Tag: relationships

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The Comfort and Discomfort of Scripts

Over the past few years, my friends and colleagues in the International Bateson Institute and particularly Nora Bateson have been talking about the nature and dynamics of scripts. In the cognitive psychology literature, “scripts” are discussed as ways in which we reduce cognitive load in our everyday lives. Some examples include:

  • The first time our parents take us into a bank and teach us to set up our own account, we have to learn every step of the process. As we go through the process of dealing with bank transactions, we no longer have to think through every step. We’ve learned the script or steps and ways of talking that allow us to complete transactions without having to devote much thinking about the process.
  • The same sort of scripts are learned as we go to grocery stores with our parents. We pick up on how to complete the shopping process so that little thought is needed other than remembering what we need to buy. 
  • When we first learn how to use a computer or a smart phone, we need to go through step-by-step learning processes. As we gain comfort and knowledge with the processes, we no longer need to think about the basics of using a computer or phone. 

If you have travelled to a very different culture, where the scripts may vary, sometimes in subtle and sometimes in not so subtle ways, we may confront the cultural variation of our own scripts. When I was visiting Malaysia, I bought a greeting card for a colleague. However, after purchasing the card, I realized it had the wrong message on the inside. When I tried to exchange the card, the store refused. My whole script short circuited. Although a really minor issue, my script destruction amplified the whole situation. The “you bought it, you keep it” no-return-script never occurred to me. My reaction to a script-short-circuit was actually quite embarrassing.

Squirrel breaking script and swimming across lake.

However, scripts are much more than these procedural sorts of automated behaviors. Scripts can be tightly intertwined with our various identities. They can manifest in a mother or father identity, in a student identity, in a teacher identity, in any professional identity, in a religious identity, in a victim identity, in a bully identity, and so forth. Depending on the context we are in, these identity scripts can dominate how we talk, how we walk, how we act, and how we relate. 

I’ve certainly relied on these scripts throughout my life, but I’ve never been particularly comfortable with them. I don’t know why I’ve been uncomfortable. Scripts usually provide a certain degree of comfort. They can provide a sense of safety, where we don’t have to expose our vulnerabilities, and we can function in our familiar contexts without much effort. 

As a teacher at all levels (grades 2 through 12 and university), I tried not to “be” in the typical teacher role of authority figure and controller. It just did not feel honest. When I did fall into those teacher scripts, it never worked out that well, and were probably some of the most embarrassing moments for me. Although students and other teachers may not have perceived these as embarrassing moments, they tended to be excruciating for me. The same sort of issues occurred as an academic, when I went to conferences and presented my research. At professional conferences, with 20,000 people acting out their scripts, the few of us who resisted the scripts did not particularly “fit in.”

I often found it most comfortable to sit somewhere in these monster hotels that were hosting the conferences, while drinking coffee and watching “the suits” (I never wore a suit) with their noses scraping the ceilings as they walked by. While sitting in these hotels, a few people would sit nearby and start up conversations, many of which were script-less and quite interesting, even when talking about our research. It was just a situation of people relating as real people. And, with the regularity suggested by probability, a small number of my script-less friends would walk by and join me. These moments of sitting on the side-lines were probably the most valuable and interesting parts of the conferences. Sitting in sessions where people just talked at the audience, did their dog and pony show, and took up more than their allotted time to give their talks were painfully dull and uninspiring. 

Old car beaten up by the “scripts” of the ecosystem.

In the times of pandemic, I, like so many others, have been spending a lot of time on Zoom. Most of these Zoom meetings have been surprisingly and wonderfully inspiring and script-less. We talk with one another about substantive topics, relax, drink coffee or some other beverage, and just be ourselves. There is no strutting, no avoiding our vulnerabilities. We just relate to one another. Then, I was invited by someone in one of those meetings to another Zoom meeting with a different group of people. I joined in and started talking in my usual unscripted fashion, and quickly realized I was the only one not scripting. It was a shock to my system. It was the reverse of acting out one script in a context where that script didn’t work. Just like in Malaysia, I was flabbergasted by the mismatch of scripting. In this new meeting, I found myself in a group of people scripting and expecting scripts, while I just tried to avoid scripting. It was quite awkward and the contrast just about knocked me off my chair, which would have been a great marker of that contrast during the meeting. 

