VIII. Earth Earns: An Open CoCreative Earthropocene to Astropocene PediaVerse

4. A Natural Genocratic Complementarity: me + We = US

Fu, Fu, Feng and Daniel Rockmore.. Too little, too late -- a dynamical systems model for gun-related violence and intervention.. arXiv:2312.04407. Dartmouth College mathematicians contribute an example of how complexity theories can even be applied to mitigate hyper firearm possession and incidence of use. As the abstract says, it is a public health issue, one might say a gundemic.

In the United States the laws regulating the public carry of firearms vary state-to-state. Recently the Governor of New Mexico issued an emergency order which temporarily rescinded the right-to-carry law after a spate of shootings. Here we frame this policy intervention as a dynamical system that measures gun violence as a function of gun prevalence. We show that the Governor's order issued as an emergency health response is a regulation that is too little, too late. We argue that a graduated response which scales with increasing violence can serve to drive gun prevalence to zero. Our intention is to show how mathematical modeling might help resolve even an extreme situation as this. We hope to encourage the modeling community to bring its abilities to bear on important and challenging social problems. (Abstract)

In our model a sharp intervention produces a nonzero equilibrium firearms prevalence, while a modulated response that scales as violence increases produces a stable equilibrium of zero prevalence. The latter could be effected in part by levels of restricted access to the right-to-carry in public. We hope that this model or dynamical systems model like this (see Ref. [10]) might provide food-for-thought for policymakers as well as future efforts to assist in battling the problem of gun violence in the United States. (10) Luiz HA Monteiro. More guns, less crime? A dynamical systems approach. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 369:124804, 2020.

Galesic, Mirta and Daniel Stein. Statistical Physics Models of Belief Dynamics. arXiv:1706.02287. The Chair of Human Social Dynamics at the Santa Fe Institute and a NYU mathematican discern a novel cross-connection between these disparate domains such that political and cultural conceptions can be quantified as agents which interact in the shape of spin-glass physics, network topologies and more. However a realization awaits, which could not be more obvious, that electoral polarities naturally hold to a particle/ wave, me/We complementarity. This week in February 2019 a senate election in North Carolina was so 50/50 close, and tainted, that it has to be done over.

We build simple computational models of belief dynamics within the framework of discrete-spin statistical physics models, and explore how suitable they are for understanding and predicting real-world belief change on both the individual and group levels. We find that accurate modeling of real-world patterns requires attending to social interaction rules that people use, network structures in which they are embedded, distributions of initial beliefs and intrinsic preferences, and the relative importance of social information and intrinsic preferences. We find that simple statistical physics-based models contain predictive value for real-world belief dynamics and enable empirical tests of different assumptions about the underlying network structure and the social interaction rules.

Geier, Fabian, et al. The Physics of Governance Networks: Critical Transitions in Contagion Dynamics on Multilayer Adaptive Networks Applied to the Sustainable Use of Renewable Resources. European Physical Journal Special Topics. 228/2357, 2019. Complexity scientists from Germany and Sweden mainly at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research including Jurgen Kurths and Jonathon Donges, apply the latest theories as they focus on a common tendency to seek and reach an optimum reciprocal balance. By our natural philoSophia view, collective human ingenuity begins to realize a universal mathematic dynamics which underlie and guide our historic, societal affairs. In regard, by a 21st century revelation and revolution could align with life’s complementary preference, rather than mutual conflict. See also Governance Networks in Public Administration and Policy by Christopher Koliba, et al, eds. (Routledge, 2018) which advocates an avail of complex adaptive systems.

Adaptive networks can serve to model phenomena such as contagion and spreading dynamics, critical transitions and complex structure formation. Here, we study multilayer adaptive networks with dynamic node states and present an application to the governance of sustainable resource use. We focus on a three layer model, where a governance network interacts with a social network of resource users which in turn interacts with an ecological network of renewable resources. Our results uncover mechanisms which lead to emergent critical transitions in contagion dynamics and show how they can be analyzed and understood with relevance complex adaptive systems from physics and epidemiology to sociology and global sustainability science. (Abstract excerpts)

Giddens, Anthony, ed. The Progressive Manifesto. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003. Further essays on aspects of the British sociologist’s search for a “third way” beyond left and right. But its “global social democracy,” with good intentions, seems laden by past baggage and wanders without a guiding cosmological context.

Gilbert, Scott. Wonder and the Necessary Alliances of Science and Religion. Euresis Journal. Volume 4, 2012. Reviewed more in Religion and Science, the Swarthmore College biologist could be seen to advance a 21st century “symbiotic democracy” of a reciprocity of me free individual and We supportive community.

Grossmann, Matt and David Hopkins. Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Michigan State University and Boston College political scientists distill an evident but heretofore unarticulated view of the two broadly conservative or liberal parties as generic, archetypal opposites. The familiar red state focus on individual liberty, and blue preference for inclusive coalitions is a definitive division, which quite results in perpetual gridlock conflict. We note that “asymmetry” is often applied to the reciprocal brain hemisphere, each with similar proclivities. While a closing section suggests a more balanced two-party system, since academe cannot allow a greater reality with its own intrinsic qualities, an obvious egalitarian complementary of both sides in salutary unison, rather than mutual attack, does not dawn. This section gathers an array of musings and examples upon this vital reciprocity of anima and animus, whose mutual conflict goes on which to our great peril.

