Arms expenditure and world systems

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 16

Arms expenditure and world systems

Sir, — Applying Dr Prigogine’s theory (“The Press,” August 21) one could argue that the world’s militaryindustrial systems are cases of “open dissipative structures” running in parallel ‘‘uphill against the general tide, gaining vigour and complexity from its (the biosphere and humanity) downhill slide and dumping their own decay or entropy into it.” The “downhill slide” is represented by depletion of the earth’s resources, industrial and military pollution (entropy) magnified by increasing population growth, starvation, poverty, disease and violence. This evolutionary impetus of the “dissipating structures” carries them uphill and “the molecules (the people) suit their behaviour to the organisation of a parent organism.” This means that people largely adapt their behaviour to suit the requirements of their “uphill” military-industrial system, “for better or worse perhaps even against man’s will.” One proof that these dissipative structures are out of control of man’s will is the growth in arms expenditures and lack of significant progress in arms control. — Yours, etc., L. F. J. ROSS. ! August 24, 1979.