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OVER THE CLIFF

TO HAVE EVOLVED believing ourselves invincible in molding nature to our collective whims and with such ignorance of our own ignorance is the greatest of follies. To realize too late that we may have failed could be, as Carson wrote, “the final irony”.⁷ When complex systems cross thresholds, abruptly flipping to new unstable states, things disassemble in wildly unpredictable ways. Because of the intensity and scale of human activities, stunning and enduring examples are everywhere. The nineteenth century degradation of the American Southwest’s grasslands punishes ranchers and desert ecosystems to this day. The outbreak of southern corn leaf blight in the Corn Belt came close to toppling North American industrial agriculture in the early 1970s and is a cautionary tale four decades on. We are now even more at risk of similar pathogenic tsunamis across vast acreages of mono-cropped corn, soybeans, rice, and wheat — the staples that feed us all. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union turned Europe on its head and still impacts economies and geopolitics across the planet. These stories illustrate our improvidence and unmask our limitations. Sudden surprises for which we are unprepared can happen so fast and so forcefully that our very ingenuity to respond to them is overwhelmed.⁸

How do these flips into unstable domains form a larger picture? How might they foretell our future? We cannot begin to answer these questions without a framework to interpret change across time and space. I set forth such a framework below. It is called panarchy. Panarchy is a theory that enables scientists to hypothesize and test narratives of change in the relatively near term — narratives that lead me to be cautious if not gloomy about the human prospect. More on that soon. But first an explanation of the term itself.

The word panarchy was coined more than a decade ago by an international group of scholars from many disciplines aiming to understand both the dynamics of change and the history of persistence in complex adaptive systems.⁹ They drew upon the Greek god Pan to embody unpredictable change. Pan was the guardian of wild places and groves and fields and the progenitor of all that was fertile. One could never know what tricks Pan had up his sleeve. The other part of the word derives from the word hierarchy. This brings focus to the notion that adaptive systems operate across many scales from the microscopic to that of major biomes and nation states. Conceivably, even the entire planet. The levels of the system are interconnected. Events at the local scale happen quickly; they allow the system to revolt against its history.

Here is where invention, experimentation, and failed inventions happen. By contrast, events at the broad scale remember the past, move slowly to stabilize and conserve system memory, and employ behaviors that have evolved after successful long-term experiments. This dynamic perpetually pits change against persistence in complex systems (Figure 1).¹⁰

Now, ponder how the recurring cycles in nature and commerce, mentioned at the onset of the book, swirl through space and time and interconnect. Once we have this dynamism clearly in mind, in the next chapter, we shall focus on K, one of the four stages of the Panarchy framework. Above all others, awareness of the opportunities and risks in K will be decisive in determining whether we humans will be able to avoid the dire consequences of plummeting from K to omega, the stage that wipes the slate clean and heralds, at best, a start-over. At worst, because we have so reduced the potential and weakened the resilience of our once thriving planet, we shall end up a self-inflicted failed species, our earthly remains, along with the dinosaurs, compressed in the siltstones of the ages.

Figure 1. Broad scale vs local scale. Source: Panarchy, 2002, 75.

Ecosystems, economies, societies and their institutions, even nations, proceed through remarkably similar cycles with four distinct stages or phases. When you think of the ecological aftermath of a hurricane or volcanic eruption or the fall of corporate giants or empires, the familiar adage ‘out of the ashes…’ embodies one part of this cycle. From omega to alpha and beyond — ‘the Phoenix rises’. So also does the idea mentioned earlier of ‘creative destruction’, Schumpeter’s insight into capitalism’s relentless process of boom and bust, of crashes and reinvention. More precisely, the stages of panarchy’s adaptive cycle are: rapid growth / exploitation (r), conservation (K), release / omega (Ω), and reorganization / alpha (α) (Figure 2). Systems do not move lock-step from one stage to the next and some may skip steps or avoid omega. Moreover, they behave differently from one phase to another depending on external conditions and the nature of a system’s internal connections, wealth, and resilience.

Figure 2. Adaptive Cycle in 2D. Source: Panarchy, 2002, 34.