As I continue to play around with this dynamic of non-scripting and scripting, I’ve been thinking about how interesting it would be for others to explore this as well. Maybe we can have some unscripted conversations here on this blog. 

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Mullings on the Pathological

The notion of “pathology” has been arising frequently in my conversations and correspondences. In fact, this past year has been an extraordinary opportunity to confront such a notion. We should start with what I mean by pathology or pathological? The dictionary definitions are rather narrow and shallow in terms of meaningfulness. However, when I discuss “pathology” or “pathological,” I am referring to a particular type of learning that has gone askew to the point of harming oneself, harming others, or harming the contexts in which one lives. Pathology can extend across scales from the minute to the global. A virus or bacteria may or may not be pathological in relationship to its context. There is one virus, Herpesvirus saimiri, that lives in a particular species of monkey. Unless something unusual occurs, the host monkeys suffer no ill effects. But, if another species of monkey tries to take over their territory, the H. saimiri virus infects and kills the invading monkeys (Buhner, 2014, see p. 108). Pathology seems to lie in the relationships and context. In such cases, the individual entity — the virus in this case — isn’t pathological, but when the context and relationships change, the pathology occurs within this dynamic. Another example is the Escherichia coli or E.coli bacteria. E. coli lives and thrives in our intestinal tract. In this particular location or context, this bacteria is helpful to our health and well-being. However, if this bacteria is ingested and ends up in our stomach, we get sick. When the contexts and relationships change, some complex sets processes are thrown off track and both the bacteria and the host can suffer a loss of life. So, for me, pathology and pathological refer to some situation (relationship, contexts, and processes) that cause harm or are destructive to an individual, a relationship, or any context that is typically autopoietic (i.e., self-sustaining, self-maintaining, self-repairing, self-transcending, and so forth), which is any living thing or any social or biological system.

And, to clarify the use of “pathology,” we all have our own pathologies. There may only be a few exceptional individuals who don’t have any pathologies. But, on the other hand, not all pathologies are equal. Some are more harmful than others. There are continuums (or “continua,” if you like) of fuzzily bounded pathologies within individuals and larger systems. But, many of these pathologies may only interfere with our lives occasionally or only at more subtle levels. Someone may have a chronic condition, such as a chronic viral infection, that may interfere with one’s activities and functioning one week, but then during another week, that person may function fairly normally. Or, one’s particular habitual patterns of obsessing about one’s weight or appearance or how they interact, may be problematic from time to time, but, in general, may not interfere with one’s functioning at work in at home. But, let’s take “anger” as a pathology. Getting angry occasionally may hurt someone else and one’s self at that moment. But, the anger may fade quickly and one’s relationships can be repaired. However, if that anger begins to dominate one’s relationship to the world, that anger festers and grow. It insidiously starts to infiltrate all aspects of life and can affect one’s health and all of one’s relationships. Such anger can act like a poison to everything it encounters, including one’s own psychological—physical health and well-being. Such poisonous emotions can affect social systems of various scales. As contexts contexts encounter one another, the “learning” of anger can spread.

There are people of note over the past year and right now who are propagating hate, fear, and anger. Such propagation of negative emotions is a pathological process of learning. It can spread from one individual to another and one context to another. And, such pathologies are dysfunctions in the relationships and contexts, and are ultimately destructive to those contexts and to other contexts that may serve as targets for hatred and as sources of fear.

But, suggesting that such situations are “just” sicknesses as a way of excusing the condition is not at all the issue here in this discussion of pathology. But, people do think or say, “oh, it was the way I was raised” or “ that just who I am.” Such statements are cop-outs. We do have opportunities to take control of our own lives and the way we relate to others. To blame others or to fall into familiar patterns of fear and hatred, is just like an addiction to alcohol or some other substance. We can break these feedback loops that perpetuate harmful or pathological ways of functioning and relating. We can stop destroying our environments and our social contexts.

—-
References

Buhner, S. H. (2014). Plant intelligence and the imaginal realm: Into the dreaming of Earth. Rochester, VT: Bear & Company.

