jude lombardi In this video short from the 1993 American Society for Cybernetics conference in Philadelphia PA. Humberto Maturana talks about the history of humanity, desires, wants, freedom and responsibility.

Humberto Maturana and The Tango of Responsibility – YouTube

Announcement from Gerald Midgley, Centre for Systems Studies, University of Hull (as posted by Mike on facebook)

MIKE C JACKSON LECTURE

You may know that we have an annual ‘Mike C Jackson Lecture’, thanks to an alumnus donation. Our speaker this year (June 2nd) will be Carlo Rovelli, who is a quantum physicist. His most recent book, Helgoland, starts the job of connecting the fundamentals of systems science with quantum mechanics. He goes back to the work of Bogdanov at the time of the Russian revolution, and explains how Bogdanov proposed a universal theory of organization that can be used to understand the fundamentally relational nature of quantum phenomena. This is very significant for systems science and systems thinking, as it promises to put the ‘science of organizing’ back at the centre stage of mainstream disciplinary science. Finally, let me thank Orsan Senalp. It was through him that this lecture became possible. Indeed, Orsan will be organizing a mini-symposium after the main lecture, not least because Carlo Rovelli is very keen to engage with post-Bogdanov systems scientists and systems thinkers. More information (including dates for both the Lecture and mini-symposium) will follow soon.

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Composing a Life: Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson on Our False Mythos of Achievement and the Messy, Nonlinear Reality of How We Become Who We Are – Brain Pickings

Composing a Life: Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson on Our False Mythos of Achievement and the Messy, Nonlinear Reality of How We Become Who We Are

“The knight errant, who finds his challenges along the way, may be a better model for our times than the knight who is questing for the Grail.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“Living has yet to be generally recognized as one of the arts,” proclaimed a 1924 guide to the art of living while, across the Atlantic, Bertrand Russell was contemplating what the good life really means. And yet as the twentieth century wore on and consumption eclipsed creativity, our ideals of and ideas about what constitutes a good life grew increasingly fogged by the cult of having, to which we submitted the art of being as a sacrificial offering.

In the mid-1970s, the great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm turned to the problem of setting ourselves free from the chains of our culture. Fromm was a seer of a different order — so much so that legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead would turn to him for advice on the most challenging aspects of living — and insisted that “the full humanization of man requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation.” But it took more than a decade for this sobering spark to kindle the light of awareness in the hearth of culture.

Few people have been more instrumental in this awakening to the authentic life than anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson (b. December 8, 1939), Mead’s daughter. Her 1989 treatise Composing a Life (public library) endures as an immensely insightful inquiry into our culturally conditioned mythologies of achievement and success, and what it takes to transcend them in order to live an authentic, meaningful life — a life that is invariably far messier and more strewn with contradiction than our misleading cultural mythos of self-actualization allows.

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Composing a Life: Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson on Our False Mythos of Achievement and the Messy, Nonlinear Reality of How We Become Who We Are – Brain Pickings

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Naturalising narrated – Cognitive Edge

Naturalising narrated

Dave Snowden March 28, 2021 MANAGING COMPLEX SYSTEMS, REFLECTIONS

In recent times I’ve been engaged in a series of interesting exchanges with Dr Mike Jackson OBE, hereinafter referred to as Mike.  I have a visiting chair at Hull University where he is Emeritus Professor and as well as a fair number of mutual friends including Yasmin Merali and Gerald Midgley.   I have been provisionally scheduled to give the Mike Jackson memorial lecture in 2023, Peter Senge gets the slot in 2020 I gather, so there will be some interesting contrasts to be made.  This year will see Carlo Rovelli is leading a symposium on the work of Alexandr Bogdanov whose work in systems has been much neglected so I am looking forward to that.

I should also make clear at this point my gratitude to, and respect for, the work that Mike has put into understanding not only Cynefin but the wider fields of complexity and systems.  It makes an exchange both interesting and rewarding and allows for a non-homogenising understanding of the wider field.  We share concerns about the rejection of all Systems Thinking by Stacy, and the, at times arrogance of the agent-based modellers of what I call Computational Complexity.

Now the exchanges, while interesting, have led to a certain amount of bafflement on my part as a large part of my responses have been along the lines of but that isn’t what I am saying and that isn’t what Cynefin is about and variations on that theme.  When this happens it is usually a result of the way one or other party is framing the problem and/or the way the idea is being communicated.  Two recent events resulted in a breakthrough for me at least, the light dawned and while I don’t yet hold said light in the palm of my hand I think I am getting there.

