IsMassNatural

Perhaps, quantity is the biggest crime.

Look at the things done in bulk in society : mass consumerism, mass production, mass media, mass mobility ... all of them destructive of environment, of social values, of social trust.

I'm interested in SelfOrganization. And one thing I wonder is whether such mass behaviours can self-organize. For example, would large numbers of people spontaneously start buying and eating the same kind of food, living the same kind of lifestyle etc. unless prompted from the outside. The alternative thought is that large numbers spontaneously organize themselves into heterogeneous behaviours rather than homogenous ones. (PowerLaws)

The epidemiological intuition is that a disease is either highly transmissible or deadly, but seldom both. Fashions (memetic epidemics) can sweep through a population, but normally expire equally rapidly. Mass consumption, which combines breadth with longevity, (reach with deadliness), may be an unnatural behaviour - driven by external forces (marketing, government support) - rather than a spontaneous, self-organized behaviour.

Speculation : Perhaps natural systems would never produce mass homogeneity which is destructive to ecological diversity (either cultural or environmental)

My recent thought is that the problem with all the massxxx is that it is forcibly flattening the structure - breaking the rule of fractality (see: FractalSociety, OnGranularity or my own Scale Free Granularity]). –ZbigniewLukasiak

My own thought/preference is that monocultures are just boring =) Or, to put it another way, lack of diversity leads to lack of evolution, and without this progress we are dead, in many ways - we lose our sense of individuality and our sense of time, because we have no benchmarks. Thus, what I call PolyCulturalism (I suspect it's a real world but never checked) is a vital part of existence, IMHO. I believe that we as intelligent beings naturally pine for it - a pining that manifests itself in today's culture through things such as drugs/alcohol (a very personal, individualising experience), blogs ("hear my thoughts!"), and the rise of an entire "personalisation" industry (e.g. mobile phone ringtones, etc). Long live the polyculturalists! – GrahamLally

ScalingBlockChains

CommunicationOverload

IntelligenceAtScale

George Kennan :

There is a real question as to whether 'bigness' in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name

McDonalds' effect on apple production in the US : http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1443677,00.html

WalMart globalizes organic food : http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/magazine/04wwln_lede.html?ex=1307073600&en=039c8635cc1a390b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

See also :

• WhatWasTheCatastrophe
• QuantitativeEthics
• CorporationsAreCancers

CategoryEthics, CategoryPhilosophy