Complexity Breeds Complexity

It seems hard to argue that agriculture wasn't an ingenious solution for conditions of that time. But the beginning of complex society leads to complex problems which require more ingenious solutions resulting in a spiral of complexity. William Ophuls points out that "[c]ivilization may be a problem too hard for the human brain to solve". It is the tragedy of civilization that the hubris of success leads to downfall.

So it's unsurprising that a study published by the United States Army War College sounds the alarm over the impending collapse of the American Empire. The U.S. military usually seems to be more clear sighted about rising threats (such as climate change) than the civilian leadership. Nafeez Ahmed summarizes the conclusions:

[T]he US now inhabits a dangerous, unpredictable “post-primacy” world, whose defining feature is “resistance to authority.”

[T]he US sees [major rivals like Russia and China, as well as smaller players like Iran and North Korea] as threats—not so much because of tangible military or security issues, but mainly because their pursuit of their own legitimate national interests is, in itself, seen as undermining American dominance.

[T]he study also points to “leaderless instability (e.g., Arab Spring)” as a major driver of “a generalized erosion or dissolution of traditional authority structures.” The document hints that such populist civil unrest is likely to become prominent in Western homelands, including inside the United States.

Ahmed describes the main solution as the further expansion of military power.

[M]ilitary power is essentially depicted as a tool for the US to force, threaten and cajole other countries into submission to US demands. The very concept of ‘defense’ is thus re-framed as the capacity to use overwhelming military might to get one’s way—anything which undermines this capacity ends up automatically appearing as a threat that deserves to be attacked.

This is a war, then, between US-led capitalist globalization, and anyone who resists it. And to win it, the document puts forward a combination of strategies: consolidating the US intelligence complex and using it more ruthlessly; intensifying mass surveillance and propaganda to manipulate US and global popular opinion; expanding US military power and reach to ensure access to “strategic regions, markets, and resources.”

Ahmed criticizes the shortsightedness of the analysis.

[T]he study’s conclusions are less a reflection of the actual state of the world, than of the way the Pentagon sees itself and the world. Indeed, most telling of all is the document’s utter inability to recognize the role of the Pentagon itself in systematically pursuing a wide range of policies over the last several decades which have contributed directly to the very instability it now wants to defend against.

While there may be a certain honesty to the report, the connection I see to our predicament is in further observations from Ophuls.

[C]ivilization's contradictions and difficulties are not seen as symptoms of impending collapse but, rather, as problems to be solved by better policies and personnel.

[E]xcessive complexity is both costly and perilous. 

Update (August 5):  Andrew O'Hehir has an on-going series of essays essentially asking, "What the Fuck is Going On?"

Resurgent white nationalism in the West and Islamic extremism in the Arab world are not the same thing, needless to say. But they are linked and parallel phenomena that share a common enemy and a common goal: They want to undermine or destabilize the entire project of liberal democracy, which they see as a crumbling, contemptible failure.

Capitalism has created enormous wealth, and distributed it in grotesquely unequal fashion. In virtually every nation that claims to be a representative democracy, participation has declined and dissatisfaction has risen. America’s paralytic political system is exceptional only because of the naked cynicism of our current governing party, and because of our mythic and laughable sense of self-importance. As I’ve said many times, [Fuckface von Clownstick] is a particularly nasty symptom of infection, but he’s not the virus.

This internal conflict and its central question — why our democracy and our economy function so poorly, and whether they can be repaired — contaminate every aspect of political, economic, social and cultural life, often in ways that are not obvious.

Could the simplest answer be--it's a problem that's just too hard to solve?

Update (September 17):  Elizabeth West points out it's not all about us.

So here we are: the summer of 2017 with the arctic ice melting, the temperatures rising, the oceans rising and acidifying, our non-human companions on the planet going extinct like nobody’s business. We thought about ourselves from the get-go. From the beginning of known human history, we wanted better lives, longer lives, happier lives. For ourselves. We used our gifts to reach for what we wanted, like toddlers, with no sense of the bigger world around us, no notion of the consequences of our actions. No awareness of the unfathomable complexity and the perfection of balance represented by the environment we inhabit.

Update (September 24):  Phil Torres makes the case that we are simultaneously living at the best time to be alive so far and the best time ever for humans. Torres cites Steven Pinker on the notion of progress, and Yaneer Bar-Yam on the problems of complexity.

There's a natural process of increasing complexity in the world. And we can recognize that at some point, that increase in complexity is going to run into the complexity of the individual. And at that point, hierarchical organizations will fail.

Update (October 21):  Nafeez Ahmed discusses research demonstrating the decline of Energy Return On Investment (EROI) since the 1930s and how that ties into the end of economic growth.

The result is that complex societies tend to reach a threshold of growth, after which returns diminish to such an extent that the complexification of the society can no longer be sustained, leading to its collapse or regression.

Update (December 27):  William Hawes strives to understand our modern world.

Collapse has happened many times in great civilizations, and the masses had no idea what was coming, doing little to prepare, as academics like Tainter and Diamond have explained. Through systems theory, the best scientists have explained time and time again that our world is entering a period of crisis never seen before. Politically, you can see this chaos emerging, personified in leaders like nationalist neo/proto-fascists such as [von Clownstick], Le Pen, Erdogan, Putin, Xi, Modi.