As discussed in my last posting, the mere mention of “systems” brings to mind images of mechanistic-like dynamics. But, this sort of association with living “systems” is problematic. In the embedded video of hawks catching prey and flying through various habitats, we can think about the dynamics of what is occurring, but not so much as a system, but as something beyond a system … as complex interactions and complex, non-linear paths of information flow, and all kinds of relationships and the dynamics within these relationships.
EBS Global Documentary: Goshawk, the Soul of the Wind Spot
Posted on Facebook by: Atmaca Alemi / Sparrowhawk World Community
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FbnPxoSANd0
This is a great video to consider in terms of what we might think of as distributed, borderless cognition. If this Goshawk had to think about each maneuver and each object, he or she would not do well at all. In fact, these maneuvers would not be possible. When you look at this video, the hawk is acting as if her thinking is at the tips of her wings and the edges of the tree limbs and at the tips of her talons and the edges of the tree trunks and in her eyes and all the way along in front of her to whatever objects there are. This is what Gregory Bateson talked about as a cybernetics of cognition. The information flows from the wings to the air to the trees and back again; from the legs to the talons to the trees to the talons to the legs; from the brain to the eyes to the scene in front to the eyes to the brain; and so forth.
There is no real separation…. Just what we impose. And, that imposition is just that… “an imposition.” We impose separation. We impose mechanism. We impose parts and wholes, We impose all sorts of labels. But, they are all an imposition to seeing and understanding the reality of our living world.
The same holds true for an athlete. If a basketball player had to think about every move, he or she could not dribble or make a shot, especially in the midst of an intense game. The thinking has to be distributed and borderless.
We also can call this cognition “being present in the moment.”
For years, I’ve been troubled by my own and others’ representations of systems thinking. I’m a visual thinker. I love diagrams. In fact, I’ve driven my students nuts with complicated diagrams of one thing or another, which make some kind of sense to me, but have usually left my students perplexed at best. Even though I thought these diagrams made some kind of sense to me, they were usually a feeble attempt to represent something that diagrams just couldn’t represent. How do you represent inquiry, systems thinking, pattern thinking, creative thinking, creative thinking, critical thinking, or any kind of thinking, for that matter, with a diagram? In fact, how can you represent any kind of complex set of systems with a diagram? Yes, it is tempting. I have tried. And, I am always left with an uneasiness that just feels dishonest… like I’m lying to myself.
As Nora Bateson* has been discussing recently, the entire concept of “systems” is problematic. Part of the problem is the cumbersome quality of our language and the baggage certain words carry despite the meaning one might attribute to a word. So, while I might have a specific meaning for “system,” no matter what I say or do, the meanings that are commonly associated with this word are going to pop into people’s heads despite what I or anyone else has to say. So, when we think of “systems,” we typically think of mechanical systems, such as a bicycle, or some other system that has been represented as an isolated, mechanical system. Ever since Rene Descartes, we have formalized our relationship to the world around us as that of a mechanical system. The human body was seen as a mechanical system. The biological—ecological world was seen as a mechanical system. This view of the world was very convenient and very powerful. However, this view has brought us to the precipice of environmental collapse, in part because this mechanical systems approach has some rather severe limitations. One of these limitations is that the systems are stuck within themselves and that even though they may operate in cycles, they operate in linear sequences with predictable sets of feedback loops and sets of consequences. Such a “mechanistic” view is very neat and tidy, and incredibly comforting. Everything is predictable, until, of course, it isn’t.
It’s what we call “complex systems” that are characteristic of living systems, there are no neat and tidy sequences of predictable outcomes. At best, there may be a probabilistic set of outcomes, say if you take an antibiotic for a particular infection, but there is no guarantee. And, there are all kinds of other things that can occur of which we have no immediate awareness, such as bacteria encoding their genome against the antibiotic or against a similar antibiotic in anticipation of one as yet to be developed.
As much as we’ve tried to represent ecosystems with boxes and arrows, we’ve never been able to represent the complexity of these systems, which in part is due to the fact that they do not have clear boundaries. In fact, the boundaries are not just the physical boundaries of where the lake ecosystem ends and the forest ecosystem begins (not just because they are integrally interconnected), but also the boundaries with the economy, societies, cultures, industries, agriculture, educational institutions, and all kinds of other human activities. We can’t isolate what we call “systems” into sets of boxes and arrows. Such boxes and arrows cannot capture the complex sets of relationships and their ever-changing dynamics. Such attempts are throw-backs to mechanistic systems.
