Liberty, Freedom and Rights

I am writing about liberty, freedom, and rights because I think that we have become confused about their meaning. This attempt was brought on because of many people saying that being told to wear a mask as a part of a protocol to control the Covid 19-pandemic is a violation of their rights as a citizen of the United States.

These words – liberty, freedom, and rights - are fraught with emotion. I do not expect that this short essay will resolve any issues. It may however get some of us to think about these words as they get thrown around in casual use.

I will start with two of our founding documents – The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

 Early in both documents the word liberty is used:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Declaration[1]

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Constitution[2] 

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Pledge of Allegiance[3]

And, we have the statue of liberty. “The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor within New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

The statue is a figure of Libertas, a robed Roman liberty goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken shackle and chain lie at her feet as she walks forward, commemorating the recent national abolition of slavery.^”[4]

 

The declaration states that freedom is one of our unalienable rights. The dictionary states that unalienable is the archaic form of inalienable. Obviously, this is a compound word. As a result, its difficult to understand. And there are two ways to break it apart: in-a-lien-able and in-alien-able.  The second one does not seem to fit. The first one does. According to the Business Dictionary[5], alienable rights are “capable of being taken away or transferable. Right of ownership of a property is alienable but the fundamental civil, human, and natural rights are inalienable. ... The alienable rights transferred directly with the transfer of ownership of the property as the responsible party can only reasonably be one entity.”

This brings us to the concept of “rights”. Wikipedia[6] states. “There is considerable disagreement about what is meant precisely by the term rights. It has been used by different groups and thinkers for different purposes, with different and sometimes opposing definitions, and the precise definition of this principle, beyond having something to do with normative rules of some sort or another, is controversial.”

Broadly speaking, liberty is the ability to do as one pleases. It is a synonym for the word freedom. And this is unfortunate because liberty as used in the declaration of independence, the constitution and the pledge of allegiance meant something different than freedom. Moreover, the choice of the liberty rather than freedom is important.

·         In modern politics, liberty is the state of being free within society from control or oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. 

·         In philosophy, liberty involves free will as contrasted with determinism. 

·         In theology, liberty is freedom from the effects of "sin, spiritual servitude, [or] worldly ties". 

·         Sometimes liberty is differentiated from freedom by using the word "freedom" primarily, if not exclusively, to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and using the word "liberty" to mean the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved.

In this later sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Thus liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom. Freedom is broader in that it represents a total lack of restraint or the unrestrained ability to fulfill one's desires. For example, a person can have the freedom to murder, but not have the liberty to murder, as the latter example deprives others of their right not to be harmed. Liberty can be taken away as a form of punishment. In many countries, people can be deprived of their liberty if they are convicted of criminal acts.

In other words, your liberty, and other rights, stop in our society when they interfere with the liberty of others in the society. I am not a lawyer, but I would presume that almost if not all law deals with this type of conflict.

The constitution adds the word blessing – the blessings of freedom. Blessing originated as a religious term. But in this case, I think it means gifts.

The first ten amendments of the constitution are called the Bill Rights. They were intended to specify some of the rights held by the people.  Amendments 1 through 8 define specific rights: Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Right to Bear Arms, Protection of Citizens’ Rights To The Ownership And Use Of Their Property, Protection against Unreasonable Search and Seizure, Grand Jury Protection, Right to a Jury Trial, Extension of The Right To A Jury Trial To Federal Civil Cases, and No Excessive Bail.

The framers of the constitution were sensitive to the fact that the rights refined in the first eight amendments were not the only rights that the people had. The ninth amendment states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” And the tenth amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This and the Declaration of Independence leaves the issue of rights open indefinitely.

It is interesting to note that the word freedom appears only in the first amendment[7]. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Freedom differs from liberty in that freedom has no limits. No one in our society or system of governess to act in any way they desire except for those rights protected in the first amendment (even those are limited if intended to harm)[8]. You do have the liberty to act in any way you want except when your action violates the rights of others. For example, you have the right to buy a car. And, you have the liberty to drive the car on public roads after obtaining a license and purchasing insurance (to protect others). However, you are not at liberty to drive at any speed above the limits set by law. Or, to purposefully use the car to affect bodily harm on someone.

You have the liberty of not wearing a mask during the pandemic as long as you do not risk infecting anyone else.

