Jul 23, 2024 | Inquiry Channel
Shae: I know that patterns are inherently ways of understanding the world. I would like to think that the simple shapes and metaphors of pattern thinking can offer a common language, a common ground to bridge across difference and diversity. We need a language of concepts and terms to be able to think and talk about difference in a way that is not judgment laden. And also, as a way of considering the possible.Ā
Alexander:Ā Right. Then you get into what Stuart Kauffman talks about as the adjacent possible, which moves us into the liminal domains of taking divergent action to engage with what might be possible, to stretch our experience beyond what we are all used to. If I used my left hand instead of my right hand to pick up something, my reality would split off in a different direct and my possible future would change.Ā Things would be different if we were just able to access the adjacent possible, to stretch into it. Contemporary alternate realities collapse into manifest experience depending on the slightest difference in the choice arrays with which we engage. The probability space associated with these alternative possibilities result in the realities we experience being expressed rather than in other ones.Ā Itās fascinating to think about what small tweak in our thinking, behaving, or expressing would have caused those other realities to manifest rather than the ones we are experiencing.Ā
Shae: An interesting concept, the adjacent possible. It opens up life beyond what we think we are, what we think our lives are, and what it is that is possible for us. It reminds me of a Learning to Learn workshop I attended many years ago, before I went to university as an undergraduate student. I was aware that I had some habits of thinking about my own capabilities. The workshop was based on getting us all to use our bodies differently than we usually did. As you said, using the other hand, moving differently. It was often uncomfortable, but it opened up the space of the possible for new learning. Us humans do tend to think life is stuck in its current groove. And many of us would like to see engagement with the adjacent possibles of change and evolution towards futures of equity and thriving.Ā
Alexander: You know, I think Kauffmanās adjacent possible can go even further. It relates to the idea of many parallel realities that may co-exist simultaneously, that you can imagine as being potentially real realities. And in imagining them, it can create an evolutionary attractor, something that can help us steer from our current groove along the walls of those adjacent possible realities by helping us be more porous and open to them. By imagining into the adjacent possible, we can reach through liminal space into futures that make us more human, more in healthy syntony with life.
I donāt know how much Stuart Kauffman has gone into the idea of temporal adjacent possibles, and what that might mean in terms of informing of our being and becoming. But I think that just as we can be informed by the adjacent possibles of space, we can sense into the adjacent possibles of time.Ā In society, when we talk about how one generation is different the next, we are actually comparing temporally distinct cultures. But we donāt often think of one generation being a temporal expression of the adjacent possible of another generation.
Shae: What we think is possible certainly influences what emerges by influencing our actions and, as you say, by generating complexity attractors. Iāve been thinking about teaching history from generational connectedness, rather than as it is often taught now as a linear progression that people were simply caught up in. And yes, including the different ways of thinking and ways of knowing among various generations may inspire us to consider the evolution of thinking, of knowing, and of the possibilities for humans to evolve into in the future. Considering future humans and other species may open up and augment our sense of what is possible.
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Kauffman, S. (1993). The Origins of Order: Self-organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford University Press.
Jul 16, 2024 | Inquiry Channel
Alexander: Ā I am fascinated by the diverse cognitive frames people have; the frames of different lifeworlds. Thatās what Husserl and later Habermas wrote about, yes? ā as being in different lifeworlds. Not just different culturesā¦ itās much more than a World View, as it is all about the way we experience and live into life. Our social and physical reality, and all the cues that we respond to, that come through our processes of socialization and acculturation and entrainment into society ā these are all part of the experiential domain of our continual becoming ā and of our forgetting of parts of ourselves, as well.Ā
Shae: A complexity of so many dimensions, aspects and elements!
