that took a bit longer then I thought…
anyway, we return to systems…
we have systems such as natural, the solar system, we have systems that
are biological, human beings, and we have mechanical, car engines…
is this the complete list, hardly, we can go on naming systems until the
cows come home, but I have my eye on other systems…
we have Kropotkin once again…
a human being…
who is a biological system unto himself but
also part of the larger biological systems that surrounds
him…as mentioned earlier, we have trees which are part of the
ecosystem and so is Kropotkin…I also exist within a natural system,
being part of planet earth which is part of the solar system…
so I exist within several different types of systems…
now as far as any mechanical systems, I have a car
and I wear a hearing aid and glasses. so I am engaged in
mechanical systems and I use computers and cook dinner
and other such uses of mechanical systems…
as noted earlier, there are also systems that are of human construct…
economic, political, social/society, cultural… among others…I exist
within various aspects of these systems and I act and interact
with some more systems then other systems…
I mentioned I am a father and husband, so I interact with my wife and
my daughter all the time…I engage with that system many, many times a day…
the family system…as a family and individually, I/we interact with other
systems such as our economic, political, social/society, cultural systems…
I work so interact with other systems… family, social, economic but not so much
political…but the political does interact with me at work, the political system
does create rules and laws that affect me at work and I must work with…
a company is a system and it works with other companies which are their
own systems and each company works within an economic system…
think of growth of systems from human being to the planet to the solar
system to the local group of stars to the galaxy to the local supercluster
of galaxies to ever larger superclusters until we reach the universe…
the universe is just another system abet a very large system…
recall those Hubble pictures of the universe with galaxies lined
up as far as the eye can see and how do you find the milky way
in the midst of all those galaxies? our economic system is the same
way…once again with stand with Kropotkin, but this time at his checkstand
ringing up groceries and creating economic activity with every single
transaction…withdraw a bit and see the company at large and my work
get very, very small but it is still there being a part of the system,
an open system which has matter and energy going into and out of the system…
then look at the even bigger picture of all retail business and my company, which
is a very, very large company becomes much smaller and I, Kropotkin, is no longer
seen… my economic activity is very small indeed in the midst of all the retail activity
within a county or a state or a country and then you add in not just retail activity,
but all kinds of economic activity, all kinds of economic systems, that in the end
add up to the GNP, Gross National Product, which is a listing of all economic
activity in the country of which I have a small, miniscule part of, as a worker,
as a consumer, I also have a small, miniscule part of, but that is another part
of the economic system, you have producers, and I exist as a worker in that aspect
of the economic system and as a consumer, I buy things and that is part of the
economic system and you can follow that line of consumers from the very small,
Kropotkin and his system the family, to very large consumer actions, the government
for instance…
but we don’t engage just with the economic, not as Marxists suppose,
we deal with the political system also and we can follow that in
same way, from Kropotkin to paying taxes to larger companies paying taxes,
I wish, to larger and larger political activity in which we have the federal
government…I vote every single election and that is part of my
political engagement and that political engagement can be affected
by the economic and social/society and the cultural…
we exist within many different types of systems and sometimes
it is hard to distinguish between the many different systems…
is it the economic that is affecting us or is it the political
or is it the social/society or the cultural system that is affecting
us and sometime is it is more then one system that is affecting us
and it makes it hard to understand and/or distinguish between the
various systems…many people blame the political system
for their problems when in reality it is the economic systems that
that are causing many of American issues…
but we cannot tell because it is so hard to break out the economic
and the political from each other…
and where does little ole Kropotkin fit into all this?
that is the question…
to understand one person, Kropotkin, you have to place him into
context of the many, many different systems that he exists within…
so how am I to live? that is the question but how do we answer that
within so many different systems? how am I to live is different
within the political and different within the economic and different with
the social and different within the cultural…
and within each system we have the feedback loop and the adaptation
aspect and the homeostasis aspect…and within each larger system, we
also have those aspects but with every single increase in the system,
the ability to create feedback and to adapt and to control the
homeostasis gets harder…the larger the system, the harder each
of these aspects of a system becomes to interact…my feedback on
a small, store level is greater then on a company level and much smaller
on the entire retail level and so on…this is one of the great problems with
systems, as they grow larger they no longer operate as systems should…
for a system to be successful, it must have a feedback loop and an
adaptation and homeostasis aspect, but as our systems grow larger,
these aspects become less able to engage within the system…
I have a larger voice politically within my small city then I do within
a state, politically and far less so within a country aspect…
as the system grows larger, the systems that maintain the systems
become harder and harder to maintain those systems because
of the fact they lose their ability to interact with the larger systems…
and we rest for a minute… for I have more to go…
Kropotkin