Fernando Alcoforado *
A system is a set of interagent and interdependent parts that together form a whole unitary with a certain purpose and perform a certain function. Systems receive resources (information, energy, material or money) from the environment and, after processing, comes as a product the information, energy, matter or money for the environment. Examples are the solar system, the biosphere, the political system, the economic system, the electronic injection system, the electrical system, the digestive system, and so on.
Each of these systems has a set of interrelated elements (called components, subsystems or subunits) that aim at achieving certain goals, such as keeping the planets spinning around the Sun in the case of the solar system, maintain life on the Earth in the case of the biosphere, and matter contained in food in the case of the digestive system, maintain political stability in the case of the political system, promote the development of a nation in the case of the economic system, regulate the optimal mixture of fuel and air into the operation of the engine in the case of the electronic injection system, to meet the electricity demand of a country or region in the case of the electrical system and to incorporate, to the body of an animal, the energy.
The interaction of the elements of the system is called synergy. Synergy is what makes a system work properly. On the other hand the entropy (concept of the physics) is the disorder or absence of synergy. A system stops working properly when internal entropy occurs. Organisms (or organ systems) in which beneficial changes are absorbed and harnessed survive, and systems where malicious qualities as a whole result in difficulty in survival, tend to disappear if there is no other counterbalance change that neutralizes that first mutation. Thus, evolution remains uninterrupted as systems self-regulate. A feedback system is necessarily a dynamic system. In a feedback loop, an output is able to change the input that generated it, and consequently itself.
A system can be simple or complex. A simple system is one that has few components and the relationship between the components is direct. Simple systems are usually mechanical, linear and predictable. Cake production is an example of simple system. Already a complex system has many elements that are highly related and interconnected. Complex systems tend to be non-linear, have some feedback control, and therefore are cybernetic. Examples of complex systems include social systems (social networks), economic (business, consumers and governments networks), biological (animal colonies) and physical systems (climate).
A stable system is one in which changes in the environment result in little or no change in the system. A dynamic system, in turn, is the one that undergoes rapid and constant changes due to the change of its environment. A system can be opened or closed, The open system is exchanged with the environment. It is a fully probabilistic and fully flexible system, since it is not possible to map all its inputs and outputs. The best example of open systems are organizations in general and companies in particular, all living systems and especially man. A closed system is entirely programmed and deterministic, having no interaction with the environment. The best example of closed systems are machines and motors. There is a very sharp separation between the system and its environment, that is, the boundaries of the system are closed. In fact, there is no totally closed system (which would be hermetic), nor fully open. Every system has some degree of relationship and dependence on the environment.
The systems can be adaptable and not adaptable. An adaptive system is one that responds to the changing environment. In other words, it monitors the environment and promotes changes in response to changes in the environment. The non-adaptive system is one that does not change with the changing environment. A system is permanent when it exists or will exist for a long period of time. A temporary system is one that will exist for a short time.
The general laws of any system are as follows: 1) Every system is composed of subsystems; 2) The greater the fragmentation of a system with several subsystems, the greater the need to coordinate the parts; and 3) Every system seeks balance (homeostasis) and that if one part is not working well, others will have to work harder to maintain balance so that the system can achieve its goal. A complex system can be: 1) dynamic, adaptive and non-linear; 2) chaotic, unpredictable and sensitive to initial conditions; and, 3) open, self-organizing and responsive to feedback.
The complex, dynamic, adaptive and non-linear system is any system that involves elements or agents, not necessarily in large numbers, that interact with each other, forming one or more structures that originate from the interactions between such agents. A relevant aspect is that this type of system is constantly revising and reorganizing its building blocks as it gains experience. Successive generations of organisms will modify and reorganize their tissues through the process of evolution. The brain, for example, will continue to fortify or weaken its connections between its neurons as an individual establishes an exchange with the environment.
The chaotic complex system, unpredictable and sensitive to initial conditions, is characterized by the inability to predict its future stages because a small change in the initial conditions of the system can have major implications for its future behavior. One can take as an example the meteorology that is a complex system in a permanently chaotic state and the world capitalist system that is a system subject to permanent cyclical crises in its evolution.
The open, self-organizing, feedback-sensitive complex system exchanges input or energy with the environment and is susceptible to feedback changes, adapting to the new environment and learning from experience. The more complex a system (living things, economic system, political system, for example) the greater the number of feedbacks it presents, thus developing completely new properties called emergency. Another key feature is the ability of the system to promote natural selection and self-organization.
When a system is complex, nonlinear, open with constant input, the number of interactive components and the amount of energy inserted in the system causes the appearance of fractals or “strange attractors”, which begin to drive the system. A strange attractor can be defined as the set of characteristic behaviors for which a dynamic system evolved independently of the starting point. An attractor is strange due to the high degree of uncertainty of the system results.
It should be noted that a dynamic system can evolve to: 1) a fixed attractor such as a ball rotating around a pit that eventually sets in its bottom by gravity and friction; 2) a periodic attractor, such as in the swing of a pendulum that there is no friction, the ball will rotate indefinitely; and, 3) a strange attractor when the system floats forever between several states in a way that is not random, neither fixed nor oscillating, but a continuous chaotic fluctuation. The most complex systems have all three types of attractors; Different initial conditions lead not only to different behaviors, but also to different types of behavior.
Brazil’s complex economic, political and social system can be classified as chaotic, unpredictable and sensitive to the initial conditions because it presents as “strange attractors” in the economic system the neoliberal model responsible for the recession and mass unemployment, in the political system the current Constitution that contributes to the absence of governability and systemic corruption in the powers of the Republic and in the social system the anarchy characterized by widespread civil disobedience responsible for increased crime and political violence. The inability of Brazil’s rulers to reverse the damage caused by the economic, political and social crisis that tends to lead to the collapse of the country is a clear proof of this.
To ensure the governance of the Brazilian political system, it would be necessary to make the current neoliberal economic system be replaced by another economic model that makes the economic system sensitive to the feedback and control exercised by the government, there is a new Constitution to reorder the political system in order for the government to regain governability and combat corruption and the social system to achieve the stability necessary to achieve social peace.
It can be said that Brazil is currently living a decisive moment in its history in which the previous world is ending at the same time that the new world seeks to assert itself. Brazil will have to choose between the current systemic chaos translated into recession and mass unemployment and violence among human beings with the maintenance of the existing neoliberal model subject to market dictates or the new one that can mean a new economic order rationally built in that the government would interfere with feedback and control over economic activity aimed at its development.
At the moment, the chaotic world prevails in which the supreme interests of the Brazilian population are not considered, but those of the financial system and of the great national and international economic groups. It is necessary to make the new economic, political and social order to be built in Brazil, based on cooperation between the productive sector and civil society, under the coordination of a democratic government, to overcome the prevailing chaos. This government to be implemented in Brazil would exercise economic regulation, coordinate the actions directed to the order of the environment of the country and would mediate the conflicts between the productive sector and Civil Society.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 13 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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