[OSList] Designing an OS way

Mon Sep 19 12:38:04 PDT 2011

Harrison,

I've been listening and learning.  Then all at once, I felt an urge to contribute!  Emergence in action.
One of my favorite ways to think about what you say below about equilibrium being "but a momentary pause on the way to something else..." comes from twelfth century (CE) Kashmir Shaivism, in the writing of Abhinavagupta and more succinctly in that of Kshemaraja, one of his students.  Talking about how we enact at our own level of consciousness the "five acts of siva" (creation, maintenance, dissolution, cloaking or forgetfulness, and revealing or grace), they refer to the tendency we have to see reality in terms of a whole bunch of dichotomies (a form of forgetfulness or cloaking), mostly having to do with seeing objects and subjects as somehow separate from each other, including ourselves, and as fixed "things." They remind us of what we in the west have only recently begun to realize, that everything in this universe is just a flow of energy, and it's all connected.  When we hold onto the idea of that thing out there (or the "I am that" in our inner universe), we exaggerate the "maintenance" part of the cycle and become attached to or averse to those "things" as something permanent.  They ask us to use our "yoga" to understand this deep sense of reality, and "reabsorb" or "dissolve" those "objects" back into the flow of consciousness, of energy, and thus move beyond the suffering or misery that we experience when we are attached to the "thingness" of reality.  We can then participate with more blissfulness in the play of reality, and even enjoy the pleasure of experiencing the "cloakedness" of our material level of experience, so long as we understand it is just one form of experience.
One of my own very personal experiences with things being "but a momentary pause on the way to something else..." comes from my backpacking in high mountains, where there are lots of imposing boulderfields to negotiate.  I must place my boot squarely on each rock I pass over, carefully, deliberately, and trust it 100% to hold my weight, and yet, each boulder has the potential to roll under my feet and take me for a very unpleasant ride, if I am attached to it staying put, or fearful of it rolling.  If I commit 100% to being on it when I am, and yet am already moving on to the next, a happy dynamic flow ensues that turns a field of death into a golden brick road.
A little poetic, but very real.
BTW, the tantrikas say that breath is the flow of universal energy, of the goddess into your being, and back into the goddess.  And "she will breathe you until she is done."

John

On Sep 19, 2011, at 12:16 PM, Harrison Owen wrote:

> John – where have you been hiding? It is fun to have you here! A thought about equilibrium – that it is but a momentary pause on the way to something else. We do like stasis – standing still. Gives us a sense of permanence, regularity, control. But unfortunately, as I experience it, life is a process, a flow, a becoming. And the stasis we experience is but a momentary snapshot along the way. Part of our problem, I think is that we become prisoners of our language. It is very difficult to talk about “flow” – we can only speak of “moments of flow” – and those moments then become (in our language) things in themselves. Shift the language to music/sound or visuals/video and the situation becomes more manageable – but then many feel that we have lost precision. Oh well – choices.
>  
> And where does Open Space fit in all of this? I think one of the wonderful things that happens is that the people become aware of the flow which moves beyond (and around) their experience of the static things…the rules, regulations, formal structure, etc. A little poetic perhaps – but I watch organizations learning to breathe again, instead of gasping for breath which is what usually happens when you are told when and how to breathe.
>  
> Harrison
>  
> Harrison Owen
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> From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org [mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of John Watkins
> Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 1:46 PM
> To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
> Subject: Re: [OSList] Designing an OS way
>  
> Great questions, Michael!
>  
> I think when I am feeling optimistic (most of the time) I see OST as creating one of those "far from equilibrium states" that Prigogine and Stengers talk about as enabling new orders to emerge; however, in less sanguine times, I could also imagine OST as just a "subsystem fluctuation" enabling larger system stability.  But I think that most of our larger systems these days are exhibiting something like either disequilibrium or bifurcation points, so maybe OST is able to restructure the system architecture so fundamentally that a new order could emerge.  Weick talks about that restructuring of the system architecture in order to change the "flows" of energy in the system.  I think Bateson referred to one kind of larger system disequilibrium as an "uptight system," where at least one of the "variables" is "pinned" at its upper or lower limits of its range of flexibility, resulting in that rigidity rippling through the whole system.   Rigid systems change more easily, but not usually in a very pretty way:  chaotic bursts, turbulence, tumbling into chaos, new orders emerging spontaneously...
>  
> John
>  
> On Sep 19, 2011, at 10:24 AM, Michael Herman wrote:
> 
> 
> yes, thanks, john.  and... where does os practice drop into either of these?  in bateson terms, it seems open space meetings would be an alternative state that organizations are unconsciously working to prevent?  how does something like working in an open space way become part of the equilbrium state that is then automatically preserved by continually returning from anything that's alternative to that way of being in organization?  in lemke terms, there seems a place for operating in open space, but will it always require what sounds like a crisis, choice-point to be helpful?  how does working in an open space way become normal in systems that are storied in this way?  m
> 
> 
>  
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> Michael Herman
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> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 12:06 PM, John Watkins <johnw536 at mac.com> wrote:
> Michael,
>  
> I think Gregory Bateson addressed the question of equilibrium most eloquently a long time ago in his great book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind!  And I've seen some great analysis of it in Jay Lemke's book, Textual Politics.  Let's see if I can find the relevant quotes...
>  
> Bateson: Systems “…maintain a dynamic equilibrium or steady state… [through] maximiz[ing] the chances against the maximization of any single simple variable” (124).  “The steady state is maintained by continual nonprogressive change” (125).  What Bateson noticed was that allowable levels of fluctuations in some subset of a larger system were used to create relative stability in the larger system, but that those fluctuations never led to fundamental shifts in the architecture of the system, as they continually shifted out of and then returned to a kind of dynamic equilibrium.   It is a “corrective action… brought about by [the awareness of] difference” (Bateson, 1972:381).  A social system “…does not elect the steady state; it prevents itself from staying in any alternative state” (381). Or, “[T]he constancy and survival of some larger system is maintained by changes in the constituent subsystem” (Bateson, 1972:339). 
>  
> Lemke calls that a “meta-stable non-equilibrium” (Lemke, 1995:11).  He goes on to argue that as social systems develop, they become more ordered and differentiated, increasingly complex, and as such, demonstrate irreversibility.  At some point, in various layers of their hierarchy (hierarchy in systems theory is not the same as hierarchy of authority or knowledge, e.g., bureaucracy; it is a concept of scale, in scope, time, or space), open, complex systems begin to demonstrate non-symmetry, or the possibility of bifurcation (branching, “choice” points), due to the amplified, interacting oscillations of various sub-systems.  Bifurcation in larger systems can enable larger out-of-equilibrium fluctuations in, or unpredictable interactions between, sub-systems to result in evolutionary, or adaptive, change in the larger system...
>  
> Does this help?
>  
> John
>  
>  
>  
> On Sep 19, 2011, at 9:36 AM, Michael Herman wrote:
> 
> 
> i want to echo florian's appreciation for your story, john, thank you.  and i have a question about "equilibrium."  
> 
> in financial markets, gene fama won a nobel prize for his theory of "efficient" markets, suggesting that markets always reflected all current information, immediately returning to "equilbrium" after every news release, so that above-normal returns were not possible.  many now question or dismiss this.
> 
> so, in a world that is always moving, what does the theory you described so nicely have to say about equilibrium?  does it then lead into questions about locality and "self" ...the department might be in equilibrium but the company is falling apart, or vice versa... so the boundaries of the "self" that is being invited to organize or re-organize really matter.
> 
> mostly i'm just wondering if you can say more to map the open systems, thermodynamics, and esp equilibrium story to what we have all seen happening in organizations and open spaces.  is "equilibrium" the same as "normal?"
> 
> m
> 
> 
>  
> --
> 
> Michael Herman
> Michael Herman Associates
> 312-280-7838 (mobile)
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> http://MichaelHerman.com
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> http://OpenSpaceWorld.org
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