Looking back, looking forward
Looking back, looking forward
Happy New Year to all of you! My year 2021 ended with a bang, I had a positive COVID-19 test on 31 December (my birthday)! So I'm now spending the first 9 days of 2022 in isolation, having lots of time to think, read and – presumably – write. And having lots of long and good conversations with my sister who is isolating with me (she generously shared the virus with me). Luckily, my symptoms have been very mild, allowing me to still have a clear mind and enough energy to do all the things I want to.
First of all, I'm deeply grateful that you have subscribed to my weekly email and I am super-excited about each and every response I am getting from my readers. And of course feel free to forward the emails to whomever you think could benefit from them.
I want to use this first email of the year to reflect a bit on 2021 and look forward to 2022, sharing some ideas I have for this upcoming year. The email has become quite long, I realise, but it has been very helpful for myself to go through these reflections. It also shows to some extent how I try to apply my thinking on how to be and act in complex living systems in my own life. Thank you very much for bearing with me.
I started this weekly email in April 2021 and this is my 35th edition. I think I missed a total of four weeks, two in the summer and two over the recent holidays. I'm enjoying the writing a lot, even though – or because – it forces me to sit down and think what I could write about – and then of course write it. Sometimes I have an idea early on in the week and sometimes I sit down on Thursday afternoon or Friday with no idea whatsoever. But even that regularly leads to a more or less coherent email.
In April 2021, I also started the Systemic Insight Circle, a membership-based, weekly conversation circle on various topics loosely connected to working with and being in complex living systems. The Circle is not only a space where people come together to reflect on how they engage with the world around them, and how they might change that, but it is also a space that allows us to have a meta-reflection on how we reflect on our own roles in the systems we are part of. And, by the way, the Circle is always open for new members, let me know if you want to join.
In October 2021 I added an additional format to this collection of spaces: the Critical Reflections on Systems. In contrast to the Circle, this format is not continuous but limited to one month (four weekly calls) and is more specific with regards to the topic discussed. In October last year we discussed the topic of 'Entanglement and Agency' and in the upcoming edition in February 2022, we will discuss the topic of 'Causality, Map and Territory' (there are still spaces, send me a message if you are interested to join).
Looking forward is always more difficult than looking back. For 2022, I will continue offering the Circle and am planning, as mentioned, a round of Critical Reflections on Systems in February (and probably more later). I'm also set to continue writing my weekly email. In addition, I have a few ideas that I would like to explore.
I would like to offer a sort of a deep-dive experience on systems and complexity. I'm imagining something like a 3-5 days residential or a longer online format, where the transformational space of the Circle is mixed with more pedagogical formats where more concrete input is provided and practices are shared on how to pay different kind of attention to the complexity we live in and how to shift one's perception to be more sensitive to the complexities in the world – and ultimately act in more meaningful ways. I'm also imagining a longer journey that I would like to offer at some point – maybe one year of continuous online conversations interjected with more intense offline interactions. While this will probably not happen in 2022, I hope to sketch it out more concretely during the year.
Another idea I have for 2022 is to take the Circle into the physical space as well and offer it in the form of a weekly walk. I have been inspired by my friend and fellow Warm Data host Al who co-founded outside.business, a walking community in the Bristol/Bath area in the UK (if you live in that area, check it out!).
Finally, I would also like to do more coaching-type work. While I'm not planning to do any kind of coaching degree (maybe I should not call it coaching then), I'm keen to work with individuals and teams and accompany them on their journey towards engaging in a continuous process of learning and discovery. Let me know if you would like to take me up on this!
