The Socio-Environmental Equation

The Socio-Environmental Equation

The vision of reality leads us to understand that in fact there subsist two functional systems in our world.
The social system and the ecosystem.
The two systems interact through exchanges of energy, information and matter.
Such exchanges constantly modify the two systems with a patrimonial accumulation.

This consideration, which can seem banal and obvious, contains in it a fundamental principle: the social system and the ecosystem are, today, the result of an accumulation of information, energy and matter that has been going on since man appeared (in a social form) on the earth.
This dynamism involves an evolution of the two systems that is not yet in equilibrium. Like in a chemical equation, equilibrium will be reached when information, energy and matter are constantly exchanged in a dynamic way and without any variation.
The new aggregate, which came about with the first environmental (and social) emergencies, is today the result of an interaction between the two systems that, even due to globalization, has activated the equation. The equation, beyond a certain activation threshold (just like in chemical processes), has begun to produce its results, which in turn tend to trigger the system of equilibrium.
To understand this concept better we can observe the following diagram:


Social System + Ecosystem


New Model


In this equation the social system (through demographic and territorial development) has created a destabilizing impulse on the equation (activation energy) which, as a result, is acting in an opposite direction, modifying and reequilibrating the two reagents (Social System and Ecosystem).
The product therefore modifies the two systems (reagents) and the two systems, through a long and inexorable process, will find a new form and a new equilibrium in a new product.
There is in all of this a consequential moral: the two reagents will logically have to conform more and more.
Until this is reached, the system will not be able to reach equilibrium.
Considering that the ecosystem is strongly bound to the laws of thermodynamics, which are based on inviolable principles that regulate the exchange of information, energy and matter, it is evident that the equation expects that even the social system conforms (otherwise equilibrium cannot be reached) to the subsistence “logic” of the ecosystem.
In brief, the equation leads us towards a social model that will contain the same elements and the same identity as the ecosystem.
This is the real determinant of the whole question. If we are capable of “reading” the essential principles on which the most perfect thermodynamics machine that exists in the universe (the ecosystem) is based, we will be able to speed up as much as possible the attainment of a phase of equilibrium that should also characterize a long period of stability even in the Social System.
This operation is less complex than how it could seem.
The laws of the ecosystem, and even more the logics, are known well enough.
In it, in order to better use the energy coming from the available sources (above all solar), the system has become as complex as possible in its forms and in its substances.
It has, in essence, created a thermodynamic machine (because that is what the ecosystem is) constituted by an incredible richness of forms and substances (ecodiversity and biodiversity) which assure it, through the relationships, the exchanges and the relations between the single components, the maximum possible perpetuation.
The System has opposed itself to the ineffable laws of thermodynamics that, subject to the greatness of the entropy, destine our Universe to thermal death and to the end of Life (at least the biological one).
The ecosystem has diversified itself and broken down into the smallest components in order to create an energy economy that has allowed it to persist longer.
And the Social System?
It is here that emerges the reason for its conflict with the ecosystem and with the laws of thermodynamics, which are none other than the most perfect economical treatise that Nature could write.
The Social System, diverted by economists and economic systems which are little (or not at all) interested in energy laws, has been structured on aspects that are substantially different from those of ecosystems.
We have standardised a lot of the forms and substances with a logic of levelling structures that is totally opposite to that of a good thermodynamic machine.
In brief, in every sector of human activity, we have often created economic macrostructures (large factories, great agglomerations, little diversified in form and in substance), levelling that additional greatness that is produced by the Social System: spiritual creativity.
Parallel to what happens in the ecosystem, in the Social System it is necessary that information, energy and matter can flow between all individuals. But when we create monospecific structures, little diversified and specialized, the differences between individuals decrease (when they are not nullified) and the flows weaken until they substantially weaken the Social System itself.
This thermodynamic model leads to a faster death, consumes more external energy, pollutes more and, being in total contact with the other System (the ecosystem), it interferes with it, damaging it and altering it.
At this point we return to the equation: the mechanism that is established is a sort of Feedback, that is, that ability that complex Systems have to correct themselves if factors intervene that could grow to nullify the System.
We are wholly in this first (historical) phase of the equation: we are receiving some feedback information from the equation that is gradually affecting the whole equilibrium.
How can we tell?
Before the seventies nobody spoke (except in some scientific circles) of Environmental Emergency; an Environmental Conscience or the culture of Saving Energy did not exist and nobody spoke of Biodiversity or of varied questions on these themes.
This is the first information that the Feedback process, created by the equation, is inserting in the reagents (especially in the Social System), slowly leading to a re-equilibrium of it.
Understanding how much longer it will continue is complex: the variables are too many and no software or elaborator possesses such a memory.
We know, however, that it is inexorable and on this not even Opinions have any sense, because thermodynamics is not opinionable.

Guido Bissanti