Mountain, Monastery, and Metropolis
A story of originality
I didn’t sleep that night.
It was our last 12 or so hours at Afralti, where we had met for one week of induction. This was over 10 years ago.
One of us had a book by my favourite fiction author, Paulo Coelho.
I had read other works by him. Vivid memories of The Valkyries are still alive in my mind, but for a long time, I wanted to have a go at the world bestseller, The Alchemist.
This one night, I found someone with the book, and the following day we were to vacate the place. So I couldn’t sleep. I had to finish it that night. Thankfully, the author was a certified page-turner.
In the book, the main character is searching for treasure. He goes to great lengths to find it. And when he gets to the prescribed destination, he discovers that the treasure was with him all along. The journey was essential because, without it, he would not have had the epiphany.
This was the story that came to mind when I heard the President of the Santa Fe Institute mention the three words — the mountain, the monastery, and the metropolis.
Up the mountain
If there’s an institute I would love to visit or even become a faculty member, it's the Santa Fe Institute.
I have been a distant admirer for a long time, even doing some courses through their online platform, Complexity Explorer.
The hub is situated up the mountain in New Mexico, literally picking from what David Krakauer, the president hinted. The reason is simple — originality.
The institute was started for and by people challenging difficult problems, grappling with ideas that could not explain the complexity in a way that current education is taught. Or if it can, with a tonne of difficulty.
To come up with original ideas, it is often advised that you go somewhere to be alone. Up a mountain is as good a place as any, because when you look down, you soak in everything around you. The vastness of it can be humbling.
It is humbling.
Similarly, one has to traverse a mountain of knowledge to uncover an original idea. And when you look at the mountain of evidence, it can humble you. The result, however, is an increased chance of coming up with something original.
But we are the easiest people to fool.
How, then, can we make sure that we don’t fool ourselves?
At the monastery
Most monasteries that I know of are situated in silent and serene areas like mountains or hills.
The Santa Fe Institute borrows from this idea because monks meditate and think a lot about life, self, and meaning. The members try to develop the meaning of all the complex behaviour of systems both individually and collaboratively.
As every one of them climbed the mountain to find an original answer, they met at one place, the monastery — the Santa Fe Institute.
Over the lunch hour, the benches are one of the best places to bump ideas through each other. As Krakauer likes to say, nobody believes you and your ideas, but they like to listen to them.
There are no departments. No siloing of capability. Just a seamless flow of oddly curious humans trying to solve some of the world’s and the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Everyone understands that. They all try to help each other solve this problem.
The biggest test for their work came in late 2019 and throughout 2020.
Metropolis
COVID-19 tested our resolve, capability, and our human understanding.
It was the global manifestation of complexity registering massive casualties. It struck at the heart of what members of the Santa Fe Institute study — systems nested into other systems.
The hope is always to develop explanations that cut across fields for better preparation but mostly, to get deep insight into the mechanisms of how the world and the universe operate.
The global pandemic showed that a health issue is an economic issue. An economic issue is an education issue. An education issue is a social issue. A social issue is a family issue. A family issue is a religious issue. A religious issue is a communication issue. Like Captain America, I can go all day.
Hyperspecialization comes with these difficulties. Departments sink deep into an area of study and along the way, find that they are the only ones who understand that field with, quite literally, great depth.
But how do you communicate this to others, simplify it for understanding, and see how it can be beneficially executed?
That is the challenge of getting back to the metropolis.
Once you have developed your original ideas, and discussed them with other folks who have similar intellectual journeys as you, one has to implement them. Or share them with the world.
Two figures I like to think of who have done that exceptionally are Stuart Kauffman and Geoffrey West. The former introduced the world to budding laws of self-organization and the latter focused on a metabolic theory of systems. In particular, how systems scale while preserving fractal-like behaviour.
I have mentioned these two figures numerous times in my book. They have shaped my thinking profoundly. I am grateful that they came down the mountain with books showing their work and shared it with me, a mere member of the virtual metropolis of people interested in complexity.
It is no wonder why I would love to visit the facility.
What I’m trying to say is…
There’s a lesson here.
Originality cannot have such a simple recipe. Everyone would have taken it already for their selfish gains. It demands courage to follow this triple M formula.
Numerous stories of originality are evident from history that don’t necessarily stick to this formula.
What SFI does, however, is reiterate how the story of originality is often a lonely one. It helps to have people with you along the journey. Original ideas tend to get thwarted at the get-go. A nurturing environment helps.
Once your idea has survived the test of your fellow intellectual monks, you can journey down and share it with the world.
Hopefully, they will accept it.
But if they don’t, the journey, just like that which Paulo Coehlo aptly captures in The Alchemist, is always worthwhile.
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