When I’ve poke around looking at what schools are doing with “systems thinking,” all I find is pages of rubrics and pages of boxes and arrows. At the same time, all of the content is based on very simplistic approaches to “systems thinking” based on closed circuits that are cut off from other relevant “systems.” Our attempts to unclutter and simplify only serve to “stupidify” the whole approach for our children. They deserve better. I think that we as adults assume children cannot handle the complexity, so we try to simplify everything, even under the guise of a more “rigorous systems thinking approach.” But, children can and do think in more complex ways. We just perpetuate the cycle of dumbing down with boxes and arrows. We really need to move “beyond systems thinking” to get at the dynamics of the interactions and relationships that make up our living world.
As Nora and Gregory Bateson have suggested, maybe the arts are keys to ways to represent systems, rather than the mathematical and engineering approaches of boxes and arrows. Maybe we need children to translate their understandings of systems in to plays, poetry, paintings, dance, music, video, photography, sculpture, and so forth. Maybe there are other ways of communicating that can capture the dynamics and uncertainties of the ways living things interact. And, maybe children are the ones who can devise just such ways of communicating.
* Nora Bateson discusses this problem with systems thinking and the representation of systems thinking in two recent papers:
Bateson, N. (submitted). Symmathesy: Proposing a new word that refers to living systems.
Bateson, N. (2015, August). Living systems are learning systems. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Berlin.
Every time I listen to radio news, read news stories, communicate with people, I am saddened by the intensity of linear (or as Gregory Bateson referred to it, “lineal”) thinking. When I can discuss issues and try to present more complex, non-linear or recursive ways of thinking about problems, I almost always encounter a knee-jerk resistance. I don’t even think most people realize they are doing it. But, it’s as if I’m talking some foreign language that doesn’t even register.
We are living in times during which we are facing huge problems that threaten the future of humanity. We need to think about the issues facing us from multiple perspectives. We can’t just see some problem and think that there is a simple causal factor. The problems are not that simple. They don’t work like mechanical systems. There are complex webs of interactions that contribute to multiple causes and effects. To address these issues in ways that may help create a reasonable future for humanity, we have to be open to all perspectives and we have to do our best to wrestle with the complexities.
I know we are capable of thinking in this way. We have to put aside our own agendas (greed, selfishness, self-absorption, or just nose-to-the-grindstone) and engage in conversations that expose the messiness and complexity of the issues we’re facing. We need to reconnect with one another, with our ecological context, and our biological and social contexts. It’s our only hope…
This morning, during my almost daily visit to the local dog park, I was chatting with a homeless guy and his friend, a previously by-choice-homeless guy, who is a house painter, poet, and actor. We usually get into to some fairly deep philosophical discussions as our dogs play or ignore one another. And, today was no different. When I walked into the dog park, I was greeted with, “Hi, Jeff. How are you doing? I need some answers.” My immediate response was that I had no answers, but tons of questions. Well, that was the beginning of a discussion about questions and answers. Our discussion prompted a day of pondering the ideas of questions and answers….
What would our world be like if we valued questions more than answers?
In many circles, people say that questions are important. They are the basis of the social and natural sciences. However, we only value questions in terms of finding the answers. We want answers… one “right” answer for each question. We want a neatly packaged world with answers to all of our questions. Having questions with no answers can be frightening. What happens when we die? Why do we die? Why are we born? What is life? How did everything begin? How can we feel happy? How can we avoid getting sick? These are some of the more pressing questions, but the list of questions is endless. The sciences, philosophy, and most religions have tried to address many of these questions. Those questions that cannot be answered by science are avoided or dismissed and relegated to philosophers, poets, or religions. But, in all cases, we want to construct answers that present a solidified, predictable, and comfortable view of our lives and our worlds. Unfortunately, “things” beyond simple physical systems (interactions of billiard balls without the element of human psychology, planetary motions, etc.) are not solid, predictable, or particularly comfortable.
Valuing questions within a sense of continuous inquisitiveness and uncertainty is more consistent with the nature of our living world. So, what would it be like if all of us valued such a view, where questions and uncertainty were central to the way we lived and interacted?
Would we become less controlled by our basic fears of uncertainty and death?
Would we thrive on curiosity?
Would we become more open to varying experiences, cultures, and individuals?
Would we appreciate diversity and difference?
Would we appreciate the uncertainty and spontaneity of the biological and social worlds in which we live?
Would we be more respectful of our fellow living organisms?
Would we develop our intellectual and emotional abilities unfettered by our desires to solidify what can’t be solidified?
Would our lives be energized by uncertainty and all of the possibilities that such uncertainty provides?
Would our lives become works of art and poetry?
Would science become a way of understanding the uncertainty and lack of predictability of multiple interacting systems?