Alexander: Yes, and it is an ongoing complexity of becoming more of who we are and less of who we arenāt!Ā In this process there always seems to be different layers or processes going on.Ā There are so many layers of culture that we are wrapped up inā¦ and they connect us, and they also estrange us.Ā And on top of that, there are things that we canāt understand from somebody elseās culture, that we canāt possibly understand because we have our own biases and myopias, our own lenses through which we view life, and these are just different from the lenses they have.Ā
Shae: Yes, in a deep complexity perspective many things can be affordances or constraints, and as you say, sometimes both at once. Aspects of our worldview, our salient patterning, can hold us firmly and securely, and may also hold us in a limiting way, especially when thinking about others who are very different from us. This is an important topic as there seems to be a backlash against difference at the moment. I know the 2SLGBTIQ+ community in the USA and in other places too are feeling it. I am also aware of an increase in reductive essentialising of gender in the heterosexual world as well, with a so-called masculine mindset that wishes to reduce women to functions of menās needs and desires. Currently there seems to be a lot of effort put into finding concepts and words to even talk about the diversity of human beings.Ā
Alexander: Indeed, there are things we need to be able to think, that we need expressions for even just to be able to think. You know the famous example of the twenty-eight words for snow from in the and Inuit culture and language? Well, itās not actually twenty-eight different words due to the way their language is structured since it relates more to how the words are formed and used. But the fact is I canāt even recognise or distinguish that many nuances of snow! I could identify maybe five different types of snow, but I canāt even see more than that. Iām sure somebody who lives in the desert has that many names for sand, or those who live in island nations have so many different names to express types of nuances in water. Different people are able to distinguish types of differentiations that you and I donāt even perceive.Ā When learning a language, we each learn the nuances and distinctions of difference and diversity relevant to our socio-cultural and bio-physical context, and as that context evolves over time, it becomes patterned in our perceptual frames.Ā
Shae: So really, language and our cultural experience can both enable and/or constrain our capacity to even see things, like shaping our perceptive capacities. What is interesting is that there are always people who can see or sense more, who are less limited in their perceptive capacities. I wonder what accounts for that difference and diversity?Ā From an educatorās developmental perspective, there is always at least 10% of divergent thinkers in any given classroom, and a further 10% of those who will be extremely divergent. This is true for all genders and cultures.Ā
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- Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Vols. 1 and 2. Boston: Beacon Press.
- Husserl, E. (1936). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. trans. David Carr 1970. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern Univ. Press.
Jul 9, 2024 | Inquiry Channel
Alexander:Ā A fascinating concept in science fiction that relates to time is a particular futuristic concept from the writing of Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek. This involves the ideation of the holodeck: a highly sophisticated computerised environment through which you can program a holographic simulation of the future that you can step into, interact with, and move around in. It looks, feels, sounds and altogether seems absolutely real. You can be in New York in the 1920ās and the cars and buses ā everything ā is there operating all around you as it was then. You can also simulate a particular scenario in the future, and think about what would happen ifā¦? The holodeck is meant to help think about how we might navigate possible future scenarios. The point worth thinking about is how might we have our own holodecks here and now; how could we do that?Ā
One way is to create mediated multisensory interactive environments (MMIEs ā see ref. below) where we can get a sense of being āvirtually presentā to whatever is being simulated. The more vivid and the more transparent/unobtrusive the technology, the more it feels like we are actually there. Nowadays, technology can be very immersive, like Virtual Reality where you feel like youāre really present to whatās happening. Itās very connecting and very disconnecting, at the same time. The question for me is how we can use this technology to engage with the possible realities that we foresee and often create. It could be very helpful!
Shae: Hmmm, yes, itās a matter of how technology is engaged. To tune us into human potential in relationship with the cosmos, and perhaps offer knowledge and understanding, on the one hand, or as entertainment only, as escapism, on the other.
Alexander: Yes, how much of it is used within the imaginary domain of human fantasy, or how much is it actually connecting to the imaginal, to the bringing-into-being of the evolutionary impulse of the cosmos?Ā That is, to the deep dimensions of the potential inherent in the holoflux.Ā But I get it, this isnāt necessarily what you want to bring directly into the classroom, I guess.Ā
Shae: Well, itās very interesting, because what I was thinking about while you were saying this is that pattern thinking is a very simple way of being able to begin to expand our cognition beyond the present moment and situation, and into wider fields of time around and ahead of us. Because we can see in the patterning what was before now and the way the dynamics are moving towards the future. Pattern thinking is not predictive, but it is certainly a tool for stretching and expanding our perspective of time and possible events. As you know, the world emerges from the holoflux through a process of patterning, so itās quite an appropriate approach.
