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Proceedings of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, 1998

HOW TO KILL A LIVING SYSTEM

Lane Tracy
Department of Management Systems, Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701

Abstract

Living systems are vulnerable at many points and to a variety of dangers. There are many ways to kill them. Living systems attempt to protect themselves from dangers in their environment through the use of decider processes, boundary processes, and adjustment processes. Yet predators, poisons, and other adverse environmental conditions may overwhelm the defenses of a living system and render it incapable of sustaining life. This paper seeks to identify across levels and in general terms the ways in which living systems are vulnerable to attack. Methods of attack are grouped into broad classes, such as denying access to vital resources, introducing poisons into the environment or injecting them into the system, disconnecting critical subsystems or components, feeding false information to the system, and inducing uncontrolled growth. The identification of points of vulnerability will aid analysis for purposes of defense as well as attack. It will also help us to understand the processes of life as they manifest themselves across the various levels of living systems.

Keywords: living systems, death, decider, boundary, adjustment process

1. Introduction

Living systems theory postulates that life is essentially the same set of systemic processes at all levels from cells to supranational systems, and that the higher levels of living systems evolved from cellular life through a shred out process (Miller, 1978). If we accept that premise, then we would expect that death would have basically the same meaning at all levels and that living systems at each level would be vulnerable to the same sorts of attack.

Murder mysteries are a popular form of entertainment. One of the tasks of the mystery writer is to devise novel methods of killing people. But suppose that the task was to find new ways to kill an organization or a nation. Would these methods of killing be fundamentally different from the methods of murder? Or would there be commonalities at all levels, based on the fact that people, organizations, and nations are all living systems (Miller, 1978) and that the writer is seeking ways to end life?

To answer that question I have attempted in the following pages to group the means of killing a living system into seven basic categories, depending on how the various means act upon the criticalsubsystems. For each of these categories we will then try to identify at other levels of living systems methods of killing that fit the category.

2. Defenses Against Death

First we must understand how living systems defend themselves from death. The most basic means of defense is simply to keep all critical subsystems running properly. Critical subsystems have been defined by Miller (1978,1) as "subsystems whose processes are essential for life, some of which process matter or energy, some of which process information, and some of which process both." Twenty critical subsystems have been identified (Miller, 1990). By definition all of these subsystems must perform their proper processes in order for life to continue. Failure of any of these processes constitutes illness in the system which will hasten death if not treated. Thus, one means of attack on a living system is to disable one or more of the critical subsystems.

Living systems employ adjustment processes to defend themselves against internal and external change that threatens the stability of the system (Miller, 1978). Many of these adjustment processes are built into the various subsystems and are activated automatically by deviations from programmed conditions. Other adjustment processes require the intervention of the decider subsystem to activate the process and/or to direct it. That is, the decider chooses whether and how to respond to a perceived threat. Thus, a living system may be killed by disabling certain adjustment processes or attacking the decider subsystem.

Several critical subsystems are vulnerable to external attack because they interact directly with the environment and are thus near the surface of the system. The critical subsystem most directly responsible for dealing with threats from the environment is the boundary subsystem. It is defined as the subsystem that "surrounds and protects vulnerable components, acts as a barrier to free movement of matter, energy, and information in and out of the system, and filters inputs and outputs by allowing some but not others to pass (Miller & Miller, 1992, 23)." The input transducer and ingestor subsystems are also critical to defense, as they provide the receiving processes for information and matter/energy. If they are unable to function, the system is deprived of necessary resources. Also vulnerable are the output transducer and extruder subsystems, which are responsible for transmitting information and ejecting excess matter/energy from the system. Because of their vulnerability each of these subsystems may be prime targets in an attack on the system.

3. Categories of Murder Methods

We have already identified certain critical points of attack, but there are also several different methods of attack, if the objective is to kill a living system. We are most familiar, perhaps, with the methods used to kill people. Therefore, let us begin at the level oforganisms with an attempt to categorize methods of murder. Then we will see if there are similar methods at other levels of the hierarchy of living systems.

