For todays reading notes, i want to expand on the whole top-down vs bottom-up part of emergence.

For me, I truly think that we live in a time when there is only top-down emergence. By this i mean that everyone everywhere is constantly being supervised by someone somewhere who holds a place of authority. They give us the rules, we follow the rules, and everything moves on from there. People and communities expand under rules and regulations enforced by people higher in the hierarchy than they are. Don't get me wrong, in this age, this top-down way of going about things works just fine. things get done efficiently, and i think people are used to doing it this way.

I Get a little confused with how bottom-up communities emerge. Especially when discussing the human population. i understand that ants can do it, and so can slime molds. but really, in a human population, it hard to come up with an example. the best one i could come up with is a student run organization, like the a cappella group im in. we dont have a designated faculty supervisor...we are just run internally. but even then, we appoint people to take over business managing, music directing, and handling of the money. In a way, these select people act as the supervising source, telling us when to sing, what we need to do, and when we need to do it. i mean they arent exactly at the level where anything they say goes, but it seems like a bottom-up wanting to turn into a top-down just because its what we are used to.

I dont know. im still a little confused. oh well.