When I was barely out of cami knickers I had a mini tiff with the founder/editor of The Ecologist magazine Edward Goldsmith (later taken-up by his nephew Zac the unmentionable, now extinct), known to my father through The Conservation Society (founded in Spain), over his book "The Stable Society, its Structure and Control: Towards a Social Cybernetic".
I wrote a long-winded piece called " Cybernetics or Aesthetics?", the gist of which was that nature is much more to do with poetic shape than with information.
At the time I had no idea of the atrocious scale of Goldsmith's faux pas, but now it can be seen as a perfect example of a parallel reality that is unbeknown to the person writing.
While it's true that cybernetics is the science of control, to equate that with stability is the ultimate in confused thinking! Stability in nature is essentially a state of power that is highly rhythmical and intricately linked with fertility.
Without the physical presence of places of power there can't possibly be stability, even if the society is under perfect control (order). This is the theme of Euripides's "The Bacchae" (prev) where Pentheus suffers the fate of being ripped to pieces by the followers of Dionysus, by denying his godhood.
The error in Goldsmith's book is really to believe there can be order without disorder and, by association, cleanliness without dirt (the fields). Cybernetics is only a belief in information, as opposed to a belief in strength and fertility.
Fertility and conception are the genesis of shape, and almost everything we touch and use - nose, throat - is proportional to a very fine degree. In this guise is song and the very breath of life.
If we live in a parallel system it's because the ego is attracted to it for its own purposes of situating information in resolved space (straight lines). This is where AI (aka cybernetics) is most happy. While that might not have been obvious in 1970, it is now.
(It may however have been so to Ada Lovelace in the 19tj century, designer of the first algorithm, who called herself a "poetic scientist".)
Resolved space is tidy space, hygienic space, where it is possible to detect micro-mutations such as virons (RNA) using x-ray diffraction (light.)
Viruses are so prone to mutations they could be views as programmable by the environment, so the type of environment is fundamentally vital.
The University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment is a world leader in " ecological economics", especially on the effects of disrupting stable ecosystems on displaced viruses (from animal.hosts.)
Viruses really thrive in weakness, which is an environment that is degraded and where plants and animals no longer live in close conjunction (as in a jungle - actually also a mixed farm.)
Degraded environments have a tendency to straight-lines (resolved space) whereas stable environments go every which way. The ego is attracted to instability, as is the virus.
It's an illusory world of information that basically lacks the strength of places of power where there are fertile situations, and where there tends to be a balance between dirt and cleanliness.
Where this balance exists in stability and fertility, there exists an identity of shape. Trees are totally identifiable by species or sub-species purely by shape.
These typical landscapes also have a symbolic or allusive meaning. In a cosmos where the Earth spins, fertility and meaning are always going to be related to the stars.
There are basically two ways to view things. One through facts, which can be fairly disgusting; one through symbolism and meaning.
The lama's knowledge of medicine was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the science. (Kim, page 331)
This reminds me of the scene of the three witches in Macbeth, "eye of newt" etc. Witchcraft and traditional medicine (as in Chinese) use strong substances that taken out of context can appear disgusting, while in the context of the medicine they could well be appropriate (see also Fulling, prev.)
This applies equally to mainstream economics. Traditional Iowa mixed pig farms (with hens, veg, crops, herds) have been taken-over by intensive lots of pure pig-breeding, resulting in manure contaminating aquifers.
Such a system is weak because it relies on economic facts (efficiency) without the ecological balance (strength). With balance comes strength (revival) and what you could call a vague sense of vigor.
Measurement is done in resolved space, which is which makes it attractive to acolytes. But this is also where mutations and viruses are harbored.
The strength of places of power can't be measured accurately. It's in the air, in the sea breeze, the tangs of forest mushrooms and exciting aromas.
The problem is that it's all too easy to measure mutations - via x-ray diffraction - and all too difficult to measure natural strength. One is an inductive system of light and logic; one is shade and woodcraft, pace and poetry under the heavens above.
'Our scientists are working on ways to mutate human female chromosomes until we can have children with them.'
(I Married a Monster from Outer Space)
