Feedback
*This can be used creatively. At a historic performance in 1969, legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix gave a great example of the artistic use of feedback. It’s a mixture of science, art - and social commentary. The tune he plays is the Star-Spangled Banner, commenting on the Vietnam war, its blowback into US society, the feedback loops between different registers of violence and alienation.
harnessed feedback
A great applications of systems thinking is the work of James Lovelock, and here too, feedback is a central theme. For example, global cooling could trigger the expansion of polar ice-caps, making the earth whiter and hence reflecting more heat and making it colder still. But the earth-system, like Hendrix, can play creatively with its feedback, maintaining some equilibrium and regulation. This is what we risk losing today, if there’s a tipping-point leading to global warming feedback.
Accumulation is in essence a feedback loop: grabbing portions of nature (land, resources) permits a minority to accumulate wealth, which in turn becomes an entitlement to accumulate more wealth.
And from a social angle, laissez-faire typifies a dangerous manifestation of the principle of feedback. Wealth is an entitlement to accumulate more wealth, leading ultimately to its concentration in fewer and fewer hands.
1. Elsewhere
1.1. In my garden
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