Models vs. Ecological Thinking
Tears & Education
This morning I listened to Nora Bateson recount an anecdote in which her father, the esteemed social scientist and anthropologist Gregory Bateson would cry as her put her on the bus to school. He was worried that she would be ruined by school education. The reason this didn’t happen she said, because she was able to hold his tears.
The ‘no’ result in the referendum is a catastrophe for what it might have been for indigenous and non-indigenous people in Australia. Now that path is closed at least for a generation and other approaches must be sought. When taken as feedback rather than rebuttal or refusal, we get a measure of where the Australian electorate is at at this present moment. We can make all kinds of stories of what it means depending on your point of view. Many of these stories are not real or true otherwise how could we accommodate such diverse views from commentators.
Reconciliation and Beyond
What we can say is that Reconciliation has been dealt a blow, perhaps that’s a good thing or maybe a bad thing, maybe both. To my eyes, Makarrata is more ‘authentic’ than Reconciliation, the coming together after a struggle, Australia was, before the struggle. It would seem that perhaps the Australia electorate doesn’t believe there was ever a struggle. It indicates that Australia’s previous course, was on a “hiding to nowhere” and if so, would continue on that trajectory regardless of referenda outcome. Instead we are with the vast emptiness of ‘what now’ that could well be our making.
Models vs. Ecological Thinking
To put it in evolutionary terms, natural selection happens incrementally, evolution does not. Whole system changes follow calamitous events, chaotic randomness reforms and regenerates entrenched systems, knowing that in the biological world there is no such thing as complete randomness and everything is connected. New linkages and relationships are formed and developed ways previously prohibited. Our test now is whether we are able to hold the emptiness of not knowing long enough for new growth to emerge, or do we slide with the tide of rebuff into an abyss of unresolved Groundhog Day, and leave it for others who follow to re-green our world. Of course it’s not really a choice, it’s just that emptiness is so hard to hold on to. Is it possible?
A number of communities I am related to, have now abandoned Reconciliation or had already done so. I believe Reconciliation to be a well intentioned movement but with roots deeply embedded in the problem, not in the ‘solution’. Communities impulse now is to look beyond, to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights For Indigenous Peoples which is yet to be ratified by the Australian Government. Of the two, a Voice to parliament or ratifying the charter, the former easier. The latter however has the advantage, the necessary advantage, of not being embedded in colonial world view. Reconciliation as it stands, is a colonial construct. Its trajectory is towards assimilation whilst holding a special place for Australia's deep history, like remembrance for the fallen at Gallipoli, only not so much. This is a far cry from the rights of indigenous people that are declared in the UN charter, which in the Australian context is of twin complementary, interdependent moieties moving together. One can hear the beating of shields at the very suggestion.
Ecological Thinking
The Batesons propose ecological thinking that is contrary to developing logical models for the future and enacting them step by step. Such models are anti evolutionary. I love models and modelling. As a young boy, I’d spend my pocket money on models of Spitfires and Hurricanes and whatever else was available from the Pittsworth Newsagent. On many a Saturday morning I’d spend a shilling or perhaps 1/6 there on after piano lessons. That modelling over the years has grown to a preferred way of thinking, conceptional modelling of large systems. But I see now that the model is a replica of the thing not a precursor. The process is essentially anti-ecological, antievolutionary. Objectively it creates the opposite result to that intended.
There was a time during my high school education that the topic of evolution entered our fundamentalist household. There was no effort whatever to consider how this new information would encourage us to learn and grow and reinterpret the world view of our forebears. Our minds were closed to new revelation. Even a knowledge of the history of our own history was discouraged, except of course though approved sources. I followed Eve in her quest for meaning. The path left the garden and found a vantage point from which it could be observed from the outside thereby creating an interiority unknown previously. Adam on the other hand, a follower rather than an adventurer, consoled his perceived loss by labouring in the fields eyes to the furrow.
Over the ages the furrow has transmogrified into something far more sparkly and may paradoxically be preferred over relationship to planetary consciousness.
What might going forward look like?
Evolution happens at the edges of things, the margins, where cross fertilisation can happen with something other than itself, at the horizon of unknowing. Jettison the big plans for the future before they take hold and entangle you. Rather be attentive to this moment, what is here and now and discover what is its yearning. What is this moment trying to give birth to? What is here at hand, the resources available, both material but especially the human resources, the conscious ones. Check for the colonial masquerade, it will be everywhere at first because it is everywhere and I say that not as a judgement by as a statement of where we come from. Allow the path to emerge from what is and resist the urge to build a model of what might be knowing that my minds eye is only one of many, simultaneously multifaceted and eye to eye. The moment doesn’t say; ‘look at me’ but ‘look into my eyes’.
Still holding her father’s tears, Nora Bateson explores the difference between the "Situation Room" approaches, driven by immediate problem-solving, and the holistic perspective of the "Meadow," which emphasises ongoing mutual learning, adaptability and context.
Scottish Proverb and Alternate Truths
Im reminded of a favourite saying of a once coworker who in his grinning Scottish brogue would defeatedly say, “Everything in our favour is against us.” The humour, over the years given way to alternate truth, a truth moderated by the consciousness of the utterer, whether it be a self fulfilling prophesy lead by the bleak narrowness of logic into a double bind cul-de-sac, or an emergent opportunity calling by an evolutionary trajectory.