SEE also: Nora Bateson’s (2015) “Symmathesy – A Word in Progress: Proposing a New Word that Refers to Living Systems” (http://internationalbatesoninstitute.wikidot.com/pub:nbateson-symmathesy2015) — Provides a new and important perspective on learning.

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When Things Go South — Schismogenesis

Have you ever noticed what happens when our life situations go south or when big global situations turn bad? It seems that much more often than not, we react with aggression, which can range from pushing someone away to outright physical aggression and violence. At least in contemporary Western societies, the only other ways of reacting to bad situations include (a) withdrawing or taking submissive position or (b) trying to seduce the other entity into some sort of relationship.

Buddhists call these reactions the three poisonous emotions or kleshas. The first is aggression, which can range from pushing something away to attacking it. The second is ignorance or avoidance, where one might withdraw or take a submissive position in order to avoid conflict. The third is passion, where one tries to seduce the other and take ownership. None of these emotional reactions or strategies is particularly helpful. They all result in further conflicts and confusion.

From the perspective of Gregory Bateson, there also are three basic strategies or types of relationships. These types of relationships don’t align with the Buddhist 3 poisons, but one can see how the three poisons come into play within these relationships. Gregory called the first of these types of relationship “symmetrical.” Such symmetrical relationships are characterized by the parties being at odds with one another. Such a relationship can manifest as two people or two groups vying for control. Both individuals or groups are similar in nature. The second type of relationship he called “complementary.” In these relationships, the individuals or entities take on the characteristics of opposites. In some cases these relationships consist of a dominant individual and a submissive individual. Both of these types of relationships tend to degenerate into schismogenesis or the pulling apart and disintegration of the relationships. The warfare of the symmetrical and the resentment of the complementary do not help bring relationships together. The only type of relationship that holds the potential to not lead into schismogenesis is reciprocal or a relationship based on negotiation and some sense of mutuality. However, most relationships, whether at the scale of two individuals or even one individual contending with some other thing (e.g., an alcoholic and alcohol) or at the scale of nations, relationships move from symmetrical to complementary to reciprocal. But, the ones that tend to default at reciprocal are those that hold the most potential for survival.

But, let’s go back to how our default patterns of reaction, especially in Western societies, seem to be those that are aggressive or retaliatory. Someone calls us a name and we are ready to punch them. Someone drives to slowly and we start cursing at them. We think some problem is the fault of a particular group (illegal immigrants, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, the LGBTQ community, African Americans, Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, Christians, or whomever). We react with aggression. At the very least, we may spread the anger or hatred and poison those around us. The reaction to 9/11 was aggression. The reaction to anything we don’t like is one of aggression. Abortion doctors are killed. A murderer is executed. A person who looks different from us is pushed away, attacked, or killed. We do this every single day. The police do it. Everyday citizens do it. Corporations do it.

And, as our world begins to collapse under the weight of a burgeoning population, rising sea levels, scarcity of water, scarcity of food, and scarcity of almost all resources, people will act out through aggression. But, aggression is exactly what is NOT needed. We don’t need to disintegrate into the visions extreme schismogenesis as in Mad Max, Blade Runner, or Total Recall. What we need to do more than anything is to come together. And, the only way to do that is with reciprocity along with heavy doses of empathy, compassion, and a willingness to understand others. Of course, we also need to change our ways of thinking so that we can in fact move toward solutions to a global meltdown, which isn’t a problem of any one nation or group of people, but is a problem for all of humanity.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I’ll end with an excerpt from a poem (“It’s a Mistake to Think You’re Special”) by John Giorno (from Subduing Demons in America, 2008, Berkeley, CA: SoftSkull Press, pp. 341—342) – read this with rhythm and a lot of energy:

Butterflies
sucking
on the carcass
of a dead bird,
and your body
is being pulled down
backwards
into the world
below,
as a king.

I feel most
at home
among the defiled
I feel most at
home among
the defiled
I feel most at home among
the defiled,
in the center
of a flower
under a deep
blue
sky.

It’s a mistake
to think
you’re special.

(1984)

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Responsibility and Relationships: From You and Me to Society

Over the past eight months or so, my wife and I have been renting a house after moving from a different city. Several weeks ago we found a house to buy. We approached our landlord, who lives out of state, and proposed that if he can let us out of our lease we could help him find a new tenant and fix up the place to move-in ready condition before the new tenant moves in. To us, this seemed like a perfectly normal proposition and apparently so did our landlord.