Guttenberg, Nicholas and Nigel Goldenfeld. Emergence of Heterogeneity and Political Organization in Information Exchange Networks. Physical Review E. 81/046111, 2010. University of Illinois physicists quantify by way of complex systems theory a universal reciprocity that is similarly evident in social domains. Akin to many entries upon this natural harmony, e.g. Scott Gilbert’s holobiont symbiosis or Vic Norris’ competitive coherence but in a different venue and terms, the same agent entities appear within relational, communicative webworks. A best resolve is seen as a mutual sharing between me member and we group, or close to it. And to note in October 2013, whence American two party politics, where each holds to one or the other of these archetypes, could not be more locked destructive, shutdown opposition. However might we be able to admit the independent existence of life’s complementary gender accord, so as to then wholly reinvent an organic me = We democracy?

Apropos, I heard Nigel Goldenfeld speak at a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, physics colloquium on October 9, 2013 on “Collective Dynamics and Phase Transitions in Early Life: Clues to the Genetic Code.” He indeed advised, two days after the Nobel Prize for the Higgs boson, that “biology is the new condensed matter physics.” As a field that studies collective phenomena, life’s evolution ought to be seen more as an on-going “process.” From an initial regime of “horizontal gene transfer,” the molecular DNA version appears to be in an optimum form. In this physical sense then, a genome can be dubbed an “information-sharing protocol.” Might we imagine some closure to a past century of necessary particle, relativity, quantum phase, that ran its course, and on cue a 21st century “systems physics” of matter come to life (again)? Goldenfeld, a colleague of the late eminent biologist Carl Woese, alluded that life’s common genome is universally suitable because it implies and has arisen from a materially conducive cosmos.

We present a simple model of the emergence of the division of labor and the development of a system of resource subsidy from an agent-based model of directed resource production with variable degrees of trust between the agents. The model has three distinct phases corresponding to different forms of societal organization: disconnected (independent agents), homogeneous cooperative (collective state), and inhomogeneous cooperative (collective state with a leader). Our results indicate that such levels of organization arise generically as a collective effect from interacting agent dynamics and may have applications in a variety of systems including social insects and microbial communities. (Abstract)

We have shown that a model of communicating agents that divide their time between information generation and information usage has three distinct phases of organization corresponding to structures identifiable in human political systems. The flow of information between agents in the system is critical to this phase structure. If agents can exchange resources in a way that does not permit cheating, then the optimal structure is to have a small number of leaders that scales logarithmically with the system size, and a larger number of workers. Fluctuations in the reliability of agents tend to emphasize the communal phase over the leader phase. (046111-7)

Harcourt, Wendy. Editorial: Transforming Democracy. Development. 50/1, 2007. An introduction to a large special issue about true democratic societies which actually might advance justice, women, practical empowerment, equality, local and global participation, allow children to be in school rather than sweatshops or armies, and so on.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. As a sequel to the authors’ widely cited book Empire (Harvard, 2000) about a historical movement from bourgeoisie society to a global dominance, this work argues that power and enfranchisement must now be returned to an informed, radically equitable and tolerant populace. The scientific basis noted in the quote is an intent of this website.

The democracy of the multitude needs a “new science,” that is, a new theoretical paradigm to confront this new situation. The first and primary agenda of this new science is the destruction of sovereignty in favor of democracy. (353)

Hawthrone, Susan. Wild Politics: Beyond Globalization. Women’s Studies International Forum. 27/3, 2004. As a context for her advocacy of an ecological, gender equitable society guided by natural wisdom, Hawthrone draws upon the writings of the African-American scholar Marimba Ani. In this regard, to fully understand a culture, one must learn it’s defining basis or logos, it’s asili or worldview. As in the quote, by “universalism” is meant one size fits all, a homogenization. A culture respectful to women and children ought to be founded on an indigenous biodiversity of tolerance and nurture. (Ani’s book Yurugu is noted in The Complementary of Civilizations.)

In Western culture, the asili is characterized by separation and universalism – what I have named disconnection. (253) I want a world in which relationship is important and reciprocity is central to social interaction. (255)

Hester, Randolph. Design for Ecological Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Available in September, we reprint from the publisher’s website. Hester is a noted landscape architect and environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley.

Over the last fifty years, the process of community building has been lost in the process of city building. City and suburban design divides us from others in our communities, destroys natural habitats, and fails to provide a joyful context for our lives. In Design for Ecological Democracy, Randolph Hester proposes a remedy for our urban anomie. He outlines new principles for urban design that will allow us to forge connections with our fellow citizens and our natural environment. He demonstrates these principles with abundantly illustrated examples--drawn from forty years of design and planning practice--showing how we can design cities that are ecologically resilient, that enhance community, and that give us pleasure.

Hester argues that it is only by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy that the needed revolution in design will take place. Democracy bestows freedom; ecology creates responsible freedom by explaining our interconnectedness with all creatures. Hester's new design principles are founded on three fundamental issues that integrate democracy and ecology: enabling form, resilient form, and impelling form. Urban design must enable us to be communities rather than zoning-segregated enclaves and to function as informed democracies.

Hester, Randolph. Reciprocal and Recombinant geometries of Ecological Democracy. Places: A Forum of Design for the Public Realm. 19/1, 2007. In this article Hester marries natural and urban topologies and contexts so as to achieve an environmentally-based, and thus truly democratic, abide.

Here I explore the factors that emerge from the marriage of ecology and democracy, particularly ones that influence how we see and design the metropolitan landscape. Ecology and democracy share the importance of sense of place, phenomenology of the locality, and responsibility for the commons in the broad sense of land, water, food, transport, education and economy. (68)

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