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Naturalising narrated – Cognitive Edge

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Lagrangian and Eulerian Decision-Making

Lagrangian and Eulerian Decision-Making

June 24, 2013 By Tempo

This metaphor is not for everybody, but if it works for you, it will probably be very useful.

Writing Tempo has sparked a lot of  fascinating conversations for me. People either seem to immediately get the decision-making model, or find it completely counter-intuitive and bizarre. Some tell me, “this is exactly how I think, thank you for describing the process clearly.” Others tell me, “nobody could possibly think this way, this is ridiculous.”

In reflecting upon the bimodal responses, it struck me that they were coming from two very different kinds of people. The ones who find the model natural are (predictably) somewhat like me: they do most of their thinking inside their heads with models. The ones who find it unnatural seem to do most of their thinking outside their heads by “watching machines work” as it were. What Myers-Briggs types refer to as the Ti vs. Te distinction (ask your friendly neighborhood Jungian to explain this to you). In terms of concepts in the book, this is the difference between narrative thinkers and situated thinkers.

Narrative thinkers tend to process by following a flow of causation, by keeping an evolving model of it going in their heads. Situationist thinkers focus on the logic of the events flowing through a particular static block of space and time: the one they happen to inhabit at the moment. It’s like following a case as it winds its way through the police investigation, different courts, judges and jurys, versus sitting in a courtroom all day and watching slices of different cases each evolve through a chapter locally.

Both are useful patterns of decision-making, and most people use some blend of the two, but with a strong bias. The two modes correspond to two distinct ways of modeling flow in fluid mechanics. In the Lagrangian approach, you follow the course of a little “parcel” of fluid as it moves. In the Eulerian approach, you watch the flow through the boundaries of a specific static “cell.” Boat perspective versus buoy perspective.

In my experience, Lagrangian decision-makers are much better at probing the internal consistency of decision-making processes, and are better able to detect errors in models when reality deviates from expectations. They are also better at long-term thinking when long-term thinking is possible at all.

Eulerian decision-makers are much better at empiricist thinking, detecting “coincidence is not correlation” and “correlation is not causation” errors. They are also much better at short-term thinking because they are more likely to notice situational coincidences and juxtapositions, because they are paying attention to an entire situation, and less subject to model or narrative bias. They are more used to dealing with juxtapositions of unexpected things.

But the general equality seems to break down a bit when it comes to action. Eulerian types are generally far more decisive and action-oriented, and get things done more effectively.  Their learned understanding of specific real situations is much richer than the modeled understanding of Lagrangians, who are just “passing through” along with the stories they are tracking. Eulerians are less derailed by chaos, while Lagrangian types tend to freeze into inaction when chaos increases too much. Greater capacity for armchair analysis is the consolation prize for us Lagrangian types. Only very rarely in history are “flow conditions” such that Lagrangians have an action advantage.

The fluid-flow analogy suggests a reason why this might happen. When flow gets turbulent, the fluid mixes a lot. To properly follow a “parcel”, you have to let it expand as flow lines diverge and churn. This means there is more fluid in your parcel than you started with, more “noise.” Eventually you are trying to analyze world hunger — the entire body of fluid.

But the Eulerian static parcel stays the same size. It just bleeds causal structure and gets more entropic. The action gets a lot more random and choppy, but still tractable in size. It is also easier to shrink what you’re paying attention to when things get complex — it’s called focusing — than it is to reduce the ambition of a model you’re tracking (generally called pruning).

So if there is a bias in Tempo, it is that I have written it for people who are fundamentally weaker at decisive action. Becoming aware of the nuances of this distinction has actually improved my situational decision-making skills, and I now get less anxious when I am in situations that are full of arbitrary juxtapositions of unrelated causal flows that are interfering with each other.

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Lagrangian and Eulerian Decision-Making

The wisdom of coding

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Simple Made Easy

Simple Made Easy

Summary

Rich Hickey emphasizes simplicity’s virtues over easiness’, showing that while many choose easiness they may end up with complexity, and the better way is to choose easiness along the simplicity path.

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Simple Made Easy

AN OVERVIEW OF INTERACTIVE PLANNING

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CP: Interactive Planning

Source: Flood, R. L., & Jackson, M. C. (1991). Creative problem solving: Total systems intervention. Chichester, UK: Wiley. [Chapter 7]

If you read the newspapers and are still satisfied with the state of the world, put this book down; it is not for you. My objective is not to convert those who are satisfied — even though I believe they need conversion — but to give those who are dissatisfied, cause for hope and something to do about it. [R. L. Ackoff, in Preface to Redesigning the Future]

INTRODUCTION

Russell Ackoff’s work has had a major impact upon all of the various branches of the management sciences about which he has had his say: operational research, corporate planning, applied social science, social systems science, management information systems — to mention only the most obvious. One explanation for the depth and breadth of Ackoff’s influence lies primarily in the power of his vision for the management sciences. The job of the management scientist is not to build the mathematical models that purport to predict the future and, therefore, help key decision-makers prepare their enterprises for the inevitable. Rather, it is to assist all of the participants of an organisation to design a desirable future for themselves and to invent ways of bringing it about.

