Monday Notes #3: The Pattern that Connects
To emerge, we start from setting the right questions, withstanding confusion, interacting toward a common purpose, a purpose that is always on the becoming. Living your questions. “You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Letters to a Young Poet” (1903). Communication and interaction matters. Communication of information as a way to reduce entropy. Living systems possess the incredible ability to be open, import information from their environment, usually in the form of energy, and disposing of their internal entropy, therefore attaining to a higher level of complexity (self-organization).From communication to empathy. Occupy virtually the other’s position. See the world through their eyes. Relation comes first. The space between matters more. Changing your perspective will change what is seen as a problem or as a solution. Bear the silence… Why lost in dichotomies? Instead of this or that, why not and… and… and… Like a living Rhizome that includes all multiplicities. What is the pattern that connects the shipwrecks to the blind men with the elephants? And the metronomes to the slime molds? And the emergence to reductionism? And all these to me and you? And with the universe above us? Time cannot be violated. Time is an inherent dimension in a process. We literally need time to digest food [for thought]. Living systems have their own dynamics. Living systems cannot be programmed; living systems can my catalyzed and facilitated, but as long as they are living cannot be programmed. And though each was partly in the wrong, all were in the right. The whole is wiser than the sum of its parts (when parts feel free and dear to speak their minds while listening to the others). Comfort and familiarize ourselves with uncertainty, ambiguity, and destabilization. Zygmunt Bowman talked about liquid reality as the condition that characterizes today’s world state: crisis, followed by another crisis, followed by another crisis, followed by another crisis… This can be a daunting condition for humans: we long for periods of stability in our lives to be able to build and prepare for the storms that are part of life. A living social lab of becoming toward our strange attractor. Emergence prerequisites communication and interaction. But are these enough? In which context? Systems thinking means we first look for the context. To emerge, we need confusion, a challenge, a purpose. A why before finding the how. Why to emerge? What for? A negotiated purpose, a goal. What is the purpose of an amoeba in a slime mold formation? Maybe its strange attractor? An organism is an intelligent machine, with the intelligence being an emergent property observed only at the whole system level. But the constituents parts seem to exhibit a kind of intelligence, a kind of knowledge about the whole are creating with their actions. Although the intelligence emerging at the whole-system level cannot be intelligible by the constituents parts. Or can it be? Do the individual cells of my body understand language and reasoning? Can a single cell understand this reflection? How to research complexity in its complexity? It’s impossible and the best we can do is to explore complexity with simplistic (reductionist) ways, keeping the whole system in mind, and hoping for a good approximation. Please, mind the filter bubble. How to create a coherent group that will serve as a good information filter to navigate in an information abundant society, without resulting in an echo chamber? What is the pattern that connects the shipwrecks to the blind men with the elephants? And the metronomes to the slime molds? And the emergence to reductionism? And all of them to me and you and to our living lab of becoming? And all of us with the Anthropocene and the Robotocene? And all these with the universe above us?
Monday Notes #9: Entropy, Anotropy, and Order out of Chaos
Life is an anotropic island in the midst of an entropic sea. The arrow of time implies that living processes are irreversible. The term ‘deterministic chaos’ is more accurate because it implies that there is an inherent order out of disorder. “A circle is whole. But also closed. Nothing new to come in. The goal isn’t wholeness. It’s openness.” A dissipative structure is an entity operating far from the equilibrium, able to demonstrate adaptive behavior and self organize and increase its internal complexity, by being open to its environment and disposing its internal entropy, while absorbs information from outside (in the form of energy): A tornado may be thought of as such dissipative structure, self-organized and operating only far from the equilibrium. In an entropic social environment where people seem to hit walls, the job of a therapist is to provide people with opportunities to change their point of view and to enrich their repertoire of possible choices and routes to follow; instead of hitting a wall, to realize they can create many alternatives. Complexity, chaos, entropy, and the arrow of time; it can be intimidating to live in such a world. Instead, we can acknowledge and share our fear, and enjoy the full potential of alternatives that the arrow of time creates in front of us. Let’s celebrate complexity! Even if I do not fully understand something with my mind, it seems that I have an embodied, nonverbal, knowledge that helps me navigate the murky waters. Irreversibility can also be read as my opportunity to grow up and flourish, to advance my life forward instead of staying stagnant. And although we cannot undo the things that happened, we can create the future that does not yet exist, and we dream of. We, humans, are anotropic pumps, constantly trying to create order out of disorder, to create flowers out of sun and earth. In the quantum level, once two entities interact, they remain in a state of mutual entanglement no matter how far in the universe will go. Chaos is a friend of mine; Chaos is me.
[Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2020/01/06/total-chaos/]
Monday Notes #1: A Learning Rhizome of Becoming
What about defining learning as creativity as the ability to build upon existing theories to invent new ones? How is creativity related to the phenomenon of life and living systems? How we define Science? Are the traditional conceptions of Science still effective today? How should modern Science be shaped to help us evolve in an evermore technology-mediated, and AI determined, dynamic environment? What about the view of a therapist as a person that helps the clients to create alternative connections, new networks of thinking and new patterns of relating with other humans? Sometimes, the new could be experienced as intimidated. How to cope with the unexpected? Why are living systems open (interact with their environment)? How to navigate into the unknown? How to create our context? Complex systems can be defined as systems extremely sensitive to their initial conditions. In such systems, Prediction becomes impossible. The Janus God and the importance of transitions in life. The community as a multiplier of perspectives. A group-as-a-whole is far smarter when all voices are freely expressed and no emotions or thoughts are suppressed. We focus on the content while we are missing the context or the unsaid. The circle as an archetypal setting for human communication (gathering around a fire). A learning rhizome of becoming, a dance between matter (content) and pattern (relating). What is the pattern that connects? The importance of the circle: the setting is never neutral; it emits a culture. “Group forming” requires a safe space. A matter of perspective… either to focus on the individuals or to focus on the connections between them. Order out of Chaos, or a deterministic Chaos. A piece of baggage that can hold us back and propel us forward at the same time (an and and and mentality). Maturana – Varela and the theory of autopoiesis. Non-verbal learning and embodied knowledge. [Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2019/10/22/learningrhizome/]
Monday Notes #5: Yes, life is unpredictable… Let’s celebrate it!
Yes, life is unpredictable… Let’s celebrate it! In the here and now, the only certainty we occupy. Prediction becomes impossible, but every question I ask is a bridge to the future I dream to create, not a prediction but an expectation I have, by living and flourishing in the present moment. But the challenge remains… How to build such a bridge in a complex world with no linear causality? How to take into account both the micro and the macro whole-system level? This seems to beyond the capabilities of a human psychology practitioner. However, unpredictability is always entangled with an array of possible opportunities: roads to choose and follow. It is up to owns personal agency to open up the necessary sensors and realize the opportunity, an opportunity that does not exist before you see it and name it so, as an opportunity. [A useful visualization: Imagine a rhizome, a multiplicity of interconnected entities, manifestations of a single super-organism. Now think of all the possible interconnections being oscillating in a strange attractor pattern, a different one each. Now think of predictability in any part of the Rhizome. At the global level, you still have a kind of inconceivable order]. Monday notes is a reductive process, as far as the composer interprets and reduces each personal reflection to a couple of lines. At the same time, by interpreting these reductions in their relation, that is through the context that they all together create, Monday notes allow for an emergent layer, the pattern that connects the (definitely reduced) dots. Monday notes can be thought of as a spiraling process: it reduces to emerge to the next cycle of the spiral. Spiraling is a moving forward process. But if we want to induce a change in a system where we start? At the micro or at the macro level? Egg or chicken first? A new player in the already messy game. Artificial Intelligence. More blurry variables in the complex causality equation. Killing robots and drones, is this sci-fi? And how systems thinking, emergence and macro patterns can help us? That is the question. We can predict the eclipses of the sun and moon, but not the weather in a few days from now. From predictability to unpredictability … it is just an extra one twist road: Möbius strip. And why not to imagine the metaphor of the bridge, like a Mobius bridge? That would be a strange bridge definitely. And remember that it is impossible to predict how the bridge to a complex future would look before it is created. In any way, even if predictability was possible, it would render life boring. Let’s celebrate complexity and creativity. We look for causes in the past, when the causes of our present actions should be searched in the future. In the future, we want to create, not to predict, with our actions. And that’s why it is totally useless to torture ourselves with a what-if logic about our past. What if I have done things differently. Unpredictability allows for freedom and creativity. But in any case, when intervening on human systems, it’s not about prediction. Psychotherapists and systemic practitioners are not Gods to predict the future. It is only a matter of creating the optimal conditions for flourishing and then step back and wait. And intervene again if necessary. And that’s how the therapy spiral is unfolding.
[Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2019/11/13/intelligence/]
Monday Notes #7: Panopticon revisited, Psychotherapy & Technological Singularity
How could Systems Theory help us today to cope with an unprecedented reality?
For a coherent group to sound like an orchestra, just everyone playing their own music is not enough. We need concerted action to resonate somehow with each other, like the metronomes. This is what we achieve through in-class group work in pairs or in fours. Emergence prerequisites meaningful interaction
[Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2019/12/03/panopticon/]
Monday Notes: The pattern that connects
In the “Systems Theory, Psychology and Social Media” course, participants are interdependent autonomous agents in a learning rhizome of becoming: A collective intelligence that rises to serve members’ creativity, autonomy and personal flourishing through and for interdependence (Polychroni et al., 2008; Vassiliou & Vassiliou, 1982). Participants maintain their own personal blog (autonomy) while they are interconnected through the central Hub (interdependence).
We call 'Monday notes' the weekly process of reading students' contributions and trying to find the pattern that connects them: the meaning of the individual contributions in the context of the whole they co-create altogether. Monday Notes were first used as an expression in the '60s by Werner von Braun at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Braun introduced the practice of asking managers of twenty-four departments every Monday morning to send him a one-page report on the work and problems of the previous week. Braun made his own notes (instructions, tips, and queries) on the margins of these pages, taking into consideration information from all other reports. The package of all annotated reports was then copied and distributed to all the twenty-four managers (Bisel, 2017; Miller & Gordon, 2014). This ensured the vertical and horizontal flow of information at an organization critical for the US space program (Tourish & Hargie, 2004; Zaremba, 2014).
Each individual reflection is treated as a contribution that would reveal new different insights if seen in the context of all other reflections, that is if seen as a unit in a reflections’ sequence. The process of Monday Notes in our practice focuses on creating a collective narrative: what the student group tells us as a whole. And then making sense of the 'individual' reflections in the context of their own collective narrative. So, this is an iterative process of forming meaning at the group’s level. Individual reflections are already the products of the group work during the weekly face-to-face meetings. With Monday Notes, students realize not only that their voices are actually heard, but also that their reflections have value: they constitute the building blocks in a collective knowledge project.
In a rhizomatic learning organization, 'it is a way of thought' that determines whether to put individual reflections together or apart (Bohm, 2004, p. 97).
Examples of the weekly Monday Notes produced during the Fall semester of the academic year 2019-20 are presented here (See the virtual exposition at Research Catalogue).
Monday Notes #2: This group is becoming a living organism
Becoming a living organism, through multiple pathways, even if we are not aware of it. Looking both at the parts and at the big picture, you feel powerful and powerless simultaneously. Keep always the context in your mind and see what underlies you through the mirror of the other.
[Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2019/10/23/towardemergence/]
Monday Notes #4: Creating bridges between the questions and the future
The questions we ask determine the answers we get… Creative group work can change our perspective. And although a new perspective is needed, it is accompanied by feelings of helplessness and confusion; Transitions cause destabilization. Time cannot be violated. We need time to digest, even a new perspective, a destabilization, or a crisis. But in some cases, it seems there is no time allowed. And you need a purpose, a why to bear with any how. You need to “know” your destination in the world within you. But in the end, is the world really in our hands? We need to rebuild education, but is this also in our hands? This is a kind of dance between opposing things, structure and process, destabilization and equilibrium, pattern and matter. It is the environmental challenge that requires emergence more than everything else. To build a sustainable symbiosis in a positive, life-promoting environment. However, it seems to be a contradiction between our power to emerge and our drift to entropy. And in such entropic, even toxic reality, I have to employ creative madness, or madness as creativity, to survive. Otherwise, the toxicity will erase me. The world needs me healthy and grown up to be able to act, so I have to take care of myself and create everyday safe shelters for me. Catastrophe may look coming too close. Catastrophe literally means in Greek, going towards a turn. So, if you foresee the turn and change your direction early enough, a new perspective will open. Otherwise, you will crash on the rock. Opportunity and risk coexist. But in the plethora of the available connections that exist in the modern networked world, due to social media, how do we select and strengthen the life-promoting ones? Because we need to reduce the complexity around us to a level that we can process and digest. And the best way to do so is by being reflective about the world within us. And being reflective by employing more creative modalities like drawing can help us approach in a more creative way, questions that seems hard to answer, and invent regenerative solutions. It is all about how to build bridges to a meaningful future.
[Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2019/11/05/creating-bridges/]
Monday Notes #6: (re)Defining human
Future intelligence is unpredictable. Would it be collective human intelligence or collective techno-social (cyborg) intelligence? Or something else we cannot even imagine? And what this kind of intelligence would mean? This is both scary and amazing, something we cannot understand right now. It is stressful not to know where technological acceleration is leading. We want stability in our life; however the only we can do is to be bricoleurs of our lives. Is it possible to lose myself through technology, to not be human anymore? Maybe it would be positive to be a techno-God, but I then won’t be human anymore. And all these advances and transitions cause instabilities in my life, which is quite confusing and causes me great stress. We need stability in our life, so we have to create it even in a technologically accelerated era. To achieve this, we need a qualitatively different intelligence, an intelligence that serves the sustainability of life on the planet. Till now, we have algorithmic determination: algorithms taking care of more and more situations. And if we humans are capable of causing damages, algorithms would be. But in any case, we cannot stop or reverse technological acceleration; the river does no go backward. However, transhumanism is a Hubris: Extreme pride, foolish arrogance, challenging the gods, and inviting nemesis. It is a Hubris not to set limits. We cannot be humans if we eliminate pain; it is a Hubris to want to be gods. Welcome to the new brave super(ficial) dystopia we want to create by eliminating what makes us human. Do we really want to create a super-human that is no human anymore? And how we define humanness? Being trapped in a good vs. bad logic, we miss the complexity of the situation that arises. Why not instead “grow a counter-culture based on lucidity and understanding of emotional complexity and irrationality of human existence?” In the end, who wants to live forever? There is so much beauty in the world because there is an End in experiencing it. And would a ‘perfect’ technology eliminate human suffering, end the wars, and bring justice on Earth? Or would bring Technological terrorism?
Monday Notes #8: Disconnect to connect
Google as Panopticon? And my right to be (digitally) forgotten? By looking to super-artificial intelligence, we are actually reducing the human. Because sometimes imperfection is perfection. But why not merging with AI to grow up our humanness to the next level? On the other hand, I trust more on a human being that carries a story, a life, pain and joy in their body. And I long for the old era when things were far more simple. In the end, why we do all this? What are we looking for? The fact is that we are already in a symbiotic relationship with technology. But being on a smartphone’s screen for 5 hours daily scares me; maybe it was better before. Are we simply algorithms with flesh? And does psychotherapy mean debugging a defective human, like debugging software code? No, behaving like being intelligent does not imply that you really understand the intimate meaning. Being intelligent means having a body and a history. Nevertheless, we can’t be sure about the future. And we have to ask how far we want to go? Do we want to create something that knows better than us? Is it inevitable? Do we need a Panoptes therapist? Is it possible to establish a therapeutic relationship with an artificial psychotherapist? Vulnerability is at the core of human existence, and maybe we need a reset.
[Source: http://emergence.edublogs.org/2019/12/09/reconnecting/]
Monday Notes #10: Keep Ithaka always in your mind
We need local rhizomes to address global challenges. I know that I know nothing: The Socratic paradox in the era of information abundance. And in the context of technological acceleration, I need to slow down. Only then will I know myself in the digital era. And I wonder, how to use Artificial Intelligence wisely to learn and produce order out of Chaos. AI ethics are complex. Reflective group practice offers the opportunity to reauthor our stories in an appreciative way. How to attain such participatory culture: It is a way of thought that puts them together or puts them apart. And this is the way to break our own tunnels. Reflecting on Technology vs. Teachology, it is better to think and act in a Systemic way rather than simply know what Systems Theory is. And how is systems theory connected to Psychology and Social Media? Through Emergence… Thank you, Erasmus Rhizome. Maybe one day AI will become our Deus ex machina. But learning never stops. Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