So, for the past two weeks we have been advertising the house, letting people view the house, and handing out applications and landlord contact information. But, what has been surprising about this whole process is that the people who call and come to see the house cannot figure out why we are doing this. They can’t make sense out of why we would be advertising the house, why we would be showing the house, and why we would be discussing the terms of the lease. When they ask “why?” I want to just say, because we’re responsible adults. But, I just give them a rather lengthy rationale instead.

I don’t think people have any models for how to develop straightforward relationships with people and how to assume responsibility for situations. The relationships they encounter with housing are all adversarial and based on distrust. Gregory Bateson’s complementary (dominant–submissive) and symmetrical (competitive or adversarial) types of relationships seem to characterize the vast majority of relationships encountered in the business of everyday life. As for “responsibility,” schools don’t really address it, even though they talk about teaching it all of the time. Their parents have been caught up in the same messy relationships and have lacked any experience in responsibility. And, most workplaces are based on the same dysfunctional sorts of relationships and lack of trust.

We live in a society where the relationships are out of whack. In such contexts, a number of the social characteristics we all discuss and say that we value are just not supported. These social characteristics include responsibility, ethics, empathy, moral reasoning/judgment, and so forth. We’ve created a social context where these sorts of positive personal and social characteristics are not supported, encouraged, or developed. There are few positive models for others to emulate. The vast majority of relationships are problematic at best. What we see in the media are dysfunctional relationships. The vast majority of our politicians do not model functional (reciprocal, negotiable) relationships or any of the positive social characteristics. I’d like to say that looking at the Republican debates is clear evidence of dysfunctionality, but the same holds true for almost all politicians. It’s just that the Republicans seem have taken the bar to a whole new low point. However, the point is that the predominant model of behavior as represented in film, TV, news, and everyday encounters is one that does not value reciprocal relationships and the values and behaviors that are intertwined in such relationships. Reciprocal relationships (Bateson’s third type) are those that are based on some sense of trust, and where terms and issues are negotiated rather than becoming the source of conflict and resentment. This sort of relationship should be what we strive to achieve with our partners, our friends, our families, and our adversaries. What would Congress look like if reciprocity was the basis for interactions. Instead of blockages and other childish games, we may see adults sitting down together in serious conversation. Disagreements would be a source of negotiation, change, and growth. But, instead we are left with childish, self-centered antics that only serve to prevent growth and destabilize the whole of society.

As The Turtles said, “You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.” But, here we are and not quite in the way The Turtles saw it.

We can step back from this precipice and change our ways of thinking and acting, but that will take an overwhelming desire from a vast majority of people to just say “NO MORE” to this nonsense.

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Epistemology, Epistemological Shock, and Schooling: Part 1

I want to elaborate on a discussion that followed a re-posting of call for university students to stop whining and suck it up when “scary new ideas that challenge your beliefs…” (supposedly by Larry Winget) are presented. In my re-posting, I said:

Mary Catherine Bateson called this experiencing epistemological shock. I have felt that as a teacher (even when I was a grade school teacher) I was obligated to provide opportunities for students to experience epistemological shock. For what other reason was I in the classroom? Reading, writing, and all the rest were important, but the most important reason was to provide opportunities for children or adult students to grow, to learn how to think more deeply, to re-evaluate what they thought they knew. Everything else was secondary. Some of my own and biggest epistemological shocks occurred in junior high and high school. And, I don’t even think the teachers knew what they had done to me, but the impacts were huge. I’ve tried tracking them down to thank them, but by the time I found them, they had already died. They had given me a great gift. I hope they knew.

