The research investigates the representations of messy/wicked/complex water-related problematic situations to understand them simultaneously as technical and human problems. We built a system of ideas whose organization is intended as paradigmatic reformative to help proferring judgment in the literature review. We discuss a method to assist integrative thinking of material, analytical, and governance complexity from the construct. The method is based on a theoretical construct of organismic biology, bringing together complementary theories for a complex life theory. We adapt the construct to water studies, guided by open rationality premises. From the relationship between material and analytical complexity, we focus on autonomy and identity and, on the relationship between these and governance, the problem of regulation and control. Thus, we show how the conflicting emergence of autonomy between the social and the ecological occurs from water's socio-ecological metabolism, officialized by the societal construct of the available from the Institutional Resource Regime (the constellation of public policy and property rights). We used MuSIASEM (Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis Societal Ecosystem Metabolism) as a technique to apprehend water as a resilience factor, considering what nature wants to be in the place occupied by the social system (built environment and production modes). Therefore, living up to the recursive retroactive resilience RE: water flows confer social (ins) stability, (un) suitable soil attributes for human occupation and permanence, and generates (destroys) economic value.