ABSTRACT
In planning for ‘the future’, much of our human focus continues to be
on ‘forward-thinking’, which essentially relies upon projecting an historical
record of the past into a trajectory that extends beyond the here and now.
Trends are identified and short- and long-term objectives are set. These
prescriptive ‘targets’ and ‘best practices’ are aimed for in an essentially
linear progression along chains of cause and effect in a fixed, 3-dimensional
framework that treats space and time as independent background constants.
Biological evolution has been depicted in much the same way, as a process
of progressive adaptation involving the preferential selection of those forms
that have a competitive advantage in a defined set of circumstances or ‘niche’.
Here I show how the rigid selectivity of this approach, whilst simulating
one aspect of natural evolutionary processes disregards another. It obstructs
our ability to attune with an ever-changing context, such as that currently
referred to as ‘climate change’. For such attunement, a natural, evolutionarily
open, process is necessary to enable a creatively receptive response in a
space-including geometry that is fundamentally fluid, not fixed. This process
of ‘natural inclusion’ involves the non-linear integration, differentiation
and complementation of both radially symmetrical (all round) and polarized
(channelled) non-local and local spatial information. Here, the latter is
a dynamic inclusion - necessarily both including and included in the former,
like a weathervane signifying airflow or fish attuning with streambed. It
cannot operate as an independent executive object, isolated from what includes
itself.
Fixing the Future: Goal-Oriented Rationality in a Euclidean Frame
Imagine you are one of a party of survivors of a plane crash in the middle
of a desert. Somewhere, beyond your immediate view, there may be an oasis.
How might you find refreshment? In this essay, I show why, in such a situation,
a single-minded, Darwinian, ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality would be
disastrous, and how a fungus, or any similar fluid dynamic natural organization
could do better with no evident selective consciousness or central executive
leadership. I go on to explore how, notwithstanding our self-awareness, our
human ability to love our neighborhood as our ‘self’, may make us more creatively
like a fungus than we might think we are!
A singular characteristic of human perception appears to be the widespread
idea that somehow some ‘thing’ objectively called ‘the future’ exists, which
can be approached along a predetermined path that leads predictably to either
a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ end. Those elite few empowered through this perception
to be ‘decision-makers’ on behalf of the populace hence stake their claims
to authority upon their ability to select which path will have a good outcome
and ensure that it is followed by means of suitable legislation and enforcement.
What counts as ‘good’ depends, however, on making a ‘value-judgement’, a
matter of opinion concerning relative desirability that may or may not be
shared by all concerned. Even where some kind of electorate is consulted,
the outcome may not be ‘democratic’ in the sense of governance for all by
all, but rather the imposition of rule by a majority, whose favour is curried
by rhetorical debate. A sharp dividing line develops between ‘them’ and ‘us’,
those empowered or oppressed by the system. Conflict and tension become inevitable,
especially where what are judged by those with power to be desirable ends
are used to justify undesirable means applied to those oppressed.
The pursuit of desirable objectives itself depends upon a system of objective
logic, perhaps unique to human beings, whereby ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are defined
in absolute moral terms, regardless of natural situation. Indeed this logic
has the effect of placing a hard dividing line between ‘human being’ and
‘other nature’. The latter then becomes what externally threatens or serves
human interest, not what human interest inextricably both includes and is
included by as natural neighborhood. For at the heart of this logic is the
strict definition of ‘what is’ or ‘is not’ a particular object. Any
‘middle ground’ between what is and is not is thereby explicitly excluded
- the so-called ‘law of the excluded middle’. Ultimately, this law depends
on the exclusion of ‘space’ - as constant empty background or ‘void’ - from
‘matter’ - as condensed electromagnetic information or ‘energy’.
The exclusion of immaterial from material presence - rather than dynamic
mutual inclusion of each in and by the other - leads to a de-spirited, static,
purely materialistic view of natural form shaped by ‘structure’ alone.
Here, ‘space’, is paradoxically regarded both as ‘absence of quantifiable
material presence’ and as ‘distance’ between material entities, which is
measured in terms of structural units of length, area and volume. In other
words space is measured in units of structure, whilst counting as nothing
in itself, a nonentity and non-participant in the dynamics of independent
form, contained in a box of x, y and z co-ordinates extending from zero through
infinitesimal to infinite. Within this box, movement can only be brought
about through the imposition of ‘force’, ultimately derived from somewhere
ineffable, rather than being implicitly included in a continual natural process
of contextual transformation (see Rayner 2004).