The more I think about it, the more this idea of epistemological shock seems to be of critical importance to teaching. We formulate epistemologies or explanatory ideas for just about everything about our world: cultures, relationships, communities, natural phenomena, living things, technology, and so forth. We are epistemological beings, but then most living things are probably epistemological beings. Dogs, cats, horses, rats, and birds certainly have epistemologies. They have understandings of their social and physical worlds and their relationships. They have expectations of their relationships. My dog expects to go to the dog park or go for walks at certain times during the day. She knows where the rabbits hang out. And, she knows where each PetSmart store keeps their Guinea pigs. My cats expect to be given attention, especially if we are sitting on the toilet or sitting at specific locations. The rats I’ve had acted much like dogs and had expectations for petting, cuddling, and receiving treats. I haven’t had horses, but from what I’ve heard they have complicated expectations and thought processes. I suspect epistemologizing (to make it a verb) is a common characteristic of living systems. Bacteria, plants, fungi, protists, and the full range of animals most likely have epistemologies that provide frames for understanding or making sense of the world.

That’s what we do… we create epistemologies to help us make sense of the world. But, such epistemologies do not guarantee any sense of accuracy or truth. They just provide a frame of reference that may seem to work. A racist may have an extensive epistemological framework that justifies his or her views of the world. Every input seems to make sense in terms of this framework. If it doesn’t make sense, then it is dismissed as nonsense, as a lie, or as some other blasphemy. At the other extreme, we may create what seems to be a fairly equitable and accurate epistemology. But, whatever epistemologies we create, they certainly are not absolute truths. They are subject to change, no matter how much we’d like to solidify them and believe that they are absolute truths. Every time there is a scientific revolution at whatever scale, there is an epistemological shock running through a particular scientific community. The scientists in that community may have thought they had pretty solid evidence for a specific theoretical framework, then all of a sudden it’s turned upside down. People get defensive, angry, and lash out. But, the old epistemological framework no longer works.

As teachers, at whatever level (K-graduate school), we are faced with the responsibility of confronting a vast array of personal and “official” epistemologies. These epistemologies may have to do with the subject matter we are teaching or they may have to do with students’ assumptions about the nature of the professional community or the nature of our professional work or the nature of one’s relationship to oneself as a learner or inquirer or whatever. If we take our work as educators seriously, we examine where our students are and teach to their particular needs or situations. We may feel obligated to cover certain material (depending upon our field and the particular course), but somewhere along the continuum of [student situation—-to—-subject matter] we are going to address epistemologies of students and epistemologies of the field.

However, the way the institution of education is moving, grade school is more concerned with subject matter coverage than with any concern for epistemology, whether personal or official. The approach is to memorize content to pass a test. The content doesn’t have to make sense, which would be an epistemological concern. At the university level, we’re not that far away from the grade school version. We don’t have the high stakes tests, but the underlying drive for profit is still there. Online learning, large classes, and multiple section classes that follow the exact same template are all aligned with the same approach to minimizing a concern for epistemology, while maximizing superficial coverage of content.

There were times when I was teaching multiple sections of the same course when I felt like I needed to keep all sections at the same point along some arbitrary continuum of content and to cover the exact same material. But, every time I tried, I found it impossible. Each group of students took the material in class in different directions. They had different questions, different ideas, and different interests. Each section became its own distinctive epistemological context. And, this epistemological context is what we need to remember when teaching. Each individual makes sense of the material in her or his own way by drawing on individual experiences, previous epistemologies, and all kinds of idiosyncratic contexts of meaning. Put a bunch of people together in a room and you have a social context of epistemologizing that can’t be replicated.

To view teaching as an epistemological endeavor, you need to see classrooms as social contexts where students are trying to make sense of whatever it is they are studying. As an epistemologizing mentor, you as the teacher need to encourage exploration, inquiry, questioning, critiquing, challenging, and examining things from multiple perspectives. You need to encourage your students to be scientists, poets, artists, writers… and not just get stuck in one perspective. We should be encouraging epistemological flexibility.

Epistemological shock occurs when a solidified structure is shaken by a new insight that undermines the solidified epistemology. If we can help students create flexible epistemologies based on the idea of changeability, maybe the shocks will not occur, but will be part of the expected changeability.

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Learning Content is the Trivial Part of Learning

We really have it all backwards. We are completely focused on having kids and adults learn copious amounts of content as the supreme goal of education. But, such a goal is really rather trivial within the entire scope of learning. This is blasphemy in the politico-corporate controlled institutions of education, testing, and publishing, but I do believe we’ve completely gone astray. We’ve lost sight of the depth and extent of learning. We’ve lost sight of children (and adults) and all of their abilities, capabilities, characteristics, and needs. We no longer value curiosity, creativity, inquiry, play, time to ponder and process, time to make mistakes and try again, time to explore, time to talk and argue, time to negotiate.

