If it is true that there does in fact exist a class (or singular, if enigmatic, presence) of global systems theories that successfully, comprehensively and usefully abstract universal properties, theorems or logical relationships in any one non-trivially complex or sophisticated system and integrated, adaptive and evolutionary context; then those insights, abstractions and global properties solve this for all systems, simultaneously. The giddy heights of such logical complexity (and its attendant disentangling simplicity) shouldn’t distract us from seeking such resolution, even if it should always prove mischievously unattainable or, indeed, if the arc and trajectory on an asymptotic curve towards it precisely is the counter-intuitive solution we are seeking.
Climate Change, for instance, is one problem among many that all loop back into each other through many, diverse and complex information and energy flows or channels of autocatalysis. As a reflexive psychological artefact and named concept, we seek to identify isolated solutions for what are distributed problems and notwithstanding that things like economy or energy production and global geopolitical cooperation are implicit here, we are just very poorly equipped at a cognitive level to process the complex essence of the problem.
These are constitutively “holistic” problems and the nature of solutions in this space is that comprehensively solving one complex problem will quite naturally solve very many others. The core inertial resistance here is not that we can not find a better way of living, cooperating and thriving but rather that we have become so inadvertently dependent – to a socioeconomic and cultural or psychological point of addiction – upon the short-term benefits of foundationally broken and inefficient systems that we are trapped in a logical, technological tesseract and effective functional blindspot of our own making.
Daedelus Kite 