The Long Con: Open ended evolution and the capacities that could save humanity
The personal commitment to explore one’s own identity is neither easy nor singular. It is a profound willingness to repeatedly examine motive and action as well one’s own fear and needs. It requires humility, transparency, courage, honesty, and authenticity and possesses the intangible quality of the spiritual. It is often deepened during and after times of great pain and suffering. There is a dynamic and subjective nature in the relationship between an observable event and an observer’s perceptions and reasoning.
As Gramsci proposed, ‘the crisis consists precisely the fact the old dying and the new cannot be born in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms that appear.’ In this intersection between the old in the new lies a continuum for transformation. Where crisis or trauma or fear stem from the inability to bear a different paradigm contexts or identity. Identity is an interwoven and complex creation of our perceptions, values and contexts. Research confirms not only the complexity of identity but its malleability and it’s adaptivity particularly in the face of identity threat. However questions remain on how we engage and cultivate the capacities for this dexterity. Too often the assumption has been prescriptive whereby tools and skills are suggested or assumed to be inclusive of the enactment and interaction of self. The Engaged Identity® approach suggests that cultivating an awareness of self and its complexity, malleability and adaptivity creates an opening to not only understanding and healing of self but provides an expanded understanding that changes perspective about society, systems and others. As conflict is often a result of identity, particularly when we are more highly identified with one aspect of self, the concept of ‘identity expansion’ is an ability to have a reflexivity in ones awareness and enactment of their identity. In this way each facet of the identity becomes a conduit for connection, communication, and transformation. An engaged identity has a deep sense of equanimity, where the multiple-aspects can be accessed without the rigidification or fixation on one particular facet. For example, if Mike’s daughter doesn’t feel comfortable discussing an argument she had at school with her ‘father’, Mike’s ability to shift the attachment from the aspect of father to another aspect, say of friend, offers a different enaction of the participatory sense-making process. The focus here is not on the shifting to a particular aspect, rather the ability to move within the various identities we hold without experiencing threat, resentment, or loss of expectation. In other words, with a sense of equanimity.
As an enactive embodied self, we have a unique opportunity to reorganize and broaden our understanding of how human beings can cultivate adaptive capacity. Developing an awareness of the self as a complex adaptive system creates opportunity for reorganization and transformation of self. Although, providing and priming our embodied cognition can enhance the ability to recognize and respect diversity and difference, it does not address the cultivation of adaptive capacities that are necessary for pro social behavior, emotional intelligence, problem solving, executive function, empathy, compassion and other mindsets that contribute to sustainable relationships. The Engaged Identity® approach utilizes this priming mechanism to create an awareness of self and system complexity. In order to engage the self as a complex system with other complex systems we need the ability to engage our multiple selves. Understanding identity from and inclusive of this biological and evolutionary aspect of the cell to system relationship, we can see the ability of the self as a complex system to cultivate a similar reflexivity through enactive embodied cognition.
The Engaged Identity® approach utilizes systems thinking as a theme to prime for transformation by increasing awarenesses of complexity from a cell to society continuum. The ability to complexify or simplify as an adaptive capacity is key to understanding our relationship with identity threat and the processes necessary to move beyond it. In others words, perhaps it is not our thinking that needs to complexify, rather we would turn attention to increasing the capacities of embodied cognition. This shift and perspective requires a re-organization of the way human adaptive capacity is understood. Examining the temporal, emergent, and mutual causality, the approach examines both the individual and the societal aspects of complexity that are reflective of lived experience. This personalization creates a opportunity for engagement and empowerment that effects both the intra- and inter- personal interactions. Ultimately, increasing the adaptive capacity of individuals to recognize, interact, an enact from a systems perspective. If we understand our personal and relational identities as dynamic, complex systems, it becomes much easier to understand conflict through the lens of complexity.
Understanding complexity, and the ability to remain adaptable in the face of change are essential for conflict transformation. Whether in psycho-social trauma healing, negotiation, or relationship building, a priming perspective is only a part of a larger continuum of transformation. Recognition alone does not offer the possibility for transformation that engagement and experience provide. The tension between autonomy and affiliation, requires interaction and adaptation. Intellectually understanding complexity and complex systems, while providing an important contribution to understanding conflict and sustainability, does not provide us the skills necessary to sustain interaction with those systems. Learning and cultivating the capacities to engage (the temporal considerations) not only requires the development of new neural pathways, it plays a role in the emotional and spatial aspects of transforming embodied cognition and perception. Rather than mapping or looking for the patterns in complex systems, the approach uses the precepts as capacities, or conduits, for enacted transformation.
The interaction and reflexivity for transformation will require these ‘pre-coming together’ adaptive capacities. The scholarship regarding the various behaviors, traits and tools of self for interaction, sustainability, and well-being, from executive function, to compassion, empathy, social-emotional intelligence, and problem solving, all raise the fundamental capabilities of listening, patience, and respect. Without the ability to genuinely listen to the other party’s conceptual and emotional experience, no true correspondence or acknowledgement can be made. In the absence of patience, response is reduced to an empty mandate or hastily applied reaction where the seeds of injury and conflict remain to resurface at a later time. If respect is not available to every individual, self-acceptance and the opportunity for the individual to take responsibility and personal accountability for their actions is left as an imposed set of standards instead of ones that are mutually shared. The approach refers to the embodiment of these capacities as identity expansion. The reflexivity, reflection, and enaction to shift the focus of our identity and engage through its varying facets holds enormous potential for developing sustainable relationships and systems.
