The primary objective of this blog is to present ideas and principles, based on those of living systems, which when integrated with existing ones in our cultures will produce a thriving, enjoyable and sustainable future for mankind. Life on Earth is the only complex system we know of that has successfully thrived and sustained itself for over 3 billion years with the same resources, limitations and natural disasters that face modern civilization. Understanding and adapting its design principles seems to me to be critical to mankind’s future.
We are reluctantly beginning to recognize that our cultures and economies must work in harmony with natural systems because, like it or not, we are in a symbiotic relationship with them. However, human cultures are still deeply rooted in limiting mythologies which describe hierarchical relationships as answers to all management questions, including our approach to managing nature. Survival of the fittest, dominion of the superior over the inferior, the ego controlling the id, man over nature, God over man, etc. are all 19th century and earlier expressions of hierarchical relationships in a clockwork universe.
Fortunately, the real world is much more interesting, much more challenging and much less deterministic than that. The principles and laws of natural systems, which seem to me to be readily understandable, are vastly more varied, yet far better focused on producing both vigor and sustainability than any combination of human principles found in religion, science, engineering and culture.
For example, the “free-market” is a concept that is much closer to how natural systems operate than the actual managed markets we’ve developed in our global economies. However, free-markets scare too many people, so we enshrine them in mythology, promote hierarchically managed markets and then vigorously deny that we have done so. Such a choice isn’t “wrong” per se, it simply involves tradeoffs between short term benefits and long term sustainability. The problem is that we don’t understand what these tradeoffs are and how far we should prudently go with them. For example, over-centralization of businesses and banking are driven by the tactical benefits of scale but only in return for strategic liabilities that, from time to time, in conjunction with other system tradeoffs, produce economic and social disasters. We are now entering one of those times.
A second objective of this blog is to stimulate discussions which will help me correct and clarify these ideas for eventual publication in a book.
A third objective is to program myself to write on a daily basis so that I can get the book finished in the near future. Eight years have passed since I started on it, and six years have passed since the basic picture and recommendations became clear to me; but, without externally imposed deadlines, I’ve successfully procrastinated on the writing part.
Posts in this blog will relate to its primary objective, although sometimes that relationship may be a bit strained by my personal preferences and limitations. Over the next few months I’ll describe 10 of the key principles underlying the evolution and sustainability of natural systems. I will also compare them to the design principles of human systems and indicate the tradeoffs we make between tactical benefits and strategic liabilities. For example, one of nature’s universal principles is: “to rampantly overproduce and relentlessly prune” and our normal course of action is “to build and maintain.” Each strategy has its place in human systems, but too much of either one produces too scary a present or an unsustainable system.
I encourage you to post comments, or to email them to me at edwinlee@znet.com if you wish to do so offline. I will respond.
Ed Lee
- Entrepreneur: founded two successful electronics companies and two other “learning experiences.”
- CEO (1972-1989) of Pro-Log Corporation: Industrial computers and PROM programmers. Pro-Log was acquired by Motorola in 1997.
- Workshop leader and public speaker on marketing, management and technical subjects.
- Author of The Handbook of Channel Marketing
- Electrical Engineer with 23 US Patents
- MIT Graduate, BSEE 1958
Web Page: http://www.elew.com contains numerous essays on business and economics, a downloadable free copy of The Handbook of Channel Marketing and a more detailed bio.
E-mail: edwinlee@znet.com
Telephone: (541) 383-2106
Bend, Oregon