Multiscale acuity

Communities define themselves by relationships directed both in and out from 3 physical boundary types. Working up from the smallest scale these are the metazoan skin, the family or gene-pool boundary, and (especially with humans) the culture or idea-pool boundary.

Thus you are multiscale smart if your actions are informed by respect for (i) self, (ii) friendship, (iii) family, (iv) consensus, (v) belief and (vi) observation. Such awareness is humbling, however, since it usually requires tradeoffs. Also, multiscale smart actions are tough to frame with a single soundbyte. This brings me to the opposite of multiscale smart...

Multiscale ignorance happens when you aren't multiscale smart. Uninformed action is easy (it comes naturally for me) and can be entertaining. Your behavior might be multiscale-ignorant when you:

• wake your neighbors up at 3am by going outside and beating a drum,
• keep redirecting your trailer-pulling vehicle so as to unwittingly add energy to a growing oscillation,
• treat others as subhuman egged on by media-assisted disrespect,
  
• ignore our need for belief systems to support idea-pool diversity,
• support ideas that contradict careful and earnest observation,
  
• pretend that consensus trumps either observation or belief, and
• ignore one or more of your six hats listed above e.g. by not acting as careful observer, cultural representative, active citizen, family member, loyal friend, and fitness enthusiast all at once.
  

Avoiding multiscale-ignorance is tough! What kind of stuff would you add to this list?

The newfound ability of ideas to travel across the globe at near lightspeed means that multiscale-ignorant ideas can be dangerous in today's inter-connected world. What ideas do you think have already proven this? Check out future posts here for more on ways to help keep such ideas from causing further trouble downstream...