Hello all who are engaged in this thread I have taken some time to reflect on the intensity of my passion regarding this question and my own reactiveness to certain language associations in self organization. I continue to enjoy the thread woven around this topic and feel downright privileged to be present for the beauty and eloquence of Peggy's description and the many insights from others as we unravel this thread. I feel it is important to continue with this tuning around language because language is so central to the creation of reality and experience
Harrison wrote: "Pat, I am not sure that Kauffmann would disagree with you regarding the centrality of relationship, and I certainly would not (disagree). But perhaps it is not an either/or (either relationship or fitness), but rather a both/and. I would put it as follows: Our search for fitness drives us into (new) relationships, and simultaneously our (new) relationships enhance our fitness. At least that may be the case -- but as you point out, some relationships can be toxic." My hang up with fitness occurs from multiple perspectives. My initial reaction is to the notion of fitness from a Darwinian perspective. That species compete and the ones with the best genes, the biggest,the most resilient, the strongest, the most adaptable, pick whatever characteristics you want, are alive at the end of the game. Darwin's theories have never been the source of opening space for me. I think they are insightful maybe even brilliant but promote in their understanding a view that closes space. Something wins and something else loses. Species can be reduced to and elevated by their configuration of attributes. Also in Darwin's and that Newtonian way of thinking there is a weighted importance given to what I the observer can observe and a dismissal of things the observer can not see, ,as if they do not exist. I guess that is the single most disturbing aspect of the notion of fitness and seems incongruent with what I experience in open space. Prepare to be surprised for me is prepare to see what has been right in front of you and invisible. If my sights are set on what is fit the invisible may not be revealed. One of the prejudices of human cognition is to identify familiar patterns and weight them for success thereby stacking the decks for future success but also tuning our perceptions to look for what makes us successful and ignoring what does not feed that. This is why I think it is important to get at the language we use in our descriptions as it reveals how we compartmentalize and describe action. Artur's description of the micro forces expressed at the macro level were helpful and descriptive in this regard. So I am back onto relationships and looking to expand that discussion. Maturana would I think, include love as a micro force that is expressed at a macro level. We most typically in American culture at least, think of love as an emotion. Maturana and many schools of psychology suggests it to be a fundamental action in self organization. I have come to think of love as an action juxtaposed fear also an action. In a Newtonian framework love and fear would be forces that attract and dispel. So following this line of thought love would be the force that attracts and creates relationships and creates entities predisposed to a permeability to more relationships. Fear on the other hand would dispel relationships limiting possibility and permeability. Perhaps it is here that we are identifying fitness and its connection to relationship. I don't know. I am curious about how love and fear as action are expressed at the macro level and how open space seems to really provide a substrate for love action to predominate in the self organization and this self to be actualized and identity formed in this relationship? If love is an action that draws together how do we or the process work as agents for that? Is open space a symbol, that which draws us and binds us together? If we want to weight organization towards love action how do we become that action? And I guess the core question for me is how to we language, use language, create language in way that works to that purpose? What are the implications for our language and the actual reality we create? What are all the other questions here? Pat Black * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
