SEPTEMBER 22, 2019 – Everything—everything—from a quark to the universe is part of a larger system. At extreme ends of the spectrum lie quantum physics and grand-scale philosophy. Between those extremes, an infinite (paradoxically) number of systems interact.
In our daily work and lives, however, we largely ignore the totality of most systems that affect us. From one moment or hour to the next, we focus on a given task or objective—ordering a meal, navigating through traffic, listening to another human, reading an x-ray, responding to an email, preparing a report, presenting a proposal, figuring out college financing. Each of these fits into a larger scheme affecting, in turn, an even broader one.
From a high-level view, all is woven tightly into a fabric of the whole. The individual strands lose all independent appearance. Each of us thinks and acts independently, but except for hermetic cave-dwellers, each of us is part of a family, workplace, local community system. Each system, in turn, influences another to create our humanity system. And, as we have learned—strike that; as science tells us—the humanity system affects the earth’s other systems.
Fatalists would remind us that ultimately the earth is a relatively closed system, meaning it has no effect on the systems beyond it. (This overlooks, of course, our planet’s gravitational pull on the moon and local space detritus that become meteor/ites.) Eventually (absent intervening cataclysmic climate change via influences of non-human systems), the sun will burn itself out, become a red giant and take us with it; end of humanity, end of story—at least the story of humanity.
The possibility exists that earth is not a closed system; that as emissaries of earth we can develop the will and the way to escape the planet, flee the solar system, and colonize another place in the galaxy. If that’s possible, a whole lot else becomes so as well—such as avoiding the necessity of a more immediate escape.
With the advent of the thermo-nuclear age and the age of ecocide, however, humanity has achieved the ability to extinguish itself long before demise by non-anthropoid causes. Well, technically, not an independent ability. Detonation of nuclear weapons and the burning of fossil fuels (and destruction of carbon “sponges”)—human actions—would trigger effects upon multiple earth systems, as they, in turn, interact with solar rays to cause our extinction. In any event, if we manage our system imprudently, we could end its story before its time; before it’s time.
Which takes us back to us individually. However independent we assume we are or would like to be in thought and deed, our synapses and actions are woven into the greater system of humanity. The collective force of what we think, then do or don’t do, is not hermetically sealed off from the systems beyond us. The earth with its systems and the sun looking over earth’s shoulder, are watching, waiting . . . nervously . . . to see what the humanity system will do.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
