…The elk in a healthy herd strains a muscle to the point of a limp. From that point on the wolves target and pester that particular elk until it eventually falls from such a minor injury. Trees with indefinite life potential can fall to fungus or pests in the presence of all nutrients, water, and sunlight needed except boron. If Boron is lacking for too long, the weakest and less associated trees will fall…
~ “Liebig’s Law of the Minimum”.
Ecology is the study of interconnected life systems. Life systems and the outplay of active universal intelligence through them is the only route known in science to directly counter entropy and effect syntropy.
Physics 201… 2nd Law of Thermodynamics:
“…The second law is concerned with the direction of natural processes. It asserts that a natural process runs only in one sense, and is not reversible. For example, heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder bodies, and never the reverse, unless external work is performed on the system.” ~ wikki
The gradual and inevitable decline into greater disorder.
Entropy, most simply, is the measure of randomness or disorder of a any system
One of the most established laws of physics says Entropy only increases…
The system decreases in order and in the functional organization of energetics
No disconnected individual, which from a mile high view would be an “incomplete organism,” can sustain syntropy… which means the disconnected individual is always a dying subject from the broad ecological view. This is why in my view “biology” and its inevitable delimitation is only as important as the half true data-set which, due to delimitation, was fully true in the vacuum of study. The aspects that make it straight forward to produce publishable scientific data are the same that create the gap between theoretical truth and actual truth. Nevertheless, through biology we gain a blurred yet intriguing and important view of much of life and life-process so as to more intelligently frame our view of reality. Reality is always holistic and holistic is always impossible to wrap science around with any certainty or sufficiency.
Unloading terms and stripping hubris…
This is where we deconstruct the dichotomy, polarization, politic, and the rivalry and tame and unload our terms to better describe a grounded reality. This is where we proudly and unashamedly redefine terms leaving the baggage for the buzzards and the “dinosaurs” to fight over. And let’s add a couple lesser known terms to boot!
New terms:
Stigmergy: Inadvertently cooperating or self directing precisely and appropriately in ways and to degrees inconceivable by current scientific understandings. “…mechanism of indirect coordination, through the environment, between agents or actions…” wikki
Syntropy IS THE HOW to overriding the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and reversing the flow of entropy… Stigmergy is a component of syntropy. Evolution—as neutral vocabulary—provides a metaphorical description and broad view of the miraculous happening. Evolution is not the how nor the why.
…to continually up-cycle the functionality of energy and complex functionality of a system and to create greater and greater order and complexity over time!
Why and How? Syntropy! in the presence of balanced sunlight/heat, nutrient/water, and gas constituents. The magic is embedded in the syntropy! and syntropy always requires a degree of stigmergy… also embedded.
SYNTROPY IS A VERY REAL PHENOMENON! but… it doesn’t turn off the en-tropic reality.
Evolution is most simply a term that describes the upward expanding spiral or direction-ally reversed vortex. Entropy is simply on a vortex merry-go-round trying allegorically, to take us all down the drain. Syntropy and to some degree our capacity to tap into stigmergic directives is our kryptonite!
Evolve is a verb imperative or other times simply a passive descriptive verb. Evolve is: Create the the metaphorical upward reverse directional vortex… get better and more relevant over time. Humans intrinsically/instinctively strive for it, and when we are evolutionary dis-empowered by manipulation, disconnection, distraction and misinformation, we make one hell of a mess!
Leaving aside the modern and traditional hubris, Evolution is a simple word describing an expanding and physically impossible spiraling upward and despite the complexity of causes it is all around us and easily observed in natural systems. It is the increasingly regenerative nature of vibrant and diverse living systems. That spiral is possible because of syntropy. Evolution is possible because of SYNTROPY!
Evolution is possible because of SYNTROPY!
Evolution is not a word to describe how we got here. TOOLED AND “WEAPONIZED” BY SYNTROPY, though, it visually or metaphorically describes the perpetuity and continence of who we are and where we happen to be going… This is in-spite of and in the very presence of the actual Grim Reaper which is ENTROPY AND IT’S SCIENTIFICALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE GOVERNING LAWS!
