Chapter Four – Systems 4 (Experience: awareness and consciousness)

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All living systems process (matter/energy – information), must process, in order to endure (maintain relative health – live). As such, all living systems receive (some form of matter/energy – information), process, and produce reactions. This process/flow of receiving, processing, and producing reactions is the experience of the system; and what all systems experience is the matter/energy (information) that is received and processed by that particular system.

Whatever the organism receives and processes is what the organism is aware of. In this general definition we see that awareness is tied to the matter/energy (information) received and, more importantly, processed within a system. Following from this, we also see that what the system is aware of is the particular matter/energy (information) which the system is able to process (if a system is unable to receive and process it, then we cannot say that it is aware of it).

So from this we understand that all life is aware (of one thing or another, or many). A single cell is aware of the stuff it is processing, it is aware when it is low in the stuff it needs to process for health, and it even sends chemical signals to other cells to send the stuff it needs. Plants are aware of the nutrients they need, are aware of the position of the sun in the sky (and we see the reaction of this processing in some flowers which turn to keep in line with the sun). Even a computer is aware of the keys you are pushing on the keyboard, and you can tell because you see the reaction of letters appearing on your screen.

Technically speaking a system is aware of what it is processing; and as to process a system must receive and produce reactions, we can look at these things to develop knowledge as to what the system is aware of. You have probably noticed that as all living systems, from single cells to human beings, are aware of what they are processing, awareness (in this basic general definition) has nothing to do with our experience of mind. With development of the brain (sensory cortices, frontal lobe, language areas, etc) humans, and many other mammals, have the ability for consciousness, which gives the physical body/brain access to mind.

While related, consciousness is something a little different to awareness; you can think of consciousness as an evolution of awareness. So all organisms with consciousness are aware, while not all organisms that are aware have consciousness. To be conscious, to have consciousness, an organism must have some form of brain, have collections of neurons that produce representations of sensory/emotional information. Whatever is being represented within the (processing) brain is what the organism is conscious of. It is in this processing of the body/brain which we find the crossover from the physical aspect of our existence to the mental world we all inhabit.

Our experience of mind is all we really have; and what we know of the physical world, the world of sensory and emotional information, we know only though what we experience within mind. While mind is tied to the physical world through brain/body, it is best thought of as a separate world (plane of existence). Although the two worlds are both part of the underlying existence, and as such are shaped by such universal principles of existence as cause and effect, there are some rules which govern one plane while not the other. One example is that of the laws of physics; obviously this principle applies in the physical world, you would be rather foolish to ignore it and jump of a large cliff. Yet in the mental world such laws do not apply; we can easily imagine flying, and many people have dreams in which they fly (some choosing to fly while conscious of their dreaming). Another example is that of time, in the physical world time flows in a direction (past – present – future), again we would be foolish to try to ignore the march of time in the physical world. While in the mental world the laws of time do not apply; we often jump between the present moment, thought of the past, and dreams of what the future could hold.

So consciousness is the same form as awareness, just different in degree. While awareness is found in all biological (physical) systems, consciousness is found in systems with specific clusters of neurons (we call brains). Consciousness is generated by our (physical) body/brain and it gives us access to the mental world (which both operates by the same principles of universal existence as the physical world, and also operates by laws different to that which govern the physical world).  

Chapter Three – Systems 3 (Environomics)

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As we move away from the (dark ages) of categorical thinking and top-down modelling dominating our social decision making process, into the light of systemic thinking and lateralisation, we must pull some concepts from their categorically related roots to place them as they should be (systemically related). Two such concepts we will re-organise here are ‘environment’ and ‘economics’.

We have covered how there are two aspects to any system, there are the boundaries (the individual parts) and the function (how the parts relate, their connections, processing, etc). Environment is a term which describes the individual parts of the system; such as the physical parts that make up your body, or the parts the make up your local geographical region. While the term economics refers to the interactions between the parts of a system (usually with focus on the form those interactions take, the quality/quantity of that interaction). To define ‘economics’ we will say it is the study/theory of (or the philosophical inquiry into) the relationships between the parts of a system (economics is about much more than human fantasy money/financial systems).

So environment describes the boundaries of a system, while economics describes the function. From this systemic perspective we see that it is impossible to treat ‘environment’ and ‘economics’ as separate things (categories of information); because in reality these two concepts are halves of the same whole (they are both parts of the systems of existence).

