Mix-and-match is not only the key to urban vitality, and fresh looks which brighten our spirits. Cooking, the most basic human activity, is all about mix and match. We braise, sauté, stir fry… Something new emerges that looks, smells and tastes different from any of the raw materials we put together. Just mixing is not sufficient to make a good dish, though: we need to match the ingredients and even with the cooking method. Cooking is enjoyable and can be exciting for it is a creative process. Read more
If we think mix in terms of leaving different things/parties there to interact, and match in terms of interacting in “right” ways, mix-and-match may well be a universal principle for sustainability.
Let’s begin with the second law of thermodynamics. It essentially says: the energy of a system diminishes without external input and will eventually “die.” That’s why biological bodies, including us, all expire some day, and physical entities like buildings deteriorate over time.
But this law is not that universal, and systems can sustain themselves and keep in existence. In complex adaptive systems, extra “energy” can be produced from interactions between the parts within a system. And this “creativity” from within can sustain a system. This is why a city can persist and prosper though its buildings, infrastructures, and inhabitants age and change.
It is not guaranteed that interactions in a complex adaptive system always generate “positive energy.” Interactions can go “wrong” and produce “negative energy,” accelerating a system’s demise. Sometimes, we make dishes that we don’t even want to eat, and we simply waste some good vegetables or a piece of fine meat. There are fashion flops even among Hollywood celebrities. Some cities do decline looking badly distressed in a dissonant mess.
Now let’s see how our universal law of creativity and sustainability apply to other complex adaptive systems. Nature provides the best examples. In a rainforest, for instance, species and populations interact in a range of mutually beneficial ways that lead to more efficient utilization of lights and nutrients and abundant life in an impoverished soil. To be sure, the process of mix-and-match is long. In the end, only those who can mix in have survived. Together they create niches for themselves and the carrying capacity of an ecosystem in a biophysical place. Mix-and-match continues as the system undergoes change amid disturbances of different sorts.
Human relationships and social groups, too, follow the law of mix-and-match. For any relationships to flourish, participants must have something to offer and obtain something that each cannot have individually. Children are the most concrete creativity of a couple. When you walk away feeling elated or inspired after talking to somebody, you will naturally want to stay in this friendship. For members to keep participating in group activities voluntarily, they need to feel at least they are getting something satisfying out of the community.
Of course, relationships can wane and social groups disappear over time and often – when they lack or lose creativity. We may use institutions like marriage to bind a couple and participation rules to try to keep a group going, but those truly vibrant relationships and groups exhibit creativity and don’t need any oath on paper or oral. Actually, whenever institutions or rules are needed, it suggests something that is likely unsustainable naturally.
Other complex adaptive systems – markets and the economy, societies, nations, civilizations – all have their own mix-and-match processes. With right interactions among their parts, they function smoothly, but when interactions go wrong, we can get market failure and even collapse of civilizations. Nations rise and fall mostly following mix-and-match/mismatch among elite groups and between the elite and the mass.
Life must have first emerged from mix-and-match of nonliving chemicals. Individuals die and species go extinct, but life sustains itself with new forms of life that emerges from mix-and-match of older forms.
The technology system does not only sustain itself but also grows nonlinearly because mix-and-match of older building blocks gives rise to new technologies. To find out exactly how, read Brian Arthur’s The Nature of Technology: What it Is and How it Evolves.
And how do we get new ideas? Mix-and-match of old ideas. Nothing is really new. Einstein made a genius connection between Maxwell’s equation on the light in a vacuum and Max Planck’s constant dealing with energy quanta. You may read Douglas Hofstadter’s writings on creativity and metaphors. What are metaphors? Mix-and-match of seemingly unrelated things. The wider an association, the more ingenious an idea.
But we don’t mix and match here: the brain does it. Our brain is a mix-and-match master, capable of magic. It mixes and matches at a deep level of neurons. Our job is to “put” stuff in neuron circuits and “build” connections between them. The rest is largely out of our control: the brain is self-sustained, bringing to life dreams, imaginations, and ideas. It’s our lifetime’s job to serve the brain – by means of action and habit and through experience.
The most revolutionary ideas, Turing’s computing machine, for example, are not the product of hard thinking. Thinking is deductive reasoning in a closed system, but the universe around us is infinite. That’s why Pascal, a firm believer of scientific method, was also a doubter of reason. We need intuitions, the brain’s magic, to break through existing systems to get into new territories. The great Descartes, who famously said “I think, therefore I am,” had to agree with young Pascal.
I have wandered a bit in the forests. And I can go on and on. Human environment systems, the global economy, international relations…
To come back to the key note, a complex adaptive system can break the second law of thermodynamics and sustain its existence if it exhibits creativity from right interactions among its parts, while wrong interactions produce negative energy and bring the system faster to demise.
I feel inclined to include a coda. Implied in mix and match is also diversity. Diversity is conducive to creativity. How would you expect to see new ideas out of a mix of same mindsets? If you want to know more about the role of diversity, check out Scott Page’s The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.