Posts Tagged ‘systems’
Calgary Writer Re-evaluates Facebook friend list: What is your Dunbar number?
Jean Symborski
I have an inability to accept when things are over. I imagine that if I work hard enough, things would last forever – namely friendships. Facebook encourages this false sense of permanence in friendships. Even when a conversation with an old friend can’t move past small talk, you are still free to know intimate details about their life by simply clicking on their Facebook profile. Nowadays, “friend” has almost no meaning.
I don’t know how many friends I have in real life, but I certainly don’t have several hundred, like on my Facebook list.
In fact in 1992, a British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, theorized that the human brain is only capable of maintaining 150 stable relationships. Since then, his idea has been referred to as Dunbar’s number. Now with Facebook, scientists have reviewed Dunbar’s number and they hypothesized that despite our large friends’ lists, Dunbar was right, we are only capable of maintaining an inner -circle relationship with about 100 to 200 people.
Occasionally, I feel the need to purge my friends list. Several dozen are vague acquaintances that I met one time or had a class with one semester, who I added in some strange need to solidify the meeting. Like the LinkedIn connection without business cards. Few things are more satisfying than going through this list of people, whose relationships with me have come to a confused cry of “Who the heck is that?” when a post of theirs appears on my newsfeed. It feels good to get rid of those people because it reminds me that some other connections are worth keeping. If some people are easy to delete off a list, they hold no emotional weight and don’t deserve the title of “friend.”
There are also friendships that are harder to take off the list. Sure, before the Internet, I probably would have just stopped speaking to them, but social media is a bittersweet reminder of the friendship we once had, and wish we still had. Although the person I was once friends with is no longer calling or texting like they used to, there is still a profile out there that bears the same name. Facebook encourages you to hold on to these connections, and somehow making the move to get rid of someone whom you were once really close to is just too hard to do.
Taking the concrete step of defriending someone isn’t as simple as deleting the fluff friends of social media, those people who never had bearing on my life and never will. Deletion of someone who used to be important is truly burning a bridge. To stop talking to this person altogether, to admit that even seeing their online presence is an odd combination of uncomfortable and unpleasant, is the stuff of real break-ups. And so I’m tempted to keep them around because, an awkward non-friendship is better than cutting them out altogether. That would be a real death to the friendship, so I’d rather keep it on life support.
I often think about quitting Facebook and social media altogether, and I could technically shut the thing down – the Earth wouldn’t fall off its axis and collide with the sun if I did.
I lived without status updates five years ago, and although living without them now would probably not make much of difference for my daily life, except then I remember those family and friends that make both my Dunbar number and my Facebook friends’ list.
So next time you sign online, think of your Dunbar number. Are you really capable of maintaining 1,367 friendships?
Loosen Your Grip: Santosha and Riding the Waves of Change
Jennifer Cassidy
Lately, a lot of the conversations in my house start with the word “when”: “when the house renovations are done”; or “when we have more money”, or “when we have more time”, and even “when the kids are older”. It seems that my husband and I are always waiting for something, because something else is always stopping us from getting where we want to go. When I married my dear husband, he warned me about the “Cassidy luck” – meaning that if something can go wrong, it will. It really does seem that we have our fair share of trouble, lately too – house renovations are on hold while we fix the truck, the truck repairs are on hold while we wait for a new part, the new part is on hold while we wait for more money. Sometimes I think “Hurry Up and Wait” should be our family motto.
In the practice of yoga, there are four principles of self-discipline, or Niyamas. One of these principles is that of “Santosha”: the practice of developing equanimity with all things. To put it another way, Santosha is the acceptance that all things are both flawed and perfect at the same time, that everything is part of a larger dynamic system of life and death, and that the only constant thing in the universe is unending change. This acceptance that everything in one’s life is part of the larger system of the universe, and that change and complexity in that system is inevitable, allows the yogi to “loosen her grip” and roll gracefully over life’s bumpy road: the yogi reduces the complexity in their lives by accepting change as part of the process of life. I’ve been thinking that practicing Santosha on a personal level is similar in some ways to using Systems Thinking to work through complexity and change in organizations: in many organizations the most commonly heard words are “when” or “if”: “if accounting would just…” or “when the engineers get the act together…” for example. Systems Thinking means seeing the organization as a system and that everything that you need to solve the organizations problems is achievable by working with the organization as a system, rather than a set of unrelated parts with problems that need to be isolated and “fixed”.