My motivation to start the Circle and the other formats and to expand on them this coming year is that I have been for quite a while reflecting on how I myself can show up differently and engage with other people to create spaces where we jointly explore what it means to understand the world as a complex living system. (I'm aware that I'm using the phrase 'complex living system' here quite often without really defining it. I will have to do that in a future edition of this email.) I do not see the world as something we can 'figure out' to an extend that we can start teaching others how to be and how to act – indeed, I don't think there is a right way of being and acting. Living as part of a complex living system means continuous exploration without ever being able to 'figure it out,' as reality is continuously created by our engaging with it. Or, to use Iain McGilchrist's much more eloquent phrasing: "The only world that any of us can know, then, is what comes into being in the never ending encounter between us and this whatever-it-is." (McGilchrist 2021, 29)
This means that I will never be an 'expert' about the wider systemic reality we live in (while I can be an expert in some relatively static aspects of it) and, hence, I will not be able to 'teach' others about the whatever-it-is in a traditional way of teaching. What I can do, is to create spaces where I can share my exploration with others and where others can share theirs in a generative and creative spirit that inspires each of us wherever we are in our personal journey – we learn together but we might learn different things. I see myself as host of these spaces, providing some sort of meta-capacity to hold these generative conversations. And, in this vein, besides being on my own journey of discovery on how to be part of a complex living system, I'm also developing my meta skills of being able to create such spaces and to support others on their own journey. In some instances these spaces might contain elements that are more constrained such as practices participants can try or the provision of frameworks they can use as thinking-aids. In other cases these spaces are very open and might only consist of a prompt followed by an hour of open conversation.
One thing that I can commit to is that I will keep exploring and continuously learning. I have recently discovered the work of Iain McGilchrist and am deeply drawn to it, so this will probably be with me for a while. I am also planning to deepen my journey into embodiment practice by training as a facilitator for the Embodied Present Process with Philip Shepherd.
Reference: McGilchrist, Iain. 2021. The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press. (Page reference from the ebook)
My Paper Museum
A brief excerpt from Dr. Iain McGilchrist's new book 'The Matter with Things' (McGilchrist, 2021, 27-29)
I wish, at this stage, to do little more than clearly distance myself from two positions. In the last century or so, there has been a tendency, at least in popular discourse, to pull reality in opposing directions. Some scientists, whether they put it this way or not when they are asked to reflect, still carry on as if there just exists a Reality Out There (ROT), the nature of which is independent of any consciousness of it: naïve realism. These are usually biologists; you won't find many physicists who would think that. In reality, we participate in the knowing: there is no 'view from nowhere'. Of crucial importance is that this fact does not in any way prevent science legitimately speaking of truths – far from it; a point I will return to in subsequent chapters. We desperately need what science can tell us, and postmodern attempts to undermine it should be vigorously resisted. Two important truths, then: science cannot tell us everything; but what science can tell us is pure gold. Any attempt to suppress science (I distinguish science sharply from technology), for whatever reason, is dangerous and wrong.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, there are philosophers of the humanities who think that there is no such thing as reality, since it's all Made Up Miraculously By Ourselves (MUMBO): naïve idealism. Such people, by the way, never behave as though there was no reality. Nor of course, by its own logic, can they claim any truth for their position.
These viewpoints are closer than they look. One party fears that if what we call reality were in any sense contaminated by our own involvement in bringing it about it would no longer be worthy of being called real. The other fears that, since we manifestly do play a part in its coming about, it's already the case that it can't be called real. But just because we participate in reality doesn't mean we invent it out of nowhere, or solipsistically project it on some inner mental screen; much less does it mean that the very idea of reality is thereby invalidated.
I take it that there is something that is not just the contents of my mind – that, for example, you, my reader, exist. There is an infinitely vast, complex, multifaceted, whatever-it-is-that-exists-apart-from-ourselves. The only world that any of us can know, then, is what comes into being in the never-ending encounter between us and this whatever-it-is.
Why have I added this to my Paper Museum? I had recently a discussion with a friend on whether there is an objective reality out there or not, so McGilchrist's point of view adds to this discussion weil being an interesting take on it.
Reference: McGilchrist, Iain. 2021. The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press. (Page reference from the ebook)
More for you to enjoy
A video interview with Iain McGilchrist on his new book 'The Matter with Things' on Rebel Wisdom.
Image
My own photo, at the Baltic See in Germany.