Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through Other Patterns

by Nora Bateson

‘Mental Mono-Cropping’: generating ideas in singular fields that are bred to be resistant to cross-pollination.

The term ‘An Ecology of Mind’ challenges me to ask myself: which thoughts are flourishing, which are composting, which are just budding, which are ready for harvesting? Also, I might ask myself, is this idea a seedling for a future learning, or a weed? What are the stimuli that came together to produce this idea?

Ideas as a garden

Ideas are living things. I am suspicious about separating the intellect and the emotions. I am more comfortable with them being entangled.

There are depths at which ideas of how the world is put together are so integrated into life that they have become invisible. Those are the ones to watch out for. They sustain other ideas, and ideas about ideas. They seem unchangeable. But, pull a single thread loose and the whole tapestry can be reorganized.

What there are no words for is often un-seeable.

The problems that are arising are the result(s) of the fragmented way that we assess the world.

the trouble seldom appears where it started. Such is the nature of complexity.

Knowledge in complexity is in itself an ecological process. Knowledge, when given this field of ecological characteristics to grow in, is alive; it requires and learns from the ideas that are brought forth from other ideas. The conversation of ideas in an ecological context gives rise to new ideas, and so on.

But the problem with problem-solving is the idea that a solution is an endpoint. There are no endpoints in complex systems, only tendrils that diffuse and reorganize situations… compensations come in crooked streams and don’t end up where you thought they would.

Treating symptoms, teaching to the test, gathering statistics… all of these forms of engagement have something in common… blindness to the complexity of the issue being addressed.

Oversimplification

To get to new ideas, new forms of conversation are necessary.

“The new comes out of the random.” Mutual learning happens in the entropy; we need the confusion to release the new. This dance exists everywhere in nature. It is the swarm of confusion that becomes the grace of the way things come together.

intergenerational learning goes backward and forward as well as following diagonal trajectories.

It is difficult to be sure whether what we know has reframed what we used to know, or if what we used to know has led us to what we know now.

I have come realize that even context is not enough. Living systems especially require more than one context of study if we’re to get a grasp of their vitality.

There isn't just one context

A forest is a world of insects, of microbacteria, of flora, and fauna, with weather patterns, and interactions with human contexts of industry or conservation. The forest is not fragmenting these contextual processes, but is them. An understanding of the interaction between these contexts is an understanding of the forest itself.

There is toxicity in the flat numbness of singular study; the blending of contexts is where the study becomes alive.

The very word ‘leadership’ has become cringe worthy. It reeks of colonialism and lopsided history-book listings of individuals successful in taking, making, and claiming. Celebrating the potency of the individual is an insatiable ghost haunting the endless array of courses and manuals for developing leaders. Our fatal flaw may be the idea that an individual or institution can single-handedly penetrate new frontiers of possibility.

How can ‘leaders’ exist without all the relationships that have culminated and fermented to make them? Should we not point to those mutualities as heroic?

Think of trees in a forest. How did the ‘leaders’ get so tall? Were they extra courageous or charismatic?

The alpha dog is seen as the ‘leader of the pack,’ presuming that the pack ends with the grouping of dogs, which it does not. The human construct of leadership is projected onto the pack by us who are in the habit of identifying that pattern. Dogs have no such framing. Pack members are in communication and mutual learning with each other and the wider surroundings, responding to information that is funneled through the ‘alpha’ but generated through the pack.

I think our notions of leadership are toxic to the ecology of communication and collaboration in a social system. How can there be real communication when there is deference to a leader?

Mutual learning is only possible when all participants are willing to be wrong… willing to learn, to explore new ideas, to go off the map, out of the known, and together grope in the shadowy corners of new ideas, new plans, new territories.

Being part of a system requires knowing that whatever happens is an expression of the patterns that entire system is involved in—that means, there is no fault, and everyone is responsible.

Collectively, growing systemic transformation is always relational; the ecology is what changes, not the individual bits.

The illusion of the leader’s capacity to innovate is created by the success of the one who chimes the bells that were in a sense ready to ring anyway.