What are some questions that can continue to stimulate our continued intrigue with our lives, our relationships, our worlds?
I don’t want to diminish the critical importance of meditation experiences, insights, and realizations. From a Buddhist point of view (but any tradition with a contemplative practice), meditation is absolutely necessary, if we are to have any hope of taking any kind of compassionate or skillful action. However, I worry that we all can get caught up in our own (meditative and other) experiences and that we only practice compassion on the cushion. I’m quite guilty of that myself.
For the first time in the history of humanity, we face, at least during the lifetimes of our children and most certainly our grandchildren, massive global environmental, social, and population collapse. When hundreds of millions of people are dying monthly and suffering is beyond comprehension, I feel like I need to be reminded continuously of the immensity of suffering now, so that maybe I can take actions that may contribute to the survival of humanity in the future.
I started and help run a small meditation group here, but in my mind this is not enough. I have to help with the larger issues in whatever ways I can, at multiple levels of scale. If I don’t get my hands dirty helping in as many as possible small ways to create possibilities for human survival (including my own kids), I don’t really see the point in just staying in my small comfortably uncomfortable world. How can I die (hopefully sometime in the relatively distant future) knowing I haven’t tried to help with the big problems? What’s the point of practicing the Dharma, when no one will be alive to practice in the future?
Maybe I’m wrong, but constantly taking in the aggression and suffering of others helps keep me “honest.” There seems to be no shortage of aggression and suffering in what was once a friendly, laid-back college/tourist town (Flagstaff, AZ) in the mountains, not to mention the exponential increases globally. Part of this very basic level of suffering is being perpetuated by things we can change in fundamental ways. As Trungpa Rinpoche, suggested, one can’t practice the Dharma (or try to live with any joyfulness) if one is starving or struggling for survival. And, it’s at this level of fundamental survival that is going to increase and spread. We’re already peak everything (food, fertile soil, water, oil, you-name-it). How can I ignore this? And, how can I help? Maybe I’ve been inspired by the early years of Greenpeace. One book accompanied all of their early missions…Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. And, all of their missions had protection cords and blessing from His Holiness the Karmapa. They pursued actions, but constantly tried to keep ego in check.
Now in my old age, I feel like I’ve blown many opportunities to help. Now, I’m trying to do what I can. But, it’s a tight-rope, where balance can be lost. It’s a path riddled, as Gregory Bateson would have said, with double binds (of seemingly no-win situations, Catch-22’s, etc.). But, I see no alternative to just jumping in. I’m too old to wait.
This story demonstrates problems with the way we think and act. Our thinking is linear — looking for simple causal relationships, while taking impulsive actions without considering complex interrelationships. We continue to think that we can manipulate and control our environments, only to find that we can’t. Then, we try to implement yet another way to control what has gone out of control. What we really need to do is minimize efforts to control our environments and to look at problems as situated in multiple interacting systems (cultural, social, biological, ecological, chemical, and so forth).
Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World by Rex Weyler (2004, Rodale Press, 612 pp)
I just finished reading Rex Weyler’s Greenpeace…, which I purchased shortly after meeting Rex at a conference in July. His talk, which is posted on YouTube and on the Ecomind site, haunted me. Although I knew much of what he talked about, the actual confrontation with his data rattled my tendency for complacency.
Greenpeace CoverHis book, Greenpeace…, has had a similar effect and provides a thorough background to his more recent thinking and actions.
In the book, he delves into the political background starting in the late 1930’s, and also addresses the beginning of environmental/ecological awareness in the 1950. The whole book reads like an historical novel with captivating dialogue, intrigue, and humor. He brings to light some of the insidious patterns of power, control, and greed that have steadily led to the increased destruction of our local and global environments, including the increased extinction of many species of life.
Greenpeace started with protests of extensive nuclear tests. Their first trip on Greenpeace I, a contracted boat with its captain, John Cormack, headed to Amchitka Island in the Aleutians, where the United States was testing nuclear bombs deep under the surface of the Earth. Of course, the tests occurred along a very active tectonic plate boundary and literally exploded the heads off of wildlife on and around the island. Although they didn’t manage to stop the test they were focused on, their fundamental strategy of using the media to put pressure on governments and corporations was successful eventually, but only after many attempts and a ramming and beatings by the French navy. But, they maintained their core values of not doing harm to anyone and of not damaging property.