Listening
The first precept for developing an engaged identity is listening. In the Engaged Identity® approach listening is understood as auditory, visual, somatic, olfactory, gustatory, and intuitive (mindful). The concept Ayatana, in Buddhist philosophy, is one way of understanding this precept. Ayatana sees the mind as a sense organ and principal gateway to additional stimuli and phenomena, in addition to the traditional five senses. Based on the concept of Ayatana, in Buddhist philosophy, the theory utilizes six internal sense organs and six external sense objects. In addition to the five senses, the mind is also seen as a sense organ and gateway to additional stimuli and phenomena that occur through reflection and perception. Paired together, they form six internal-external pairs of sense bases:
eye and visible objects
ear and sound
nose and odor
tongue and taste
body and touch
mind and mental objects
Using this idea of ‘multi-sensory’ listening to gain greater understanding, listening is not limited to external stimuli, rather it reflects the autopoiesis and embodied cognition, enhancing the ability to observe our interactions, intuitions, and perceptions. Cultivating the capacity to listen with these six sources of sensation and perception enhances our understanding of the human experience and includes the internal sources of sensation as well as our experience of the external world. In this approach, listening is seen as the enaction of physical, auditory, emotional, and intuitive interaction between systems. From body language to the lump the back of the throat, tension in the body and the ability to focus, the approach cultivates the capacity of listening as an awareness of this multi-sensory system, the interactive sensations created, and the phenomena it perceives within oneself and with systems at large.
Many types of listening inclusive approaches aim to address trauma and the transformation of conflict. The Engaged Identity® approach does not discount any of these particular practices. It does however purposefully decide to avoid particular affiliations to process in favor of a broader embodied interactive view of what and how listening is experienced. By doing so, the approach includes a spectrum of potential processes for listening reflective of capacity, capability, and culture.
Patience
The second precept is patience. Patience provides us time to create, to calm down, to observe, to problem solve, and to develop commitment as an action instead of mere reactions. More often than not, we seek the end point at the expense of thoughtful exchange and experience. Transformation takes time. Patience allows for the creation of thoughtful, inclusive information gathering, the ability to recognize the temporal considerations in use of time, and in assistance with executive function and the self-regulation of emotion. Gandhi’s observation that “‘the pursuit of Truth did not come of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he [the opponent] must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy’”. In the rush to conclusions, sustainable transformation is unavailable without the patience required to address threats to identity the seeds of injury and conflict may resurface at a later time. Cultivating patience gives us the ability to extend ourselves without attachment to outcomes and more fully engage in the process of transformation. Hal Saunders stresses the power of extended interactions to transform relationships, and the importance of transforming relationships within the broader society. He and others cautioned against being too efficient and “rushing to harmony.” In addition, patience is not only considered in intra- and inter- human relationships, it also applies to the interconnected web of ecological systems. Example patience could be seen as a function of consciousness in understanding spatial and temporal aspects of interaction and transformation. It can also be seen as a tool, in such as in negotiation or organizational development that in turn can be developed as a skill, such as with social-emotional regulation or pro-social behavior. Looking to human adaptive capacities such as emotional regulation, compassion, and executive function and empathy, patience plays a vital role in order for their enactment.
Respect
The last precept is respect; a basic human need that includes recognition, acknowledgment, and dignity. It is essential for building the types of relationships supportive of transformation. It offers an identity the ability to flourish, trust and collaborate. This aids us in creation of relationships able to withstand change and disagreement by providing a foundation for our interactions. However, in the approach, respect is not only developed towards others, it is also practiced towards ourselves and the natural world. It is a vehicle that assists us in recognizing our common humanity and interdependent systems, and a way to acknowledge the role of time for transformation. Rilke declares that the ultimate expression of love is to “stand guard over and protect the solitude of the other,”expressing the importance of respecting the autonomous states that lie within interdependency and the diversity of humanity. Without respect, our differences and diversity form hierarchies that blind us to the needs of others and leave us unable to contribute to a just peace. In a Gandhian sense, respect is a vehicle that assists us in judging an action and not the actor. Respect has been a focus of many wisdom and spiritual traditions, particularly in the realms of traditions that comprise a deep ecology or belief in the interdepend wholeness of self, society, and nature. As Dietrich explains the Mayan context,
Utziläj k’aslen is the word used by the Maya-Kakchikel for Peace. It refers to mental and material well-being and circumscribes in the world view of these people the one-ness of society, nature, and the universe. Maintaining this unity requires the respect of each man towards each other, towards the community and the environment. In the Maya’s view, this environment is not objectivised and functionalised in the service of man; instead, they see themselves and everything else which exists on the material and spiritual levels as creative elements of the whole. In the Maya’s cosmology, wherever this respect — for individuals, the community, nature, or the universe — is absent, the harmony of elements gets lost, Utziläj k’aslen is disturbed, and the result is some kind of peacelessness.
In today’s multicultural world, the only reliable path to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies or sympathies. It must be rooted in consciousnesses. Consciousness as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe; transcendence as a deeply experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because all this constitutes a single world; consciousness as the only real alternative to extinction. The Long Con.