As an example, reckless driving is a crime because not driving recklessly is a duty. “In Texas, reckless driving is a crime. More specifically, reckless driving is a misdemeanor punishable by:

• A fine not to exceed $200,
• Confinement in a county jail for not more than 30 days, or
• Both a fine and confinement in jail.”[9]

If you are aware that you have Covid-19 and do not wear a mask in the presence of others, you may have committed a crime. For example, “Criminal transmission of HIV is now better known as HIV non-disclosure, which is the criminal punishment for not disclosing an HIV positive status. This can be intentionally or unknowingly not disclosing HIV status and then exposing or transmitting HIV to a person.”[10]

I believe that it is our duty to wear a mask during the pandemic and not recklessly expose others in our sphere of influence to Covid-19.

 

---

[1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

[2] https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/constitution/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty

[5] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/alienable.html

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights

[7] According to a search of the Constitution in Annenberg’s “Constitution Guide”, https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/constitution/

[8] The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government sometimes may be allowed to limit speech. For example, the government may limit or ban libel (the communication of false statements about a person that may injure his or her reputation), obscenity, fighting words, and words that present a clear and present danger of inciting violence. The government also may regulate speech by limiting the time, place or manner in which it is made. For example, the government may require activists to obtain a permit before holding a large protest rally on a public street.

[9] https://www.enjuris.com/texas/car-accident/reckless-driving.htm

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_transmission_of_HIV

Leadership in the Interactive Age

Finally got around to archiving this work. Probably more accurately stated, my information technology tools finally allowed me to create this archive.

"Leadership in the Interactive Age" was one of significant accomplishments of my consulting career. It was a collaboration between my business partner, Donna Prestwood, our colleague, Barbara Benjamin, New York, and me. We met at least three times for a week at a time in New York and Maine discussing the issues, teasing out the basics and creating the concepts contained in this work. We interviewed over 60 people and placed clips of those interviews in the appropriate place in our structure.

For the actual production of the work, Barbara moved to Austin for about three months. The series consisted of 8 sessions each 1 hour and 50 minutes long. These were broadcast live over NTU's satellite network weekly in January and February 1995 from Oklahoma State's studios in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It was quite a grind to get everything ready in a week's time. Many very late hours.

NTU was a pioneer of distance learning using satellite TV.

I still believe that some of the concepts developed through this collaboration are still relevant today. Unfortunately we did not get national recognition for this work. To just name two. I think we were right in naming our times as the interactive age. Look around you or at yourself, how much time is spent interacting, sometimes without much to show for it? And, second, I think our focus on ingenuity was correct, rather than creativity or innovation.

This project was one of the most challenging, and creative endeavors I had as a consultant. And, I enjoyed it. I like working in the medium and the integration of interviews. It would have been nice to do several more of these, but it didn't work out that way.

Here's what I archived:

Leadership in the Interactive Age Brochure
Leadership in the Interactive Age Description
Video Programs

1. Leadership and Technology: Is Your Mental Map Ready? Part 1 and Part 2
2. Personal Ingenuity and Emerging Technologies Part 1 and Part 2
3. Knowledge and the Ethics of Technology Part 1 and Part 2
4. Integrating Technologies  in the Age of Interaction Part 1 and Part 2
5. Leading in the Age of Interactions Part 1 and Part 2
6. Leadership is a State of Mind, Not a Position Part 1 and Part 2
7. Leadership, Ingenuity and Technology: Accelerators of Innovation Part 1 and Part 2
8. Organizations and Individuals Who Have Invented new Tools for New Times Part 1 and Part 2

National Technological University (NTU), Fort Collins, Colorado, was founded in 1984 as a non-profit organization offering graduate courses via satellite and leading to a Master of Science (M.S.) degree. It was a collaborative effort among many major engineering and management colleges in the United States to meet the graduate and continuing education needs of “engineers, technical professionals and managers using advanced educational and telecommunications technology.” Graduate and non-credit courses were sourced from a number of distinguished universities and were delivered through NTU to working technical professionals and managers at corporate and government sites across the United States and at international locations as well. NTU was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, The Higher Learning Commission.

"There is widespread recognition of the growing need for engineers and the organizations that employ them to create a new engineering culture that encourages lifelong learning....The National Technological University (NTU) is an important example. NTU delivers classes from major engineering schools by satellite to working professionals in industry. NTU and Motorola University...have been cited as U.S. 'best practices' in this field."

In 2002, NTU was sold to Sylvan Learning Systems and then folded into Walden University in 2004. Wikipedia

Ten critical elements for an open innovation culture

Stefan Lindegaard, INTRAP

In our Leadership+Innovation community on LinkedIn, Chris Thoen who is a R&D Director at Procter & Gamble, asked which elements are needed in order to create an open innovation culture. Our community had an interesting discussion and I want to share the key elements that came up.

- Willingness to accept that not all the smart people work for your company. We need to work with smart people inside and outside our company.

