Integral City 3.7: Reframing Complex Challenges for Gaia's Human Hives by Marilyn Hamilton

Author:Marilyn Hamilton [Hamilton, Marilyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, Political Science
ISBN: 9780998031705
Google: enIovgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 42817819
Publisher: Amaranth Press
Published: 2018-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

In each of the stages of resilience the relationship of DGs to CEs differs. (While, in the beehive, it appears to be the role of Resource Allocators (RAs) and Inner Judges (IJs) to reward the appropriate balance of behaviors between DG and CE bees so that 20 kilos of honey can be produced (Beck, 2012; Bloom, 2000; Hamilton, 2008). At this stage of evolution of the human hive, the clarity of what constitutes the equivalent of the 20 kilos of honey remains obscure—although we appear to be approaching core algorithms expressed in terms of eco-footprints and GHG emissions (Taylor, 2008), the ratios of certain behaviors to population size as discussed in Chapter 15 (West, 2011, 2017), the economics of health, productivity and happiness (Robinson, 2012), and livability indexes (anon, 2017a).

The Integral model has demonstrated how diversity dynamics are biologically, psychologically, culturally and structurally embedded in the people of the city (Gregory & Raffanti, 2009). People act, think, relate and produce within the life conditions they co-create, responding to the interactive relationship of CE’s with DG’s. When CE’s encounter seemingly intractable problems that drain resources from the system on a large enough scale, eventually the contribution of DGs to overcome dissonances, challenges, blocks and barriers becomes critical to the city’s survival and evolution. (It becomes effectively the dissonance trigger to transformative change (Graves, 1974; Gregory & Raffanti, 2009)). However, such decisions and actions to issues like homelessness (see Chapter 13), can take a surprisingly long time to realize because of the power of the CE’s to resist change.

. . . the dominant behaviors [of social systems in cities], arise in response to life conditions (as one would expect from any complex adaptive system (Holling (2001); Stevenson and Hamilton, 2000; Capra, (Capra, 1996)

1996)). So each level of existence behaves with increasing levels of complexity in order to maximize the organizing principle (or value) of the current life condition. This behavior results in a tendency to protect the status quo at its current level of complexity . . . [which] could be interpreted as conformity enforcement (of the organizing principle / value).

Thus a tension in favor of the values and behavior that is most coherent with the current life conditions [called in complexity theory, the “fitness landscape”], will be demonstrated as conformity enforcement. The flip side of this behavior is that the dominant culture will also protect itself against diversity generation, until such time as life conditions require the solutions that diversity generation can offer to the problems created by maximizing the values and organizing principles in play at any level of existence. Moreover, we can see the natural evolutionary cycles emerge at all levels of scale: individual, family, organization, society.(Hamilton, 2007)

When considering the Resilience Cycle it appears that CE’s and DG’s have the following relationships at the four stages (as illustrated in Figure 7).

Conservation—CE’s are strong (+); DG’s are weak (-)

Breakdown/Release—both CE’s and DG’s are weak (-), conflicted in their connections

Redistribution/Reorganization—CE’s are strong (+) and DG’s are strong (+), conflicted in their

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