[OSList] Designing an OS way

Mon Sep 19 12:57:42 PDT 2011

Of course, John! Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only
truly useful pre-work for OST is good yoga. Might not be a bad idea J

Harrison 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 20854

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

www.openspaceworld.com

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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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 3:38 PM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] Designing an OS way

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

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 20854

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

www.openspaceworld.com

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of OSLIST
Go to:http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org

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

--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
312-280-7838 (mobile)

http://MichaelHerman.com <http://MichaelHerman.com/> 
http://ManorNeighbors.com <http://ManorNeighbors.com/> 
http://OpenSpaceWorld.org <http://OpenSpaceWorld.org/> 

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)

http://MichaelHerman.com <http://MichaelHerman.com/> 
http://ManorNeighbors.com <http://ManorNeighbors.com/> 
http://OpenSpaceWorld.org <http://OpenSpaceWorld.org/> 

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