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CP: Interactive Planning

If you have a systems thinking method or practice topic that you can cover in 45-50 mins, and are willing to take a few questions, please get in touch – tony.korycki@sytemspractice.org

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Viable System Model Example – Smart Organizations

Viable System Model Example

How to apply the Viable System Model?

One of the most obvious ways to use the Viable System Model is a mapping approach. You take the VSM quite literally and map organizational aspects like meetings, roles, tools, or artifacts to the model’s different systems. Even though this method is partially criticized within the VSM community, I still like it since it allows me to visualize all the different things we do or don’t do in organizations. It helps to clarify which functions are actually maintained and reflect if they are functional or dysfunctional.

In the following lecture, I show how the model explains an Agile Software Development Team. To make the story a bit more tangible, I use the scenario of a startup situation. Four friends found a new company…

In the next video, I will revisit my Viable System Model Canvas and show how you can use this tool for your own purposes. Maybe you are curious to read how an Agile Team could be seen with this example of the Viable System Model .

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Viable System Model Example – Smart Organizations

full paper (free) in source:

Introducing the VIPLAN Methodology (with VSM) for Handling Messy Situations – Nine Lessons | SpringerLink

• Published: 27 October 2020

Introducing the VIPLAN Methodology (with VSM) for Handling Messy Situations – Nine Lessons

• Stephen Harwood 

Systemic Practice and Action Research (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

This paper examines the utility of a novel and relatively unknown approach to handling messy situations. This approach, developed by Raul Espejo, is the VIPLAN Methodology. It is presented as a heuristic and comprises a set of six activities which act as ‘pointers’ to guide thinking and actions. The methodology’s contribution rests upon its explicit focus upon the context within which messy situations are handled. This draws attention to the cybernetics of the situation (Cybernetic Loop), which can be made sense of using the Viable System Model. However, one of the challenges of the methodology is the perception that it is complex and difficult to use. A case-study is used to investigate how the methodology can be operationalised. This reveals a set of nine lessons, which are offered as guidelines to enhance our understanding of how to use the VIPLAN Methodology.

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Introducing the VIPLAN Methodology (with VSM) for Handling Messy Situations – Nine Lessons | SpringerLink

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MFLB

What is the overall idea?
When people gather together, a group naturally forms. In many
cases, it is desirable to have these natural groups persist in 
time and have their existence be sustainable over the long term. 
However, given the highly dynamic nature of interpersonal 
communications and the variety of life events, developing the 
right infrastructure for long term group success is far from easy. 
This essay presents a model and pattern for one such infrastructure.
Introduction
In any grouping of people, there needs to be some sort of
organizational principle, even if it is very informal or 
implicit, that allows each person, each member, to more 
effectively coordinate their own individual actions with 
respect to the intents of the group as a whole.  As groups 
get larger, the need for an explicit internal structure 
increases.  For very large groups this need for formal 
complexity becomes significant. 

Yet, despite the many examples of large governments, 
institutions, industries, etc, that currently exist, 
the organizational principles necessary for them to be 
sustainable are far from obvious.  In may cases, it is 
not even obvious that they are sustainable at all — 
sometimes even large bodies fail without a single 
identifiable cause.  Attempting to found a new group 
or institution on the basis of an existing one can 
often result in transparently, unconsciously, and implicitly 
inheriting the weaknesses of the existing system.  Without 
an awareness of the principles of group formation, there can 
be little hope of real group longevity in the face of 
significant enviromental or situational changes. 

However, rather than attempting to deal with the complexity 
of large scale groups directly, it is considered that 
sustainable group systems can be identified by 1) 
resolving a minimal abstract set of organizational concepts 
(one which would span the total space of all organizational 
systems) and 2) using those concepts to define the minimum 
possible structure necessary to create a sustainable group. 
Once the basic principles of long term group stability 
have been identified in their simplest ‘ideal’ form, the 
way is opened for the practical application of these ideals 
to real groups. 