I’m not suggesting that content knowledge is useless or irrelevant, but it is superficial knowledge compared to other kinds of learning. And, what we have done is create a world of superficiality, while thinking it’s the most sophisticated knowledge ever. It’s an extraordinary illusion. Or, rather it is an extraordinarily confused view of knowledge and what is worth knowing. A mistake that is strikingly apparent in the move to online courses and online degrees, which really amount to no more than a grand scam.

And, let me say here that while this superficial knowledge may have some importance and interest, when it stands as alone as the total package of knowledge, it is more or less meaningless, disconnected, and irrelevant. The way we package knowledge into textbooks and then test the supposed acquisition of this knowledge is just further testament to the decontextualized and disconnected approach we have developed to our relationship to knowing and knowledge. We think that all of these bits of information mean something, like money in the bank, but unlike money in the bank they are worthless without context, meaning, and relationship. On the other hand, these bits of information are money in the bank for testing companies, publishers, and politicians; and very big money at that.

But, what is misunderstood and misrepresented about learning is the big issue. Learning is dynamic and continual. We are always learning … in all situations, whether we like it or not. Learning is not an accumulation of static information in neatly packaged structures. Learning about any kind of relational information is always changing and morphing as new connections are made and lost. Learning doesn’t just happen in the brain, but is distributed throughout our bodies. And, in fact, there seems to be ample evidence that social learning is distributed among people. Look at a highly coordinated sports team where the thinking and immediacy of learning is taking place within the team and no one individual. In fact, learning seems to be distributed among individuals in coordinated contexts much more often than we ever imagined. Our bodies are comprised of more microbes than human cells. And, on top of that, we have millions of other inhabitants living in most parts of our bodies. This vast ecosystem is not just a bunch of individuals disconnected from one another, but is a community of different species living in an interdependent, coordinated way. And, this whole ecosystem has to learn together in order to survive. We are just beginning to understand how complex these interactions are, but we can get a sense that our learning is not just what some book says, but is about how we respond to, adjust to, react to, and make sense of all kinds of information with which we are confronted all the time. Most of the time, we don’t even know we’re learning or where the learning is taking place, but it is happening.

So, we have this distributed learning happening all of the time as we encounter new situations and new contexts. We walk on a new hiking trail, swim in the ocean, ski, ice skate, go to a new country or any new place, we are renegotiating the ways we do things, re-assessing our assumptions, reworking our relationships and ways of relating. These new renegotiations are new learning.

But, let’s return to what I’ve referred to as superficial textbook learning. What this textbook learning tries to address is the accumulated depth and expanse of learning that has occurred by organisms, ecosystems, and living systems of all kinds. Authors and publishers try to condense this knowledge down to discrete bits of disconnected, decontextualized, static informational strings. The vast depth and extent of interrelationships are never explored and discussed. The dynamic, changing, and uncertain nature of our knowledge is never recognized. The knowledge claims are all very clinical, dry, lifeless. We are not presented with the complexity of interacting systems that affect one another in countless ways, and that within these systems are even more relationships affecting aspects of all of the players in the systems.

In a world where the issues are increasingly intense and increasingly important to our continued survival and well-being, we and especially our children need to be learning in ways that enable us to make sense of what is happening. We need to be able to dissect out the nonsense from the sensible. We need to see the complexities and interrelationships. We have to see the faulty assumptions that we and others are making and then take appropriate actions. We can’t do this by learning lots of disconnected, superficial information. We must be learning at deeper levels of relationship and context.

For a great treatment of a different way of viewing learning, read Nora Bateson’s Symmathesy: A Word in Progress.

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Consciousness of Trees and Our Need to Move Beyond Simple Systems Thinking

Trees and shall we say plants have much more going on than we’ve assumed. We need to pay attention.

