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The vision of reality leads us to understand
that in fact there subsist two functional systems in our
world.
The social system and the ecosystem.
The two
systems interact through exchanges of energy, information and
matter.
Such exchanges constantly modify the two systems
with a patrimonial accumulation.
This consideration, which
can seem banal and obvious, contains in it a fundamental
principle: the social system and the ecosystem are, today, the
result of an accumulation of information, energy and matter
that has been going on since man appeared (in a social form)
on the earth.
This dynamism involves an evolution of the
two systems that is not yet in equilibrium. Like in a chemical
equation, equilibrium will be reached when information, energy
and matter are constantly exchanged in a dynamic way and
without any variation.
The new aggregate, which came about
with the first environmental (and social) emergencies, is
today the result of an interaction between the two systems
that, even due to globalization, has activated the equation.
The equation, beyond a certain activation threshold (just like
in chemical processes), has begun to produce its results,
which in turn tend to trigger the system of equilibrium.
To understand this concept better we can observe the following
diagram:
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Reagents |
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Product |
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Social System + Ecosystem |
 |
New Model |
|
 |
In this equation the social system (through
demographic and territorial development) has created a
destabilizing impulse on the equation (activation energy)
which, as a result, is acting in an opposite direction,
modifying and reequilibrating the two reagents (Social
System and Ecosystem).
The product therefore modifies
the two systems (reagents) and the two systems, through a
long and inexorable process, will find a new form and a new
equilibrium in a new product.
There is in all of this a
consequential moral: the two reagents will logically have to
conform more and more.
Until this is reached, the system
will not be able to reach equilibrium.
Considering that
the ecosystem is strongly bound to the laws of
thermodynamics, which are based on inviolable principles
that regulate the exchange of information, energy and
matter, it is evident that the equation expects that even
the social system conforms (otherwise equilibrium cannot be
reached) to the subsistence "logic" of the ecosystem.
In
brief, the equation leads us towards a social model that
will contain the same elements and the same identity as the
ecosystem.
This is the real determinant of the whole
question. If we are capable of "reading" the essential
principles on which the most perfect thermodynamics machine
that exists in the universe (the ecosystem) is based, we
will be able to speed up as much as possible the attainment
of a phase of equilibrium that should also characterize a
long period of stability even in the Social System.
This
operation is less complex than how it could seem.
The
laws of the ecosystem, and even more the logics, are known
well enough.
In it, in order to better use the energy
coming from the available sources (above all solar), the
system has become as complex as possible in its forms and in
its substances.
It has, in essence, created a
thermodynamic machine (because that is what the ecosystem
is) constituted by an incredible richness of forms and
substances (ecodiversity and biodiversity) which assure it,
through the relationships, the exchanges and the relations
between the single components, the maximum possible
perpetuation.
The System has opposed itself to the
ineffable laws of thermodynamics that, subject to the
greatness of the entropy, destine our Universe to thermal
death and to the end of Life (at least the biological one).
The ecosystem has diversified itself and broken down
into the smallest components in order to create an energy
economy that has allowed it to persist longer.
And the
Social System?
It is here that emerges the reason for
its conflict with the ecosystem and with the laws of
thermodynamics, which are none other than the most perfect
economical treatise that Nature could write.
The Social
System, diverted by economists and economic systems which
are little (or not at all) interested in energy laws, has
been structured on aspects that are substantially different
from those of ecosystems.
We have standardised a lot of
the forms and substances with a logic of levelling
structures that is totally opposite to that of a good
thermodynamic machine.
In brief, in every sector of
human activity, we have often created economic
macrostructures (large factories, great agglomerations,
little diversified in form and in substance), levelling that
additional greatness that is produced by the Social System:
spiritual creativity.
Parallel to what happens in the
ecosystem, in the Social System it is necessary that
information, energy and matter can flow between all
individuals. But when we create monospecific structures,
little diversified and specialized, the differences between
individuals decrease (when they are not nullified) and the
flows weaken until they substantially weaken the Social
System itself.
This thermodynamic model leads to a
faster death, consumes more external energy, pollutes more
and, being in total contact with the other System (the
ecosystem), it interferes with it, damaging it and altering
it.
At this point we return to the equation: the
mechanism that is established is a sort of Feedback, that
is, that ability that complex Systems have to correct
themselves if factors intervene that could grow to nullify
the System.
We are wholly in this first (historical)
phase of the equation: we are receiving some feedback
information from the equation that is gradually affecting
the whole equilibrium.
How can we tell?
Before the
seventies nobody spoke (except in some scientific circles)
of Environmental Emergency; an Environmental Conscience or
the culture of Saving Energy did not exist and nobody spoke
of Biodiversity or of varied questions on these themes.
This is the first information that the Feedback process,
created by the equation, is inserting in the reagents
(especially in the Social System), slowly leading to a
re-equilibrium of it.
Understanding how much longer it
will continue is complex: the variables are too many and no
software or elaborator possesses such a memory.
We know,
however, that it is inexorable and on this not even Opinions
have any sense, because thermodynamics is not opinionable.
Guido Bissanti
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