The Great Mystery at the heart of human folly is simply this: How deep does it run? Permaculturists, game theory geeks and professional poker players all know One Big Thing. It's all about pattern recognition and sorting the complex from the complicated. When a massive disaster on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon clusterfuck is unleashed by human hands (with opposable thumbs!), patterns within patterns within patterns proliferate. When Nature dishes up a devastating flood in Pakistan, an earthquake in Haiti, a tsunami in Indonesia, same thing: a cascade of patterns that bifurcate, creating whorls within whorls, a fractal display of patterns. Here's what to recognize: Natural chaos is complex; Manmade mayhem is complicated. Pundits wonder aloud about 'getting to the bottom of this'. Permacuturists on the other hand ask, Does it have a bottom? Game theorists ask how big it this bottom anyway and cardsharps just want to knowWhat are the odds it will happen again...
- KBOO