This powerful short video points to how our thinking needs to move beyond mechanistic thinking and even beyond simple systems thinking to a much more complex way of thinking about interrelationships.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iSGPNm3bFmQ

Even though the film depicts some of the relationships with diagrams, these relationships are only a tiny picture of the complexity. There are so many things going on with their roots acting as neural networks with a complete set of neurotransmitters, bacteria and other living things that assist with many communal functions, their mere presence as mini-ecosystems for millions of other creatures, their abilities to affect local and global climate, and the list goes on.

We cannot capture the complexity in diagrams without getting lost in the webs of interconnections, which move and morph anyway. Systems thinking suggests a certain stasis, but in reality the world works in ways that are dynamic and ever-changing in order to meet the ever-changing conditions.

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Beyond Systems 2: Borderless Cognition

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.”

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More Shootings and We Still Haven’t Learned

Yet another school shooting today, and this time young children, as well as adults.

Of course, we still think everyone should have guns, even though the 2nd Amendment was not intended to allow guns in everyone’s homes, but rather for state organized militia. We should remember that those were very different times.

But, the issue of gun control is somewhat secondary to what has been a recurring pattern in our schools. Fundamentally, our whole notion of dealing with children in and out of schools is really heartless, much in the same way Boehner and his colleagues want to treat our elder citizens. Kids and the elderly are just numbers and pawns in a game of money and politics.

If we really want to help children, we don’t need to “raise standards,” use more high stakes tests, implement “zero tolerance” (just another form of heartlessness), or set up a “Common Core” curriculum. None of these efforts really have anything to do with the welfare of children. If we really cared about our children, we would help teachers formulate approaches to develop relationships. Children need to learn how to appreciate one another, to value differences, to develop empathy, and negotiate solutions to particular problems. When I was in the classroom, the personal and social problems that arose always trumped whatever agenda I had for the day or the week. We’d drop everything and work on ways to communicate and appreciate one another. It’s all about developing deeply meaningful and empathic communities in schools. When kids feel appreciated, they don’t act out with violence. But, of course, adults don’t do a very good job of modeling relationships and community. Look at our congress and the way they treat each other and the way they propagate fear and hatred of other cultures.

What the people who develop educational policy don’t realize is that when children begin to feel good about themselves and each other, they learn more than we could ever imagine. But, maybe that’s the issue. Maybe the policy-makers don’t want our children to feel good about themselves and don’t want them to learn more than some meaningless content.

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The Problem with Hierarchies

We live in a world of hierarchies… that top-down organization with a few powerful people at the top along with progressively larger numbers of individuals at each layer as we move towards the bottom. Our political structures, the military, the organization of businesses and corporations, the organization of schools and universities, and all sorts of other groupings tend to be hierarchical. Even most families tend to be organized as hierarchies. Such organizational schemes are so pervasive that most of us have no clue how to organize groups in any other way.

The problem with hierarchies is that they tend to set up dysfunctional relationships. They are not based on “seeing relationships” or on establishing effective relationships. Of course, some hierarchies may be necessary, such as with the military, where functioning is based on having centralized control. In most cases, this centralized control and power at the top is problematic for some of the following reasons:

  • Many of those who occupy lower layers tend to compete with their “layer-mates” in order to rise to the top. This competition can be ruthless and without concern for the well-being of others.
  • Those at lower layers tend to distrust and/or resent those at higher layers in the hierarchy.
  • Feelings of inadequacy and apathy are fostered.
  • People who occupy the lower layers tend not to have a stake in the organization and do not take the work seriously.
  • An attitude of going-through-the-motions is promoted.
  • The “look busy” technique is standard practice.
  • The top and the bottom are disconnected.

The alternative approach to organization is what I refer to as holarchy. Holarchies are embedded layers, where there is no top or bottom, but rather center and periphery. Control and power are distributed among the layers. Holarchic social structures are based on participation and shared “governance” among all participants. Some examples of such organizational structures include: (a) original tribal organization, where the “chief” or elders are at the center as models of leadership and wisdom, rather than as those in absolute control; (b) the Dalai Lama as model of enlightened leadership and manifestation; and (c) a few businesses where power and leadership are distributed, such as with W. L. Gore. In fact, the ideal of democracy is modeled as a holarchy with involvement and shared governance among all members.

Holarchies are based on establishing relationships and on shared power and control. Participants in holarchies operate through negotiation and consensus. The major question is: how can we move towards holarchic organization and away from hierarchy?