The Upward Spiral — revision 42050

The Upward Spiral is an hour-long video by Paul Krafel, describing a novel way to look at the natural world in terms of flow. The full version is available on Google video, as is a 40-minute edit by Arthur Brock.

Rules: when inflow greater than outflow, things accumulate; when outflow greater than inflow, things diminish
Everything flowing out of one place is flowing in somewhere else
Relative balance between inflow and outflow
Ex. getting more money by either earning more or spending less
Two levels
Ex. difference between a car backing up and traffic backing up
Balanced flow makes the flow invisible and makes it easy to take stability for granted
Many of the problems we grapple with are the result of unwittingly shifting the relative balance of some flow

How is creation possible within a universe where energy bleeds away?
Life is like an eddy in a stream: bits of water moving upstream within the larger downward flow
First solution: Your survival requires something else to be sacrificed, so get good at it
Absolutely essential part of being alive in a universe that is shaped by the Second Law
Second solution: Positive feedback spirals
Example: Salmon return nitrogen and phosphorus from the sea, and predators move those nutrients back to the land, countering the flow of nutrients to the sea

Succession (forest filling a glacial valley)
In the beginning, rock touches sky (one surface) and water washes away anything that could form soil
Moss grows on deposits of sand and gravel, sucking up rock grains and expanding, then dying and becoming soil, and even slowing tumbling boulders
Small plants form dams contoured across the bedrock, allowing rock grains to accumulate against them, absorbing moisture that helps the plants grow taller
Deciduous trees create leaf dams that self-heal and form more soil to support more trees
It's all about the creation of surfaces
Plant surfaces hold the rain and buffer the wind
Soil's power comes from the vast combined surface area of all its particles
Water cycle
Only 11 inches of rain on land comes from evaporation off the ocean
Beaver dams create lakes where water evaporates
Plant transpiration: most of the water on leaves evaporates and falls again as rain, almost tripling what falls on land
Kelp absorbing wave energy, preventing erosion of beaches, allowing the land to grow, increasing the lengths of coastlines where kelp live

Gullies form through a feedback spiral of erosion
The steeper and narrower a gully gets, the faster water in it flows and the faster it steepens and narrows the gully
Gullies cut into the underground water table, and outflow becomes greater than inflow
Rain can either flow quickly and wash away soil, or soak in and create soil
You can't slow/stop the flow in the gullies themselves, only high in the drainage

Remember, you always create a new path before opposing the current path.
You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed.
"The Fit": when two parts of the world fit together so perfectly that you know they're both part of the same story.
The world is like clouds: everything is made of flows, but it's easier to see the upper-level, solid-seeming appearance than the lower-level flow.
Feedback spirals contain a magical power to bring things into existence.
The environment is an upper-level accumulation of all these flows toward more surfaces and possibilities. This is the Upward Spiral.
Don't let your current understanding stop you from doing this work (nurturing upward spirals). The work will grow on itself as shifts in the relative balance transform enemies into allies.
Science and religion both point to a truth: There is a direction to the universe.

Art: Main St. vs. Wal-Mart's "gully economy"
When people's local rural economy gets too weak to support the Wal-Mart, it moves out, leaving nothing
Paul: Education: making kids passive vs. responsible
Politics: where are the "headwaters?"
Bottom up: school boards and city councils
Top down: President is at the headwaters
Alysia: our goal should be to act in our own spheres of influence
Paul: divorce between science and religion is a big gully
Or there might be three entities involved, the third being magic/enchantment

Brandon: We're not just wasting natural resources, we're making an investment
Need to figure out how to make it "pay back"
Art: We've built a nervous system for Gaia
Steve: Can we "harness" existing consumerism to move in a better direction, or do we have to retreat?
Brandon: People are already reconsidering what it means to be happy

Paul: Start by studying the power within ourselves, making our inner energy flow more and be more visible
Author of book Small is Beautiful: We shouldn't be optimists or pessimists about the future; just do the work
Quote from the movie: "Don't let your current understanding prevent you from doing this work"
Kim: Example of individual "upstream" action: went to a local college's council and brought up the idea of benefits for domestic parnters of college employees
The effects rippled up to the state chancellor
Defining "what's right" is a never-ending process
Increasing possibilities makes it more likely that a "right" path will be available

Gus: Acting high in the drainage = acting locally
Brandon: If you act in many local places rather than at the national level, you will be more effective
Ben: Until you're exposed as a secretive group that funds a vast conspiracy
Ben: Or you can act in one locality and have kindred in other localities working for the same things
Gus: This is made far easier by modern telecommunications

Brandon: Growth is fine as long as it's growth in possibilities, not growth in consumption

Conversations where you have to give up lots of things you value in order to "stop being wrong" are deeply unattractive
Even if we're aligned with the values of the person who's asking us
Gus: Silverton People for Peace don't define themselves as anti-war
Even the most strident war hawk will eventually realize that we can't afford empire anymore--it's not effective
"High in the drainage" = community security
Brandon: Seeing the world as a community instead of a dangerous place
Gus: Harder in a big city, where everyone locks their doors, reasonably enough since larger populations include larger criminal populations