SYSTEM THEORY

 Quietly in rather esoteric math-based communities like programmers or neuroresearchers, focus has sharpened on systems.  Now the concept has broadened as we realize that political systems have taken power.  Instead of being only a theory about how brains develop by building systems -- first out of movement in directions and then by adding more sensory information that describes where to go and make memories of where the entity has been -- now we apply the theory to other parts of life.

If creature motivation is about survival in the evolutionary sense — that the species design works well enough to continue existing, meaning getting enough food and fleeing from trouble — then systems are the key.  But it’s not conscious and deliberate.  No dinosaur decided to be one, nor did they decide to stop being dinosaurs.  Instead they just didn’t survive.  Their system for living didn't fit the environmental system anymore.

Part of being a good system is continuing to find new patterns and elaborating on old successful ones.  We’re hoping to preserve democracy long enough to find some new way instead of sinking back into an old system that destroys so many.  Chances are good because of technology expanding our knowledge, presenting new and still unexplored systems.   We discover what amazing things the internet and cell phones can do, at the same time that we find out how vulnerable we are. We’re witnessing massive disruption of the controls on the electrical grid and the human relationships through social media.

So I try to go deeper into system theory.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.464.4692&rep=rep1&type=pdf

“Growing (or incremental) network models have no pre-defined structure.  Rather, they are generated by successive addition (and possibly occasional deletion) of elements. . . .For growing networks, however, suitable insertion strategies have to be defined as well as criteria how to eventually stop the growth.”

What follows in this article is a long and technical description of graphs and geometries that I don’t understand.  But I did pick up one statement:  the point of insertion for new patterns is often best found by looking for problem areas.  Like government corruption or unqualified legislators, or domination by a rival network with selfish goals.  As Maddow says, “Put a flag in that.”  Complex math-based ideas often emerge to change everything we take for granted.

If we admit that systems can evolve themselves from internal forces or external changing conditions, we have to admit the opposite — that related systems affect each other.  Thus, the education system of the US presents many points of insertion for cheating in the legal system, like over-reliance on paper tests, forcing everything through a grid of “grades” and test scores that enforce conformity as a condition for success, or reducing everything to a question of money.

Not only do these handicaps make educational success weak or even hostile as indicators of quality, they also push other systems like the Rule of Law towards bad levels of access and process, letting profit rule quality and justice.  The very hierarchy of legal offenses — organized from misdemeanor to felony to capital — echoes assigning people levels of achievement.  And pulls in social class levels as a related system.

It’s a challenge to leave this orderly way of looking at things to grasp the complex and survival-based networking of the human body or the natural organic world where bits of accumulated interactions create a whole of enormous complexity and subtlety.  Luckily for us in these times, the social systems that have grown up across the continent, even transnationally, have this sort of complex survival-based nature even in the face of corporations trying to dominate or distort what happens, like diverting water or imposing frakking.  But the powerful result gives us climate change that begins to starve and stifle us all. 

Perhaps most vulnerable to systems that previously served us well has been our medical establishment.  Every comparison to other countries from the survival of babies to women giving birth, and to the vulnerable (old, ailing, poverty-stricken) people burdened with stigma, has made the US look worse than other countries.  

We have hooked “professions” to profit at the expense of respect and even self-governance, so their internal “system” is also empty now, replaced by pills and woo-woo theories.  An MD is challenged by the competing DO degree and by the several layers of “Nursing assistant (CNA), Nursing aides or CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants), Licensed practical nurse (LPN), Registered nurse (RN), Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs)”  Add to that “point of care” lab technicians, pharmacist assistants and dispensers.  Regulations exist; regulators not so much.  Hospitals have fabulous MRI machines, but do not say much about the qualifications who make them work.  We count beds in ICU, then fire the people who do the intensive care — for the sake of the budget, paying for profit with lives.

Just coming to public knowledge through hearings about the Supreme Court is a shadow “amicus” corporate system that exists secretly but controls with effectiveness what decisions the Supreme Court makes.  Happily, there is a liberal system of amicus briefs that are powered by idealism rather than money.

Systems are not invested in good versus bad — they just exist as connections with consequences.  It is people who make the judgement in terms of good or bad.  The judgements don’t necessarily split out as a dyad — could be multiple kinds of good or bad — maybe good for people you like but not others.  Many people have no opinion, but just do what they are told without thinking why.  Systems of emotion are far less predictable, understandable, or orderly — as we know from elections.

The most dangerous force operating on systems is trying to hold everything the same which can’t happen for the simple and obvious reason that the cosmos is dynamic and a small change in something like climate can have massive consequences.  A practically invisible force killed many bees which affected crop productivity which moves to diminish food, more vital than any weapons.  Sometimes a benign decision — even a virtuous one like setting up nursing homes to care for people in a time of disappearing families and people who must work elsewhere instead of staying home — silently forms a target for diseases that affect the elderly.

The tragic contrast might be that poor people are a target for disease and crime, but instead of finding a way to compensate, we use emotions about virtue and deservingness to label any attempt to help these people as “bad”, excusing ourselves from obligation.  We don’t say that old or traumatized people are automatically bad, at least not in public but we eliminate them anyway.

What changes can we make to improve lives?  What should we label as “bad”, deserving destruction?  What will lead to survival?  And who will survive besides the weathy?  Related:  why do rich people do bad things to themselves and others?  It doesn’t seem to improve survival but they never disappear.