source:

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

source:

Trapped by Double Binds  | Pune365

Webinar: Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity

Webinar: Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity – YouTube

Cranfield School of Management5.57K subscribersSUBSCRIBEDSpeaker: Professor Michael C Jackson (University of Hull) This talk discusses the nature of complexity, the development of systems thinking, the emergence of critical systems thinking, and how to conduct interventions on the basis of critical systems practice. The world has become increasingly networked and unpredictable. Leaders of international bodies such as the UN, OECD, UNESCO and WHO, and of major business, public sector, charitable, and professional organizations, have all declared systems thinking an essential leadership skill for managing the complexity of the interrelated economic, social, and environmental issues they face.

https://sites.google.com/schoolfablab.com/huggerx/home

Our Vision

HUGGERx is a researched-based, immersive ecosystem of learning and collaboration “tools” or touchpoints designed to support young people – ages 8-88, to lean into complexity, to see it as a guide, rather than an enemy.

Ultimately our goal is for youth to develop confidence that they can use their understanding of living systems principles to help solve complex problems and together, innovate their way to healthier futures

At Hugger X, we’re exploring these Immersive Whole-Systems“Touchpoints” to learn about and collaborate around living systems:

Standard Media ( Books, web, Mobile App)

Hands-on activities,

AR (augmented reality) and

VR (virtual reality).

Systems Change Finland

Welcome Systems Changers…

Systems change friends! We invite you to a great Open Space online gathering. Here the themes, topics, and discussions that our wider community needs to have will emerge. As will the actions we choose to take.

The ideas, projects, questions and challenges concerned with systems change that you are working on contain the seeds of the discussions that will populate our agenda for the day. We will self-organise around the topics that matter to us.

Together we will grow new and fruitful connections. Ideas will propagate and cross-pollinate across our networks.

System changer, systems thinker, complexity navigator, network weaver, social acupuncturist? Whatever label you respond to, if you are in some way trying to understand and shift systems for the better, this Open Space is for you!

Who is this for?

If you feel any kind of affiliation to the idea of systems change, then this is for you. You may be a complete beginner, an interested academic, or a seasoned practitioner, if you have an interest in systems change, then you are who we are looking for, and we would be delighted to welcome you to the open space.

Register now

• Converge & Emerge tickets (individuals)€10,00 – €50,00
• Converge & Emerge Sponsor Package€500,00

How does it work?

Open Space uses self-organisation to co-create an agenda for discussion that is of common interest to the assembled participants.

Open Space operates under four principles and one law. The four principles are:

1. Whoever comes are the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
3. When it starts is the right time.
4. When it’s over it’s over.

The Law is known as the Law of Mobility:

If you find yourself in a situation where you are not contributing or learning,
move somewhere where you can.

The four principles and the law work to create a powerful event motivated by the passion, and bounded by the responsibility, of the participants.

In the first hour after the welcome and introductions we will open the space for agenda creation. Here you are all invited to propose a session topic. We will ask you to add your session to an editable spreadsheet and then we will give you the ‘microphone’ and invite you to present your session topic in 30 seconds to the wider audience.

Once the agenda has been prepared we will split into various rooms to begin the discussions. 

At the end of the day we will all reconvene in the closing circle and share insights from the conversation that has been emerging throughout the day. 

Event Host

Facilitators

Tanja Korvenmaa & Esko Reinikainen

Event Partners

Registration

The tickets for this event are ‘pay what you can’ with a minimum contribution of €10 to cover platform and event management costs. Current Systems Change Finland members can attend for free. If you pay €30 or over you will also receive a Systems Change Finland membership for 2021. Any surplus collected above the platform and event management costs will go to support the activities of Systems Change Finland.

You can read more about the Systems Change Finland membership here: https://www.systemschange.fi/membership/

book at:

Systems Change Finland

Messy Issues, Worldviews and Systemic Competencies January 2010 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2_6 In book: Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice Richard Bawden

(1) (PDF) Messy Issues, Worldviews and Systemic Competencies

feature piece:

An atlas of conceptual maps:

https://www.education.sa.gov.au/sites/default/files/an_atlas_of_conceptual_maps.pdf?acsf_files_redirect

Beer, S. (1986). Recursions of Power. Power, Autonomy, Utopia, 3–17. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-2225-2_1 

Sci-Hub | Recursions of Power. Power, Autonomy, Utopia, 3–17 | 10.1007/978-1-4613-2225-2_1

Link for comments etc – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YepFqiARZ8

An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems – LnuPlay – Linnaeus University MediaSpace

Gerald said:

