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Human life on Earth is threatened by environmental and social catastrophes. These may arise from the compound hyper-exponential growth of world human consumption. If human consumption continues to quadruple every 35 years (Fey, Lam, 1998), as it has in the 20th century, major environmental imbalances soon may severely deplete many of Earth's life forms on which our planetary life support system depends. Almost all human activity by individuals and groups is motivated by a need and desire for growth. The consumption growth that the growth motivation induces, in turn, reinforces the motivation. This positive feedback loop has been and will be extremely difficult to overcome; but it must be overcome to prevent environmental catastrophes. However, the world economy and the structures of nation states and organizations of all kinds are designed to create and to depend on growth. Therefore, if the growth of human consumption were to stop; major economic, social, and military disasters could cause famines, pestilence, social anarchy, financial depression and wars. We call this tragic dilemma the Ecocosm Paradox.rnConsumption growth is caused by many interacting positive feedback loop processes that are driven by human desires and instincts to reproduce and to consume. These are greatly amplified by the growth of technology. The human activities that energize these loops involve many different types of human, technological, and natural environmental variables. Study of these variables separately has given rise to specialized intellectual disciplines such as economics, political science, social psychology, management, psychology, medicine, law, ecology, biology, meteorology, ethnology, physics, chemistry, and various types of engineering. Such disciplines study relationships between variables perceived as specific to the discipline. However, in real-life human activities, the variables of these different disciplines do not operate independently, and cannot realistically be analyzed separately by each discipline. In order to understand the reasons for consumption growth and to identify changes in human attitudes and actions that may save humanity and the planet, all contributing aspects of human action must be analyzed together as a single, large, noisy, dynamic feedback control process. A new method of analysis, synthesis, and implementation based on a new discipline, 'Ecocosm Dynamics,' is herein proposed for this analysis. It is a difficult, yet extremely important field of human inquiry. The survival of the human species may depend on its rapid development, and its proper and creative application to the real Ecocosm to ameliorate, if not to resolve, the Ecocosm Paradox.......

【作者名称】: Willard R. Fey, Ann C. W. Lam
【作者单位】: Ecocosm Dynamics, Ltd. 1830 Cameo Court, Tucker, GA 30084, rnEcocosm Dynamics, Ltd. 1830 Cameo Court, Tucker, GA 30084
【关 键 词】: world system, environment, growth, ecocosm, technology
【会议名称】: Humanity, science, technology: the systemic foundations of the information age
【期刊论文编号】: 100,827,782
【摘要长度】: 2,712
【会议地点】: Toronto(CA);Toronto(CA);Toronto(CA)
【会议组织】: Ecocosm Dynamics, Ltd. 1830 Cameo Court, Tucker, GA 30084;rnEcocosm Dynamics, Ltd. 1830 Cameo Court, Tucker, GA 30084;
【会议时间】: 2000
【上篇论文】: 外文会议 - “Has Asia Been Resilient to Natural Disaster Events and Terrorist Attacks? A Debate on theIssues”