The patterning provides a cognitive framework for thinking about time in a more complex way, and not just in our own lives, but for others and the world around them. Perhaps I can think about the multidimensional and fractal patterning of Complexity Patterning as a very simple holodeck! I have always thought about having it as an interactive haptic hologram interface, room size! Then we could try on different patternings, various flows of dynamics. A fascinating science fiction!Ā One day maybe…
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Laszlo, A., Rowland R., Taylor G. and Johnston T.Ā (2012). Virtual Learning in a Socially Digitized World. In World Futures: The Journal of Global Education, Vol. 68, No. 8, November, pp. 575-594 [available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02604027.2012.730436].
Jul 2, 2024 | Inquiry Channel
Shae:Ā I am inspired by the many wonderful works that are being published at the moment. Currently my reading relates to frameworks, for thinking with and thinking through. And as is my passion, I tend towards the temporal aspects of life. Our relationship with time can be so subtle, we donāt tend to think much about it. The tendencies of modern life towards speed and a focus on only the immediacy of our own lives and satisfaction shortens our experience of time.
I know there is encouragement to focus only on the now. To live in the present moment. I appreciate that as a spiritual practice, but it can erase time in a strange way, move us out of time as a long-term phenomenon. And I think this can contribute to the psychological problems we see. I am reading The Long View by Richard Fisher. It has the byline Why we need to transform how the world sees time.Ā Whilst I donāt agree with everything he says, as he leans very much into time as a linear construct, and I have a much more complex view of time, his logic of longtermism is spot on! We need to understand ourselves as integral within many generations, all the way backwards and all the way forwards, as well as all the way sidewards (sideways?), as integral within the generational rhythms of all of the other species on Earth, and Earth itself.Ā
I think that a complex and longterm temporal cognition, or mindset if you like, is really important. So, I am shaping the frameworks for an educational curriculum that includes temporal complexity and longtermism.Ā What are you reading at the moment?Ā
Alexander: Ā Do you like science fiction?
Shae: I have a confession to make, Iām not reading much fiction at the moment. My research is getting all of my attention, so I am reading mostly non-fiction.Ā
Alexander: Ah, I see. In terms of time, Bela H. Banathy (who was a colleague and good friend of mine, a guiding light) was big on science fiction.Ā He believed it was essential for systems science thinkers, and particularly social systems designers, because it augments our ability to move into the imaginary domain. Not the imaginal, which is a term describing the liminality of the evolutionary frames that undergird the connection between the cosmos and the universe through what David Bohm and Karl Prigram termed the holoflux, but the imaginary, which is unfettered but can also be well-grounded in science.
Dan Simmons has a series of books out, the Hyperion Cantos series, and Endymion is one of them. They are all based on Greek poets and the poetry of Yates. They are awesome!Ā In one of his books, he gets into time, and he talks about Time Fields. The fields of time in these books are so interesting because of the metaphors he constructs. Simmons writes about eddies, currents, and tides, but they are all eddies and tides of time. In his stories, there are certain areas of the universe where the time tides are particularly strong, and when you go there, they can pull you in, like getting caught in a temporal riptide.Ā Such analogies between how the ocean works and the behaviour of time in different places is very provocative, donāt you think?Ā
Shae:Ā What a brilliant set of analogous concepts as a way to think about time! Iāve used the metaphors of the life cycles of a fruiting tree, together with weather and all ecological conditions in my work. And I know of a river as a metaphor for time, but thatās the first Iāve heard of such oceanic analogies!
Image by Egin Akyurt. [Royalty free by unsplash]
- Fisher, R, (2023). The Long View: Why we need to transform how the world sees time. Wildfire.
- Simmons, D (2011). Hyperion, Orion.
Jun 25, 2024 | Inquiry Channel
Alexander: So, how are we going teach extended awareness and relational being in educational frames? How are we going to bring this into healing our connection with Gaia?Ā There are many possible ways, and as you said, so many wisdom cultures have developed their own specific ways ā what my friend Marty Spiegelman [see ref. below] talks about as technologies of consciousness, but in a very shamanic and traditional sense that is highly developed. For example, it can take the form of a drumming circle, bringing collective being in and allowing it to create a resonant field out of which can emerge dynamic potentials that foster the manifestation of a greater inter-being, of an entire field ā a domain that may even include a whole bioregion. Curating this ā¦ how do we enable that? First Nations peoples of the Pacific North Eastern Rim talk about being shepherds of forests. I mean, this involves a kind listening that is operates at the level of entire bioregions. Imagine if someone asks āWhatās your job?ā and you say āIām a shepherd of forestsā! And the response might be āYeah right, what do you do all day, because the trees are not going anywhere!ā We simply donāt get that kind of reciprocal relationality in a Western knowledge frameworks. This involves both listening and empathy. It is a deep form of medicine.
