreversible phenomena. The notion of Nature Balanced when it comes to the current state of the economy is long gone, a mirage of an oasis left behind.  "Recovery"  in this context is about finding a stable alternate configuration that is not yet known to us, expert or otherwise. What I currently see happening is a rather nostalgic attempt to revert to a previous state.  I'm not sure what the motivation is, fear, lack of imagination, genuine desire, or a fundamental type of conservatism laid waste by context (seems both parties suffer from this affliction).  In any case, I don't yet see any systematic or coordinated attempt to find an alternate configuration

As such I think the right thing to do is to set the conditions for recovery by making rapid the processes of discovery, reconfiguration and connection.  But more on that later...

I think the last "Myth" is about a change in point of view - one that I associate with many ideas but lately with Edgar Morin and an conceptualization of a "creative universe": the idea, that we never become too comfortable in any state, with its incomplete understandings and framings, while at the same time retaining an optimism in our capacity to evolve, adapt, reinvent and regenerate ourselves and our circumstance from within our circumstance.