Forever Becoming

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STATE - What is it: solid, liquid, or gas? Or something in between?

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Change - Becoming - The Sea - Shaking Up - Absolutes

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Life           -              Death
Solid             -                      Liquid
Stability          -                      Plasticity
Certain          -                      Uncertain
Permanence          -                      Change
Rigid       -                      Flexible
Cohesive       -                      Random
Fundamentalism      -                      Relativism
Order       -                      Chaos

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Change is in the nature of all things. Like the Sea, nothing stands still. It is speculated that all life began in the sea; and without water there would be no life. The land stands as a counterpoint to the sea. Nothing is permanent. All of our structures are castles made of sand, destined to one day be washed away. Everything is forever becoming, but nothing ever truly is.

To get from one state to another you must be prepared to sail the turbulent seas; to abandon your structures, say goodbye to the land beneath your feet, and journey to somewhere new. From certainty to uncertainty; known to unknown.

The Sea is a fertile place. It is the place from which new structures emerge, and into which old structures fall. It is the negative space between our structures. It eludes definition, and cannot be pinned down. It is a place from which alternatives emerge; where other things can be tried out.

1. Solid and Liquid

Every thing is composed of other things. Imposing order is like telling a story, weaving together separate elements to create something new. Order is, then, synonymous with fusion; and whenever we make connections between things we are creating order. The stronger the connections the more solid the totality.

I use the image of Land to represent this idea of order and solidity. If we want to build structures then we need Land - solid ground - to build upon. Our structures act as bulwarks against the uncertainty and chaos of the outside world, sheltering us from the elements, and providing safety, security and familiarity. They are sanctuaries in which we can express ourselves - our view of things - without fear of rebuke. They are predictable places, where things are arranged just as we like them. Each structure is a little ordered world, with its own set of rules, preferences and meanings; its own culture.

For a structure to feel safe, it must be well built. Each element - from the foundations up to the roof - must be put in place with a crucial amount of care and attention, by trustworthy builders. Faulty foundations can cause paranoia and insecurity, a constant worry that at any moment our structure could crumble to the ground. They necessitate an inwards looking mentality, a pathological need to support, defend and maintain. Every blow becomes potentially life-threatening. Firm foundations, on the other hand, allow us to look - and venture - outwards, safe in the knowledge that our structure will remain standing, in spite of our lack of vigilance. A strong, resilient structure allows the odd blow to be absorbed here and there.

We may be so afraid of the outside world that we become reluctant to travel beyond the familiarity of our own four walls; at which point our little world becomes the whole world, and we see everything through its prism. Our vision becomes monocular, and all meanings are conflated with our own. If red is our colour, then all we see is red.

Entering someone else's structure can be like a trip to a foreign land, a place of strange sounds, smells and tastes. When the 'otherness' of foreign structures becomes threatening, then our santuary may become a castle, a fortified position from which we go to war. With its reinforced walls and elaborate defences, a castle is the zenith of solidity: its purpose is to endure; to keep the inside in, and the outside out.

To prevent an embattled mindset, lines of communication must stay open. We must allow an opening in our defences - an entry and exit point - through which we give and receive messages. Dialogue is an invisible thread that connects us to the outside world, allowing a mutual exchange of influence. It stops us from taking our little world too seriously, by reminding us of its relativity.

Our sanctuary can also become a prison: comforting familiarity can slide into dull habituation. Sometimes things need to be shaken up, constricting bonds loosened.

The Sea stands as a counterpoint to Land. A return to the Sea means a breaking apart of what was held together. Looser bonds allow more movement, and so as things come apart they become more fluid and flexible, and less solid. Water is formless and adaptable, assuming the shape of whatever vessel it is placed within. It is an antidote to the fundamentalism of solid matter.

However, we cannot build upon, or with, water. It is indecisive, enamoured with novelty - here, then there; this, then that - and so cannot be relied upon. In this sense, solid matter stands as an antidote to the relativism of liquidity.

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"stuck in your ways," "firmly rooted"

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Main posts:-
All is Change
Status Quo
Escaping Uncertainty
Solid Ground
Everything and Nothing

The Pyramid

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LEVEL - SCALE - How high/big?

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Viewpoint - Position - Hierarchy - Games - Logical types - Roots - Development - Growth -

Size - Scale - Distance - Proximity - Infinity - Limits - Borders - Planes - Order -

Resolution

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Short              -           Long
Concrete          -                      Abstract
Pragmatic       -                      Ideal
Narrow           -              Wide
Small          -                      Large
Together         -                      Apart
Close    -                      Far
Facts    -                     Values
Particular       -                      General
Individual       -                     Collective
Chaos    -                     Order
Hot       -                     Cold

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1. The Short View and the Long View

I like to imagine a town at the bottom of the pyramid. When we are at ground level we are able to walk within the town and take in various features; the smells drifting from its eateries; the sounds of its markets; the patterns of its cobbled streets; the cracks in its walls. Perhaps we come across a park, and stop and sit on the grass, feeling its blades tickling our neck as we lie down. If we look close enough we can see insects wriggling their way past us. If we are so inclined, we can dig our fingers into the dirt, and, bringing our hands close to our eyes we can see its residue lining the grooves of our fingertips.

