[Oe List ...] Nature and the Social Process Triangles

[Richard & Maria Maguire]

At 06:26 AM 22/11/2009, you wrote:
Yes we have, and many other colleagues we know as well.  But its not 
easy to do.

We notice that social process triangles speak directly about the 
natural world only is as a resource in the economic triangle.

Since the triangles are about the *social* process I find it 
difficult to put nature in directly.  If I were to include the 
natural world it would be in a symbol that surrounds and interacts 
with the social process all over the place, or a large triangle of 
some sort with the social process as a sub triangle.  The natural 
world is finally more powerful and durable than our human social 
world.  We arise from it and  utterly depend on it.  Our Western 
technologists have only recently begun to realize what Indigenous 
peoples have known for a long time--our fate will very much depend on 
how we treat it.  It almost seems that our attaining a healthy 
relationship with nature very much depends on our creating the 
balance in the social process that has been so important to us as the 
ICA.  It is clearer than ever that economic overemphasis of the 
current society, even more blatant than in the 60s, is not only the 
source of great social injustice, but also damage to our natural 
world for which many people, and other species are paying dearly.

Another thought I have had is that nature plays an unspoken role 
within of the social process, particularly as a locus of meaning and 
significance, so especially in common religion, but also in wisdom 
etc.  An awful lot of our political activity now has to do with the 
natural world as well. Maybe we should include this in our contexts.

On another note:

Since the Nobel commission gave the Peace prize to Obama for 
*promising* to eliminate nuclear weapons, maybe they should *promise* 
that a Nobel peace prize will be given to the "world leaders" who put 
a strong carbon plan into action, some years after it is successfully 
implemented.  After all, they don't give prizes in physics or 
medicine until the results have been validated, (I understand that 
that's the reason why Einstein never got one for relativity) and the 
same could be true for the peace prize.

Best wishes

Richard

>hat's a good statement and worth archiving!
>
>Occasionally I muse on how to place the social process into the Earth
>process. I haven't had a brilliant idea about this yet. One approach is to
>have an Earth process set of triangles (like the carbon cycle, the
>hydrological cycle, etc.) parallel to the social process. Another approach
>is to have the Earth process in the middle triangle of the social process
>triangles. Another is to redo the social process triangles to include
>interactions with nature.
>
>I haven't really done much except muse about this. (One approach I saw that
>I question is to apply the social process to nature--it's not entirely
>unfruitful but it seems like an artificial imposition on the natural
>processes rather than beginning with the natural process itself.)
>
>I wonder if anyone else has thought about this.
>
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