This is the cubical cubicle world of 3-dimensional Euclidean geometry, where
points are dimensionless, lines are widthless, planes are depthless and solids
are pure magic! The great arithmetical convenience of this world is that
both space and time can be abstracted as constants, divisible into discrete
equal units to form an independent reference frame in which to fix and quantify
the movements, mass and numbers of pure material objects. Curvature is not
treated as natural or primary, but constructed secondarily by calculus, in
infinitesimal steps from discrete point masses or singularities. Acceleration
is derived from velocity, not vice versa.
Only in this back-projected, atomized world of alienation of material from
immaterial presence can any kind of fixed independent form exist, for any
natural curvature implies a dynamic spatial asymmetry (inequality) between
interdependent concave and convex domains. These domains are reciprocally
coupled and distinguished through the transition zone or ‘boundary’ that
simultaneously outlines one and inlines the other. Try to blow a cubical
bubble and you’ll gather what I mean!
As was recognised by Henri Poincaré (1905), it takes only a few moments’
real-world consideration to appreciate that this primarily linear world of
Euclidean geometry is inconsistent with our living experience of nature as
inhabitants of the varied dynamic surface of a space-including sphere with
no fixed centre or corners. It is both an abstraction from and an inverted
supra-natural imposition upon real-world dynamic geometry. Yet it lies deep
in the heart of the fallacious and ultimately adversarial, distressing and
addictive logic that we apply so rigorously to our understanding of
life on Earth. What is it about human beings, which makes us so susceptible
to becoming entrapped by this pure materialistic logic?
Abstract Sovereignty: The Unnatural Selectivity of Hierarchical Governance
Imagine for a moment that you are not a member of a party, but a sole survivor
of that plane crash in the desert. Your only hope, quite literally, is to
set as straight a course as you can for the horizon. You proceed with grim
determination, looking forward all the way, as we humans are predisposed
to do through eyes set on the front of our faces and powerful frontal lobes
in our brains, which repress any sideways distraction of conscious attention
from our fixed objective. You are further aided by your own footprints, which
help you to avoid departing from or backtracking along your initially set
trajectory, and any set reference points like a distant hilltop or the trajectory
and angle of elevation of the sun. At last, water appears in the distance.
You thank God and/or congratulate your own single-mindedness for your deliverance.
Of course, for all you know, you could have set off in exactly the wrong
direction, but then you wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. So you prepare
to repeat this successful strategy, thinking that what’s served you so well
in ‘the past’ will serve you equally well in ‘the future’.
It’s easy in this context to understand how the human tendency to fixate
upon desirable objectives can be developed and reinforced by any sense of
individual isolation in a desolate, unyielding landscape. Here, the only
immediate sign of ‘life’ or ‘movement’ is within one self and all else appears
to be fixed structure and empty space. The doublethink begins to emerge of
the individual as a ‘free agency’ - a local, self-centred automaton paradoxically
driven either by internal purpose or external force and free to do whatever
it thinks fit in order to stay alive and well. This is the thought that appears
to have become deeply entrenched in modern human culture, reinforced along
its way by philosophical, religious, mathematical, scientific, educational,
political and economic orthodoxy (‘right-mindedness’). Moreover, there is
strong anthropological evidence that this thought began its ascent to prominence
with ‘The Fall’, during a period around 6000 years ago, when large areas
of the Middle East and North Africa became desert (Taylor, 2005).
Our dislocated sense of self-centredness as ghost-in-the-machine prisoners
of our skin severed from and hence in rivalry with the world of other(s)
outside, has us seek to impose our will upon this world in a superhuman effort
to avoid being overwhelmed by it. We struggle for our existence through seeking
sovereignty over other(s).
We begin to divide the world and ourselves up into opposing factions and
fractions, which can only be overruled by the power of ‘higher authority’.
We seek the rich rewards this power brings, for ourselves. We gain this power
by winning competitive games of one against another. But as we do so, the
possibility of loving ‘other’ as a vital aspect of our ‘self’ recedes further
and further and further away, behind the barricade that we have ourselves
set against it.
