Being ‘Roughly Right’ is ‘Always’ and is ‘Never’… ‘Good Enough’
Some things are right.
Some things are wrong.
[Don’t worry…there’s more on always and never farther down…]
Clearcut binary distinctions are best correlated with the simpler stuff…and some universally accepted unequivocally proven facts that are not [still] being debated…at least not much…
There are red lines…a moral compass that guides this stuff…and those need to be worked through and understood.
🔮 What do we mean by moral compass?
🔮 Who’s moral compass?
🔮 Based on what guiding purpose, values and criteria for common good?
A moral compass can [generally] guide and help steer our beliefs, thinking and behaviour/actions — distinguishing right from wrong — on some deeply important issues. There’s plenty of wisdom, knowledge and resources — spiritual, philosophical, sociological, ecological, anthropological, historical — for us humans, on which to draw. [Deep subject that warrants exploration beyond the scope of this article.]
Being right — even when we are — doesn’t make us unequivocally 100% right — a recurring hydra-headed and layered theme. [The subject of two earlier articles.]
Being right doesn’t exempt us from being wrong on some [relevant] aspects, some of the time, in some contexts.
Being wrong…some of the time — graciously acknowledging this — doesn’t make us wrong as people. Being wrong [generally] isn’t who we are. It makes us human. It also acknowledges and accepts the larger interconnected world and contexts within which we are a small part.
We can’t always get things right…our thinking…our behaviour can be roughly or largely right or wrong at any given time in the course of our lives…And even when we’re right, there’s no guarantee that things will progress as hoped or advocated…
…in the contexts of how our sense-making is/isn’t attuned or working. …in the contexts of a complex non-ergodic unpredictable uncertain world…
…Especially in the context of a systemically dysfunctional, pathologically imbalanced society, which has veered off course…a consequence of disconnectedness that has uprooted and unrooted much of humanity from the essence of life.
Can we aim for roughly right? What does that mean?
Let’s back up and reflect a bit on the patterns that brought us to our perspectives on knowledge, ways of knowing, rightness and wrongness…
Disciplines help us organize what we know into manageable buckets and deep-dive into some sub-specialties.
Invariably, there is always so much to learn and know, with ever deeper rabbit holes and barriers to certainty or mastery. There’s always much that is not [yet] known, or definitively knowable…
As the Industrial Age progressed…those specialized disciplines deepened and the fields proliferated into more segregated compartmentalized expert branches, professions and position titles.
As disciplines became more disciplined, defined boundaries became more rigid…the silos became more insular…the horizons more myopic…
Imposter syndrome also seemed to proliferate, as people individually struggled to keep up, catch up, measure up — to look and sound polished, leading-edged, certain and on top of their/our game…
The term imposter syndrome, acknowledging a common experience, normalized what might be mistaken as an individual condition or syndrome, overlooking its deeper societal systemic roots.
That slippery slope often urged us to fake-it-till-we-make-it, conceal our vulnerability and play up our prowess, credentials, accomplishments and wins or conquests.
These pervasive patterns became normal. They continue to play out, insidiously wreak havoc — a layering of blind spots upon blind spots cloaked in knowingness. The name-of-the-game: repetitive competitive cycles of win-lose and domination-oppression.
ENOUGH!
Those familiar conventional ways of navigating have worn thin.
They don’t work well and haven’t been serving us well for a long time.
Increasingly more people are seeking [and some are finding] ways to get off that zero sum game treadmill…[And there are vast numbers living under circumstances that offer little or no choice…]
Ever-increasing complexity, uncertainty and the overlapping, layered challenges we face, call for us to work in different ways — when we can…
Expert maps and models — while useful approximations and pointing sticks — are not the terrain. And the ways we see the world — are at best [relatively] narrow slices…partially representative — never the full realities. No single expert discipline or cluster of disciplines can take it all in…
When we work across disciplines we can transcontextualize, widen and extend our horizons and gain integrative perspectives that are more nuanced, colourful, multidimensional, open-ended and blurred-at-the-edges…
In reality, all living beings [systems] have semi-permeable boundaries that support life, allowing a healthy multi-directional [information] flow.
Breaking out of those narrowly defined disciplines and boxes, opens our eyes and we can’t unsee what enters our view…
A side effect — we can learn how to learn emergently and more deeply — how to keep on learning with curiosity and a thirst for understanding that follows us everywhere throughout the course of our lives.
