What is going on?
What is going on?
What are we not seeing? This is a difficult question to answer. How should we know what we are not seeing? Yet there is always something we are not seeing. The slice of reality we see is always narrowed by both our physical senses’ ability to perceive, the models we use to make sense of what we perceive, and the logic we use (consciously or unconsciously) to decide what is real and what is not. And this is a feedback loop, what cannot be is also not perceived.
We often hear that we need to take different perspectives into account when we work in systems. Different people with different backgrounds perceive different things. Yet as so often, it is not necessarily the different perspectives that make a difference, but the difference between these different perspectives. The gaps that the individual perspectives don’t cover. It is in these gaps where we can find our blind spots. So the question we should ask is not, “how are these perspectives the same?” but, “how are these perspectives different and what does this difference tell us?” We can re-tissue the gaps between the perspectives to create new meaning.
When we go out into the world to figure out what is going on we often look for perspectives that confirm what we see ourselves. Yet it is much richer to look for difference in how others see the situation. When we take similarities into account, we narrow down quickly to a consensus view, which allows us to come up with a plan for action to rectify things. When we look for difference, the picture is getting messier, yet richer and more nuanced. What I’m looking for is not clarity or the right solution. I’m looking for a rich, wild space of possibility from which abduction can intuitively pull together seemingly unconnected strands to create options to play with.
Different people will draw different conclusions that lead to different actions being taken. We are learning together, yet we are learning different things and draw different consequences. We respond to complexity with complexity, not with a false, illusory clarity, forced alignment and prescribed action.
The Paper Museum
This week I feel I need to write a short disclaimer about last week’s Paper Museum quote. I pulled it from a podcast a friend shared with me. After sharing it here, I went back to listen to the whole podcast and I was frankly a bit shocked about the two men’s stance on the central place of humans in the evolution, the ability of humans to solve all problems through reasoning and technology, and their techno-optimism. I want to make the point that while I still agree with the content of the specific quote, I do not endorse the content of the whole podcast.
This week something very different. From the article “About the boys: Tim Winton on how toxic masculinity is shackling men to misogyny” (The Guardian online)
A man in manacles doesn’t fully understand the threat he poses to others. Even as he’s raging against his bonds. Especially as he’s raging against his bonds. When you’re bred for mastery, when you’re trained to endure and fight and suppress empathy, how do you find your way in a world that cannot be mastered? How do you live a life in which all of us must eventually surrender and come to terms? Too many men are blunt instruments. Otherwise known, I guess, as tools. Because of poor training, they’re simply not fit for purpose. Because life is not a race, it’s not a game, and it’s not a fight.
Why have I added this to my paper museum? The article talks about a topic I have become more sensitive to in recent months. Not sure why, maybe because I have crossed 40. It’s funny how you can go on living and saying, “I’m not misogynous so misogyny isn’t my problem.” And yet it is the problem of all of us: men, women and everybody in between. But I agree with Tim Winton, the author of the article, that it is for us men to step up and take responsibility – also men like me who think that we are not part of the problem. So I have joined a group of men who regularly meet and try to figure out how we can respond to toxic masculinity and misogyny.
More for you to enjoy
As I wrote about ‘Pause and Reflect’ last week, I wanted to share Robert Poynton‘s work on ‘Pausing’ as an important practice in our busy lives. He wrote a book called ‘Do Pause‘ and he is writing a newsletter in which reflects about things that happen to him in his life that he thinks are meaningful enough to share. He also runs Yellow, “A space of learning for a complex world.” Definitely recommended.
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It’s not the similarities between the tree and the stick insect that makes it visible to our eyes, it’s the differences. (Source)