Our creative lives become diminished, fearful and ultimately as desolate
as the desert mind set that drove us to such abstraction. The most help we
can expect from others in our human neighborhood is to co-preserve an uneasy
balance of power. We survive but don’t thrive, armed to the teeth with weapons
of mutually assured destruction and certain of our mutual selfishness and
mistrust worthiness, in accordance with John Nash’s ‘Game Theory’ and Richard
Dawkins’ ‘Selfish Genes’. Many of us may try to escape this unforgiving world
through various forms of addiction and expressions of mental distress. Meanwhile
we let our living space go to pot, until, as recently, we suddenly notice
that it’s overheating, and frantically set about trying to rectify it using
the same sovereign logic that got us into trouble in the first place. Over
thirty years ago, when I was depressed following a year of postgraduate research
in which I had been fully exposed for the first time in my life to the real
implications of ‘objective scientific method’, I portrayed this desolation
in the painting shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. ‘Arid Confrontation’ (Oil painting on board, by Alan Rayner, 1973).
This painting depicts the limitations of the detached view of the observer
excommunicated from nature. After a long pilgrimage, access to life is barred
from the objective stare by the rigidity of artificial boundaries. A sun
composed of semicircle and triangles is caught between straight lines and
weeps sundrops into a canalized watercourse. Moonlight, transformed into
penetrating shafts of fear encroaches across the night sky above a plain
of desolation. Life is withdrawn behind closed doors.
No Fixed Limits: Fluid Dynamic Patterns of Natural Exploration
How very different it could all be if instead of being a sole survivor in
the desert, we were members of a party who could radiate in all directions,
whilst remaining in touch with one another visually, acoustically and/or
via our paths in the sand. When any one or a few of us came within range
of an oasis, we could immediately communicate this to our nearest neighbors.
Our neighbors would relay the message to their neighbors, and all would quickly
converge upon and reinforce our initial path, some crossing over from, others
retracing their original footsteps. We’d all arrive at the oasis more or
less together and splash ourselves all over in delight. We might chatter
excitedly and praise our human cleverness for devizing such a successful
survival strategy. But then we’d be wrong. For such spreading and narrowing
of focus in dynamic attunement with spatial context is characteristic of
all kinds of living flow-forms, including fungi, as shown in Figure 2. In
fact it’s characteristic of flow forms generally, not just those we have
become accustomed to classify as ‘life as we know it’ on Earth.
Figure 2. A fungus finds an oasis in a desert, by fluid-dynamically spreading
and narrowing its energetic focus. The wood-decaying fungus, Hypholoma fasciculare,
has been inoculated into a tray full of soil on a block of wood ('starter'
food source), with an uncolonized wood block ('bait' food source) placed
some distance away from it. Distinct stages are shown in the radial spreading
of the fungal colony from the inoculated wood block, followed by the redistribution
and focusing of its energy in one direction following upon contact with the
bait. Similar fluid dynamic patterns of gathering in, conservation of, exploration
for and redistribution of energy supplies are found throughout the living
world, from subcellular to ecosystem scales of organization (From Dowson
et al., 1986; see also Rayner, 1997).
Now just imagine that when the first of the party of plane crash survivors
to locate an oasis refused to communicate with his or her neighbors but instead
rushed headlong to take sole advantage. Alternatively, imagine that the leader
of the advance party claimed ownership over the find, saying that it was
down to their superiority over their neighbors, and formed a posse to defend
and perhaps charge an entrance fee to the facility. What kind of betrayal
would that be? How much betrayal of that kind is evident in modern human
culture and survival of the fittest mentality?
The relationship between spread-focus and narrow-focus exploration is also
evident in two distinctive patterns of human brain activity, closely associated
with creativity. These are called the Inspiration and Elaboration phase (e.g.
see Claxton, 2006).
In the Inspiration phase, there is openness to all kinds of possibility via
an unconditional panoramic perceptive process associated with ‘alpha waves’
in the brain. For many people this process may be taken for granted or unconscious
- indeed associated with dreaming or daydreaming. Personally, however, I
am very aware of consciously allowing myself to become receptive to whatever
comes, by relaxing both my body and frame of mind as I give free reign to
my imagination prior to setting to work on a piece of writing or painting
or problem or opportunity. As inspiration is gained, particular possibilities
are developed and refined into explicit form through the Elaboration phase,
a process characterized by ‘beta waves’ associated with strong activity of
the frontal lobes of the brain, which concentrate attention along a particular
avenue.
These phases may also be related to distinctive forms of sensory perception,
musculature and emotions. The Elaboration phase of unidirectional thought,
would correspond with attraction or repulsion responses to or from sources
of fear and satiation, detected through our explicit senses of sight, sound,
taste, smell and touch, and mediated through ‘tonic’ or ‘fast action’ muscle
fibers. The Inspiration phase of omni-directional thought would correspond
with feelings of comfort and discomfort, derived from implicit all-round
bodily ‘proprioception’ or ‘situational awareness’ of gravitational and thermal
fields, and mediated through ‘phasic’ or ‘slow action’ muscle fibers. Whereas
Inspiration provides an awareness of inclusion in ‘everywhere’ (non-local),
Elaboration directs attention to ‘somewhere’ (local).