3.1. Resource Deprivation

Murder methods can be grouped into several categories in accordance with how they affect the organism as a living system. First, there are methods such as starvation, dehydration, asphyxiation, and drowning that cut off the supply of a required material resource (e.g., food, water, or air). Let us call these the resource deprivation methods. They act either by preventing resources from reaching the system or by attacking the ingestor and input transducer subsystems, which are responsible for bringing inputs into the system (Miller, 1978). For example, asphyxiation could be accomplished by removing oxygen from the air or by closing the victim's windpipe with a choke hold. Resource deprivation would also include methods that deprive the victim of needed energy. For instance, the murderer might lock the victim in a freezer.

Subtler forms of this method could be directed at the information-processing subsystems by cutting off vital information. Access to information can be shut off by isolating the victim, eliminating sources, or disabling the input transducers. The organism may then be unable to defend itself against naturally-occurring dangers. An example would be blindfolding a person and leading her to the edge of a cliff.

Resource deprivation methods work by denying access of critical subsystems to the matter, energy, or information that they require in order to sustain their processes. Unrelievable strain is thereby induced in the victim. For instance, lack of inputs of oxygen or carbohydrates shuts down the metabolism process of the converter subsystem. Likewise, lack of needed information causes the decider subsystem to malfunction, either by failing to decide or by making harmful choices. Failure of one subsystem tends to initiate a cascade of failures of other critical subsystems, resulting in death of the system.

3.2. Harmful Input

A second category consists of methods that kill by causing the organism to take in something harmful. Let us call these the harmful input methods. These methods include adding various poisons to food or drink, injecting poison with a needle or dart, spreading poisonous gas or germs in the air, or engaging in unprotected sex. In the latter case, for instance, the body's adjustment mechanisms may be weakened by a virus such as HIV, thereby allowing other diseases to overwhelm the subsystems.

Harmful substances are introduced to the system by mixing them with substances that are regularly ingested or by injecting them past the boundary and directly into the system. These substances attack the critical subsystems in various ways, such as dissolving components anddisrupting processes. For instance, digitalis works by putting extreme stress on the heart, while nerve gas interferes with the channel and net subsystem.

Excessive amounts of input, even of normally desirable resources, can lead to death. Constant overfeeding is slow as a method of murder, but ultimately effective. Supplying an addict with narcotics has a similar, and usually more rapid, effect. Even too much oxygen can kill a person.

Also included in the harmful input category are methods that expose the system to unwanted energy or disinformation. Stroboscopic lights and earsplitting noise may be used to disable a victim's decider subsystem. Constant bombardment of light or sound can render a person insane through sleep deprivation.

Disinformation acts like poison, causing the information-processing subsystems to malfunction. Poor decisions are made, adjustment processes are misdirected, the boundary subsystem screens inputs improperly, and so forth. Of course, it can be argued that many poisons and viruses attack organisms by means of disinformation, by providing chemically- or genetically-coded information that instructs components to turn off, overwork, or malfunction.

An example of the use of disinformation at the organism level would be telling a healthy person that they have only one month to live. They may react in such a way as to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. An interesting variant of this method is to spread false rumors, giving the victim an ever-moving target of misinformation that must be dispelled.

Harmful input may also consist of demands or orders that put excessive strain on the victim. This category would include such tactics as piling excessive work on a person, giving incomplete or conflicting instructions, supplying defective tools and materials, and giving constant negative feedback. Information overload is a broad subcategory of this method.

3.3. Physical Attack

Methods that kill by directly attacking critical subsystems or their components constitute another category. Shooting, stabbing, crushing, bludgeoning, and carving with a laser beam fall in this category, which will be dubbed the physical attack method. Several critical subsystems may be attacked at once, but inflicting trauma on a single vital component may be all that is necessary. As we noted earlier, certain subsystems are particularly vulnerable to physical attack because they are near the periphery of the system and interact directly with the environment. The boundary subsystem is the most accessible to attack, but the ingestor, extruder, and input and output transducer subsystems are also quite vulnerable. Thus, a person’s skin, throat, tongue, eyes, and ears allpresent inviting targets. Yet death can be induced more quickly by attacking certain better-protected organs. A well-placed blow to the heart, for instance, may do the job efficiently by disabling part of the distributor subsystem. The channel and net subsystem is similarly vulnerable to a blow along the spinal cord. The rack was an instrument of torture that killed by attacking the human supporter subsystem.