It seems the more I practice yoga and the more I learn about the process of Systems Thinking, the more I realize that these two practices are really about behaving in a conscious manner. The consciousness that is required to practice equanimity in one’s personal life by making the decision to be “roll with the punches” of life and just be okay with what is happening in the here and now, and the critical consciousness that is required to practice Systems Thinking by leveraging change in an organization to produce positive results, are similar. In terms of outcomes, yogis know that physical and emotional abundance is the reward for practicing contentment with what is here and now, with being equanimous with the unending change in the world. Similarly, Systems Thinking practitioners know that the reward for equanimity within an organization means working with an organization as a whole system and consciously making decisions that put the organization in the position of riding the crest of constant change, and the reward is the same: abundance follows.
So, taking a little from my yoga practice and a little from Systems Thinking, I’ve been trying to see my household as a system in which change is not a disruption but more of a way of being. I’m trying to start conversations more constructively: instead of “when” I’ve been practicing saying “how” or “why”. I figure knowing the system means knowing how to make constructive decisions about the system rather than getting off on a track of discontentment about what is happening now: what is changing too fast, and what isn’t changing fast enough. I’ve even been thinking about a new family motto: In mutatione pax…Peace in Change!
Wheeler’s U: The Participant and the Observer
Blog Entry #4 by Marilyn Herasymowych
Marilyn Herasymowych
A new science called cognitive science is exploding with new information on how humans think, and how our thinking gives rise to our behaviours. Cognitive science covers a broad spectrum of science, including brain research, thinking, neurobiology, biochemistry, and psychology. The discoveries emerging from cognitive science are challenging the foundation of what we believe as a Western culture, and what it means to be human. For example, we now know that our minds are embodied, that most of our thinking is unconscious, and that nothing we think about or experience is emotion-free. This changes the way we think about our ability to exercise free will, and whether or not we can be rational without engaging our emotions.
For me, there is no question that this is true. Especially now, with the experience of two cancer diagnoses, treatment, surgeries, and a protracted recovery. As a result of my first cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I was given the gift of observing what it might be like to die. I was in the hospital, watching myself desperately trying to get enough breath to sustain myself. My lungs were screaming in terror, my chest in shock as water drained uncontrollably off my right lung. It was Wednesday, March 25, 2009, only two days after my first chemo treatment.
I vividly recall having a chest tube inserted into my right pleural cavity to drain the water off my lung. At first, it was all so new to me, something I had never experienced. I had allowed student nurses to be present during the procedure, so there were a lot of people surrounding my bed. I was listening to what the doctor was saying, and imagining what it all looked like. It didn’t take long before I could breathe easily again, as 2.5 L of water drained quickly off my right lung. All seemed to be going well, and everyone left while I rested. Then suddenly, I was watching myself struggling to breathe. I was no longer in my body. Somehow, I was outside of my body, standing slightly beside the bed, calmly trying to figure out what I should do. I saw myself frantically pressing the call button. I saw the nurse rush into the room and clamp off my chest tube to stop the fluid from draining. I watched everything going on with no fear, no emotion, no curiosity – simply watching and thinking what I could do to help. There was my body flailing, desperate to breathe. And there was me watching as if there was no problem.
In his book, The User Illusion, Tor Nørretranders describes how John Wheeler, a famous physicist, summarized what he believed humans knew about the world. His model is called Wheeler’s U (shown below).
Wheeler's U
Wheeler believed that the way in which we observe the universe also helps to create it. For example, if we think in linear ways, we will see a linear universe; therefore, we will create a linear universe. When faced with complex non-linear problems, we will try to solve these problems in linear ways, without understanding why our solutions do not work. If we consider that we are also running in an unconscious mode most of the time, it is small wonder that we cannot seem to solve complex problems or take advantage of complex opportunities. In the situation with the chest tube, I was the observer watching my body (the participant) flailing, desperate to breathe.
But I have also been on the other side, a participant, unable to find the observer in me. When diagnosed with breast cancer less than a year after being diagnosed and treated for lymphoma, the world as I knew it imploded. I was too traumatized to observe what was going on during the surgery to remove the tumour. When the day of surgery arrived, I lost it. I couldn’t hold onto myself, and I became a crazy person, totally irrational and out of control. I went to bed the night before in tears, crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I woke up in tears, needing Henry to help me to get dressed. I cried in the waiting room at the diagnostic centre. I cried when I was given a needle with the radioactive tracer. I screamed when the technicians inserted the surgical wire that would guide the surgeon to the tumour. I cried when I got into the car and Henry drove me to the hospital. I cried while I waited to be admitted into the hospital. I cried while getting changed for the surgery. I cried while being wheeled into the surgical waiting area. I cried when the surgeon came to talk with me, and again when the anaesthesiologist came to discuss my situation with my leg weakness. I cried and cried and cried, and cried some more. Then, it was over and I couldn’t cry anymore.