In effect, it is considered that if any group can be made 
sustainable, that the dynamics of that group can be treated 
as a ‘cell’ and composed into larger groups which will also 
be sustainable (using the same techniques as that internal 
to the prototypical cell group itself).  Therefore, the 
issues associated with group scale can be factored out. 
This allows the consideration of sustainability to be applied 
to small groups (with minimum complexity) as if they are 
representative of all groups.  Of primary interest then is 
what sort of minimal organizational dynamics would enable 
any small group to be sustainable.

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MFLB

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Trapped by Double Binds  | Pune365

Trapped by Double Binds 

By Anupam Saraph -March 24, 2021

Last week Nora Bateson engaged in a conversation with a few of us on the work of the International Bateson Institute. Nora is the President of the International Bateson Institute.

Her work asks the important question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world”.

“Pathology,” said Nora Bateson while explaining the importance of perception in systems, “is the inability of an organism to understand its world.” 

“What world?” responded a someone I know when I shared the concept. For him, his world was about himself and his needs. He failed to recognise the others in the different systems he was a part of. He never saw the others that made up his family. He never recognized the others who were his colleagues. He never saw the others in the teachers that he interacted with. He never recognised those who he did business with, they were simply means to an end. He never saw the others that made up his community. 

For him, therefore, all that mattered was his own aspirations, purposes, and needs. Not those of anyone else. He had been described by those who interacted with him as being self-centred, even narcissistic. He was an example of the pathology Nora referred to. 

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You know the kind of person I mean, right? Unfortunately there are too many in the world for whom the world is all about themselves, their aspirations, their purposes, and their needs. For them everyone else is just a means to their aspirations, needs, and ends. 

They are systems illiterate. They do not recognize that our world is the result of the systems we are a part of.

They are blind to the fact that systems are a result of purposes for which its participants come together, not the private purposes of a participant. They do not understand that the behaviour of the system is a result of the interactions of its participants, not a result of their wishes.

Nora Bateson calls information about the interrelationships in a system as warm data. It is the basis of understanding our world. Without it we have pathology.

One of the ways in which this pathology expresses itself is through what Nora’s remarkable father, Systems Scientist Gregory Bateson, had described as double bind.

For instance we when we tell children to be free to do as they please, we create a double bind. Asking them to do as they please is inconsistent because if they are free to do as they please, they will not heed to the needs of others. They will not care, nor respect others.

While there are many different explanations for double binds, from a systems perspective, those who learn to drive their actions while ignoring the others in their systems, or those who ignore feedback that tells them about the consequence of their actions, will experience a double bind. Double binds are the result of creating exploitative systems or systems that allow feedback to fail.

When we block perception, ignore its feedback, chose to see only what we like, not what is, or we completely ignore the others and the common purposes that brought us together, we create double binds. The less perceptive we are of the others in our world, the more the double binds we create. 

For instance those who get accustomed to drive their motorcycles on pavements while ignoring the others who came together to accept the pavement for our common purpose of walking will experience double bind. They create a situation where they believe they are being punished if they cannot drive on the pavement and they are being punished for driving on the pavement. This is not very different from a terrorist who feels punished for not doing the act of terror, and also for doing the act of terror.

Bateson had also surmised that children who get into double binds would have greater problems as they grow. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The child then creates an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the delusional world of a pathological system. Bateson demonstrated that the symptoms and etiology of schizophrenia could be formally described in terms of a double binds.

The COVID pandemic, and the climate crisis are also the result of this double bind. When we see social distancing, use of masks, and lockdowns as an affront on our freedom, as a punishment, we ensure the continuity of the pandemic. We feel we are punished by an unending pandemic. 

When we view our restrictions on our consumption as a punishment, we move faster and faster toward a global rise in temperature and extreme weather conditions. We feel punished and helpless in the climate crisis.

Unless we learn to understand and share the warm data of our systems: the participating actors, the common purposes that brought them together, the feedback that drives their actions, the moral code that serves as the basis to evaluate the feedback of the consequences of their action, our systems will have pathology.

Without systems literacy, there is no path to free ourselves from the short-term and be able to address the Short-Now, or the lifetime of the systems we participate in. 

Thankfully we have those like Nora Bateson to bring sanity in an increasingly insane world.

~~

#All views expressed in this column are those of the author and/or individuals or institutions that may be quoted and Pune365 does not necessarily subscribe to the same. 

Anupam Saraph

Dr. Anupam Saraph grew up in a Pune that was possibly a tenth of its current expanse and every road was lined by 200 year old trees. He’s committed to the cause of de-addicting the short-termers.

He can be reached @AnupamSaraph

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Trapped by Double Binds  | Pune365