Resilience Thinking
I have often - ironically - accused the pious general systems theory zealots of believing they can predict the uncertainty principle. And I have roundly - and mercilessly - mocked them for believing they can tame chaos.
Trouble is, they really do believe that they can tame chaos.
In 2010, the Resilience Alliance released ‘Assessing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: Workbook for Practitioners‘1. But before we go there, and why it matters, let’s first establish the authors. Lance Gunderson, Ann Kinzig, Allyson Quinlan, and Brian Walker.
Of those four, three are still with the Resilience Alliance2, including Lance Gunderson. In fact, going through their list of members, there’s sufficient material here for weeks of commentry.
The only exception of the four is Ann Kinzig, who now appears to work with… wait, what? She’s at ASU, but also a contributor at ‘Governing’3, which apparently is a magazine released since… 19874. But more importantly -
‘She served as a American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton admin, from 1998-99‘
Setting aside her fellowship of the Rockefeller-funded AAAS (which arranged the original meet culminating in the launch of the Society of the Advancement of General Systems Theory in the mid-1950s),,, we yet AGAIN arrive at the Clinton admin.
The search for the first detailed description of the Ecosystem Approach led to the Council on Environmental Quality under Al Gore. They very same, who also played a prominent role in the early days of GLOBE Legislators, as well as carrying out much of the work behind the scenes, as the Convention on Biological Diversity was successfully pushed through at the Rio Summit in 1992 -
But we also arrived at Clinton’s White House, when looking into the 1996 White House initiative, launching the DoD-led Global Emerging Infections Surveillance, ie, global surveillance.
And it was they who in 1998 issued a call relating to ‘information terrorism’, leading to a UN Resolution drafted by Russia, and ultimately, calls for censorship.
As for Ann Kinzig’s google scholar records5… well they sort of tell a story…
… and let’s just take a quick look at that particular paper, titled ‘Hard choices: Making trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human well-being‘6, which would appear a great place to find out where Ann’s loyalties live -
‘Win–win solutions that both conserve biodiversity and promote human well-being are difficult to realize. Trade-offs and the hard choices they entail are the norm. Since 2008, the Advancing Conservation in a Social Context (ACSC) research initiative has been investigating the complex trade-offs that exist between human well-being and biodiversity conservation goals, and between conservation and other economic, political and social agendas across multiple scales.‘
Yeah, that will always be the issue. Do you prioritise humans, or nature? Of course, no normal person would ever with intent cause harm, but let’s carry on -
‘Resolving trade-offs is difficult because social problems – of which conservation is one – can be perceived and understood in a variety of disparate ways, influenced (in part at least) by how people are raised and educated, their life experiences, and the options they have faced‘
It’s pretty clear that we’re on the express lane of psychopathic ideology here.
‘Pre-existing assumptions about the ‘‘right” approach to conservation often obscure important differences in both power and understanding, and can limit the success of policy and programmatic interventions‘
It’s funny, because I’m pretty damn certain that these people will not be the kind who will accept being wrong. No, rather, it’s just that they ‘selected the wrong stakeholders’, and hence will need to ‘iterate the selection process’.
‘The new conservation debate challenges conservationists to be explicit about losses, costs, and hard choices so they can be openly discussed and honestly negotiated. Not to do so can lead to unrealized expectations, and ultimately to unresolved conflict‘
Yeah, sorry, ‘indigenous peoples’, ‘minorities’ and ‘women and children’, but Nestle wants to monetise the fresh water ‘ecosystem services’ off the plot you live on, so you’ll just have to move elsewhere? What’s what - you disagree? Well, look, I thought we had this discussion. It’s the best available scientific censensus.
There. That should do it. Send in the bulldozers.
And in the event you think I’m kidding, let’s proceed to -
‘Many similar examples of the need to move beyond win–win thinking could be given. A recent review of projects supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF, 2005) found that expectations of win–win situations proved unrealistic in most cases.’
Ie, those GEF projects you hear about? Yeah, f- those ‘indigenous peoples’ on the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. We have ‘ecosystem services’ to exploit.
’Most GEF projects in the biodiversity portfolio involve some form of restriction of existing patterns of resource exploitation, which generally leads to a loss of livelihood and development opportunities for at least some individuals or groups.‘
Oh look. No fresh water for you, ‘women and children’. It’s what’s best, according to our new totally scientific vote… sorry… consensus.