- Willingness to strive for balance between internal and external R&D. External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D is needed to claim some portion of that value.

- Willingness to give part of the control to others. We don’t have to originate the research to profit from it. We don’t need to control everything from the cradle to the grave.

- No need to always be first. Building a better business model is better than getting to market first.

More

Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

This was an interesting and thought provoking book. The author, Richard Wolf, has written an intriguing and valuable history of the development of democratic capitalism. I found this part of the book very valuable. I also learned from his distinctions and history of the development of socialism and communism. He reverts back to the ideas of Karl Max and defines capitalism not in terms of markets and private property to ideas based on the means and goals of production:

“A capitalist system is, then, one in which a mass of people-productive workers-interact with nature to fashion both means of production (tools, equipment, and raw materials) and final products for human consumption. They produce a total output larger than the portion of that output (wages) given back to them.
The wage portion sustains the productive workers: it provides their consumption and secures their continued productive labor. The difference between their total output and their wage portion is called the "surplus," and it accrues to a different group of people, the employers of productive laborers: capitalists.

The capitalists receive the surplus from the productive laborers by virtue of a wage labor contract entered into between capitalist and worker. This wage labor contract specifies a particular commodity exchange. The capitalist agrees to buy-pay the worker regularly for-her or his labor time. The worker agrees to sell her or his labor time to the capitalist. The worker further typically agrees to use the tools, equipment, raw materials, and space provided by the capitalist. Finally, the worker agrees that the total output emerging from her or his labor is immediately and totally the private property of the capitalist
.
The productive laborers-those who produce the surplus-use the wages paid to them by the capitalists to buy the goods and services they consume and to pay personal taxes. The capitalists use the surplus they obtain from their productive employees to reproduce the conditions that allow them to keep obtaining surpluses from their productive employees. For example, they use part of their surplus to hire supervisors to make sure the productive laborers work effectively.

They use another part to pay taxes to a state apparatus that will, among other activities, enforce the contracts they have with their workers. They use another part of the surplus to sustain institutions (churches, schools, think tanks, advertising enterprises) that persuade workers and their families that this capitalist system is good, unalterable, and so on, so that it is accepted and perpetuated.

The workers who sign contracts with capitalist employers fall into two categories. Productive laborers are those directly engaged in the production of the goods and services that their employers sell; their labor yields the surplus that employers receive and distribute to reproduce their positions as capitalists. The term "unproductive laborers" refers to all those engaged in providing the needed context or "conditions of existence" for productive workers to generate surpluses. The unproductive laborers have their wages paid and their means of work provided by capitalists. The latter distribute parts of the surplus they get from productive laborers to pay and provide for the unproductive laborers.

In short, the capitalist economic system divides people into three basic economic groups: productive laborers, capitalists, and unproductive laborers. Just as the social context for the economic system-politics and culture-shapes and influences the economy, so the reverse also holds. To focus on a society's economic system, as this book does, does not mean that economics is any more important than politics, culture, or nature in the interaction among them that shapes every society. My focus on the capitalist economic system is driven chiefly by the widespread neglect of this dimension of today's social problems.”

He discusses the transition from private capitalism to regulated capitalism, and private capitalism to state capitalism (referred to by many as socialism). He makes little distinction between communism and socialism. And, he introduces the ideas of social capitalism.

The author develops his ideas for worker self directed enterprises. He introduces what I think is an unfortunate acronym “WSDE”. Weapons of mass destruction come to mind, “WMD”.  I found the latter part of the book discussing WSDEs to be a stretch and tedious. It’s certainly idealistic, and I am in no position, as a non expert, to judge this idea. I only know that it will be very difficult to gain acceptance and usage of this concept except in very special cases. There are just too many unknowns, and the barriers are enormous. The entire political-social-economic system is structured to fight this type of change. And, it’s not just the U.S. It’s the whole world.

Yet, here we are. All well known economic -political-social systems have either failed, are in crisis or are headed for a crisis. Let’s stay open and keep talking.

To read more, click here.

The Evolution of Music

William Calvin  in his excellent book The Cerebral Symphony, speculates in the excerpt reprinted below about how music evolved in us. It is one of the unsolved riddles of natural selection. The occasion he writes about here is The Woods Hole Cantata, a once a year performance by the scientists at Woods Hole  who are also musicians.

“Many of the musicians, and most of the audience, are making their once-a-year appearance in church with this evening of music.  Quite a few scientists in my acquaintance are accomplished musicians who had to make a difficult choice between continuing their musical careers and their scientific careers. And so the weeks of practice for this night are a joy to such scientists, a chance to exercise their considerable skills once more. My choral career evaporated, alas, when my voice changed, but performances in church still have a special quality for me from having once been on the other side, singing Latin words that I didn't understand.