On 4 March 2021, I gave a seminar entitled ‘An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems’. This was in a series of seminars co-organized by the Linnaeus University Systems Community (Sweden) and the Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull (UK). 261 people participated. The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive, and lots of people wrote asking if a recording would be made available. I have now been sent the recording, and the URL is pasted below. I have to say that nerves got to me in the first couple of minutes, as I wasn’t expecting several hundred participants, but then it gets more fluent after the ‘contents’ slide.Note that the URL below takes you to the Linnaeus University web site, and there is some text about the talk below the video screen. This is not visible at first sight – you have to scroll down. Please do so, as I have suggested a couple of books for you to read if you want to find out more. Here is the abstract for the talk:We are increasingly facing ‘wicked problems’. They are stubborn, challenging and often have to be managed rather than solved. They frequently involve interlinked issues, multiple agencies with different perspectives on both the problem and potential solutions, conflict over desired outcomes or the means to achieve them, power relations making change difficult, and uncertainty about the possible effects of proposed changes. While traditional scientific, policy and management approaches can make a useful contribution, we need something more than these if we want to gain a bigger picture understanding of how to act in the face of wicked problems. Systems thinking can help. In this talk, Gerald Midgley will introduce a framework of systems thinking skills, plus a variety of systems ideas and methods that can help people put these skills into practice. He will illustrate the use of the methods with a number of examples from his own social policy, natural resource management and community development projects in the UK and New Zealand. In this way, he will show how we can begin to get a better handle on wicked problems.

source:

An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Tackling Wicked Problems – LnuPlay – Linnaeus University MediaSpace

Consilience – Wikipedia

Consilience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigationJump to searchFor other uses, see Consilience (disambiguation).

In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can “converge” on strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significantly so on its own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence: if not, the evidence is comparatively weak, and there will not likely be a strong scientific consensus.

The principle is based on the unity of knowledge; measuring the same result by several different methods should lead to the same answer. For example, it should not matter whether one measures the distance between the Giza pyramid complex by laser rangefinding, by satellite imaging, or with a meter stick – in all three cases, the answer should be approximately the same. For the same reason, different dating methods in geochronology should concur, a result in chemistry should not contradict a result in geology, etc.

The word consilience was originally coined as the phrase “consilience of inductions” by William Whewell (consilience refers to a “jumping together” of knowledge).^[1][2] The word comes from Latin com- “together” and -siliens “jumping” (as in resilience).^[3]

source:

Consilience – Wikipedia

An important concept in systems, and also ‘post-pandemic’

What’s Hysteresis?

What’s Hysteresis?

Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary tells us:hys-ter-e-sis:n [NL, fr. Gk hysteresis shortcoming, fr. hysterein to be late, fall short, fr. hysteros later]

a retardation of the effect when the forces acting upon a body are changed (as if from viscosity or internal friction); esp: a lagging in the values of resulting magnetization in a magnetic material (as iron) due to a changing magnetizing force. –hys-ter-et-ic adjThere seems to be no etymological link between hysteresis and either hysterical (fr. L hystericus of the womb) or history (fr. Gk, inquiry, history, fr. histor, istor knowing, learned). This is too bad, as there are scientific connections to both words. (There is no link, scientific or etymological, to histolysis, the breakdown of bodily tissues, or to blood.)

Hysteresis represent the history dependence of physical systems. If you push on something, it will yield: when you release, does it spring back completely? If it doesn’t, it is exhibiting hysteresis, in some broad sense. The term is most commonly applied, as Webster implies, to magnetic materials: as the external field with the signal from the microphone is turned off, the little magnetic domains in the tape don’t return to their original configuration (by design, otherwise your record of the music would disappear!) Hysteresis happens in lots of other systems: if you place a large force on your fork while cutting a tough piece of meat, it doesn’t always return to its original shape: the shape of the fork depends on its history.

source:

What’s Hysteresis?

Some really interesting references in here, particularly ‘interactions of actors theory’

Gordon Pask – Wikipedia

Gordon Pask

Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was an English author, inventor, educational theorist, cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology. Pask first learned about cybernetics in the early 1950s when the originator of the subject, Norbert Wiener, spoke at Cambridge University, where Pask was an undergraduate student. Pask was asked to be of assistance during Wiener’s talk.^[1]

Holding three doctorate degrees, Pask published more than 250 journal articles, books, patents and technical reports from funding from United States Armed Forces, the British Ministry of Defence, the British Home Office and the British Road Research Laboratory.^[2] He taught at the University of Illinois, Old Dominion University, Concordia University, Open University, University of New Mexico, Architectural Association School of Architecture and MIT.^[3]

Contents

• 1Biography
• 2Work
• 3Interactions of actors theory
  • 3.1Hewitt’s actor model
• 4No Doppelgangers
  • 4.1Duration proof
  • 4.2Reproduction proof
  • 4.3A mechanical model
  • 4.4Further context
• 5Publications
  • 5.1Selected books
  • 5.2Selected papers
  • 5.3Patent
  • 5.4Exhibition
• 6See also
• 7References
• 8Further reading
• 9External links

source:

Gordon Pask – Wikipedia

Transcending Psychosocial Polarization with Tensegrity Biomimetic clues to collective resilience and unshackling knowledge

Transcending Psychosocial Polarization with Tensegrity