The adaptive cycle is at once both beautifully straight-forward and mind-bogglingly complex. That it looks graphically like the infinity symbol is intentional, of course. But it is more accurately a Möbius strip, a semi-closed surface that curves back upon itself and swirls on infinitely, a surface with just one side and one edge. In two dimensions, the Y axis of the adaptive cycle represents potential (or wealth) in a system — the available resources like moisture and soil nutrients in a forest; knowledge, labor, skills, and capital in a business; or networks of relationships in a social system. The X axis is the degree of connectedness — the strength of the web of internal connections that mediate and regulate what happens within the system and between it and its surrounding environment. Think here of a thermostat that keeps the temperature of a home tolerable no matter what kind of weather is transpiring outside.¹¹

Figure 3. Adaptive Cycle in 3D. Source: www.homerdixon.com

Going one step further (Figure 3) resilience is represented by a third dimension, the Z axis. As we explained earlier, resilience is the capacity of a system to experience disturbance and maintain its ongoing functions and controls.¹² So here are the three qualities of complex adaptive systems, discussed in earlier chapters. In the simplest possible terms, the interplay of these three dimensions — potential, connectedness, and resilience — determines where a system falls in the endless progression of this cycle.

What exactly is happening at each of these stages? Since this is an ongoing progression one can start anywhere in the cycle. Let’s begin with r, the rapid growth or exploitation phase.

r Rapid Growth

This is the stage when ecosystems are growing to the max by exploiting newly available niches and raw materials following an omega (Ω) event. A familiar example is an old field on an abandoned farm, say in southern Wisconsin where I live. When left unplowed, in just one growing season, the field is invaded by pioneer species of plants. Seeded from stored banks in the soil or dispersed by the wind, birds, and insects, pioneer species thrive in the open and barren conditions of the old field. With few enemies and very high rates of reproduction, these pioneer species, sometimes called r-strategists, rapidly establish new life.

This sets the stage for the next phase, K, when fewer species, or companies, become dominant and the ecosystem or economic landscape matures.

K Conservation

Progression from r to K is incremental. As the term conservation suggests, both the storage of energy and the accumulation of wealth enable potential, connectedness, and stability to trend upward. The accumulating wealth is stashed away for the maturing ecosystem or the business enterprise and represents potential for the future. K strategists are longer lived, are fierce and influential competitors, and are conservative both in resource use and risk taking. For an ecosystem, potential or wealth builds from greater diversity, deeper soils, soil moisture, humidity, and accumulated biomass. For an economic system, skills, managerial acumen, and financial networks develop as r progresses into K and beyond. Eventually the accumulating biomass and nutrients, or in the case of the economy, income and investments, become more tightly bound thus preventing access to competitors and suppressing novelty. Since wealth has increased overall, in theory, the potential for a greater diversity of uses should be high, but because the wealth has been cornered and controlled by highly selected plants and animals, or again in the economy, by powerful commercial enterprises solidly in place, diversity and innovation trail off. As growth in the system slows, it becomes over-connected with increasingly rigid control structures. Competition, such as it happens, has shifted from opportunists to specialists (K-strategists).

As connectedness tightens, the system becomes more and more rigid, less and less resilient, and increasingly vulnerable to disturbance. To the untrained eye, the system seems to be stable, but this is an illusion. It is only stable within a decreasing range of conditions. Should these conditions shift, everything can quickly collapse. Such is the vulnerability of the Late-K arena. This is arguably the stage where we now find ourselves. The reader who rightfully wishes to make a fair judgment about this assertion requires more information. To this end, I devote an entire chapter to Late-K with the additional motive of persuading those who may yet be skeptical of the urgency of this moment, a moment when it would take little to send us over the cliff.

Ω (omega) Release

Omega, the end, is triggered by an event that on the surface may seem benign. In a mature forest ecosystem, for example, it could be an insect pest or disease, a small windstorm, or wildfire that leads to system breakdown. Whereas the forest progressing toward maturity through K took place via slow incremental change that can take centuries, its breakdown is stunningly fast. In the case of a storm or fire it can happen in minutes or hours, in that of a pathogen, perhaps months or a few years. If the journey through K toward maturity is a marathon, then the cascade from K to omega is a 100-meter sprint.

After omega, chaos reigns and all bets are off the table. There is no telling how a scene, in which components, connections, and controls have been disaggregated for an indeterminate and a highly unstable period, will evolve. If the collapse has been deep and widespread, recovery will depend upon whether enough system wealth has been retained and whether it can be accessed for the system to begin to renew itself. Surviving elements become building blocks for a future of reconfiguration and renewal.

α (alpha) Reorganization

As the scramble to repopulate the scene takes place, pioneers find vacant niches; speciation proceeds apace ; invention, re-assortment, and trial and error rule. Early on, everything is possible. Novel combinations generate new dynamics that in time are either successful or discarded. If the process proceeds apace, previously suppressed forms of life and perhaps some new ones together with non-native species populate the land and establish new order, develop new control systems to constrain the disorder and ultimately create a totally fresh identity. It may replicate previous cycles or invent something original. In heavily human impacted situations, omega could become long term, if not permanent. The system could slip backward into a degraded state called a ‘poverty trap’. An example, explained above, is the degraded rangeland of the arid American southwest. These lands have become entrapped in an impoverished state from which they may never fully recover.

