Associations for the Reciprocal and Mutual Sharing of Advantages and DisAvantages (ARMSADA) - A Fruitful Predictive Paradigm

Abstract

To survive the living systems must to eat and not to be eaten. But, soon or late, every one is eaten. The law of the strongest is not-at-all the best! The only way to escape for a moment from the struggle for life is to enter into an Association for the Reciprocal and Mutual Sharing of Advantages and DisAdvantages (ARMSADA http://armsada.eu). A lichen, which is both an organism and an ecosystem, a cell, which is both an ecosystem and an endosyncenosis (ceno: to meet and fuse, syn: into a system, endo: with a new internal structural and functional organization), both are ARMSADAs. A neuron emerges from the “unity through diversity“ between a population of Schwann's cells and a giant cell. The legumes' nodes emerge from the fusion of a population of Monera with an organism. The cell emerged with the help of a RNA virus from a microbial mat of Monera. In their new endophysiotope (endo: internal, tope: space, physio: of functioning), the parceners are absolutely dependent from each others. Every ARMSADA emerges when the partners lose simultaneously the capacity to kill the other one(s). In the new Whole, all that is an advantage for a partner is a disadvantage for the other one(s). The “parceners“ are linked together “for the best and for the worst”. Symbiosis is not at all a win-win association but an ARMSADA: the benefits are not for the partners but only for their Whole which expresses new “abilities”. But, through the iteration of the process of new ARMSADAs' emerging, the new -more and more complex- “system-of-systems” is, more and more, independent of its ecoexotope (exo: external, tope: space, eco: of inhabitation). The endophysiotope of a i level of organization is the ecoexotope of previous i-n levels. So the Whole is also less and more than the sum of its parts: because of the semi-autonomy of the parceners abilities of the previous levels are lost but new are gained. There are never advantages without disadvantages! To survive that is to turn disadvantages into advantages and to avoid advantages turning into disadvantages: the survival of the fittest is the survival of the best fitted mutual sharing association! The systemic disfunction of its ARMSADA explains the cell apoptosis as the result of the death of one endangered internal partner (the bacterial parts: the population of mitochondria or the nucleus) which results into the death of the whole endosyncenosis. Cancer also is a breaking of the cell's ARMSADA. Cells that should have to die, because of external dangers, “thanks” to the escape of internal dormant viruses do not. Through this metamorphosis their new endophysiotope survives but their previous ecoexotope, the organism, is altered and endangered. Into an ARMSADA each partner can survive only if the other ones survive first. Man is not an exception! AIDS and cancer curative vaccines that had been proposed using this ARMSADA paradigm are coming effectively in practice. Ecosystems management must take into account that paradigm before any change, economic and social managements should too.