‘Indeed, the fact that many such programs also promote alternative income-generating activities such as ecotourism is an implicit acknowledgement of trade-off relationships, but the trade-offs involved are rarely made explicit or systematically evaluated.‘
Such lies. Yeah, that didn’t exactly work out for Iwokrama, now did it? And as for making something explicit… if I tell you up front I will punch you in the face, will you be alright with it? Clearly, Ann Kinzig would be, provided it was accompanied by the outcome of the recent vote on the best available, current science.
What is described here is a dictatorship. Yes, really. Oh sorry, ‘adaptive management’ through a decision arrived at through a ‘participatory’ approach with 'iteratively selected stakeholders’.
In yesterdays article, we saw how they will ‘iterate’ during the ‘stakeholder selection process’, because it’s very important to reach agreement (ie, boot you should you disagree). And adaptive management in short means changing opinion as informaiton comes in with impunity - an example of which could be yet another fabricated ‘best available scientific consensus’.
The paper continues -
‘Frustrated expectations have led to a backlash against conservation from some groups with human development and rights as their central focus, while fueling sentiment…‘
Yeah, how unreasonable they didn’t just f- off when presented with the best available quack science.
‘Parts of the practitioner and academic communities are beginning to call into question the assumptions underlying win–win approaches as a result of the growing recognition that many situations on the ground involve competing, rather than complementary, social, economic, and ecological goals (Barrett and Arcese, 1995; Songorwa, 1999; Songorwa et al., 2000; Robinson and Redford, 2004; Robinson, 2011).‘
The only - only - reason I quoted the above is to show that apparently, it requires FIVE ‘scientific’ studies to arrive at a conclusion which absolutely anyone with a modicum of common sense could have told you. These people are legit so far removed from reality that they are outright dangerous. They should under absolutely no circumstances be allowed anywhere near power, because they’d immediately kick off, attempting to ‘purify’ society, in expressly the same way Pol Pot attempted.
Anyway, there’s not much more to come for in this ‘paper’. But just to hammer home - if given half the chance - people with this mindset will absolutely and with no regret rule over you through outright force. I can only assume every single one is a member of the local communist party, though they probably lie about it.
To protect you.
Right, so we’ve established exactly what level of Marxism to which Ann subscribes. And we’ve learned of the ‘Advancing Conservation in a Social Context‘ institute, which I’ll make sure to look into. But let’s have a look at Lance next. In 2020, a paper titled ‘Designing Law to Enable Adaptive Governance of Modern Wicked Problems‘ was released7
‘The new theories of governance discussed in this Article have been developed through empirical observation of emerging governance innovation to fill governance gaps that have opened with the increasing complexity of society. Among them, adaptive governance has been described as emerging in environmental governance and described in the resilience literature as a promising means to manage modern wicked problems.‘
Delightful. More arbitrary rule, sorry, Adaptive Governance zealotry.
‘… the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, general systems theory, which emphasizes explaining complex patterns or behaviors that arise from interactions of key system components, was coming of age to address environmental problems, but it either received little application or was rejected by the social and political sciences. Modern complex environmental problems, such as climate change, share the core attributes Rittel and Webber described but also include elements of rapid social change and increasing complexity as societies enter the age of globalization, the digital revolution, and human domination of the planet‘
And we’ve arrived at where it was obvious we would. General Systems Theory.
What GST in short does, is describe an arbitrary ‘system’ through inputs and outputs, typically ordered in a hierarchy. So to give an example… well, actually, this is what’s they’re trying to achieve… you could consider the entire biosphere and all living material one ‘system’; humans would then become a ‘subsystem’, or a ‘cell’ depending on terminology. And this entire ‘system’ with ‘subsystems’ you then ‘describe’ - typically through flowcharts and state systems - as though life is a computer programming model.
Then assume you take issue with a type of ‘cell’ within the ‘system’ - in this context, let’s say that its ‘impact on the biosphere is overweight’ and that you wish to reduce said dominance — what do you do?
Now realise that you see a lot of General Systems Theory designs around you, counting Sustainable Development, One Health, the Ecosystem Approach, the Circular Economy, Planetary Health, and even the Spaceship Earth metaphor popularised in the 1960s by a range of individuals, not least Barbara Ward8.