Energy may also be used in physical attack. The boundary subsystem may be traumatized by fire or radiation. A high-voltage electrical current can quickly fry the channel and net, decider, memory, and associator subsystems.

3.4. Dismemberment

Removal or disconnection of a critical subsystem or one of its components is another method of murder. Decapitation, disemboweling, and draining the organism of its blood would fall in this category, as would disconnecting the heart-lung machine of a critically-ill patient. This method will be labeled the dismemberment method. It involves loss of, or loss of the use of, one or more components or artifacts of the organism.

The examples above focus on matter/energy processing subsystems, but dismemberment also may involve loss of information, as when the victim's eyes are gouged out. In the extreme version of this method the organism is the victim of an explosion that disconnects all subsystems at once.

3.5. Output Restriction

Immobilization is another method of killing an organism. This method works by restricting the outputs of the motor subsystem. It can be accomplished by binding the victim or confining her in a very small space or, more directly, by using drugs or surgery to render the motor subsystem inoperative. In the latter cases this method is combined with the harmful input or dismemberment methods.

Closely related to immobilization are methods that restrict outputs of excess energy or waste matter. An organism can be killed by putting it in an environment in which it is unable to disperse excess heat, or by inducing a state of total constipation. Collectively these methods may be called output restriction methods.

3.6. Uncontrolled Growth

Another set of methods works by inducing uncontrolled growth. This method is generally used in conjunction with harmful input of carcinogens or hormones. That is, a person may be killed by inducing him to smoke heavily, chew tobacco, sunbathe regularly without using sun blockers, visit Chernobyl, or take large amounts of growth hormones. As a method of murder inducing uncontrolled growth is slow and uncertain, but it often does eventually cause death.

3.7. Indirect Methods

When an organism is already ill the end may be hastened by methods of neglect. Care givers can neglect to provide needed care, physicians can misdiagnose an illness or prescribe placebos, relatives can fail to visit or communicate. Neglect is a passive method of killing.

Another indirect method is to lead a person into danger. The danger may consist of any of the killing agents already discussed. The difference is that the killer does not directly supply the agent, but only leads the victim to it. This method is a favorite of political leaders who mislead people into war, famine, nuclear radiation, global warming and other dangers.

4. Murder by Any Other Name -- Extension to Organizations and Societies

Murder is a term generally reserved for the deliberate, unsanctioned killing of a human being. We are not really concerned here with questions of deliberateness or sanctioning (e.g., war, legal execution, assisted suicide). Rather, the focus of our investigation is on whether the same basic methods of killing can be extended to apply to other levels of living systems. For reasons of space we will limit the extension to the levels of organizations and societies.

4.1. Resource Deprivation

It is easy to show that resource deprivation can be used to kill organizations and societies. Business firms often employ the method of monopolizing sources of supply as a means of killing off competition or forcing a merger or acquisition. An employer may attack a labor union by firing union supporters or engaging in a lockout that deprives the union members of income. Labor unions withhold labor (i.e. strike) in order to put pressure on business firms. Although the intent is not usually to kill the firm, that is sometimes the result -- witness the demise of Eastern Airlines after a prolonged strike by the International Association of Machinists. Likewise, nations have long used sieges, blockades, and embargoes as methods of starving out or conquering other nations. Sometimes the withholding of a single critical resource (e.g., chromium or water) can be enough to bring a company or a nation to its knees. Withholding of information plays a prominent part in societal warfare. Secrecy is a common tactic of war between nations, as in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Allied invasion of Normandy. Suppression of information flow, as in the former Soviet Union, may be a strong factor in conquering societies, if not killing them. When the Soviet Union dissolved, there was an explosion of "new" nations such as Belarus and Uzbekistan. These nations had been conquered and absorbed by Russia and then the Soviet Union, but re-emerged when information began to flow freely again. At the organizational level the Russian Orthodox Church and organized crime also re-emerged.