Shae: In an educational setting, I start very simply: by engaging students in the very interconnected reality of our bodies, as a first step. For example, we explore how we donāt actually move through life, as though it were a stage or a backdrop: life moves through us. We can only exist due to the symbiotic relationship of millions of bacterial cells that live with our human cells in our bodies, for example. And we consider the air we breathe in and out that other life forms breathe in and out in a reverse way, and the nutrients we consume. We eat life, digest it, the soils that food grows in ā¦ we are living because of the soils of the planet. Yes, I starting with this symbiosis and inseparability on a very immediate level, blowing open the idea of any absolute boundary at a very personal level. This can assist young people to see how boundaries that we tend to think of as solid are actually not solid at all, but are interfaces of relationship. This is small steps toward dissolving the mechanistic paradigm that has everyone thinking that life is made of separate parts; the outdated parts-in-a-machine perspective. The shift in knowledge is to the understanding that, as individuals, we are more like a specific wave in a greater body of water; a manifest instance forming and actualising for a while from the ocean of probability, possibility, and potential!Ā
It involves engaging with the latest ideas in science and quantum physics in particular, and really is also about engaging with Indigenous Knowledge and traditional knowledges such as the Vedas and Buddhism, that are based in this view of an inseparable and constant coming-into-being through relationality. This is also expressed as the deep complexity paradigm. So yes, in educational settings, normalising the extent of how inseparably connected we are all the time, and then moving toward what we can all be aware of and feel, or sense, is a good start. It would be wonderful if awareness and perception activities were a normal part of education!
Alexander: Yes, certainly in my martial arts class, we practice such awareness activities. For instance, I have my students sit a couple of metres apart, crossed legged with eyes closed. I ask them to open all of their other senses. We actually go through a little exercise beforehand with eyes closed, involving listening inside, on, near, and far from themselves. I ask, ācan you hear your heartbeat? Can you hear your digestion? Can you feel it? What else can you feel inside? Can you feel the clothes on your skin? Can you feel the ground pressing up against you? Maybe a little bit of a breeze on your skin?ā Then moving more outside of your body, I say, āok ā¦ keep your eyes closed ā¦ now, where are the windows and doors in this room? How many people are in the room?ā They have their eyes closed, but they can know these things because partly they are sensing them. āNow, outside of the building, is it day or night? Are there birds there? In what direction are they?ā With each of these sensing exercises, they tune and heighten their senses.
Then we play a game, and itās great because they try to catch me out and I try sneak around them, they love that. They want to catch this guy out! While their eyes are closed, I walk around behind them, and then stop behind somebody, and as quietly as possible, I try to touch their shoulder from behind. Their objective is to try to grab my hand before I touch their shoulder. For the younger ones and the ones who havenāt done this very much, as I go by their ear, I rub my fingers together a little so they get a bit more of a cue. For the ones who are more experienced, I can be really quiet, and I reach from behind them and they can sense me in their field and will grab hand before it lands on their shoulder. Sometimes I go for both shoulders, but often they still grab me first. Not always, not always. But they try to catch me out, and itās fun, and they develop this sense-ability that is part of martial arts training; to be able to sense your surroundings and know the dynamics that are flowing around and through you.Ā Also, at an even deeper level, they start to sense the intention behind those dynamics, as well.Ā
Shae: In my teaching experience, I have found that many young people are very aware of far more than they say or talk about. Creating a safe classroom culture that normalises and encourages extending awareness, sensing, and indeed sentient cognition into wider fields of energy and informational flow is a vital first step. I have used the activity of knowing if someone is looking at you from behind. Many teenagers are acutely aware of someone looking at them, maybe from behind, or across a space, and are also able to know the intention, as you say. Whether the looker is thinking they know them, or thinking they are attractive, for instance. It has been fun to actually talk about those subtle flows of energy and information with them. And of course, there is a safety factor in having such extended awareness. Itās a vital skill, though it can feel like a super-power!
Royalty free image by FunkyFocus, Pixerbay.
Spiegelman, M. (ongoing). Leading from Being, a podcast series with Marti Spiegelman & Todd Hoskins. https://www.amazon.com/Leading-from-Being/dp/B08K57G2Z5
