Robert Rosen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rosen_(theoretical_biologist)

Unintended Consequences

I am meditating and contemplating unintended consequences this morning. Sometimes one hears the phrase couched as "the law" of unintended consequences. I have certainly seen the phenomenon, as have many. So I ponder, is it indeed a law?  'Law' in itself is a concept pregnant with implications, but that's a different post.
Others have said, "you shall reap what you sow" or words to that effect. But that's a little different, too.
There's a body of knowledge regarding the subject; a wikipedia entry, no less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

It is certainly worthwhile, to my way of thinking, to invest some serious thought regarding this 'law'.

Other related terms deployed to remark the phenomenon of unintended consequence are "Murphy's Law",  'what goes around comes around', 'karma', and 'butterfly effect'.

From the wiki article:
"Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types:

• Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
• Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).
• Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse). This is sometimes referred to as 'backfire'

...Intervention in a complex system tends to create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes."

It catches my attention that there seems to be a bias in favor of 'undesirable outcomes'. All this is in the context of human actions. Conduct is contrasted with behavior, to emphasize the intentional aspect of the causal factors involved, rather than just random undirected activity, if there is such a thing.
So, unexpected benefits are less frequently attributed to the law than unexpected drawbacks. Kind of an entropic quality. What is the term for unexpected benefits? antifragility? serendipity? grace?

To me, the existence of this observed bias for defect in life is a rather strong indicator for a 'conservative' approach as opposed to the 'progressive' approach, especially on the collective level.  Other important considerations have a bearing on progressive/conservative tension, such as the ''zone of proximal development" where new thinking and innovation is engendered by willingness to venture into the unknown. Many fruits on the serendipitous upside of this issue are the result of informed and thoughtful risk taking and reasoned tolerance for uncertainty. Still, many features of life that involve injustice, oppression, and suffering beg us to get involved collectively with our 2 cent solutions.

For example, yesterday we discovered tiny bugs on the underside of one of our grapevines. After a brief internet search they were identified as western grape leafhoppers. The initial knee-jerk response is "we've got to DO something!".  Turns out, integrated pest management (IPM) methodology indicates that grape vines can withstand significant infestation and that natural predators such as a certain kind of wasp, keeps these critters in check...so, standing down on the use of a global 'solution', fewer unintended consequences. Yogi Berra was right again. ("If it ain't broke..."). Any given bug may turn out to be in fact a feature.

Justice is something that can only be generated by individuals.
The individual is the locus of where justice takes place. Either you make that effort to try to do what is just or you turn away from it, in your individual decisions and actions.

Instant Karma by John Lennon

If individuals make just decisions and actions, the result is a just society. If and when individuals don't, injustice in society is the result. When individuals outsource justice to an external and abstract 'system', they have abdicated a primary responsibility and cannot expect a centralized abstraction to discern justice. It is 'artificial intelligence', and there will be unintended consequences. But in lieu of an aggregate of individuals making just actions and decisions, we have tried to come up with external systems to save us from our selves. They work only to the extent just individuals engage cooperatively therewith.
"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

Michael Polanyi, Wilfred Bion

Tacit knowledge
Central to Michael Polanyi’s thinking was the belief that creative acts (especially acts of discovery) are shot-through or charged with strong personal feelings and commitments (hence the title of his most famous work Personal Knowledge). Arguing against the then dominant position that science was somehow value-free, Michael Polanyi sought to bring into creative tension a concern with reasoned and critical interrogation with other, more ‘tacit’, forms of knowing.
Michael Polanyi placed a strong emphasis on dialogue within an open community.

http://www.polanyisociety.org/mp-transcendence.htm



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Bion
http://braungardt.trialectics.com/projects/psychoanalysis/bion/seminar-in-paris/

The Struggle between Man and his Soul by Eric Voegelin

The Struggle between Man and his Soul
As the purpose of this inquiry is not a description of symbols but an analysis of the experiences engendering them, our choice of a case is narrowly determined by requirements of method. For on the one hand, the case selected should be an historically early one, in order to avoid questions which otherwise might arise with regard to the traditional character of the symbols and a correspondingly suspect authenticity of the experience. But on the other hand, it has to be culturally late enough for an exegesis of the experience to be so articulate that the connection between the truth experienced and the symbols expressing it will be intelligible beyond a doubt. The case that will satisfy both requirements is an anonymous text from the Egypt of the First Intermediate Period, ca. 2000 b.c., an early reflection on the experiences of life, death, and immortality, distinguished by excellence of analysis. The text is known as the “Dispute of a Man, Who Contemplates Suicide, With His Soul.”

read the whole thing, as they say... https://voegelinview.com/immortality-experience-and-symbol-pt-1/