Samenspraak: conditioneren van situaties

Global4cast.org is one of the most interesting I’m following. I think it is connected with Antifragility by Nassim Taleb and Homo Deus by Harari. One of its latest post https://global4cast.org/2017/07/11/to-survive-we-must-be-all-inclusive/. I’ve added these comments.

All laws of physics emerge from a paradoxical pair (like + and -, up – down, …). The tension between the alternatives is being released through motion, which can be used to do “work”. Conservation of energy – First Law – means also conservation of paradox. Like energy, paradoxes are converted into each other. The “lowest” type is heath, which is motion, action, the processes of conversing.

Between groups there are three inter-group paradoxes (Smith and Berg – Paradoxes of Group Life):
paradox of scarcity / abundance – which makes us create boundaries (which leads to the “problem” of migration),
paradox of engagement / disengagement (which leads to ingroup / outgroup and for instance the Brexit (“you can check out, but never leave”) and the
paradox of power / powerlessness (which leads to the problems of followers / leadership).
These paradox are in a dynamical equilibrium, creating a chaordic system.

The second law of thermodynamics creates “disorder”, entropy, or better use the verb “entropy creating“. The paradox here is, that an orderly system can produce more disorder then a disorderly system. So “free energy” will use itself to create order, which will be released later in heat, motion. Dissipation orders itself. If is “as if” the universe waits to collapse, because it “knows” that it can collapse with an even bigger bang.

The trick here is to establish a self-organizing, auto-catalyzing, self-referring system, aka “life“, with metastable states, to move away from equilibrium (and death, speaking of paradoxes). Any system needs “free energy” to jump to a more organized state. Once it has done tat, it can propagate itself. This is being called “punctured equilibrium”.

The third law is the law of least action. Every process produces the least amount of action or work. In order to do a lot of work, one needs a lot of “free” energy. Off course, nothing in life is “free”, so the equivalence here is, that we “pay” through disruptions, suffering, devastation. At least, until now, in the classical way, using unintentional evolution.

I suppose the next step is to get into intentional evolution. I think we need to use the paradoxes of power here: the interesting thing is, that power is connected with the use of energy. Power needs connections, a network, a grid. (I do think that the current “energy transition” is also part of the solution / problem). Also, a network structures, guides. We’re now witnessing the auto-organizing process of the internet. The way this work, is that first power is being concentrated, “attracted” – for instance in Google, Amazon, … much like the current great powers. This type of situation is fragile, very fragile, hyper critical and will be released into a new way of organizing. I suspect that we’ll create a network of distributed, local power. This type of organizing processes will use facilitative leadership.

It took a while to find it, but the article The evolution of cooperative organisation gives an interesting option: a new type of management. Stewart – interesting name – explains how RNA/DNA offers a digital type of “managing” the analogue type of evolution of metabolizing molecules. In way, they co-evolve. The basic problem with our current type of management, is that managers benefit more from coordinating cooperation than the participants in the organization. They’re having the power, but they do not use it to also share the benefits of cooperation. This is because the myth of “the invisible hand”. There is no “invisible hand” (or an all-seeing eye-in-the-sky). The other myth, the communist tale, doesn’t work either, because also here, it propagates a “winner takes all”. Taleb discusses this point from another perspective: managers don’t carry the risks of failure anymore (but say they do).

So, we’re at the edge of a systemic transformation, the development of a new type of leadership, which I call facilitative leadership. These leaders don’t get big benefits from managing or coordinating an organization. Because the don’t lead the organization in the traditional way. We lead the organizations through leading conversations, having dialogues. They do not command and control, but listen to the participants and check their assumptions. They guide the conversations into effective and efficient actions. And not only do they guide the conversation, they also manage the distribution of wealth through conversations. These leaders use the power of expressing by creating new myths. We’re seeing the emergence of this type of leadership in Agile, Deep Democracy, Dialogue, Intuitive Intelligence, Sociocracy, Systemic Work, … And what we’ll have to endure is the death struggle of the old system.

On Quora there was this question: What is the link between mind, brain and consciousness?

Here is my answer, with some additions between [].

You. You are. You are the (missing) link. And “we” are, that is to say, the projection of me and our relationship (= link), implied by the use of language. Every thought is being thought by a human being. And this thought is being thought by U. [Added: at this very moment] Human beings think, using a part of our body called “brain”. Assigning “mind” or “consciousness” to a brain is like assigning “motion” and “movement” to you legs. What is the link between motion, legs and movement? The runner. So the question I read is: “who is running?” or “who is thinking this thought?”. (this, in my opinion, is why we are being moved by e-motion, or should we call it i-motion?).

