Shorts - E21: Personal Accountability

2019-07-07

“To remain the same in function, animals must change their form.” - Stephen Jay Gould, 1979 Gould wrote the quote above a couple times in different articles. Ryan likes it because he thinks it can apply to systems in general. Thus, to remain the same in function, systems should change their structure provided there are changes in their throughput. In organisms this happens with changes in scale. To get bigger and taller on Earth’s surface, an animal’s legs must also get thicker. Otherwise, gravita...

“To remain the same in function, animals must change their form.” - Stephen Jay Gould, 1979

Gould wrote the quote above a couple times in different articles. Ryan likes it because he thinks it can apply to systems in general. Thus, to remain the same in function, systems should change their structure provided there are changes in their throughput.

In organisms this happens with changes in scale. To get bigger and taller on Earth’s surface, an animal’s legs must also get thicker. Otherwise, gravitational acceleration will break them as they buckle under the mass of the body above.

But nature does not ask a five gram shrew to stand as tall as a ten foot elephant either. Its muscles could hardly move its legs. Yet sometimes, society asks its citizens to do similar feats by moralizing the damn prosocial empaths into feeling as if they’re not doing enough.

Well, to that, *we* say, “Enough!” Enjoy this bitchfest about personal accountability.

-Dawds

Song: How I’ve Missed You; Artist: TIM

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