Another example of the effect of information control is the chilling effect on rival firms of Microsoft's control of disk-operating software. In this case it is not the information itself thatcan be withheld, but the right to use it. Because the use of Windows is so widespread, a software or computer manufacturing firm that attempts to bypass Windows may fail.

4.2. Harmful Input

Harmful input is also used extensively by organizations and societies to kill or maim other systems. The story of the Trojan horse stands as a metaphor of the harmful input method of attack at the societal level. The use of poisons, germs, and radiation in warfare is well known, though widely disapproved of.

A subtler form of societal attack through input occurs when one nation supplies inferior goods to another or exports its poor people en masse to other nations. Propaganda and disinformation are also frequently employed by societies against each other.

Organizations poison each other with defective products, subversive employees, bad debt, and disinformation. Firms use "poison pills" to defend themselves against hostile takeovers. Labor unions may employ tactics such as work-to-rule or a sit-in strike to disrupt an employer's operations. Firms also routinely withhold information from each other. Occasionally, the lack of information may be fatal, as when a firm's primary customer fails to inform it of plans to change suppliers or vertically integrate operations.

4.3 Physical Attack

Physical attack is common in societal warfare. Bombing raids and armed thrusts are directed at critical production sites, primary distribution points, communications nodes, and strategic headquarters. In other words, they are aimed at the producer, distributor, channel and net, and decider subsystems.

Physical attack is less common among organizations, but does exist in such forms as industrial sabotage and arson. Labor unions occasionally use sabotage as a weapon against employers; employers have been known to use goons to beat up union supporters or set fire to union property.

4.4. Dismemberment

Dismemberment is used frequently as a method of attack on organizations, perhaps because the "members" of organizations are not tied as closely to the system as are the organs of an organism. Business firms often attempt to hire key employees away from their rivals or purchase a controlling interest in another firm, thereby taking over the rival firm's decider subsystem. Some religious organizations seek to proselytize from the membership of other religions.

Nations also practice dismemberment through such tactics as seizing key territory (e.g., the Golan Heights or the port of Trieste) from other nations. When dismemberment only maims but does not kill a rival society, however, it often becomes a source of contention that may last for centuries. The merger of East and West Germany appeared to completely dismember East Germany, but recent events have suggestedthat a separate East German society may still exist.

4.5. Output Restriction

Embargoes, blockades, and sieges restrict not only a society's inputs but also its outputs. The current U.S. embargoes against Iraq and Cuba are aimed at cutting their exports and weakening their economies so that they cannot afford to engage in armed conflict. These forms of output restriction may seldom kill a nation, but they weaken it and make it more susceptible to other forms of attack.

Boycotts have a similar purpose when used against business firms. A manufacturing firm can be harmed, even killed, by refusal of shipping firms to carry its goods. Predatory pricing by large firms may kill smaller ones by preventing them from moving their inventory. In some nations restrictions on the press prevent rival political parties from getting their message to potential supporters. Restrictions on meetings or worship may have a similar effect on religious organizations.

4.6. Uncontrolled Growth

This method of killing assumes that there are well-defined limits on the rate and pattern of growth of a living system, and that when these limits are exceeded it is harmful to the system. History provides us with examples in which societies, such as the Roman Empire, expanded beyond their ability to maintain control. However, modern advances in communications and transportation technology may have rendered those limits obsolete. It is not clear, for instance, whether such former nations as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia fell victim to uncontrolled growth or to other causes of death.

Uncontrolled growth is probably the leading cause of the demise of new businesses. Every day hundreds of small firms with viable products and services fail or go bankrupt because they expand faster than their ability to maintain control of operations or to finance them. It can be argued in many cases that their customers kill them by making attractive offers of patronage if they will produce greater volume or variety. In most cases, however, it is suicide rather than murder.