Wheeler’s U demonstrates the degree to which we are thinking and acting from our unconscious. In their book, Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state that most cognitive operations in the human brain are largely unconscious. In fact, it is thought that the estimate now used of 95% unconscious is a serious underestimate. They call these cognitive operations the cognitive unconscious, and describe it as all of the unconscious mental operations and structures involved in language, meaning, perception, conceptual systems, and reason. This 95% below the surface of our consciousness shapes all of our conscious thought. Lakoff and Johnson call this cognitive unconscious a hidden hand that shapes the stories we tell about the experiences we have. Superimposing this 95% unconscious on Wheeler’s U, you can see that the majority of our waking moments is actually unconscious. If we are not aware of how much we do that is unconscious, we can find it very difficult to think and act in a conscious state.
Wheeler's U and the Unconscious
That day in the hospital with the chest tube, I think I touched death, or at least the impression of it. As I observed myself, I was “holding death lightly”, as if it were a new-born child lying patiently and contentedly in my arms. This is an example of melding the observer with the participant in Wheeler’s U, from an unconscious state to a more conscious one.
With the breast cancer surgery, I couldn’t lift myself from an unconscious state to a more conscious one. The trauma was too great, and I succumbed to what was happening, living the nightmare as a pure participant, totally operating from my unconscious. I was numb, unable to breathe, unable to smile, unable to talk. I got better after a few days, but I still couldn’t lift myself into a more conscious state. All I could do was lift the experience into a more conscious state. I could dissect the experience, but I was still completely gripped by the trauma. I kept thinking about how breast cancer is a killer. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I kept seeing my mother’s face just before she died, writhing in agony as cancer ripped out her humanity and her soul. I was losing my grip on reality, drowning in fear.
To find the eye in the storm that has become my life, and to regain some sense of control, I use all of the forms of systems thinking I have available to me. Any form of non-linear systems thinking brings the cognitive unconscious to a conscious level, and with it a sense of control and calm. Systems thinking brings us out of an observer role in a system, and into to the role of a participant-observer within the system dynamic.
Wheeler's U and Systems Thinking
According to Lakoff and Johnson, unless we gain an understanding of the cognitive unconscious, and its effect on our thinking and actions, we cannot easily create new ways of thinking and acting. The key is to bring the cognitive unconscious to a conscious level, to bring us into the role of a participant-observer within the situation in which we find ourselves. Once we are conscious of the fact that we are operating from our cognitive unconscious, we can make choices about what we want to do with this knowledge — how we think and act.
I have few choices now in terms of what I can do with my life. None of these choices, in my opinion, are good choices, and all of them are hard. The trick for me is to be able to live a life worth living, while in the grip of two incurable and advanced cancers, and the side effects of treatment. To me, this means living both the participant and the observer experience simultaneously. I don’t know if I can ever shut off the fear and anxiety that is now so much a part of my life, and deeply embedded in my unconscious. But, this cancer experience has shown me that it is possible to hold both places together, as I did when I had the chest tube inserted in my pleural cavity. The participant and observer don’t necessarily cancel each other out. Rather, they find a way to co-exist.
Note: If you’d like to know more about Marilyn’s cancer journey, check out her blog at www.cancerbrokeallmypencils.com.
Complexity, Relationships, Strange Loops: Reflexive Practice
Today, organizations are downsizing, reorganizing, rightsizing, redesigning, and re-engineering in an attempt to be effective in a turbulent and uncertain marketplace. Although meant to help, more often than not, these initiatives do not come close to what is necessary for organizations to thrive in this complex world. They often fall short because they ignore the key aspects of an organization: its people and the relationships they form that allow work to be done effectively. Without people, there is no organization. Without resilient relationships among the people within an organization there is no high performance.
Everything that we do, as individuals and as groups, involves relationships. These relationships can be with our own ideas, assumptions, and values, with other people, with our jobs, or with the organization. Every situation is defined by its relationships. Fragile relationships translate into inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, low productivity, and a lack of innovation. Resilient relationships translate into high levels of effectiveness, productivity, and innovation.
No matter how resilient it is, every relationship experiences ups and downs over time. Like riding a roller coaster, sometimes we feel great in our relationships, and other times we feel overwhelmed by the strange loops these relationships manifest. To create and sustain relationships that work, we need to understand them, and how we, and others, function within them. Reflexive practice helps us to ride the strange loops that relationships create so we can develop and sustain resilience, and be prepared for other relationship roller coasters that may come our way.
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