As reorganization paves the way for r, the cycle gyres again toward K.

Panarchy invites us to conceive of the world as a vast interlocking set of interactive systems that pass through phases over time. If we can thoroughly understand the implications of panarchy’s dynamic, we can perhaps begin to avoid behaviors that quicken the progression of human and ecological systems toward collapse. That is the challenge before us now.

Stefan strolled into class a minute or two late. We were in place, a noisy lot full of chatter. He walked to the door and closed it. He had never done this. José glanced at me. “What’s with the door?” said his look. I shrugged. Stefan walked back to the room’s center, sat on the table, put on a serious but somehow roguish face, an expression we had seen more than once. “The powers-that-be seem to have some misgivings about how I’m teaching this class. It seems the preference would be that I simply lecture from a set of slides. I defended myself and asked them what would transpire if all classes encouraged the interaction we have here. What would that look like? The answer I got was, ‘Then we should change our name to Gilligan Community College.’ What do you think?”

He looked expectantly at us, the crafty generation of entitled twits, to use Dr. T.’s words. Jonathan, who had never spoken in class, raised his eyebrows toward Abby. She pointed back at him, rotating her index finger. He cleared his throat. Jonathan was a skinny kid with a sort of rough-hewn, handsome face and a fastidious old-school way of dressing. When he spoke, his deep baritone came across as grave and a bit shaky. “It’s hard for me to speak in class since I suck at speaking off the cuff. But when I came to class with Abby this morning, I said to her, ‘I’m so freaked out by what I’m learning in this class, I forget to take notes.’ I also suck at note-taking. So, I asked to borrow her notes. Anyway, I’ve gotta say I’m just learning tons here, so I would not change your style.”

Abby added, “First, that comment from ‘the powers-that-be’ about community colleges is grossly unfair. I went to a community college and had some great classes there. It prepared me well for Gilligan. But the big thing I want to say is I wish my other classes were as inclusive of all opinions and questions as yours. Don’t buckle under Stefan.”

A frat boy business major, Matt, admitted, “I’ll have to say, Stefan, you have completely knocked on its ass almost everything I thought I’d figured out. When you asked us to read Hijacking Sustainability,^v my mind was stretched in a hundred directions, all of them freaking me out. If you had simply been blah-blahing up there with slides, not pestering us every day to think for ourselves, my head would have been out on the golf course and I’d still be thinking all’s well with the world. Man, you have seriously messed me up and thanks for that.”

My friend, Astrid, the dreadlocked one, pursed her lips. She told Stefan, “Hey prof, you’ve got power here. Free speech, freedom of assembly and petition. Lodged in the American Constitution, right? Go to the dean, go to the president. Defend this way of learning and, you know, we can up our game here, take a few of us with you. We could sit down and occupy Stiggins Hall.”

“Yeah!” agreed several others. A chorus erupted.

OCCUPY STIGGINS! OCCUPY STIGGINS! OCCUPY STIGGINS!

“Whoa there!” Stefan checked them. “That would be one way to assure yourselves a new professor, rather quickly. And that wouldn’t end up well in anybody’s universe.” He softened his tone, “You know, of course, I had hoped you might be holding these thoughts. It is reassuring to hear your words. You’ve strengthened my resolve. I have no intention to change who I am in this classroom. But you also must remember we don’t live in an either/or world. Sometimes, lectures, particularly by gifted orators and theatrical professors, can be more memorable than rowdy discussions and can bring order to complex information. The point is that what goes on in any classroom ought to stretch you, to make you uncomfortable — mess you up, as Matt just said, raise questions, and provide space for your voices to be heard. There are many roads to that outcome: discussion, group activities, readings, films, even lectures.”

Stefan stopped there, stood up, walked toward the door. He stopped in mid-stride. He turned back toward us, stroked his chin, as if some random extraneous bit had just crossed his mind. “Okay, finally, I’ve got this to say. No matter what style of teaching and learning puts you in the place that many of you seem to be in, once you’ve been kidnapped by somebody who believes critical thinking is one of the essentials of life, watch out. This act can separate you from your friends, make you a pariah in your family, throw your religion out the window, usher you into the world feeling bewildered and questioning everything you once believed. You will be like a lost child in a nightmare. If you try to turn back, you cannot find your way. I plead guilty here as your kidnapper. But the real culprit is Socrates.”