These are the experiences that are available to us at the bottom of the pyramid. We are able to rejoice in details.

At the top of the pyramid awaits an altogether different experience. The details of the town are now lost to us; we can no longer see its cracks and crevices; smell its various odours; or touch its surfaces with our fingers. However, from up here we suddenly notice something new. We see that the streets of the town, those streets that we once walked through, make a pattern. And that the park is positioned in a very particular place within that pattern, along with a number of other landmarks. We see how everything fits together in order to create something larger. Up here another level of sense, of meaning, opens up to us.

I often use this analogy in order to illustrate different ways, or levels, of thinking. The sort of thinking that is associated with a ground-level view is pragmatic; concerned with details, and the here and now. It does not see the bigger picture. The thinking associated with the loftier view is idealist, or generalist. It is more concerned with how things fit together, and with long-term considerations. I call the view at the bottom the short view (short-term thinking) and the view from the top the long-view (long-term thinking).

I do not see one as being better than the other; rather, heeding the lesson of the colour wheel, both are necessary for a complete picture. Where one is proficient, the other is deficient. Working together they form a formidable team.

2. Abstraction

Another way of describing the change that occurs as we move up the pyramid is to say that things get more abstract. I like to imagine a pyramid that is constructed from different sized blocks. The very bottom level of the pyramid (‘Level 1’) consists of many small blocks. The next level (‘Level 2’) contains slightly fewer, larger blocks. A single block on Level 2 is large enough to contain a number of blocks from Level 1. Thus, a unit of information from the second Level encapsulates several units from the first.

In subsuming multiple blocks under one larger block - one ‘heading’ - we connect things that were formerly separate. In other words, we tell a story about them; which is another way of saying that we make sense of them. A 'story' is, in this sense, synonymous with a 'concept', or a 'category': it is a binding together of separate things.

However, the pay off is that in making sense we lose detail. Thus, as we travel up the pyramid, each level is more abstract than the one beneath it. The blocks continue to increase in size and decrease in number, resulting finally in a very large capstone. The capstone is akin to universally binding truth; it encapsulates everything beneath it, but only in a very general, or abstract, way. Such a truth could be something like “everything is connected”, or “universal love.”

The process of abstraction, then, is one of travelling upwards and away from the ground - away from concrete tangible reality and up toward the heavens. Its opposite is concretisation, which is a downward move; a grounding.

If we have our head in the clouds for too long then we may lose sight of reality. And too much time spent examining details may lead to us forgetting the bigger picture. As ever, balance is key.

3. Chaos and Order

As things become more abstract they also become more ordered, and so we can see the movement up the pyramid as one of increasing levels of order.

At ground-level we are presented with a chaos of details, but as we move upwards these begin to disappear from view. Movement becomes stillness; chaos becomes order. It is not that there is no movement, only that we are no longer able to perceive as much of it.

What this shows us is that the more we abstract - the further we move up the pyramid - the more we are able to hold things still (or to fool ourselves into thinking that we have done so). Looked at this way, our concepts are ways of solidifying, or fixing things.

This may explain the comfort that some people find in general concepts or overarching stories that appear to explain (hold together) many seemingly separate things. The chaos of change can be bewildering, and we all, to some extent, seek the comfort of solid ground, and the sanctuary of strong walls. However, the more a story seeks to include (the more abstract is the concept) the less in touch with empirical reality it becomes (the further it gets from ground-level).

4. Resolution

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"Touching base"
"Head in the clouds"
"Can't see the forest for the trees"
"Seeing the bigger picture"
"Keep it real"
Being "well grounded"

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Main posts:-
Abstract / Concrete
Only Playing
Touching Base
Digging Deeper
Scale
Middle World
A Higher Power

Imagine something different

By 'insight' we mean there is an understanding of (1) what went wrong with the previous system and why, as well as (2) what resources are now available for handling the problems better. Until people have a rationale for understanding why the prior system was embraced initially and why it was eventually undermined, lasting change into the next order is fitful. Insight keeps the old problems in focus and clarifies the new ones.

Different patterns and models, as well as step-by-step processes for implementing them, are essential to moving into a new system. These alternative scenarios must be active in the collective consciousness before they can be considered. Too often they are guarded in the minds of an elite few 'planners' or 'decision makers.'

People need mental pictures of what things might be like for them in their own real Life Conditions, not for some distant Hollywood stars or textbook case studies.

[Don Edward Beck & Christopher C. Cowan]
Spiral Dynamics, p. 84

Circle / Spiral / Line

Land and Sea

The Pyramid

Imagine something different

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