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 disintegration,
of sustainable balance
and runwaway monocultural disasters
like climate and landscape anti-nutritional pathologies.

Did you just say
climate change derives from monocultural overshoot,
a weedpatch taking over our garden,
also known as Earth?

I guess,
but in this case the weedpatch
is also known as over-industrialized
LeftBrain dominant
anthropoids.
But, the natural trinity of altruism
is about climates of inter-relational health,
and not about monocultures and 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 ecosystemic theory
when you took MultiCultural Civics Development classes;
although Howard was published well before your high school years.

It probably took awhile for educators
to figure out the significance
of ecosystemic balance,
within and without,
rather than merely lecturing about unsustainable imbalances
hoping for civil democratically optimizing
multiculturing
and, thereby, self-other regenerative systems
as wellness,
and not so much sickness
requiring Anger Management.

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 implicated 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 lifetime energy investments,
but at two levels.
The individual biosystem.
And, the collective species’ regenerational biosystem,
conceived as a not totally discontinuous
ongoing spacetime ecosystem
sharing Earth with other biosystemic ecosystems.

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

Another consumed third of energy
feeds back to maintain mutually subsidiary subsystemic prey,
providers of fuel and energy.

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

Do you have an example?
What might be one of my potential investments
in a higher-order control/nurture 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-order controlling species,
a hungry pride of lions.

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

I suppose Odum was looking at balanced ecosystems
as a resonantly deep whole,
in which about one third of a species’ generation,
as seen from God’s Higher Order perspective,
redeems the other two-thirds
by feeding the metabolic thrival needs
of higher-order predators,
controlling risks of overpopulation
leading to monocultural landscapes and climates
of descending, and increasingly rabid,
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 system
between generations within the same species.
Perhaps Odum was speaking of some cosmic balance of energy.
Really big picture.
Global.
Polypathic energy exchanges.

And maybe higher order systems
are not limited to controlling predators.
Perhaps a higher order ecosystem
might nurture potential victims
of Earth’s imbalance,
especially our young and enslaved and addicted
to competing sensory blindness
and malnourished projects for ego-identity expansion,
continuation,
until we each discover
that pain and loss and death
could be revisited
reconceived
as equal to two-thirds of cooperative life
and multiculturing gain
through monoculturing absence,
emptiness,
loss of egocentric WinLose interest,
divestment of self
as re-investment in higher-order YangControl/YinNurture balance.

So, that would be the connection, then,
between Odum’s natural trinity of altruism
and Christianity’s Holy Trinity
of and for Earth’s multiculturing altruism.

Where is Holonic Spirit
in this dual level trinity
of higher order control
with lower order nurturance
producing self-regenerating healthy wealth
of ego/eco-systemic Earth?

That would be the middle ego/eco feeding balance,
growing out to extend family identity
to include gratitude for nurturing embryonic cousins,
extending on through our ultimate individual biosystemic loss
to and for and of higher order nurturing.

co-arising nonduality

of 0-sum polypathic spacetime energy regeneration,
in 4D bilaterally co-gravitating
Commons-squared Folds
with dualdark ExFolding ExFormations.

You’re making that up
as you go along
aren’t you?

About one third, I would say.
Another third comes from Elder RightYin memories
and the final third comes out through LeftBrain Yang-explicating
language,
not necessarily higher ecological orders of balance
and resonant octave-fractal harmonics,
yet that is our Cooperative Democratic shared ideal,
I suppose?

And do we intuitively and multiculturally share
this 0-sum ecopolitical metaphysical development
do you think?

I hope so.
Otherwise I have a serious case of idolatrous
toxic imbalance going on,
contributing further to climates of dismay
rather than natural-spiritual trinities
of ecosystemic balance,
as was my original matriarchal intent.

You need to update, Mom.
Re-sync.
Get more health-wealth centered.

I thought that’s what we were doing together,
just now.

Oh, I get it,
kind of a higher order cooperative nurturance
of ego/eco co-investing systemic paradigms.

Very good!
Building mutual trust and identity expansion
by each reiterating ego-convex
with eco-concave
0-sum bilateral nurturing
creolizing communication order.

Wait a minute,
creolization theory
has nothing to do with systems theory
at least as captured and re-invested by Howard Odum.

Oh, I thought they sound and feel alike,
while one looks outside physical
and the other listens inside metaphysical.

Right.
Change of subject:
What’s for dinner?

Not sure.
What would you like to eat
and help me produce
for our future re-investments
in higher-order thrival
and ego-ordering metabolic survival?

Mom, stop.
This happens every time you ask me
How was school?
And I respond with anything other than
Fine.

Oh, come on,
you’re the one who said I need to update.
And, besides,
you might be able to use this.
Maybe in Political Philosophy next semester,
if not Permaculture Systemic Design this semester.

I’ll have to think about that…
There’s also that Polypathic EcoPolitics of Cosmology thesis
I’ve not quite finished.

Sounds like a tossed salad?