As they moved on to trying to stop the slaughtering of whales, they encountered the same resistance, but managed to put incredible pressure on countries to stop whaling. Interspersed with the open ocean adventures, are stories of Dr. Paul Spong’s and other scientists’ investigations of whales and their extensive intelligence and sensitivity. When Spong first started investigating whales he was dangling his feet in the water in the Vancouver Aquarium’s Orca tank. When the Orca swam up and brushed his foot with her teeth, Spong reacted reflexively by pulling his legs out of the water. After a number of times doing this, he forced himself not to react. When the Orca saw that he didn’t react, she swam out into middle of the tank and started making lots of sounds. It was at this point that Dr. Spong realized he had just been trained by the Orca and the roles had been reversed.
Rex Weyler also introduces a great deal of fundamental ecological concepts, to which we all should pay very close attention. The nature of the carbon cycle, energy, and toxicity, as well as all of the complex interactions among life forms (including humans) and the environment should be fundamental to the way we view our life and actions on Earth.
As Greenpeace expanded to protecting seals from being skinned alive, while decimating their populations (as with the whales), to dealing many other environmental and socio-political issues, the internal politics of Greenpeace became another potentially damaging dimension to their very future. However, the wisdom of a few key players helped Greenpeace to thrive as an international organization.
What I find troubling now is that it is very difficult to use the media to bring issues to light. We do have the capability to use the Internet for disseminating information, but the broad impact of the media is no longer a possibility. While the major TV networks and newspapers covered the actions of Greenpeace in the 1970’s, these same networks and newspapers are now owned by the corporations that are behind many of the current, destructive practices. From the ignorance, irresponsible, and dangerous practices of FOX news to the poor journalism of most of NPR, we’re placed in a fog of ignorance.
For those of us who lived during the beginning decade of Greenpeace in the 1970’s, the book introduces many familiar key figures on both sides of the issues. Some of the key players included then president Nixon and Jerry Brown (past and present governor of California), as well as Allen Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Chögyam Trungpa, and the 16th Karmapa, who provided support and wisdom. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and the I Ching also served as guides for their actions.
Reading Greenpeace…. was a joy (even when the stories were at their most disturbing). I found it hard to put down, even though each chapter is broken down into one to three page sections making it easy to read in small bits. I highly recommend this book as both an engaging read and an important source of information about our past and current situations. For me, the book has been a call to action, as well. We shouldn’t sit back, while the destruction of our global environment threatens the survival of the human species.
Controlled burns have always bothered me conceptually, but the recent burns that have blanketed the city have been affecting my immediate health (and I’m in reasonably good health otherwise). So, I started poking around on the internet about the health effects of wood smoke. Of course, what you find immediately is not a discussion of the actual effects, but discussions of what you should do, like don’t breathe the smoke, stay indoors, etc. These sites are government or medical industry sites. The government, of course, is responsible for the controlled burns, so they don’t really want people to know too much. The medical industry (I’m using “industry” rather than “profession’) is closely connected to the government, so they don’t want to “burn” any bridges either. What you do find if you dig a little deeper, is that we really don’t know the full extent of the effects of smoke. However, the research does suggest that the smoke particles are a health risk, such as contributing to lung cancer and other cardiopulmonary diseases. In addition, the smoke contains carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and a number of toxic chemicals. We know that both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide (in large amounts) are dangerous and can lead to death. The troubling part that no one talks about is the toxic substances in the smoke. We don’t know what effects will be, but they may not show up for years. Controlled Burn in Flagstaff
These issues should be of extreme personal concern for everyone. However, from a larger view, the burning of forest wood is environmentally unsound at this point in time where we’re already putting way too much carbon into the atmosphere. The issue here is that our biosphere stores carbon in several places, like deep inside the Earth (what we call fossil fuels), in the atmosphere, in living things, etc. Each of the storage sites have different time scales for the storage of carbon. The deep Earth storage sites are for very long-term periods of time, which we’ve managed to change very quickly to short-term stores. These deep stores are released naturally into the atmosphere naturally during various volcanic or tectonic activities. On the other hand, soil and atmospheric stores are shorter term. However, the natural process of decay from dead trees is a relatively slow process that adds carbon to soils for use in various life processes with some carbon released slowly into the atmosphere. When we burn these trees, we skip most of the soil storage and put most of the carbon (along with toxic substances) into the atmosphere very quickly. As we all know, the atmospheric carbon content is much higher than it should be, and is leading to global warming and all of its effects.
Of course, forest fires in the southwest have been a part of the natural functioning of the ecosystems. However, that was before humankind started saturating the atmosphere with carbon. We screwed up that process and now we’re stuck with trying to prevent fires. What we need to think about are alternatives to controlled burns. We could use the dead wood for mulch, compost, and various other products, especially for local use so that carbon emissions can be minimized.
We need to stop controlled burns for our own and our children’s health and for the health of our home planet.