Clearly, these phases of inspiration and elaboration are complementary and
interdependent, not mutually incompatible. Neither alone can amount to much:
inspiration without elaboration is incoherent; elaboration without inspiration
is restrictive. Moreover, the linear – directional - view can be derived
from the non-linear – panoramic - by closing down spatial possibility, but
not vice versa. The linear has to open up to the inclusion of space everywhere
- all in all - to melt into non-linear.
What a travesty it is, then, if the linear view becomes regarded as somehow
superior to and given inverted precedence over the non-linear! Yet just such
favoritism is evident in an immense variety of hierarchically structured
human walks of life, as well as in our selective interpretation of history
and evolutionary process through post-hoc ‘hindsight’. A linear path is back-projected
from present into past, and only those events or characters that occur sequentially
along this path are acknowledged to have contributed to the historical lineage
of cause and effect. The path becomes a regression ‘line of best fit’, selected
through the exclusion of other possibilities, which become regarded as ‘peripheral’,
‘vulgar’, ‘non-mainstream’ or even as wasteful ‘failures’. Correspondingly,
conventional neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory describes a process of ‘preserving
the best and discarding the rest’ of a randomly generated set of variations,
as if ‘success’ were a prescriptively fixed target that could only be attained
in one way.
From such thinking emerges the idea that ‘if only I/we could predict with
foresight the path to success that is evident from hindsight, how much better
off I/we would be’. This is the idea that leads us to impose prescriptive
closure upon our objectives and hence narrow down our creative options when
trying to plan ahead, ever fearful of succumbing to competition with our
rivals as the penalty for ‘error’ or ‘failure’. We become path-followers,
not pathfinders: tunnel vision begets tunnel vision in an ever-deepening
rut.
Close inspection of Figure 2 reveals, however, that this selective understanding
of evolutionary process literally presents a very partial, elitist and wasteful
view of what really happens, even where there is a fixed ‘target’, let alone
when opportunity is continually shifting via the transformation of the contextual
landscape. Far from being excluded as ‘failures’ from the path of discovery,
the energetic resources initially spread out along other paths are gathered
back into it, enabling considerable amplification. Simplification is achieved
not by eliminative selection, but by integrative inclusion, involving the
co-creative, fluid dynamic transformation of all by all in the receptive
spatial context of labyrinthine pathways that become less resistive to current
as current flows along them, enabling autocatalytic flow. Herein lies the
fundamental difference between evolution by (un)natural selection – as an
essentially degenerative process of ever-diminishing competitive options
in a restrictive domain – and evolution by natural inclusion, as a creative
process of ever-opening possibilities in a transforming spatial context.
Whirls, Curls, Nests and Labyrinths: The Dynamic, Space-including
Geometry of Natural Inclusion
Geometrically, then, what makes the difference between a generative and degenerative
evolutionary process is the dynamic inclusion, in the former, of space as
‘omnipresence of structural absence’. This inclusion is vital in the formation
of a variable viscosity, variable permeability field of dynamic relational
curvature in which every concavity simultaneously and reciprocally implies
a convexity over nested scales from subatomic to universal. In this field
any displacement of ‘somewhere’ local simultaneously and reciprocally implies
a transformation in the configuration (i.e. a ‘transfiguration’) of ‘everywhere’
non-local, and vice versa. ‘Content’ cannot change or move independently
of the spatial context of which it is a dynamic inclusion. Evolution involves
the continual harmonizing (‘dynamic balancing’, ‘attunement’ or ‘resonance’)
of local with non-local, not the perfection of individual fixed entities
through one-way ‘adaptation’ to a fixed ‘other’.
The mutual correspondence of ever transforming convex and concave via necessarily
incomplete and hence ‘holey’ or permeable, intermediary domains, implies
a fundamental dynamic geometry of Nature. This geometry extends from microcosm
to macrocosm and differs radically from the hard-line abstractions of Euclid.
It is primarily non-linear or curved, due to the inductive receptivity of
spatial attraction, giving rise to spheres, ellipsoids, spirals and tubes.