When we live and work more permeably, we can transcend the [artificial] boundaries that constrict our creative flow and sense-making capacity. Our collective creative ability can expand.
We’ll make better progress individually and collectively when we accept that we’re all works-in-progress as we navigate through life and work.
Maybe those sinking feelings of imposter phenomenon loosen their grip as we relax a bit, welcoming others to fill in some gaps, contributing diverse capabilities as we work collaboratively — in relational dynamic flow.
Dancing with paradox and our inherent messy humanness: an unrelenting ebb and flow, always curious and humble, embracing nonlinear ways of knowing, making peace with all that we don’t [yet] know, making space for what is or might become knowable, what we may never know, what is not ours to know, grasp or own…
Being roughly right makes space for healthy adaptation. It allows for enough permeability to factor in…assimilate new information, wider dimensions and nuance.
…to integrate…gain wisdom…
Being roughly right makes and holds wider space for more people to be roughly right as well and to co-adapt in ways that might better serve us — individually and collectively within real contexts.
Paradoxically — being roughly right is never and is always good enough…
…never complacent or complete
…never airtight
…always dynamic, moving and in flow…
…always learning
Being roughly right:
🔮 Acknowledges a clear-eyed reality of what is — to the best of our current sense of reality…
🔮 Accepts what can never be known or encompassed in totality…
🔮 Makes space for [unseen/unknown/uncertain] possibilities…
🔮 Is not a free pass to blindly press on…
🔮 Means we might also be roughly wrong, and depending on the context, that can have huge consequences. Having the ability to pause, adjust and mindfully self-correct is vitally important.
Yup. To suggest that “being roughly right is always AND is never good enough” — is provocative. It can be interpreted in different ways. It can be refuted. For starters, absolutes like ‘always’ and ‘never,’ generally reflect exaggerations or overstatements. Best to use these adverbs sparingly and with care. Using them together like this kinda cancels them out — unless we’re ‘dancing with paradox.’ The coexistence of polar opposite ‘views’ brings us back to the overarching importance of context and the meaning making that is derived within real contexts, ‘working through the stuff’ that requires ‘work’…
Sometimes, being roughly right…heading toward being roughly wrong…widens the pathway and probability to seriously wrong, with damaging and potentially irreversible consequences.
Sometimes being roughly wrong is okay. Okay doesn’t equate to good enough. It becomes apparent through experimentation. It can enable learning and discernment along the nonlinear path toward roughly right…
And so, our sense making needs to happen within contexts, working together to find the common[s] ground that might enable us to navigate wisely and well, discerning the [roughly] right things in the [roughly] right ways — always subject to adaptation…
🔮 Isn’t that how adaptive living systems naturally adapt and evolve?
🔮 Doesn’t that also reflect the wisdom and evolving co-intelligence of [human] nature?
Perfectly imperfect. Naturally asymmetrical. Dynamic…in flow…disturbances…discontinuity…morphing…shapeshifting…adaptations…
These are not metaphorical like nature mimicry comparisons.
We. Are. Nature.
Every moment, every day, up close and on a world-wide planetary scale — we are being reminded that we are nature.
Life is messy…precious…mysterious…chaotic…ordered…chaordic…random…designed…
🔮 When will we, as a species, learn how to live into the wholeness…the ecological fullness of our interconnected [human] nature…our interbecoming?
🔮 How can we learn to embrace life and work challenges as an ongoing dance of emergence and strategy…raising and continuing to invite, unearth, ask and live lots of [tough] questions?
The questions themselves can guide and illuminate our pathways. They can enrich the inter-relational quality of the journey. They can potentially improve our navigation radar toward more roughly right decisions, choices and directions.
Rather than become paralyzed by the questions and the feelings they invariably evoke, living the questions can potentially help us develop a wider range of co-intelligence and futures literacy as we navigate forward.
🔮 What enabling conditions are needed so that we — many more of us — can navigate a wide[r] diversity of roughly right pathways in relative harmony with life-affirming conditions conducive to life?
🔮 Can we strategically design, engineer and orchestrate for some enabling ergodic conditions…in ways that don’t become mechanistic, rigid, absolutist or dogmatic?
🔮 Can we [provisionally] build in enabling conditions…at every layer — deconstructing…reconstructing…our organizations, [eco]systems, practices and the very fabric of society — in ways that are aligned with natural laws?
🔮 How can we nurture and continuously adaptively care for these enabling conditions — conducive to life and its natural cycles?
