WHY
do we tend a reef with more care than we tend ourselves?
SIMPLE ENOUGH TO FIX
Reducing a complex existence to something manageable
We reduce the human being to something simple, so that it can be managed and fixed. The reduction works by analogy. The human being is described as something else, something with fewer parts and clearer rules, and the analogy is then defended more firmly than the reality it was meant to describe.
The mechanical and computational figures represent the human being as assembled parts with fixed roles and a determinate flow between them. The pyramid associated with Maslow’s hierarchy represents human requirements as tiers completed in order. Neither carries simultaneity, mutual dependence, or continuous exchange with an environment.
An ecology carries all three, and the human being is an ecosystem rather than something that resembles one. The tiered account fails for a specific reason: it treats a lower tier as completable on its own, when in practice no tier is available in isolation from the rest. That argument is set out in Rethinking Maslow.
Taking the human being seriously as an ecology means not treating people as a resource to be strip-mined, not running them like machines, and not reading their biology as a report card on their character. It means not inventing hierarchies inside them either, where thinking outranks feeling, or one part of the brain is older and cruder than the rest. None of that is true and all of it does damage.
This framework gives that failure a name. Stewardship is an accurate accounting of actual capacity, actual need, and the actual environment, directed at the conditions under which the system functions well and continues to develop. Abuse is the refusal or falsification of that accounting.
Nobody has to intend harm for the accounting to be false.
Within a single organism, abuse takes the characteristic form of setting one part against another. Where a current of the organism is positioned as requiring control, it has already been defined as something that would otherwise go elsewhere, and the person and the current then stand on opposite sides of the same being. The reason offered for the control does not alter that structure, and it makes no difference whether the reason is a moral one or an appeal to efficiency and proper operation.
The alternative to subjugation is a relation that does not require control, rather than a gentler exercise of it.
A STABLE CONFIGURATION
What the human being is, and what refusing it costs
From the vantage point of neurobiology, Neural Coherence Ecology proposes that the human being is an individual internal ecosystem fully interdependent with an external ecosystem, society.
Evolution is not a singular thing or an intention. It is what we have named the collective processes, contained by time and influenced by location, that results in stable systems of existence. The long stress-test proving system of evolution has resulted in a coherent stable human being and human society that is capable of baseline wellbeing and extraordinary developmental capacity.
So Neural Coherence Ecology proposes that the human being is a stable configuration. That claim describes the lineage and the configuration rather than any individual’s present condition. The lack of a design also means there is no mistake to be corrected, as there was no design that was deviated from.
When the essential conditions the human being requires are provided, the human being sustains homeostasis, which is what this framework means by wellbeing. A substantial part of those conditions is a stable and coherent society, and that part is not separable from the rest.
What those conditions ask for is an accurate accounting of actual capacity, actual need, and the actual environment. We extend that accounting to a reef or a woodland readily and oddly withhold it from ourselves.
A human being is a living system, and living systems hold together when their conditions are met. Nobody blames a reef for bleaching. They check the water. Do that for people.
Where conditions change, through illness, injury, or a shift in environment, the ecology does not fail at once. The load of sustaining homeostasis is distributed across the four Infrastructures, which compensate, at cost. How long that holds, and what it costs, depends on the conditions available, and those are substantially social.
When conditions are bad, people are resilient and compensate. They can maintain that effort for a while, at a cost. A system, whether a lifestyle or a society, seeks equilibrium by default. Abuse is when the conditions take more than they give back. Then the system spirals, because the load is unsustainable. Humans don’t give up, and this is when interventions and revolutions occur.
This cycle is not necessary.
RESPONSIBILITY, NOT CONTROL
What an ecology asks of the person tending it
We have afforded this essential respect and understanding to some entities and rarely to ourselves. We treat plants and animals, such as our gardens and pets, with more respect than our own human existence. We observe how our plants grow and work to nurture them according to their needs. It is easier for us to understand that we have responsibility for these systems and little if no control. We can’t force a plant to flower, but we can prepare it as best as possible to do so.
We tend not to force these systems to our will the same way we do our own bodies and psychology. A flower that is not flowering is not evil; it simply may not have been tended properly. Instead, we’ve learned to create an environment conducive to their growth and flourishing. This is a limited example, as we have abused nature as much if not more than shepherding it. Nonetheless the comparison makes sense. We tend not to treat ourselves or our community with the same humble respect we afford the ecosystem of a coral reef.
Responsibility and control are a defined pair here, understood as in tending a garden, restoring an ecology, or raising a child. Responsibility is stewardship in operation, and control is abuse in operation.
Human existence is complex, and the complexity runs both ways. It affords higher-level cognition, and it requires more attentive tending to hold a baseline. The four Infrastructures name the biological ground that tending works on. Functional Coherence describes the responsibility for the ecosystem’s daily operation. Developmental Coherence describes the responsibility, and the opportunity, in its maturation over time. Social Coherence describes the conditions a community builds or fails to build, without which neither of the others is possible.
None of this requires expertise. A gardener can rarely give the reason for each action taken and still produces results through sustained attention to the particular garden. That is the whole of the demand, and it is why the practice has to be available to any person, with a living brain, in whatever circumstances they are actually in.
If a practice takes money, expertise, or spare time, it isn’t a baseline, it’s a luxury. Most of what people need is plain, and most of it depends on other people.
Where it holds, and holds long enough, operation stops costing what it cost and begins to generate instead. That is not a reward for effort. It is what an ecology does when its conditions are met.
THE MARKETPLACE
The same refusal, at the scale of a community
The human being evolved interdependent with an external ecosystem, society. Without society the human being with its capacity for higher-level cognition would not have been possible, not only because a long infancy requires nurture and protection to mature such an advanced brain, but also because an advanced brain has little use and even becomes a liability without a society in which to operate.
So it makes sense that a function of the external ecosystem the human being is interdependent with is what we would consider a marketplace. The marketplace was not just for commerce but where the authentic activity of a community occurred, its beating heart. Here is where friends met and were made, information and ideas were exchanged, deals were made, and disputes were settled. In ancient societies it was the court, the library, the bulletin board, the cafe, the meeting place, and the temple of a community. Having a hub for social and civic interaction makes sense to the brain.
The brain needs authentic value exchange. We have infrastructures that work to determine authenticity. We also require external affirmation of our contribution to our community. This is why commerce and a professional life are essential to humans, not a necessary evil or something we do until we can achieve a state of enlightenment free of economy and currency. Likewise the brain needs fairness.
Essential to the homeostasis of the human external ecosystem, and therefore also to the individual internal ecosystem, is a coherent marketplace that is stable and provides opportunity for fair and authentic engagement and exchange.
We have instead a global marketplace, which includes our technologies, designed solely to collect wealth over any and all other concerns. Today’s social structures not only fail to consistently provide basic opportunities but are rewarded for denying them.
This is the same refusal at the scale of a community. A social ecology that extracts rather than exchanges takes more than it gives back, and the return misreports. The theory is set out on the Ecology page, and the critique is developed in the essays.
Either baseline wellbeing is achieved for all or it is achieved for none. It is not possible to sacrifice long term wellbeing for short term gain.