we have, for thousands of years attempted to define man/human beings…
and we have failed… but why? why have we failed to understand man/human beings?
I believe its because we haven’t put human beings into the proper context…
we have isolated our thinking about who we are…
in other words, we haven’t seen ourselves in our rightful context…
we look at ourselves as separate individuals with no context to
our environment or what is going around us…
I am Kropotkin…
I am of medium height and built…
I am older but still have my hair but its going gray…
I am a liberal… I watch baseball and basketball and hockey
but not football.
all these things are true about me, but they don’t put me into a context…
I am a father and a husband, brother and son…
now all of these things put me into a context because
they place me into systems…
systems as defined as a regularly interacting group…
that is being a father and a husband and son and a brother…
the family is one type of system…my family, my immediate
family and my mother and brother and sisters are a system…
and we fit into the terms I offered earlier…
there is feedback and adaptation and homeostasis and all the
other signs of a system…we will call this type of system as biological…
a biological system…
we live on planet earth, the third planet from the sun,
in a solar system with 8 planets… this is by its very name,
a system…
think of our solar system, imagine as the planets revolve around
the sun…we are an open system which means, matter and energy
go into and out of the system… just as a biological system is an open
system and just as the family is an open system… matter and energy
go into and out of the biological and solar system…the human body
is also a system and a biological system which has matter and energy
going into and out of…the solar system is an natural system…
thus meaning it was created naturally by forces like gravity and the big bang
and material like dust…
and then we have systems like a car engine… which is also an open
system in which matter and energy passes into and out of…
we call this type of system a mechanical system…
so far, we have three different types of systems, the body which is
a biological system and the solar system which is a natural system and the engine
which is a mechanical system…we have plenty of other systems but first let us
understand these three systems…
all three operate as systems and can be defined as systems, the body,
the solar system and the car engine…
the matter and energy used by each is different however…
the input and output of each system, biological, natural
and mechanical are different…now each of these systems
operate within both larger and smaller systems…
the car engine for example, doesn’t exist in isolation by itself,
it has the other systems of the car also working to achieve its
goal and that is the movement of the car toward some destination…
the engine is part of a larger system, the electrical system for example
in a car and the input and output of the system called gas and carbon
monoxide for example helps the car achieve its goal of moving…
the car has its feedback loop and adaptation and homeostasis aspect…
just like any system of which the engine is part of that system…
so the engine is part of a larger system… just like the body or the family
is part of a larger system
and the solar system is part of a larger system, the milky way galaxy…
imagine the milky way galaxy as its revolves around in space and then
try to find our solar system in the midst of that milky way galaxy…
you can’t… but the solar system is part of that immensely large
galaxy and that milky way galaxy is part of a larger system, the local
group of galaxies which is part of the Virgo Supercluster which is part
of the Laniakea Supercluster… each cluster gets bigger and bigger…
and all of them part of larger system in which passes matter and energy
and another component, which is gravity and gravity is why the solar system
is different then a biological or mechanical system… so each system, be it
natural or biological or mechanical have slightly different aspects to it…
but they are still systems, just as we humans are a system in our bodies…
so look out the window and see a tree or a bush, we tend to isolate
that tree or bush into a separate thing, whereas the tree or bush exists
within a system, an ecosystem, in which the tree and the local systems
exchange matter and energy and support each other…so to properly
understand a tree, you must understand the ecosystem around the tree
and explain how the tree interacts with the local environment…
to make sense of a tree…that is why we have failed in our understanding
of the man/human being… we isolate the human being from the systems surrounding
us… we exist in many different systems… for example,
we have the economic system, the political system,
the social/society system and the cultural system,
we have many more systems but let us understand these
system first…after a short break…to finish laundry…
Kropotkin