Complexity and People Plates

excerpts from Upside of Down section of  "EDGE  of the Apocalypse"...


Complexity

Breakdowns and collapses happen when societies become rigid and fixed – unable to change. They are unable to respond with complex solutions.

Wars and social disruptions happen when people are no longer able to talk. When positions become intractable and people are stuck in simple, unyielding positions. Until then the answer to stress is increasing complexity.  

We develop increasingly elaborate solutions.

But at some point the complexity gets too convoluted – it takes too much energy to follow and maintain. We fall back into the comfort of simplicity – and we sometimes fight.

The Mad Max post-apocalyptic world is ultimately very simple. Haiti is simple. So is Somalia. Hitler and  Stalin wanted to create simple societies.

But complexity cannot increase forever. It always falls apart. 

A gun is very simple. So is death.  

Weathers’ Aside - People Plates

Perhaps people could be regarded as having psychological plates - like the earth has tectonic plates.

People plates correspond to likes, dislikes, desires, fears. Everything that makes a person. Just as tectonic plates slide around in response to pressures - some from within some from without - people plates move around. When the plates (either kind) slide past easily the crust remains undisturbed. When there is friction, pressure builds up until finally released as an earthquake (or a person quake).

Stretching the analogy...

Both types of plates float on a fluid inner layer (mantle, subconscious). Sometimes the inner layer erupts into the surface (as volcanoes, dreams, fits, blurts, poems). The inner layer not only supports the plates, it is a source of destruction and construction. It destroys old plates and creates new ones.

Stretching the analogy even further...

The power of the inner layer comes from energy within which comes from energy without - gravity, dark matter, dark energy, cosmic biology, cosmic history - who knows. So long as there is energy, the inner layer stays fluid and the plates continue to move. The inner layer supports, destroys, and rebuilds.

But after a time  - billions of years or seven decades, the energy runs out - or has been so altered by entropic flow to be unusable. The clock quits. The plates stop moving, crack - turn to dust.

The system dies.

Then the whole thing falls back to a universal center, explodes and does it all again.

(According to some theories.)