Dead silence. Few in the class, myself included, knew much about Socrates. But we looked back at our professor with a certain collective gaze, the one that says, “Ah Stefan, first the buildup, then the letdown. Geez, can’t we live out our fantasies a bit more?” I guess Stefan figured that he’d tamped down the love fest sufficiently but not so much as to cast serious existential drag on the day. Later that day, he told me that though the kidnapping narrative had to find a rightful place in our lives, “at heart, you guys are upbeat kids with a rosy outlook. And that is great.” Really? I’m not sure I felt so rosy that day.

Stefan walked to the back of the room and sat in an empty chair next to the soccer star, Michelle. Loud enough for everyone to hear, he asked her, “So, Michelle, what’s with this word, panarchy? Where'd it come from?”

“Let me see, the first part was from Greek mythology. Pan was some kind of god. I can’t remember exactly what he did but he was apparently hard to pin down. Just like this Panarchy model.”

Her quip got a hearty laugh.

“Interesting analogy,” Stefan deadpanned. “Yes, Pan was a fickle being, a sort of nature god. He hung out with the nymphs. The nymphs were nubile female spirits who claimed certain bits of terrain — a grove of trees, a lakeside — places like that. Pan had a reputation for being somewhat randy with these young spirits. No need to get into those details.”

“Aww, just when this got interesting, you choose to censor information.” chided a guy on the other side of Michelle.

“Not now,” Stefan replied. “We’ve got lots to do this morning. Besides, isn’t it a bit early for tales of ardor and passion?”

“Not for me,” he responded.

Stefan smiled and moved back to the front of the room. “Maybe not for you.” He changed the subject. “While I’m at it, what about the ‘archy’ part of the word panarchy? Hannah?”

“Well, that’s from hierarchy,” I replied haughtily, like the geeky know-it-all I seemed to be that year. “I guess the scientists wanted to show that the theory is meant to cover scales at lots of different levels.”

“Yes. In terms of change, how do these scales operate? Somebody else here?”

Astrid replied, “Well, there are many possible connection points between the large, slow-moving cycles and the small fast-moving ones. They can impact one another going either up the hierarchy or down it.”

“Right. What do you recall about the concepts of ‘revolt’ and ‘remember’?”

Astrid in her usual uninflected manner said, “Yeah, revolt happens when fast moving, small events overwhelm large, slow ones, like when a forest fire that was once very local at the ground spreads into the crown and races from one part of the forest to the next until the whole forest is blazing.”

“Good. Who else here? What about the concept of remember?”

Michelle responded. “Remember is about the wealth stored at the top of the hierarchy where change takes place more slowly. Wealth can play a big role in the r phase. So, using the example of the forest fire, after it burns out, over the long-term, processes at the higher levels slow the leakage of stuff, for example from the seed bank in the soil and from surrounding places with the help of, like, birds, insects, and mice. These become the blocks to rebuild with.”

“Perfect. Everybody with Michelle here?”

“Absolutely!” Zach, as usual, presumed to speak for everybody.

A boy named Greg raised his hand. “By the way, Stefan, since I’m a third-generation Greek American, I pay attention to things Greek. Did you know that there’s a statue of Pan on campus?”

“Really? I did not know that.”

“Yeah, in the little park with benches between Brownlow Library and Stiggins Hall, he’s right there, larger than life. I don’t know why.”

“There you go gang. Take a little detour to see Pan next time you’re at the library. The Library! You might remember that the library is where you can find books. Ever hear of books?”

Nobody took the bait. But almost under her breath, Astrid, mumbled, “Are you, like, lampooning us, Stefan?”

Stefan tilted his head and smirked at Astrid. He said nothing. The class stirred with a few snickers and whispers. I can tell you that in our sorority that night I heard Samantha mimicking him: “I’m headed out to study in the library now,” she said. “You know, that big building where you can find some books. You know what books are, right?” Proving, of course, that our beloved mentor had found yet another way to imprint our half-developed brains and enlarge our unsure hearts.

Greg had one more thing to tell the class. “Expect to be surprised, perhaps a little grossed out. Pan isn’t exactly handsome. He’s half-goat — or is it sheep? — half-man. The lower half is the animal. Let’s say, the sculptor let it all hang out.”

Stefan cut in, “Okay, Greg, that may be more than we needed to know, but thanks for the tip. Now every time you guys pass through that little park, I hope you’ll think about what the Panarchy model is trying to teach us.”

In my diary that night, I wrote, Tomorrow, check out Pan’s junk.