The sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation
Feedback is a systems concept that came into common use through electronic engineering. Principle 3: Obtain a yield described the feedback of energy from storages to help get more energy, an example of positive feedback[xi]. This can be thought of as an accelerator to push the system towards freely available energy. Similarly, negative feedback is the brake that prevents the system falling into holes of scarcity and instability from overuse or misuse of energy.
Self-maintaining and regulating systems might be said to be the 'Holy Grail' of permaculture: an ideal that we strive for but might never fully achieve. Much of this is achieved by application of the Integration and Diversity (Permaculture design principles 8 & 10) but it is also fostered by making each element within a system as self-reliant as is energy efficient. A system composed of self-reliant elements is more robust to disturbance. Use of tough, semi-wild and self-reproducing crop varieties and livestock breeds, instead of highly bred and dependent ones is a classic permaculture strategy that exemplifies this principle. On a larger scale, self-reliant farmers were once recognised as the basis of a strong and independent country. Today's globalised economies make for greater instability where effects cascade around the world. Rebuilding self-reliance at both the element and system level increases resilience. In the energy descent world, self-reliance will become more valued as capacity for high and continuous input declines and economies of scale and specialisation reduce.
Organisms and individuals also adapt to the negative feedback from large-scale systems of nature and community by developing self-regulation to pre-empt and avoid the harsher consequence of external negative feedback. Kangaroos and other marsupials abort the development of embryos if seasonal conditions appear unfavourable. This reduces the later stress on the population and the environment.
Traditional societies recognised that the effects of external negative feedback controls are often slow to emerge. People needed explanations and warnings, such as the sins of the fathers are visited on the children unto the seventh generation and laws of karma which operate in a world of reincarnated souls.
In modern society, we take for granted an enormous degree of dependence on large-scale, often remote, systems for provision of our needs, while expecting a huge degree of freedom in what we do without external control. In a sense, our whole society is like a teenager who wants to have it all, have it now, without consequences. Even in more traditional communities, older taboos and controls have lost much of their power, or are no longer ecologically functional due to changes in the environment, population density and technology.
The development of behaviour and culture that is more attuned to the feedback signals from nature to prevent overexploitation is one of the challenges of environmentalism. Negative feedback needs to be well targeted and strong enough to bring about corrective change, but not so strong that it damages further development of the system. For example, rainwater collection and use in a house brings awareness of limits to both yield and quality. If a wood stove flue produces a smoky taste to water, this negative feedback encourages corrective action. The common aim of designing sustainable systems with zero hazard from negative feedback is like trying to raise children without exposure to immunological and accident hazards; it leads to more serious hazards in the future. Clearly the open acceptance of hazards from negative feedback must be constrained by ethical principles and primarily applied to ourselves, families and communities (in that order), rather than externalised as is more typical through large-scale industrial economies.
The Gaia hypothesis[xii] of the earth as a self-regulating system, analogous to a living organism, makes the Whole Earth a suitable image to represent this principle. Scientific evidence of the Earth's remarkable homeostasis over hundreds of millions of years highlights the Earth as the archetypical self-regulating whole system, which stimulated the evolution, and nurtures the continuity, of its constituent lifeforms and subsystems.
/Prin4.jpg)