We cannot “defeat entropy and the laws governing it, but we can ignore and immunize ourselves from it by creating and living pragmatically and intelligently within a highly diverse and vibrant ecosystem of life… and by playing by the rules we never wrote and cannot escape.
All of this is much more than adaptation and any agreement or disagreement on the causes or terms is far less relevant than the need for those within the system to have reverence and respect instead of the traditional and modern hubris!
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. ~ Albert Einstein
Functional syntropy is functional immortality!
Ecology is a “keystone discipline” studying the diversely associated, creative, evolution-enabled reality that makes our planet something exceptional and gives our existence, hopes, and dreams perpetuity pride and purpose. It is the study of the roots and foundations of what makes success possible regarding our intrinsic and primordial bent and instinctual need for accomplishment. No fully developed human was ever fulfilled in the way a squirrel is… by simply gathering successfully. We are architects, creators, orchestrators, directors, … we are stewards… collectively and in a diversity that forms that whole.
Ecology is nothing but the study of and the collection of knowledge about the phenomenon of intelligent and adaptive life systems that makes the earth dynamic and non-en-tropic. Entropy is the Law of science that says all things are in a state of decay moving from greater order to less perpetually.
Syntropy is a dike and fully functional barrier to en-tropic effects that only breaks down when the inter-connectivity of life systems break down. It is a little like a tree that begins to lack a required nutrient: 1. It weakens and 2. The harvesters—fungi and insects begin to invade the otherwise untouchable cellulose, and 3. Unless it recovers sufficiently before the tipping point, it is deconstructed/harvested/slaughtered. In syntropic systems a tree is but a cell within an organism that continues to live. The tree is harvested to death as the greater organism creates myriads of new life in continuance.
In en-tropic systems it is a water glass tipped past its balance point that without intervention will spill its contents randomly and messily across the table. If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it—no one being the trillions of life forms of the forest—it would lie there until an asteroid finally blows it to pieces or until the photo degradation of the sun and the action of winds and friction from sands over hundreds of thousands of years degrades it. Or it is covered deeply by the wind and pressures increasingly turn it to coal/oil (fossil fuel). The normal de-constructive action of a rotting tree that we know in our oxygen sufficient earth is actually the organizational process of syntropic systems that leads to greater system complexity and order over time.
The breaching of dike or dam is en-tropic. That is the analogy of syntropy’s strength over and ultimate vulnerability to entropy. The process of weakening/dying ecosystems is desertification. The form of portions of deserts like the Taklamakan and the Sahara is the result of a full conversion to an en-tropic system. In a very real sense, any system that is consistently diminishing in complexity and order is dying and is in undergoing desertification—entropy is more powerful than syntropy and is breaching the dike.
This is what is happening when we talk of “desertification”. The process of entropy has become stronger than the strength and vibrancy of interconnected life. The system is slowly degrading. Like the dying of a tree the desertification began long before it was recognized.
The catch phrases of our time—global warming and climate change—are actually only indications of the nutrient the tree is lacking that is causing the weakness that is in turn causing the infestation with aphids that were always present but never problematic. The elk in a healthy herd strains a muscle to the point of a limp. From that point on the wolves target and pester that particular elk until it eventually falls from such a minor injury. Trees with indefinite life potential can fall to fungus or pests in the presence of all nutrients, water, and sunlight needed except boron. If Boron is lacking for too long, the weakest and less associated trees will fall. ~ “Liebig’s Law of the Minimum”.
Trees are in the rarity. Most of the trillions of creatures have an innate lifespan which when biologically complete succumbs cell by cell or organ by organ until they fall. The holistic life system of the earth with its regenerative characteristic has an indefinite lifespan. So long as water and nutrients are conserved within the system, balance of gasses in the atmosphere, and sunlight is metered upon the earth in balance, there is immortality. If any of those fail to hold, that is no longer the case. Let us not be the cause of premature failure.
That brings us to the important topic of Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture for upcoming discussion ; )