The pews and aisles were packed by the time I arrived. But I have, arguably, the best seat in the house: A commanding view, excellent acoustics, room to stretch my legs during the concert, and I can even imitate conducting the chorus because I am out of sight at the rear of the church and few people will see me. There is only one slight drawback: One dares not fall asleep, under penalty of falling one floor and landing in the cellar below, undoubtedly with a great crash. I have the window sill above the cellar stairs, and I am wedged in, thanks to a mountain-climbing technique known as chimney bridging that I last used at Matkatamiba in the Grand Canyon. But there isn't the usual danger of becoming drowsy: I also have an excellent supply of fresh air, because the window is open. During pauses, I can hear it softly raining outdoors.

Much of the great music is church music, written to celebrate the faith and attract others to it. And so here with the Mass in F we have one of Bach's "Missae breve," descended from the Gregorian chants of the medieval Catholic Church, written for Lutheran services in Leipzig in the early eighteenth century, sung in a nineteenth-century Episcopal church on Cape Cod by and for a collection of late-twentieth-century scientists who would explain the world in very different terms from those used by many churchgoers.

Yet science is descended from the same roots as the philosophy of Bach and Handel; Newton surely considered himself to be attempting to understand deeply his Creator's works. In most cultures, there is little distinction between religion-philosophy- science; even in Western civilization, they were all one subject until only a few centuries ago, when religious and natural philosophy split apart, the former becoming theology and the latter again splitting in the last century to become science and what we now call philosophy. The scientists of Bach's time surely considered church music their music, not that of another tradition.

But music is music: It can stand by itself, transcending the centuries independent of rational and irrational beliefs about other things. No one really approaches modern religion like the proverbial cultural anthropologist from outer space ("But they organize all their good deeds around this gruesome symbol of torture, and their highest ritual is playacting cannibalism, and they constantly reaffirm their own version of what in other cultures they call magic and animism. They seem to expect members to check their brains at the church-house door!"). Yet cultures cannot simply start over fresh with a new vocabulary and new traditions untainted by past enthusiasms and misunderstandings; it is simply too easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, religions rationalize the past in various ways and go on from there with the real business: relieving suffering and building hope and advancing understanding. The philosophers and scientists have merely become the understanding specialists over the last several centuries, But if we've left some of the excess baggage and comforting rituals behind, we still revere the music.

And I think that musical forms will have a lot to teach us about our brains. Folksinger Bill Crowfoot observes that children in many cultures, speaking many languages, still all use the musical form known as a "minor third" to harass their siblings:

Nyah-nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

The first few notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, G-G-G-Eb, probably sound like "Thus, Fate knocks at the door" (or is it Kate?) in many cultures. The more elaborate forms of the Magnificat may not be as universal-but still, they resonate. Some tunes (which the Germans call Ohrwurm or "ear worm") seem to spread through the population like the latest respiratory infection. Why? Is there some niche in our brains, created by the language we speak, that predisposes us to certain melodies?

The robin red-breast sings in a loud clear voice in order to keep other robin red-breasts away from the bit of territory that it is on. But except for singing in the morning in the shower, I have never known a human being to utter sounds for this purpose.
the mathematician JACOB BRONOWSKI (1908-1974)

Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic .... Music is pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
the mathematician G. W. LEIBNITZ (1646-1716)

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light. 
the composer CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

MUSIC IS ONE OF OUR GREAT evolutionary puzzles. It demonstrates nicely the inadequacy of evolution by adaptation to explain some of our abilities. The anthropologists periodically suggest that musical abilities were evolved because of their usefulness, that they are an adaptation to social life, with music "soothing the savage breast," or some such explanation.

I'd concede some effect, especially since the chimpanzee "rain dance" has been shown to play a role in dominance display (though that typically leads to sexual selection, not. natural selection) but I cannot imagine how four-part harmony evolved, nor the abilities to weave the elaborate counter-melodies of Bach that seem to echo in my head. Maybe my imagination is simply inadequate to the task, but I'll bet that music is going to turn out to be a secondary use of some neural structure selected for its usefulness in some serial-timing task like language or throwing-and used in the off-hours for music.

