Process: How Systems Change Over Time

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Process reveals whether structure is alive or merely preserved.

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If structure defines the boundaries of possibility, process determines whether those boundaries remain responsive to reality. Structure without process is a museum—much like this site was until recently: a record of thought without motion. Process without structure is a flood—chaotic at best, coercive at worst.

Process introduces time, feedback, and development—three things humans routinely underestimate, especially when intentions are sincere. Systems rarely fail because someone woke up malicious. They fail because feedback arrived late, was filtered, or was ignored. Very few people wake up asking how to ruin their own day. Fewer still succeed at it intentionally.

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This is where frozen versus adaptive NABB appear. An adaptive NABB adjusts when pressure increases. It cracks slightly, redistributes weight, or reshapes. A frozen NABB does none of these things. It holds perfectly—right up until it doesn’t.

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Frozen NABB usually arise when homeostasis overwhelms development. Stability becomes the primary value. Novel information is treated as threat rather than signal. Rules designed for protection become permanent, even after conditions change. The system survives—but stops learning.

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Pressure accumulation is invisible because it is distributed. Each small decision seems reasonable. Each delay feels justified. Responsibility fragments. By the time failure is obvious, it appears sudden, even though it was long in the making.

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Across time, systems that rely on fewer assumptions tend to outperform those that require constant explanation. This is not because simplicity is elegant, but because it places less demand on reality to cooperate. Parsimony functions as a kind of structural humility: the fewer justifications a system needs to remain coherent, the more likely it is to survive contact with feedback.

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This is why good intentions drift into force. When feedback is blocked, authority substitutes for learning. When learning fails, rhetoric substitutes for authority. When rhetoric fails, enforcement appears inevitable. No villains are required—only time and uncorrected error.

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Process tells us whether structure is still serving life or merely preserving itself. A system that cannot revise without panic will eventually revise through coercion, and then through collapse.

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Suggested Sources:
Donella Meadows; W. Ross Ashby; Charles Perrow; Karl Popper