In general terms, ‘sustainability’ is about the endurance of systems and processes. More importantly sustainability is about developing knowledge of systems and their processes so that we can make decisions to maintain (at least not destroy) their endurance. Because systems are comprised of (have boundaries and functions we describe in terms of) environment and economics, our analysis of sustainability (in decision making) must include both environmental and economic aspects. To only look at one aspect of systems, we will only see part of the systems overall sustainability, and as such the decisions we make will only be part as good (productive, fitting with reality, etc) as we could possible produce with the current information our species has gathered.

Environomics is a term we shall use to describe the study of systems with particular focus on sustainability (for the ultimate end of decision making). As systems are comprised of environmental and economic aspects, environomics provides us a more accurate model of the systems of existence than could be modelled by either studying environment or economics as discrete (separate) pools of information. And as we have talked about, we need more accurate models of (ways of organising) information because then we can make more accurate decisions (and this is as true in our own individual life as it is for the collective life of our society, or species).

One of the facts of existence, as described conceptually within Einstein’s theory of relativity, is that perspective matters. Because the form of (at least our informational) existence is basically system within system, within system, etc (having many layers of systems – from Universe to the systems that make up sub-atomic particles – and many systems within each layer), the particular point from which we choose to view this amazingly interconnected matrix will determine how the form (boundaries and function) of the systems appear to us (i.e. an individual human viewed as part of a social species looks rather different than a human seen from the perspective of collections of cells, which is again different to viewing a human in terms of information processing – yet all are the same, only the perspective (from where we view the information) changes).

For this reason the study of environomics, being designed to look toward (explore) the entirety of universal existence so as to develop an ever evolving ‘as complete a picture of existence as we can manage’ (given our current experiences), embraces analysis of multi-level system interaction (and our need to include various systemic perspectives from higher and lower levels, relating to whatever our subject is (its boundaries and function) at the time, so as to generate a more detailed picture for use in decision making). So when considering the overall human; environomics includes study of the physical aspect (what the physical system needs for relative health), the mental aspect (what the information processing system needs for relative health), the social aspects (what the social system needs for relative health), and also exploration of how the various aspects relate/associate (how changes to one aspect affects the other aspects).

As all of universal existence is systemically related, we could extend our environomic analysis of the individual human to include family/friend systems, the system of life, and even of the entirety of universal existence. We live in an informational world (more on this later); as there are so many parts of universal existence (many levels/layers of systems, and multitudes of systems within the levels/layers), and as humans beings are really good at creating (in this case stories, belief systems, fantasies, etc), it is rather easy to become ‘awash’ (lost adrift) in a sea of information.

To stay afloat in the sea of information we must choose our perspective, determine what we are looking at (or for). For this reason decision making is rather important for us. As the topic of decision making is rather large, we shall unravel it over a number of pieces of words organised to convey meaning (you will find the topic to be the underlying theme of this whole work).

Chapter Two – Systems 2 (systemic organisation and lateralisation)

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Organising information is important (critical actually), because the way we organise information is essential in our decision making process. While we all use something called logic, or rationality, when making decisions, this is just a tool, like a hammer (and a hammer needs something to ham, er). The thing about logic is that the results we get are only as good (as valid) as the information we put into the tool. So if our organisation of information is not that good (by not that good it is meant ‘doesn’t fit well with reality’, or ‘is based on a lot of fantasy’), then the decisions we make will be similar (i.e. not that good – meaning our decision will not fit will with the reality of universal existence).

The human body/brain organises (processes) information by making connections between three basic elements (packets of information/glyphs) – sensory, emotional, and language. Our information processing system is really good at making these connections in usual situations – such as connecting the picture of a ball and the word ball underneath, matched with the sound ‘ball’ coming from a caregiver. This basic processing of the body/brain is of a form called categorical; as in the body/brain makes connections so as to place information into categories (cat and tree are living, ball is not). There is a theory of knowledge development known as the ‘building block’ theory; which holds the idea that we develop knowledge like building a wall, larger concepts/ideas are made up of smaller concept/ideas (i.e. before we can know about calculus we need to first know about addition and subtraction and work our way up the various mathematical ‘blocks’ of concepts/ideas).

While categorical thinking is an important evolutionary stage of life (of information processing), as we mature and experience more of existence we realise that the world has a very different structure. Categorical thinking can be thought of as a building block toward systemic thinking; once we have categorised enough of the individuals of the world (seen the boundaries), we begin to see the interactions/connections (the functions) of the greater systems made up of the individual parts. Remember that the way we organise information impacts the way we make decisions, so to organise our information in a way that better reflects our universal existence will help us make better decisions within this universal existence.