Linear structure emerges secondarily from this geometry, as in the cylinders
formed by trees or the hexagonal arrays formed in honeycombs and the regular
surfaces of crystals. This natural geometry is also ‘nested’, with smaller
domains contained within and communicating with larger domains. The simplest
form of expression of this geometry would be a set of concentric perforated
spheres, but has the potential to become extremely ‘involved’ or ‘complex’.
The nearest approach that conventionally fixed-framed mathematics has made
to this natural fluid dynamic geometry of ‘nested holeyness’ or ‘holey communion’
is known as ‘fractal geometry’. This was made famous by Benoit Mandelbrot
(1977), as a way to describe structures whose boundaries, unlike Euclidean
surfaces, appear progressively more complex/irregular, in ‘self-similar’
patterns, the closer they are observed. Almost anything we look at in nature
from clouds, to snowflakes, to river valleys, to ferns, to trees, to lungs
has this property, which makes them immeasurable in terms of discrete units
of length, area and volume, because how much you see depends on how close
you are. For example, the length of the coastline of Madagascar seems much
less to an astronaut orbiting the Earth than it does to a mite crawling around
its many indentations. At infinitesimal scales of closeness, the length is
infinite.
The problem of quantifying fractal structures can be solved by relinquishing
the Euclidean idealization that dimensions can have only integral values
of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 etc, and allowing them also to have fractional (hence ‘fractal’)
values. The fractal dimension of a structure can be calculated from the equation:
M = krD
where M is the material ‘content’ of a portion of the structure, r is the
radius of the field in which this portion of content is contained, and D
is the dimension. D can readily be found from the relationship between the
logarithms of M and r for different fields of view. If the structure is homogeneous,
then D will have an integral value. If it is heterogeneous, D will be fractional.
Fractal patterns can be simulated mathematically by iterating non-linear
equations. A famous example is the ‘Mandelbrot set’ itself, which appeared
in many guises as a colourful modern mathematical art form in the late twentieth
century. This set is made by mapping the distribution of points in the ‘complex
plane’ that do not result in infinity when iterated according to the rule,
z →z2 + c, where z begins at zero and c is the complex number corresponding
to the point being tested. Here, a ‘complex number’ is a number that consists
of a combination of a ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ component, the latter being
a derivation of, ‘i’, the square root of -1. The complex plane is formed
in the space defined by placing all ‘real’ numbers, from -∞, through 0, to
+∞ along a horizontal line, and all ‘imaginary’ numbers, from -∞i, through
0, to +∞i, along a vertical line, and using these Euclidean lines as co-ordinates.
In effect, it represents a way of increasing the ‘possibility space’ for
numbers as discrete entities to inhabit, from one to two dimensions.
The remarkable feature of the Mandelbrot set is the extraordinarily complex
boundary that occurs between points within and points outside the set, in
effect between an inner attractive space of zero and an outer attractive
space of infinity. Such complex boundaries formed between neighbouring attractive
spaces or ‘attractors’ have more generally been referred to as ‘fractal basin
boundaries’, and are clearly at least analogous to the complex boundaries
of natural process geometry. The conventional abstract mathematical representation
of such complexity, however, begins prescriptively with the implicit or explicit
Euclidean or numerical definition of contents and containers as complete
wholes, hence retaining paradoxical singularity and replacing their simultaneous
reciprocal relationship with sequential ‘feedback’. Natural geometry, by
contrast, implies intermediary, incompletely definable realms (dynamic boundaries)
through which convex and concave spatial possibilities are coupled and transformed
by one another. Endless creative possibility emerges.
Simplifying Agenda: Removing the Complication from Complexity Theory
The complex involvement of ‘all in the fluid dynamic field of all’ may appear
quite off-putting to those of us who yearn for a ‘simple life’, as well as
impossible to analyse or study comprehensively by those striving for the
clarity of rationalistic objectivity. Yet at the heart of this involvement
is an underlying simplicity of dynamic local/non-local relationship, which
has not been accounted for explicitly in modern Complexity Theory based on
the ‘self-organization’ of many-bodied systems (e.g. Goodwin, 1994). This
simplicity is actually obscured by efforts to simplify Nature via the imposition
of a fixed reference frame or boundary limit around discrete objects or groups
of objects. For in a real-world geometry where no such frame or discrete
boundary is known to exist, to impose it can only ultimately add in redundant
complication, distortion and misunderstanding. In much the same way, the
complicated ‘epicycles’ used to explain ‘erratic’ planetary movements in
the Ptolemaic, geocentric model of the solar system made life Hell for students
and scholars of astronomy prior to the Copernican Revolution. Perhaps
it is opportune now to remove this frame, or at least use it wisely, purely
as a tool of enquiry rather than as an end in itself. Maybe we should focus
instead on real-world dynamic boundaries as our source of reference to where
we are in the scheme of everywhere, integral as these boundaries are in the
fluid pooling together of all in all, microcosm in macrocosm and vice versa.