Bennett and Hacker explain this in more detail in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. They’re calling this the “mereological fallacy”: a whole is not the sum of its part, it is the product of the parts and therefore a different logical type. Some words point to or refer to an element (fact), some to a relationship between elements which we cannot point at (fiction). What is the link between a word and its meaning? You are. You’re making it up (fact and fiction).

The words look the same – words – and (mind you! and and not but) what they refer to creates a paradox. Language is also meta-language (about “saying something about what is being said”) and therefore always implies a speaker. (S)He creates the links, like you’re doing while reading this.

[Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D schrijft in: Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: “Indeed, all the functions of implicit intricacy in language and situations are functions of the body.” (cursivering door de auteur)]

I’ve volunteered to do a workshop at the First Global Conference on Positive Change. Here is the approach.

How to change positively? Everything is energy and energy is always conserved. So, systems, by necessity, tend to settle in the lowest configuration possible. Moving them into a higher configuration, requires energy too. This energy we can call “free energy”. Change requires “free energy”. The question now becomes, “How can we free energy?” A second question arises: “how do we guide this free energy positively?”.

Energies are stored in tensions, and tensions are energies. You’ll have noticed that there are tensions everywhere. Inside you, between human beings, between groups of people. And, ultimately, between nations. Tensions build and need to be released. This creates motions. In Physics this is called the First Law of Motion: Action = – (minus) Reaction. The minus sign suggests, that reaction works contrary to (the cause of) action. Reaction somehow is “negative”. How to change positively?

Energy reside inside you, me, human beings. The energies of life, are tensions too. So, these tensions create motiond too. This is what I like to call E-motions. You act because of your E-motion; people act on E-motions. Most of the times, we instinctively react. Action = – (minus) Reaction. Which is, by default “negative”. We’ve learned that to “go away” makes more sense than to “engage”. We should learn to create positive change instead of react negatively. Guiding this process is called “process facilitation”

Our task now becomes, “Configure. How to guide the release of E-motions in a positive way?”. Over the years, I’ve been developing an approach that enables us to investigate the current system and search for creative resolutions, to find positive (re)configurations. Using objects, (LEGO, Playmobile) figures and placing them on a map, you recreate your configuration of elements. This makes the tensions visible and communicable. We can give at-tention to them. We can move them, finding paths of change.

Interested: join the 1St Global Conference on Positive Change – Amsterdam, Apri1 13th – 14th. We’ll recreate situations, and invent or create ways to positively change a system.

Life is inherently paradoxical, among others. Specifically amongst others. Change is the only outcome of paradox and paradoxically change is a paradox too. What we can see, is people trying to “solve” paradoxes, paradoxes like I and other (“individuality, identity, involvement and borders”). Or paradoxes about power: authority, (in)dependence, creativity and destruction and off course “courage“. Or how to perceive reality – facts and fictions. As you’ll notice, one paradox will just change or morph into another one.

I adapted a quote form 21stcenturyparadoxes.blogspot.com/

Dealing with change and paradoxes does not mean trying to think things through and force a resolution into being through action. Rather it means to hold the opposites within one’s being until a path comes into being, emerging from its own nature. Thus is the natural way of paradox. Dealing with paradox is not action – reaction. Dealing with paradox and change rather means a kind of “recreating”.

Wrote a page on facts, fiction and the use of language. https://www.mindatwork.nl/facilitation-guru/facts-or-fiction-yes/

I have accepted the position of facilitation.guru. Open all our hours for your question on facilitating groups, events and change. I cannot make life easier, but lighter must be attainable. Please visit the page facilitation-guru

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. – A. Einstein.

In most cases, a difference between theory and practice is being ignored. Sometimes the facts are blamed. “We need more research”. Or we could revise the theory and run into another Einstein quote:

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius (and a lot of courage) to move in the opposite direction.

In facilitation we do have theories. They are also called methods or techniques. They lead to results. In practice, however, an actual situation may require another theory-in-use. As we do not seem to reach the intended result. You may blame it on resistance, unwillingness, defensive routines, whatever. You may try to apply more energy, more of the same. Won’t work.

We need a practice and to practice the practice. A community of practice on facilitation makes perfect sense.

In communicating about this, I call this a meta-praxis. The “meta-practice” I espouse, looks like a theory, feels like a theory, but isn’t a theory. It is about being aware of your practice while practicing. Facilitate yourself, while facilitating. How does this work? Only in practice!