🔮 Considering the contexts, what needs to be true and what is good enough? With thanks to our colleague, Marie, who suggested this addition :-)
🔮 Are we — more of us — ready to live these questions?
🔮 Are we — more of us- ready to embark on and gain [more] progress along roughly right pathways that combine what is known and knowable and accept what is unknowable…letting go of the need to impose our rightness…to control what truly cannot be controlled and predicted in an uncertain [non-ergodic] world?
Dunno…we can shut down…or we can dance….
Speaking of the non-ergodic world…the term VUCA is surely widely recognized by now.
Yup. It’s pretty obvious that we are navigating a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world.
Old news.
And if that wasn’t enough we can top it up with a serving of RUPT — Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical and Tangled. Reminds us of words that shake things up: disRUPT, eRUPT, abRUPT and RUPTure.
But why stop there? Other acronyms have also surfaced. TUNA describes our Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, Ambiguous world. And BANI, which stands for Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible, cropped up as well.
There is plenty underway to ramp up anxiety and stir up a wide range of unsettled, upsetting, fearful, angry feelings as people experience the effects.
🔮 Who hasn’t experienced [high] needs to [attempt to] control — living in a world and under circumstances when so much is outside-of-our-[direct]-control?
🔮 Who hasn’t felt the urge to retreat at times — to hide under the proverbial rock and sit this out until things stabilize and improve?
At times, in the midst of relentless intense seriousness and turbulence, the natural longing to experience some rapture and joy, might go underground — leaving us feeling flat and numb.
All understandable.
However, all the indicators tell us that the escalating complex challenges that gave rise to overlapping Meta-Poly-Perma crises — will continue to destabilize and wreak havoc in our lives…to varying degrees…at various times for the foreseeable future.
When conditions non-conducive to life compound and escalate, entangled cycles of decay, decline and collapse invariably follow. While humanity influences the course [to some degree some of the time] and the decisions we make matter greatly — we do not direct and exert control, with dominion over the laws of nature and the cycles and timelines of life and death.
There is no going back and there are no guarantees on how these far-ranging forces — social, environmental and economic — will all play out.
We all feel overwhelmed at times. Some of us have a higher tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. Some even seem to thrive on the challenges posed.
Our energy reserves and personal agency can run low, especially as we encounter setbacks and when we aren’t connecting, aligning and combining our efforts.
We are likely better equipped to weather these times, proactively navigating and shifting tides when our efforts are joined up in ways that coalesce and focus collective coherent agency toward mindful activation.
When we work together collaboratively and across the boundaries and divides, cultivating a reframed sense of belonging, we can potentially balance the highs and lows better, become more resilient and draw from our differentiated capabilities, as we navigate through complexity.
So yes…in the face of it all…we can shut down……
We can pretend…we can cling to blind hope…to illusory [command and] control….waiting for leaders to step up and steer us in the right direction…directing others to follow the paths we deem right…
We can [try to] block out the reality of limited growth on a finite planet. We can ignore that we’re living under the unpredictable conditions of a non-ergodic world.
It is hard to get unstuck…trapped by a driving neoclassical economic model that continues to predict and forecast based on out-of-context flawed assumptions. Abstract monopoly game investment decisions aren’t grounded at the interconnected interdependent ecosystem layers of a living, well-functioning wellbeing society.
…or we can dance...collaboratively shaping, testing and grounding alternatives patterns…roughly right direction[s] that might help shift the current trajectory.
Exploring alternatives much further is beyond the scope of this article. In the meantime, to learn about Unstitution’s nonlinear journey forging alternative commons governance pathways, these 2 updated articles are primers: Our way of being. Starting with Unstitution governance patterns; Dance to a different tune on a new dancefloor.
The existential cliffhanger that we seem to be facing portrays alternating and intertwined horizons of:
…cascading planetary tipping points pointing to ever-accelerating risks and…
…emergent possibilities and social tipping points pointing us in ways that nurture life…building in some enabling ergodic conditions…and co-discovering possibilities not yet apparent…
When we choose to dance, we aren’t abdicating to fate. We are accepting responsibility for life-affirming choices and mindful navigation. We are accepting that we aren’t masters or centres of the universe, that there are forces outside of our [direct]control. We are accepting the inherent messiness…laws of nature and the randomness of some events and circumstances that happen, regardless of our best efforts and interventions. We are accepting the unknowability of some downstream consequences — the nonlinear chain-of-events set in motion by our actions, inactions and multiple variables over which we cannot control.