4.7. Indirect Methods

Many developing nations contend that they suffer from the neglect of the industrialized nations. They argue that wars and coups are a result of the failure of sponsoring nations to provide enough financial or political support. In other cases they may contend that they have been led down the wrong political or economic path, or put in danger by being carved up by colonial powers into states that do not represent the underlying ethnic or linguistic groupings. Industrialized nations tend to counter that the woes of such nations are due to the neglect and misdirection of their own leaders. Regardless of which side you take, the charges indicate belief in the killing potential of neglect and poor leadership.

Similar beliefs are evident with respect to organizations. When a corporation is in trouble, the first step in trying to bring it back to health is often a change in leadership. If the old leadership focused on growth, diversification, and decentralization as the keys to success, the new leaders will emphasize downsizing, core competencies, and recentralization. Small, entrepreneur-owned firms often suffer from neglect as the entrepreneur's interests turn to new challenges, leaving the old firm to flounder. Many political and religious organizations decline or disappear with the death of their charismatic founder.

Although neglect and poor leadership are clearly major factors in the decline and death of organizations and nations, the effect is usually self-induced. Such indirect methods are either unnecessary or too slow when the targeted victim is a corporation or a nation.

5. Summary

There are hundreds of ways to kill a living system, if we concern ourselves with details such as what weapon is used. From the viewpoint of how the method acts upon the system, however, we can group these methods into seven basic categories. The categories are:

1. Resource deprivation -- restricting input of matter, energy, or information that is required by one or more critical subsystems

2. Harmful input -- inducing or forcing input of matter, energy, or information that is harmful to one or more critical subsystems

3. Physical attack -- direct injury to or interference with one or more components of the system's critical subsystems

4. Dismemberment -- removal or disconnection of one or more components of the system's critical subsystems

5. Output restriction -- preventing output of matter, energy, or information which is harmful to the system if it is retained

6. Uncontrolled growth -- inducing cancerous or unsustainable growth of the system or its components

7. Indirect methods -- neglecting the system when it is ill or leading it into danger.

There are obviously other ways to define the categories and the list may not be complete. Furthermore, the categories are not mutually exclusive. A given method of killing may fall into more than one category. For instance, shooting a person may be seen primarily as a physical attack on that person’s organs, but if the bullet misses any vital organs it may instead kill through loss of blood (i.e., dismemberment) or lead poisoning (i.e., harmful input).

Given that the categories are based in part on living systemstheory, it is not surprising that they seem to apply equally well to the killing of organisms, organizations, and societies. That is, at each level it is easy to find examples of death that fit each of the categories. The conjecture of this paper is that the categories apply to all levels of living systems. If so, such a finding would tend to confirm the equivalency of life at all of the levels.

Some differences in modes of killing among organisms, organizations, and societies are evident in the examples cited in this paper. We noted that, although systems from the three levels were vulnerable to methods from all seven categories, there were differences in patterns of occurrence of these methods. For instance, organizations are very susceptible to death by uncontrolled growth, but the damage is usually self-inflicted. Further examination of differences between self- and other-inflicted death might be informative.

Methods of killing that are commonly used at one level may be uncommon at another. For instance, direct attack is often used at the levels of organisms and societies, but seldom among organizations. Such a variation may signal differences in vulnerability across levels. We noted, for example, that dismemberment is easier in organizations than in organisms because the components are tied more loosely to the system in organizations. Further examination of preferences for various methods of killing at each level might reveal interesting differences in the life processes at those levels. Nevertheless, the overall conclusion of this paper is that the equivalency of life processes across levels of living systems is reaffirmed by multi-level similarities in methods of killing.

6. References

Miller, J. G. 1978, Living Systems, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Miller, J. L. 1990, "The Timer," Behavioral Science Vol. 35: 164-196.

Miller, J. L. & Miller, J. G. 1992, "Subsystems that Process Both Matter-Energy and Information: The Boundary," Behavioral Science Vol. 37: 23-38.