Categorical thinking attempts to view the world in terms of hierarchies (a top category, made up of smaller categories, which are made up of smaller categories – and so on until all information is placed into a discrete category/box). What this means for our decision making, is that categorical thinking leads to a top-down approach to create social structures (which is really good if you want a small group to control the many – such as in currency creation, or the flow of information, or even social decision making/government). The major fault of relying on a top-down approach to developing social systems, apart from the fact that this model does not fit well with reality (and so has many inherent problems), is the fact that it has (for thousands of years) been used as a tool for social control (of the many by the few).

Just as categorical organisation of information leads to social structures of a similar form (which we call top-down), systemic organisation of information leads to social structures of a similar form (which we call ‘lateralised’, or of a lateral form). Basically, top-down structures are organised so that the matter/energy (information) within them are passed from one central point out to the individuals which make up the system (such as a central power station, central media, or central politics). On the other hand, lateralised structures are organised so that the passing of matter/energy (information) is spread (laterally) between the individuals of the system (like the ‘green’ energy grid being developed in Germany, or the participatory democracy forms practiced by some political parties in their decision making, or the way the internet has changed the flow of/access to information within our species).

With the evolution of human mind, our ability to organise information in terms of systems, we have realised that a lateral approach to social structures (rather than a top-down approach) is far better. While we could list the many practical reasons why embracing lateralisation in social organisation/structures is better for our species than top-down modelling, the main reason is that lateralisation, being based on systemic thinking (organising information in terms of systems) more accurately represents the reality of our physical (and mental) existence. And as anyone who has studied logic will tell you, the quality of the information you are working with will determine the quality of the results you get – start with poor(ly organised) information, get poor results, start with more accurate information, get more accurate results – simple.

Chapter One – Systems 1 (intro)

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Systems are everywhere. We are biological systems (humans) made up of many levels of smaller biological systems (such as organs and cells), which are themselves basically made up of smaller systems (atoms). All the individuals of our species make up a larger level system of humanity, which is part of an even larger level system known as life. Even this universe we inhabit can be viewed in terms of systems – after all we live in a solar system. Looking at the many ‘levels’ of systems, we can see that systems within these levels interact with other systems of the same level (cells interact with cells, humans interact with humans, etc). We can also see that there are relationships between the systems on various levels, such as the relationships of certain atoms which make up certain cells, which make up the system of your body.

A system is made up of individual parts, these give us the boundary of the system. What parts we include in our system depends on what system we choose to look at. If we look at a cell we will include such parts as cell wall, membrane, nucleus, etc. While if we look at a human body we might include a couple of levels of systems in our overall system called ‘human body’; such the organ systems which make up our body, and the individual cell systems which make them up, or even the information processing system interfacing the body with the rest of universal existence. While the individual parts give us the boundary of a system this is only half of the story, because the real defining aspect of a system is its function – which is the interaction of the individual parts (which gives rise to processing).  

By observing the interaction of parts we find the function of the system (how/with what the parts interact – the quantity and quality of interaction). The function of a system comes from the nature of exchange between the parts, and what is exchanged is some form of matter/energy (information). So the nature of exchange within a system is to do with the form of matter/energy (information) which is being processed (exchanged) by the individuals which make up the system. By looking at the nature of exchange, the form of matter/energy (information) received and processed, as well as knowing the individual parts (what they need to function), we can gain knowledge of the relative health (endurance) of that system.

Cause and effect is a universal principle, and so because a system process (a cause) there must be reactions (effects). Which is great for us because we can look at the reactions a system produces to give us an idea of its ability to endure (relative health) – such as the stomach ache after eating that new food, or the distinctive (and new) clunking sound coming from the engine of your car.

So systems are pretty simple really. They are made up of individual parts (the boundary of the system), and the parts interact (communicate) in a specific way (the function of the system). The way the parts of the system interact is the processing of the system; and to process the parts must receive something (matter/energy – information), and they produce reactions (such as an engine receiving fuel and a spark, processing through the physical interaction of the various parts, to produce the reaction of rotational energy to move the car).

Understanding systems is great, and handy, because it helps us analyse the ability of systems to endure (their relative health), and to make changes to improve endurance. This is enhanced the more we learn about the particular system – because by understanding how the system processes, we not only learn what to put into the system, we also learn what types of reaction the system should be producing (and with more knowledge, we can know what parts of the system need changing/improvement from the types of reactions produced – like the seasoned mechanic who can tell exactly what is wrong with an engine, and what needs to be changed, just from listening to it).