How was school today?

Fine.

Did you learn anything important?

Maybe. I’m not sure yet.

Really? What are you considering?

We talked about Howard Odum’s natural trinity
of altruism.

Maybe I skipped that day
way back in premillennial times
before Permaculture Design had taken over deep learning development.
Who is Howard Odum
and how does his natural trinity
diverge from my traditional Holy Trinity?
Or, maybe it doesn’t.

Howard Odum was an early systems theorist
who studied ecosystemic trends
of nutrition building and disintegrating
of sustainable polycultural balance
and runwaway monocultural disasters
like climate and culture and communication
anti-nutritional pathologies.

Did you just say
climate change derives from monocultural overshoot,
an anthropocentric weed patch
taking over our communal garden,
also known as organic Earth?

I guess,
but in this case the weed patch
is over-commodified
LeftBrain dominant
anthropoids.
Odum’s natural trinity of altruism
is about climates of interdependent health,
and not for developing monocultural monopolies
like monotheistic anthropocentrism.

I’m sure I missed this class,
if they even had it back in my Baby Boomer day.

You probably just got the Holy Trinity part,
when you studied metaphysics.
I don’t think they were teaching organic physical theory
when you took MultiCultural Civics Organization classes;
although Howard was published well before your high school years.

It probably took a while for educators
to sort out the health and wealth significance
of ecosystemic balance,
rather than merely lecturing against issues
of unsustainable imbalances
hoping for healthy democracy optimizing,
polyculturing,
and, thereby, self+other polyamorous systems
as win+win wellness,
and not so much win v lose sickness.

Anyway, so is there a summary version of this natural trinity
that you might share?

Well, yes, I suppose the basic idea is as simple
as any convex and therefore also concave co-binary triangle.

I’m already lost.
No recall of convex and concave
in my Holy Trinity.

Oh, right…
you missed postmillennial Bucky Fuller metrics too.
Let’s see…
OK, Odum’s natural trinity
is a dynamic model for balancing organic energy investments,
but at two levels.

The individual anthropocentric biosystem.
And, the collective EarthMother pro-life support system,
conceived as a nondualistic
ongoing space/time
body/mind ecosystem
sharing Earth together
as one organic/sacred
pleasure/compassion-seeking Body.

At both of these levels,
individual and higher-order interdependent civil,
about a third of energy invested into the system
is required for healthy metabolic regeneration
of each and every organic ego-system.

Another consumed third of energy
feeds back to (concavely) sustain mutually subsidiary bioregions,
providers of interdependent fuel and energy and relationship.

The last captured third of energy
produces re-investments outward
to what Odum calls
“higher-order [convex] system controllers.”

Do you have an example?
What might be one of my potential investments
in a higher-order nurture/nutrition system?

Well,
in class
the hierarchical trinity we used
was grass in relationship with rabbits
in relationship with a predator,
like a fox,
for example.

So the rabbit’s energy waste fuels the grass,
and the more vulnerable rabbits feed the foxes.

Yes, especially the young and lame.
The ones who see and sniff and move less well.

I don’t see how that works out so well as a trinitarian third.
If you are young or lame or blind, especially.
But how does Odum approximate this one-third math
at the individual creature level?

That’s what we’re talking about in class.
I would imagine
if you view successfully hunted and devoured
from a predator’s perspective
you might feel the prey had made nearly a 100% re-investment,
perhaps omitting the larger bones,
in your higher-caste controlling species.
Perhaps a hungry pride of lions.

This natural trinity of altruism
seems to suffer in the end
from gluttonous taking without needing
and less compassionate giving without needing to be asked,
which is what I thought altruism was more about.

I suppose Odum was imagining a healthy polyculturing life-support system
as a resonantly deep-concave and wide-convex whole organic system,
in which about one third of ego-support generation,
as seen from a monotheistic perspective,
redeems the other two-thirds sacrifice
by feeding the metabolic thrival needs
of higher-order predators,
controlling risks of overpopulation,
leading to monocultural climates and communications
of descending, and increasingly rabid,
monopolistic pathology.

You mean like mother pigs eating their young
to better feed those remaining in her litter?

OK, if that actually happens
I’m not sure I wanted to know about it.
Also, if that happens,
then we are talking about an out of balance survival system
between older and younger generations within the same species.

Perhaps Odum was speaking of some Gaia Hypothesis balance
of energy and communication transfers.
Really big picture.
Global.
Polypathic energy exchanges.

And maybe higher order systems
are not limited to upper-caste predators.
Perhaps a higher order ecosystem
might nurture bioregional victims
of Earth’s imbalance,
especially our young and wounded
unenlightened and disempowered
by sensory blindness
and malnourished ego-identity expansion,
continuation

Until we each rediscover
that pain and loss and death
could be revisited
reconceived
reconnected
re-ligioned
as equal to two-thirds of compassionate life
and polyculturing gain
through monoculturing absence,
concave emptiness,
loss of egocentric Win v Lose investment,
divestment of upper-caste monotheistic self
as re-investment in Whole PolyCultural System
compassionate communion balance.

So, that would be the inter-religious connection, then,
between Odum’s natural trinity of altruism
and Christianity’s Holy Trinity
of and for EarthMother’s polytheistic
polyamorous altruism.

Where is Holonic Spirit
in this nondualistic trinity
of convex-eco control
with concave-ego nurturance
co-binary producing resilient healthy wealth
of ego/eco-systemic Whole Organic Earth?

That would be the middle ego/eco
co-passionate/pleasure
mind/body balance,
growing out to extend family identity
to include gratitude for annoying cousins
unenlightened politicians
disempowering judges
extending on through our individual biosystemic losses
pains
aches
depressions
systemic traumas
dispassionate/displeasing challenges
to personal higher order thrival.

So, with all that said,
do you both think and feel
that you learned anything enlightening
and empowering at school today?

As I said, maybe.
I’m not sure yet.