The Wildfires Raging in our Souls…a Reimagining of Humanity — digs in more spirit-fully…reconnecting with the essence of life worth living and work worth doing.
Perhaps being roughly right about many things in roughy right ways is our provisional portal and life raft to a better future…
Perhaps accepting that being roughly wrong about many things, much of the time — is not about fault and blame. It might be our best insurance — a state of grace — towards course correction…[generally] re-steering the course in the roughly right direction…
When we learn how to tap and engage our full(er) humanness — left and right brain capacities — we might find the roughly right ways to overcome what is seriously wrong and bring more life-affirming balance into society.
Recognizing the gifts and givingness of life — hidden in plain sight, we might discover and recover the abundance of enoughness.
Being unstitutional…is choosing to dance…with paradox…with our inherent messy humanness…and yes, even with the shadowy monsters that confound and confront us. Guided by a moral compass …some clear red lines…maybe being roughly right can adaptably, figure-out-ably help us move farther outside our comfort zones, becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable, mobilizing some needed inner AND outer shifts.
Living between worlds is not easy.
It is easy to slide [back] into the same patterns that got us here — to feed [still too] rigid polarized positions, to label and demonize. It’s also understandably human [for any of us] to lapse into dissonance…
🔮 Defending, justifying and rationalizing the righteous rightness of our positions and the wrong-full wrongness of others.’
🔮 Half-listening and cherry-picking truths that fit with our own well-defined rightness — perhaps hard-earned expertness and [at times painfully gained and endured] lived experience
Can we recognize those patterns — adjusting and shifting course?
To recognize all this without [the finality of] judgment — to confront openly, speak one’s truth, be courageous, en-couraging, authentically caring, listening deeply and hearing with compassion — radically humbles and challenges us all.
Perhaps, as more of us [work to] engage in these ways, more of the time, not waiting for others to do so…not using others’ wrongness as our excuse to default to the same dysfunctional patterns — what seems radical will become [more] normal…will feel [more] natural. Perhaps we’ll feel less compelled to rely or rest on [the laurels of] expertise and expertness that is of limited scope, navigating these uncharted waters.
There are multiple elephants in multiple rooms and myriad ways that [partial] blindness can affect our individual and collective ability to dance with systems and complexity and navigate wisely and well.
🔮 What part[s] of what elephant[s] are we seeing, pointing at, focusing on and/or [perhaps] avoiding, ignoring or missing?
🔮 How can we explore and deepen our understanding without becoming overly fixated on or identified with models or categories that reinforce mechanistic patterns?
🔮 Can we codify and adaptively shape accessible pattern languages that support and invite healthy collaboration with mutual respect for differences?
🔮 [How] can we see and experience our own relationships and embeddedness — within and across contexts?
🔮 [How] can we hold [the tension of] multiple contexts and polarities?
🔮 [How] can we flow transcontextually — being in flow — zooming in and out, intra and inter-relationally — sense and meaning making, iteratively, nonlinearly?
🔮 [How] can we see and/or appreciate differentiated scales as [nested] semi-permeable adaptive living systems?
🔮 [How] are we valuing the natural interdependent relationship[s] — [whole] human, non-human, within, between and across scales — appreciating and tapping the co-intelligence gained when we humbly accept that there is always more and that no one of us can see/take in [all] the whole[s?]
In generative dialogue and in context, how might living the questions, inform and support our mutual navigation through uncertainty — discerning the roughly right direction?
Perhaps some of these questions can help us flow with the inherent messiness of complexity, systems and ecosystems — in work and life.
LENSES…
CONTEXTS…
NESTEDNESS…
FLOWS…
RELATIONSHIPS…
.…all at play as we navigate
However we describe or experience them…Whether we illuminate with floodlights or point with flashlights…there’s always more beyond our [pur]view or [ad]vantage point
Perhaps our growing capacity to humbly accept, see and [co]creatively engage in their interplay can contribute to our co-evolving co-intelligent, wiser navigation.
A [r]evolutionary dance of emergence and strategy:
🔮 Shaping and establishing some enabling ergodic conditions [e.g. commons governance, work system structures, multicapital value flows/exchange etc.] can help set contexts for healthy human [system] behaviour patterns conducive to ecosystem regeneration and flourishing for future generations
🔮 Adopting relational rules of engagement conducive to being the change — adaptively-walking-the-talk-listening-as-we-walk…[co]learning by doing
That’s what we mean by …wisdom with teeth…
Dancing together…mindfully forging pathways forward, we can help to shape life-affirming patterns, restoring those that honour our deeper Indigeneity. Living into an uncertain, unprogrammable future we might collectively figure out how to reboot society’s operating system as viable adaptive living systems — for the benefit of humanity and the planet!
