Complexity Theory: Daring to Look at Our Future

A discernible change is taking place in the forum of environmental awareness. As the subject matures and our insights deepen, specific concerns are now accompanied by a general uneasiness as leading philosophers and scientists begin to examine the structure of our modern civilization and question its viability. One of these new avenues of consideration is Complexity Theory.

Complexity Theory argues that societies become progressively more unstable and vulnerable as the network of interconnections within them increases ‹ not particularly good news for a globalizing system in which increasing complexity is precisely the thrust of economics, finance, manufacturing, technology and almost everything else we do. The sobering implications may explain why many proponents of Complexity Theory preface their comments with an apology. "We don't want to tell you this," goes the essence of their message, "but we think you should know." When the New Scientist published two articles on Complexity Theory (Apr. 5/08), its editor anticipated some reader discomfort. "We are predisposed to pay attention to bad news," noted the editorial. "There is a good reason for this. We need to be warned of difficulty and danger so we can protect ourselves.... [But] if the warning is too scary or distressing, we attack the messenger as a doom monger."

Complexity Theory comes with its hint of doom, ominously reminding us that no civilization has ever survived the stresses of history, with the possible exception of China and Byzantium ‹ in a much reduced state for 450 years following the 15th century Arab invasions. But Sumer, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Maya and even Rome all collapsed, primarily because they succumbed to overwhelming complexities.

Joseph Tainter, writing in The Collapse of Complex Societies, explains why. "For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies" (Ibid.). Food production is a classical example. Each time people find the solution to a food shortage ‹ irrigation, fertilizer or plants with higher yields‹ the population rises to meet the food supply and the next problem to solve is more complicated and challenging. Every solution adds extra levels of organization, complexity and interdependence, which adds inefficiency and diminishing returns for the total amount of energy expended.

Progress is a process of perpetual problem solving, with each new solution adding more specialists and more layers of peripheral tasks that don't directly address the problems being solved. A civilization finally peaks at its maximum level of complexity when all its efforts are being used just to maintain its equilibrium. Then an unusual adversity arises: invaders, crop failure, disease, climate change, depletion of a critical natural resource, or anything that stresses a structure already precariously balanced. Then the civilization collapses and reorganizes itself at a simpler level.

Civilization's simplest structure is the hunter-gatherer tribe, a hierarchy with one leader and a few followers. Feudal societies are based on the same linear model. This explains why the catastrophe of the Black Plague of 1348 could kill about a third of Europe's population without a discernible effect on the society's stability ‹ 80% of the people were peasant farmers so the system simply shrunk but held together.

Tainter contrasts this with a similar plague and death rate that struck the Roman empire in 170 CE. Although also hierarchical, the Romans had huge urban populations that were wholly "depended on peasants for grain, taxes and soldiers" (Ibid.), and a complex infrastructure of administrators, builders, labourers and slaves. The weakening of these lateral connections compromised the empire's structure and set in motion an unstoppable and fatal decline.

Compared to the Roman empire, the networks of interdependence in our present global systems are orders of magnitude more complicated ‹ and comparably less resilient. Efficiency, the hallmark of modern economics, is precisely the fine tuning of higher levels of interdependence to minimize duplication and waste. Think of manufacturing with just-in-time delivery systems, or cities which typically store only a three-day supply of food, or hospitals which rely on the daily arrival of drugs, blood and oxygen ‹ Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota reminds us that "most medical equipment and 85% of US pharmaceuticals are made abroad" (Ibid.).

Now imagine the consequences if one link were removed from this network of interdependence. If truck drivers stopped delivering supplies to factories, cities and hospitals. If refineries did not make fuel for trucks. If tankers or pipelines could not send oil to refineries. Or if a highly infectious pandemic kept truck drivers from delivering anything anywhere. The same fear could ground all airplanes. A study by Warwick McKibben of the Lowry Institute for International Policy in Australia calculated that a pandemic equivalent to the Spanish flu of 1918 would kill 142 million people today and cause a 12.6% crash in global GDP ‹ the flu killed 3% of those infected compared to the 63% that could die from an H5N1 bird flu pandemic (Ibid.). Or, to be less hypothetical about the failings of complexity, we are now learning what happens to the global economy when a few decisions to allow unsupported mortgages in the United States infects the entire international financial system.

Complexity Theory is an uncomfortable subject, particularly given the unsettling stresses we are measuring in food production, climate change, resource depletion, ecosystem damage, pollution and population growth. But the theory has its saving graces. It does make us more aware of our vulnerabilities. And it does argue for simplification and local self-sufficiency, particularly for essentials such as food supply and energy production. The incentive to begin thinking and acting with foresight should compensate for the need to be apologetic.