If we come to understand why Bach's brain still speaks so compellingly to our brains today, we will have bridged the gap between primary evolutionary adaptations and the magnificent secondary uses that can be made of the same brain machinery. Music is an emergent property, unless someone can figure out how a lilting aria and a choral fugue and an arpeggio were shaped up by survival-sensitive adaptations. The program notes (attributed to "Senza Sordino" -a pseudonym which turns out to be an Italian musical phrase that translates to "without muting; with the loud pedal"!) for tonight's performance of the Mass in F and the Magnificat demonstrate some of the musical features that tickle our brains:
.
. . the final "kyrie eleison" is composed as a counterfugue- that is, each thematic entry is answered by its inversion. In the further course of the movement, Bach makes use of the contrapuntal techniques of stretto, parallel voice-leading, and mirror inversions of themes. 

As the fugal chorus builds to a climax, each voice enters one note higher than its predecessor; and the repetition of this device gives the impression of an endless succession of voices .... 

The phrase mente cordis sui calls forth an astounding harmonic progression, suggesting, in the course of some nine measures, D-major, F -sharp-minor, F -sharp-major, B-minor, D-minor, and, finally, D-major, the first trumpet bringing everyone back to the home key with a descending scale passage and trill that haunts the dreams of every trumpeter. 

Though musical tastes vary with the culture in which one is raised (and I am sure that some enterprising student will eventually do a Ph.D. dissertation on how a culture's musical structure is related to its language's grammatical structure), it seems likely that there will be a "deep structure" of music with a biological basis in the brain, just as a brain basis has been inferred for the deep grammar of languages. What is it about our brains that so disposes them to the minor third and to complex musical patterns, despite the lack of evolutionary adaptations for such musical patterns?

Though this question is seldom asked, I am sure that the standard answer would be the tie with language: Both music and language are sequences of sounds where recognizing patterns is all-important. Chords are simultaneous notes just as phonemes are; tunes are chains of chords just as words and sentences are chains of phonemes. And so natural selection for language abilities would, pari passu , gain us musical abilities as a secondary use of the same neural machinery. Maybe so. But the notion of stochastic sequencing on many parallel tracks as the key element of "get set" in ballistic movements suggests that both language and music are potentially secondary uses of the neural machinery for ballistic skills, that music might have more to do with modern-day baseball than modern-day prose.

The program notes end with:

Gloria Patri, gloria Filio, gloria et Spiritui sancto! Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper in saecula. Amen. ("Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost! As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.")

The Latin translator adds to Mary's "hymn" the traditional invocation of the Trinity. (It does not occur in St. Luke.) Bach cannot resist the musical symbolism of triplets in the three invocations, to represent the tripartite nature of the Trinity, and a return of the opening music at the end, taking his cue from, "As it was in the beginning ... " But the musical return serves aesthetics as well as theology, making a perfectly satisfying close to one of the most perfect and satisfying works of the choral literature. 

There are many aspects of human brains that would vie for a trilogy if anyone tried to pick the three focal aspects of our humanity. Surely if one's criteria were traits whose improvements would help us survive the next century, the mental attitudes controlling cooperation, conflict resolution, and family size (all likely to be strongly shared with our primate cousins) would surely rank high.

But if one focuses on the primary traits via which we differ from the apes in an order-of-magnitude way, you can wind up with a curious trio: language, scenario-spinning consciousness, and music-three aspects of sequential patterns in our brains. Their beginnings are still dimly seen, but in their elaboration may lie the higher humanity.”

The Cerebral Symphony: Seashore Reflections on the Structure of Consciousness, William Calvin, A Bantam Book, 1990

Introduction to Complexity

This is a re-offering of our popular "Introduction to Complexity" course, with some new material, homework, and exams.

In this course you'll learn about the tools used by scientists to understand complex systems. The topics you'll learn about include dynamics, chaos, fractals, information theory, self-organization, agent-based modeling, and networks. You’ll also get a sense of how these topics fit together to help explain how complexity arises and evolves in nature, society, and technology. There are no prerequisites. You don't need a science or math background to take this introductory course; it simply requires an interest in the field and the willingness to participate in a hands-on approach to the subject.

http://www.complexityexplorer.org/online-courses/3

Bernie Krause: The voice of the natural world

Bernie Krause has been recording wild soundscapes -- the wind in the trees, the chirping of birds, the subtle sounds of insect larvae -- for 45 years. In that time, he has seen many environments radically altered by humans, sometimes even by practices thought to be environmentally safe. A surprising look at what we can learn through nature's symphonies, from the grunting of a sea anemone to the sad calls of a beaver in mourning.

Bernie Krause's legendary soundscapes uncover nature’s rich sonic tapestry -- along with some unexpected results. 

This has something to do with complexity but I'm not sure what. Each of the environments he records are complex systems (I think). And, the sound of the system must relfect the complexity. But ...