Leadership does not reside in a person but in an arena that can be occupied by offerings of specific wisdom to the needs of the community. So leadership is produced collectively in the community, not the individual. The individual’s responsibility is to be ready and willing to show up, serve, and then, most importantly, stand back.

Leadership for this era is not a role or a set of traits; it’s a zone of interrelational process. Step in, step out.

a good teacher, and a real expert, knows that they are in a process of learning themselves. They are not leaders. They are not making the seeds grow… They are fertilizer, tending to the soil.

It is learning to learn, both within and about the systems that are inside and outside ourselves, micro, macro, biological, and social. More importantly, it is a way of seeing.

bias against those models. I will admit it. I see in them the traps of linear and causal thinking, the notions of control, and the mechanistic approach to life that is repeatedly evident in all aspects of our culture.

Complexity does not compress.

the mechanistic principles of reductionism in western culture have wormed their way into the systems vocabulary.

the old way of addressing problems—by defining causality and applying predetermined formulized ‘actions’ to ‘solve’ the problem defined—has become painted into the terms and language of the new systems and complexity disciplines. The vocabulary has changed, but the thinking remains the same.

Whether it be medicine, space travel, or other technology, we are too often sure that we have cracked the code of nature and found the answers we need, and that is usually the moment at which we brazenly commit the most destruction. So, uncertainty is healthy. It can change the tone of our approach, make us humble, give a pause, and cool off the arrogance that comes with the sense of having found ‘solutions.’

Uncertainty is healthy

One approach: 1. Define a polarity. 2. Add trauma and drama. 3. Panic in search of a solution while the situation blooms into cascading and overlapping destruction. 4. Define a solution within another polarity 5. Repeat steps 2-5 indefinitely. When that gets too painful and repetitive we might try this approach: 1. Allow complexity. 2. Pause the impulse to find cause. 3. Increase mutual learning within the situation. 4. Previously un-seeable possibilities appear 5. Repeat steps 1-5 indefinitely There are infinite ways to approach approaching.

As human beings, we cannot help but monitor the way the others in a group are perceiving something.

To see something, which you are sure can only be interpreted one way, being interpreted in another is a phenomenon that all of us need practice in.

In a world that is defined by constant change, significant effort is needed to hold any particular aspect of a system in a static pattern.

In any complex living system there are countless variables moving and changing in countless ways. This makes it hard to keep something—anything—inside this complexity from changing.

To hold one part of a system still requires that all the relationships upon which this part is interdependent must alter to absorb the shifting. Every other interaction within the system must compensate for the lack of flexibility in one part. This strategy for maintaining security is temporary at best.

In defense of a world that is characterized by mutual learning between variables in a given context—a world that does not stay the same, a world that won’t be mechanized or modeled—in defense of that world, I maintain that nothing could be more practical than to become more familiar with the patterns of movement that life requires. The goal is not to crack the code, but rather to catch the rhythm.

Surf Complexity

The world is complex, and the complexity is not manageable in a predictable, strategic plan.

If you do not know what the terrain of a marathon is, you had better be prepared for anything. Most importantly, be prepared to make spontaneous decisions based on an assessment of the context at the time. Long preparations for a run across the desert will not be useful in the event of urban snowstorm conditions.

Adatation and adaptability is the practical thing

It is true; it takes longer to consider complexity. It is true also that we will never understand all of the infinite interrelationships. ‘Can we afford the time and effort to try?’ is a good question. My only response is: ‘Can we afford not to?’

We cannot know the systems, but we can know more. We cannot perfect the systems, but we can do better. The evolution of our own ability to understand and interact with the world around us is an increase in our ability to be sensitive to information we have previously been blind to. That is learning to learn.

At the edges of the given patterns, there are liminal zones. The boundaries. This is where interaction takes place. These are the places where the directions of potential pathways as yet uncharted live.

A good question leads to better questions. A simple question gets a simple answer, and we do not live in a simple world.

I maintain, at the risk of being called abstract, that the possibility of an increase in our ability to receive nuanced information about the interactions in a complex system exists.

William Bateson said, “Treasure your exceptions.”