Roughly, rightfully, truthfully…what could possibly be more important?
What if we conveyed our own roughly right/wrong perspectives as partial, unfinished invitations for creative interplay? Imagine a world where ideas are offered and accepted as input — fractals of larger wholes. What if our views were generally received as gifts, unpolished, imperfect gems that contributed to something made better as a result of reciprocity?
Imagine a world where the many things that are roughly and very wrong are [increasingly] acknowledged — enabling wisdom, humility and grace to guide our collective navigation toward things that are roughly right.
Imagine if we worked at it and let it flow…
Would that help to lay the foundation for grounded hope? Would that begin to reset this nonlinear course along a roughly right trajectory, with better enabling conditions and potential outcomes, as we increasingly befriend our mutual vulnerability — living into an unknowable future?
After Notes…the story is always ongoing…
Many of the references included in this and other articles, invite us to widen our [trans]contextual lens — to access, develop, engage and combine all our senses and sense-making to the best of our individual and collective navigation capacity. In essence we’re challenged to reframe rightness and wrongness beyond the atomized decontextualized problem solving/solutionist programming of the Industrial Age.
This formidable juncture of our civilization history calls upon us to widen and deepen our co-intelligence, as Tom Atlee explores and implores in his Latest book Co-intelligence: The Applied Wisdom of Wholeness, Interconnectedness, and Co-Creativity. This compendium, synthesizing decades of research and work, builds from the wise democracy pattern language. In ongoing conversations with Tom, we’ve been exploring how to nurture wiser co-intelligence patterns and extend the horizons of possibilities that can make this work, in its multiple forms, more widely accessible.
Retrospective and forward-facing, we can enrich our learning and expand our relational and sense making capacity as care holders— co-activating co-intelligence as engaged participants, leaders and citizens in our wiser human evolution — within the contexts of ongoing every day work, life and societal shifts.
In this May 2024 deep dive Before Skool 3+-hour video/podcast: Game Theory, False Narratives, Survival, Life Advice, Daniel Schmachtenberger cogently articulates and unpacks the many overlapping challenges that interweave across the meta crises and the multipolar traps that keep people, systems and society stuck on a degenerative spiral of human civilization decline. There’s no way to sum this up with a pithy quote. Watch if and when you can.
As we listen…we recognize the underlying issues and themes — moreover the questions — that many of us have been observing and exploring as we wrestle with ways to navigate mindfully. With this recognition and the growing gulf of precarity, is an ever-deepening dawning that he and we — integrally connected to the web of life — aren’t alone on this quest to widen sense making portals and the multitudes of ways to engage with people generatively within and across contexts.
A reaffirming theme that runs throughout is the the need to gain wisdom…and how some of those layers of wisdom might best be derived by humbly accepting the inherent I and we don’t knowness — as we navigate, guided by what is most precious about life in all its wondrous forms.
In this July 2024 Moving Beyond Polarization in Service of Life | Reality Roundtable, Nate Hagens interviews Vanessa Andreotti, Nora Bateson, Rex Wyler and Daniel Schmachtenberger, peeling back layers, reflecting on communication as an ecology.
Together, they aspire towards a rich ecology of communication-in-action, ways of co-learning that are always open-ended. Many layers. Each uniquely contributed and together combined nourishing ingredients within the context of the inquiry they are cultivating. Relevant to the moment-to-moment here-and-now AND the contextual meanings and possibilities carried forward in emergent conversations.
Their thoughts took shape, lovingly expressed as a vibrant tapestry with many recurring themes. None of us will hear and process conversations in the same ways. Do watch…in living context….
The need for collective connective meaningful dialogue toward coherent progress in our ongoing everyday work and life — is underscored
*Building on recurring themes and peeling back yet more layers, this article updated July 2024, reflects additional perspectives and ongoing action research, as we continue to observe, listen, assimilate, curate and adapt — a learning journey for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze and support collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They portray a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work.
You can follow Unstitution and engage with us on LinkedIn. Many of our posts and perspectives also pop up under hashtags #messyhumanness and #wisdomwithteeth.
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