It’s not a word that comes up in casual conversations, but our lives and our society depend on it. Homeostasis applies to any system that is self-regulating, keeping itself within an acceptable operating range.
Thermostats keep our homes within a few degrees of the temperature we set. It operates through a simple feedback loop between a thermometer in the thermostat and whatever system cools or heats the house. Once we understand how homeostasis works, we see it operating everywhere.
Some feedback loops are fundamental to our health and the well-being of our society.
Plant growth takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and generates oxygen that all animals consume. These offsetting processes regulate the carbon dioxide and oxygen levels in the atmosphere.
The elegance of homeostatic feedback loops is that when they are functioning, we can “set them and forget them.”
Until they stop working. That’s when we need to get involved.
Insulin production in the pancreas regulates the blood sugar level in our bloodstreams. When our blood sugar level becomes dangerously high, the feedback loops between blood sugar and insulin levels needs attention, possibly including supplementary insulin injections.
Sometimes our attempts to fix a feedback loop can have unwelcome side effects.
Europeans moving to Australia brought their tradition of small game hunting with them, but the marsupials and feral rabbits they found didn’t satisfy them. In 1859, Thomas Austin imported 24 European rabbits and released them to increase small-game hunting. Their population size exploded, advancing across the continent more than five miles per year. They stripped crops and wild plants until the soil was bare and blowing away.
There was no natural feedback loop that could control them. After a century of failed attempts, a virus found in Spain was introduced to Australia and it spread rapidly to bring the rabbit population down to safe levels.
Our bodies are complex ecosystems with interconnected sensors and feedback loops. They detect disease and the introduction of infections and other foreign bodies, and they react with defenses. Autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes result when sensors misidentify normal healthy tissue as foreign bodies, causing the immune system to attack.
Communities and societies have many of these characteristics and weaknesses. Sometimes our sensors and the resulting reactions to new and exotic people can be destructive.
The introduction of kidnapped Africans into Maryland and enslaved as an agricultural workforce began in 1642 in St. Mary’s City. They were considered and treated as an inferior type of human, fit only for subservience to Whites. In 1664, Maryland’s General Assembly passed a law making imported Black Africans and their descendants the enslaved property of their owners for life. By 1755, enslaved Black Africans represented 40 percent of Maryland’s population.
Maryland’s law and others like it essentially prohibited the assimilation of Black Africans into American culture.
These legal prohibitions ended in the mid-1860s and under Reconstruction, newly freed Black citizens made rapid advances in business and government. This progress proved to be short-lived and was followed by a century of terrorist lynching, Jim Crow laws, and a degrading system of segregation. The Civil Rights movement energized a new period of advancement and assimilation under new laws.
The arrival of White Europeans escaping war, poverty, and oppression has been part of America’s history for centuries. Waves of immigrants triggered reactions similar to tissue rejection following organ transplants. Laws were passed ending Chinese immigration, and 1921 and 1924 laws set limits on the immigration of people from poor southern European countries.
Despite sometimes violent reactions, these groups persisted, assimilated, and even flourished over a few generations. It became a source of strength and innovation for our country, and immigrants are now essential to many sectors of our economy. It’s common for immigrant families to enter the middle class within a few generations, and many achieve greater success with time.
The hostile reactions result from an unhealthy, destructive negative feedback loop. It begins with the signals sent by our sensors, reinforced by the hostile reactions of others. The presence of foreigners triggers a threat response of suspicion, fear, and violence in some people. They feel anxious, paranoid, and seek solidarity with like-minded groups. Societies split into warring camps.
Resentment, anger, and even violence are indicators that our national thermostat is no longer operating correctly. The sensors in our social feedback system are seriously broken and in need of repair.
Local communities and social scientists have shown that regular and meaningful interactions with the groups we fear, a desegregation of our everyday lives, can reset our sensors and responses. Recalibrated sensors will begin to identify them as part of the same human community, not dangerous foreign bodies.
Our self-defense reactions will dissipate and be replaced by the cooperation we normally show our neighbors.
We have the challenge and the opportunity to heal our political and cultural divides. If we have the will and resol
One Response
Terrific article. Recent photographs of Earth from the Artemis II spacecraft also demonstrate, and remind us, that we share a single planet, hurtling through space, with an almost infinite number of incredibly interconnected and complex feedback loops that, collectively, operating entirely through natural forces, maintain that homeostasis.
So important to bear the author’s point in mind as we each contribute to our collective well being.