Now realise that the Ecosystem Approach describes a top-down authoritarian management strategy, One Health describe using surveillance and vaccines to cull ‘wildlife species, more broadly’, realise that these people think humans are those oversized ‘cells’ within this system (per the latest Pandemic Treaty), …
… and that this ideology on display - as per above - leads to ‘indigeous peoples’ being evicted from their lands for sakes of resource exploitation at will, and that there quite literally is no end to the amount of the ‘elite’ signed up for this lunatic garbage… (more in the article on General Systems Theory linked above)…
… wait. I might be ‘missing context’, no? Damn, defeated by an ‘independent’ ‘fact’ ‘checker’ (funded by Facebook and Google). Better make sure we appreciate the full context, no, or at least attempt to find other related material in the article -
‘The Anthropocene unfolded in concert with a scientific revolution in which understanding of planetary processes reached a level that allowed scientists not only to identify the global imprint of human activities but to begin to understand consequences of those activities.’
Yes, yes, the old ‘we can’t predict the path of a tornado, but we can predict the climate 50 years from now’…
’ Various approaches, such as general systems theory, complexity theory, and resilience theory, were developed to help recognize and understand patterns of change across a range of systems.’
… yet, still, can’t even predict the path - nor even the pauses - of that single ant, crossing a garden tile on a hot summers day…
‘Systems thinking is based on this understanding of complexity in systems. Systems thinking arose in the first half of the twentieth century out of the study of living systems and the recognition of patterns arising from interactions that are not present in the reductionist study of the components alone.‘
I appreciate the outlined link to ‘systems thinking’, but just to nail it down -
‘Systems science began to flourish in the 1950s with the development of general systems theories and methods (such as mathematical modeling, measurements, and experiments) to test those theories. Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy developed systems models to reconcile paradoxes between physical system rules (such as the laws of thermodynamics) and living systems. Beginning in the 1960s, mathematical modeling through the use of computer technology began to reveal the complexity of systems, allowing scientists "to discover order beneath the seeming chaos."‘
Except, of course, that they applied it to the carbon cycle, and in 1978 at an IIASA conference (ie, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) admitted9 that their faith in their own models… -
… yup. And that, just a few months before the best available scientific consensus established that carbon dioxide is terrifying, at an invite-only conference arranged by Rockefeller-funded ICSU where the debate was not about the science itself, but about future policy direction.
The best available quack science.
… and that definitely-not-fraudulent ‘carbon consensus’ then inevitably led to the UNFCCC/CBD lever, and hence tradeable emission permits -
… a topic covered in 1980 by Rockefeller-funded Conservation Foundation, with Barbara ‘Spaceship Earth‘ Ward acting in capacity of trustee. No, I am serious, fully sourced -
Oh wait. This article was supposed to be about Resilience. Let’s return to the paper initially linked; ‘Assessing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: Workbook for Practitioners‘. Yeah, it’s systems theory alright, though specialised rather than general.
I won’t go through this in detail. What they propose to do, is to float an ‘approximation’ of a human hierarchy and its function, to carry out a simulation, and then measure the output of the machine versus human society. If the prediction gets it wrong, they’ll measure the difference, adjust the model, and try again.
What they expect is that these adjustments progressively narrow and that eventually, the entire simulation can replace 99% of humanity. Which is probably where ‘One Health’ and those ‘vaccines’ come into play.
Of course, they can’t replace the correct function of the entire hierarchical system anymore than they can guess the number I currently think of between 0 and 10. Their counterargument will predictably be ‘ah, but a million of you on average will guess 5’, of which of course there will be an increasing likelihood, the larger numbers you poll. But what this also means is that the process itself will readily dismiss every single care of the individual itself. And this - for the record - is patently on display in the yearbooks of the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, with this example by Edward Goldsmith being just one example.
Setting aside that Goldsmith co-founded the UK ‘Green Party’ - ie the environmentalists - the point here is that you will be considered on equal footing with that ant, whose path across that garden tile they still won’t be able to predict, on the hot summers day unfortunately about to be interrupted by a tornado, in similarly unpredictable fashion.
And - of course - they know all of this. But by the time you are supposed to discover, the entire global surveillance infrastructure will be long implemented, and that - fatal - vaccine ‘booster’ you were forced to accept (or your CBDCs would be revoked and hence your kids wouldn’t be fed) down the vaccine center in your 15-minute gulag… is just about to kick in.
But it’s ok. No, really - it is.
Because it’s what the best available scientific consensus finds to be true… at this minute, anyway. Consequently, it’s what the general systems theory zealots practising adaptive governance dictated was for the greater good. And don’t complain about the ‘stakeholder selection process’ excluding you from their ‘participatory democracy’. Because had you not disagreed, they wouldn’t have had to ‘iterate’ you out.
The ‘Resilience’ of which they speak is a progressive transformation of society away from human control, and towards that of the machine.
Of course, that machine very much will be controlled by a human, but that human certainly won’t be you, nor someone you ever will be allowed to vote out of office.