the skin of a system

Here's another interesting generalization about systems.

A meta-stable system has a pattern that it more-or-less preserves despite a varying environment. However, the substrate is in flux. For example, our bodies maintain their integrity even though:
- subatomic particles quantumly jump in and out of space
- atoms and molecules recycle continuously, especially through breath and food
- cells die and are replaced

How can you keep a system in rich communion with its context, without losing the pattern of the system? Why isn't there breakdown along the edges that propagates inward to destroy the system?

Every meta-stable system has a skin. The cell membrane is the quintessential example. The cell NEEDS to be in flux with its environment, but that flux also NEEDS to be regulated. So there has to be a border patrol. Otherwise, the cytoplasm would take on too many of the characteristics of the external world, to the loss of its identity (in this case, primarily through diffusion). The border patrol is, in some senses, its own entity, with a purpose aligned to the system. It masks the lever points of the system, so they can't be pulled willy-nilly by the external world.

Countries have skin, cultures have skin, even minds have skin. If the mind were a pure representational mirror of the world, the mind wouldn't exist as a separate entity, and it would have no purpose.