Dynamic Balancing: The Non-Executive Management of Natural Neighbourhood
There is a form of leadership that does not call for a careful, creative
and reflective consideration of possibilities viewed from all angles by all
concerned. Rather, it demands conformity with its own vision and specification
of destination. In the absence of others’ agreement, it carries on regardless
with whatever action it has planned, convinced in its own mindset that this
is the 'right thing to do'. Any leader of this ilk, whether elected by a
supposedly democratic majority or not, considers him or herself to have a
prerogative to do what they know to be best for the world, regardless of
context. Moreover, by exercising their moral imperialism in the face of opposition
they demonstrate the strength of their authority, a resolve that historical
narrative will, they imagine, in due course affirm and celebrate. But events
often don’t exactly turn out as predicted. The real life and death situation
on the ground is far more complex and non-linear than envisaged. The effects
of intervention in complex - highly involved - situations aren't so certain
in the long run. The ensuing tragedies are never more heart-rending than
when a leader decides to declare war upon his neighborhood.
This is a style that I think is all too commonly the sole form of leadership
recognized in human organizations: a product of prescriptively definitive
(rationalistic) thinking and action that places deterministic power at control
centres or hubs. It amounts to what might be called authoritarian, dictatorial,
proprietorial or, as my correspondent Ted Lumley puts it, powerboat leadership.
It entails leadership towards a set destination of a fleet of individuals
that have declared themselves independent of their natural situation by dint
of strapping an outboard motor of technology on their backsides. It creates
one Hell of a wash of collateral damage for those caught up in its turbulence.
It is the kind of leadership provided by some so-called experts, gurus, presidents
and ministers whose actions primarily serve individual self-interest, whereby
an individual or elite lays down the law or 'codes of conduct' for others
to follow, regardless of circumstances.
There is, however, another style of leadership, or perhaps more aptly, craftsmanship,
that seeks to cultivate creative space for all to air their views and benefit
from shared experience. This is what might be called Arthurian (after King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table), co-educational, non-proprietorial
or, as Ted Lumley puts it, sailboat leadership. Such craftsmanship is based
on learning through experience how to attune with natural processes, in a
way that all can learn from.
Now, as the supposedly 'United Nations' of humanity contemplates its 'next
steps', in the face of seemingly global environmental, psychological and
social crisis, the question of which, if either, of these forms of leadership
is wiser seems very important. Here, it is not a question necessarily of
'which is better?' in an 'either/or' sense, but how can these styles best
be balanced? How does anyone in this situation who seeks leadership or has
leadership thrust upon them, see their role? Do they see themselves as co-cultivators
of creative space for wise enquiry? Does they see themselves as Directors
and Proprietors of organizations? Is wise leadership something definable
that we can be instructed about via the 'right kind of training' in a real
or virtual Institution? Is wise leadership perhaps identifiable with love,
some indefinable presence that we can open ourselves to and co-cultivate?
Beneath all, I am suggesting that we need to learn or re-learn how to live
and love a little more, and conflict a lot less, if we are to attune co-creatively
with our ever-transforming natural neighbourhood. But I can no more tell
you prescriptively how to ‘do’ this than I can tell you how to ride a bicycle
along a bumpy road. I can only show and encourage you in a non-executive
way that it’s possible, by relaxing your self-definition and using your feeling.
In much the same way, with no need for an onboard computer or set of gradient-detecting
instruments, a weathervane aligns through its bodily relationship with airflow,
and a trout orients with streambed. It’s easy if you don’t try too hard.
References
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Goodwin, B. (1994) How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Mandelbrot, B. (1977). The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: Freeman.
Poincaré, H. (1905) Science and Hypothesis. Dover Publications.
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Rayner, A.D.M. (1997) Degrees of Freedom - Living in Dynamic Boundaries.
Imperial College Press, London.
Rayner, A.D.M. (2004) Inclusionality and the Role of Place, Space and Dynamic
Boundaries in Evolutionary Processes. Philosophica, 73, 51-70.
Taylor, S. (2005). The Fall. Winchester, UK, New York, USA: O Books