Top-down approaches attempt to achieve efficiency in focussed goals despite differing individual goals. Bottom-up approaches attempt to empower individuals and small group decisions despite inefficiency in achieving focussed goals. Both approaches have their merits and because they are not mutually exclusive they can exist simultaneously at multiple levels within a system. Even so, to achieve democracy, the system as a whole must be bottom-up.

Despite the vicious rumours you may have heard, lemmings are not suicidal or even particularly conformist. They are predated upon by snowy owls, seabirds, arctic foxes and stoats. But where did this myth come from and how did we discover it was wrong?

Systems are a group of interrelated entities that form a whole. They become complex when they show behaviours that are not obvious linked to the individual entities or the whole system in aggregate.