How to live in a Complex World?
Principles to live by when understanding it all becomes impossible.
“We can’t solve a problem with the same kind of consciousness that created it.” Alfred Einstein
I recently returned from offering a two day workshop on Swarm Leadership in Israel, for the Institute of Democratic Education. Both for me and the participants very enlightening. In addition to earlier writing about this theme, here are some deeper insights that surfaced during these two days.
The need of making sense in chaos.
Many of us feel dazed and confused by an overflow of input. We know many things feel wrong, from the financial system or care to food production. And many of us wonder where and how to make a meaningful difference. Our old school education doesn’t prepare us enough for tough new world issues. It primarily focusses on preparing to take on a professional job, forgetting life is so much more than just that. That’s why I wrote this exploration, building on principles that help me and many others. The principles are based upon Swarm Leadership and Taoism. They may seem paradoxical, yet are essential when dealing with chaos and complexity.
The 5 paradoxical ways are: Awareness: Overview through the Body. Responsibility: Leadership by taking part. Wisdom: Achieving by not-doing. Co-Creation: Collaboration through diversity. Glocal: Local actions supporting global impact.
The world we live in.
In our world many interventions, rules, processes are based upon an mechanistic world view. This world view is based upon strong convictions (“Growth and profits are necessary for healthy economics. Nature is a secondary issue for politics (and people in cities who have it all).”), biases (”If you don’t have big success your ideas mean little, especially indigenous world views.”), so called ‘proofs’ (“GMO’s & pesticides create better agriculture.”) and the love of order through control (“Listen to those in power! They know. It says so in main stream media.”). More and more people are worried. They see, what they are being fed as solutions are too often faltering, lead to conflicts and are basically destroying life on this planet. And the ones in control don’t seem worried. Destructive practices are not addressed. This leads to more anxiety and struggles. It leads to us either thinking we need to take sides and hate others or just feeling worried and powerless. If we don’t take the step to a higher consciousness and attitude, such damages and troubles will only grow.
Our mission. We need to go from a mechanistic world view to an organic one. In an organic world view we unfold our connectedness as being part of. The whole, including you, will flourish if we work for that. In this post you’ll find that paradoxes to help find a new path, where rational control must bow to principles that are simpler, gentler and ultimately more true to life.
The 5 principles
AWARENESS
“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” Eckhart Tolle
Overview through the body.
In our immensely complex world having a conscious understanding, let alone a mental picture of all that’s going on, is impossible. There are thousands of influences going on at every given moment, everything from radiation, smells to cultural barriers, personal convictions and hormones to climate and global politics. And each of these factors influence your state of mind and choices.
More and more we see two kinds of dealing with the complexity, that actually make matters worse. The first becomes visible on almost any given political forum: ignorance, stupidity, bias and simple answers. Each a danger in itself, together a potent mix for manipulators & populist politicians. The second we see mostly in big organizations, management and ruling elites. It is the strategic rational overview. Being convinced you have an overarching overview, doesn’t mean you have. Having a huge dashboard of information, still means a lot of reality escapes your view. Add to this: the cold rational strategic mindset is capable of taking disconnected decisions affecting millions, endangering nature, starting wars and consciously lying to the first group to further their own interests. Thus the half blind and sometimes consciously manipulative mindset of the strategist is a danger to us all.
The overview effect described by astronauts is an overview of a very different kind. Looking back at earth they all seemed to start to care, and understand the vulnerability of the whole. Since we can’t all go into space there’s another way to get that effect. It’s through the body. Take in what you see, and feel how it effects your body. Sorrow, pain, love, the sense of the wonderful may all happen when we truly look and allow ourselves to be touched by what we see. We are part of the whole and our body knows it. By opening up to what is, we become a sensing part. And while our senses may have a shorter reach than our internet connection, by truly listening to our caring senses, we often do make the best most helpful choices in the here and now. That’s because true connectedness happens through the body, and often understands way more than our mind.
(more on this: Inner Compass and in the Embodiment Manifesto)
RESPONSIBILITY
“A leader is anyone who wants to help.” Margaret Wheatley
Leadership by taking part.
We used to think leadership was striving for control, preferably as much as possible over as many people and resources as possible. Leadership was having a vision about what to do and where to go next. It was having the ideas how to raise profits, protect interests and having the capacity to make decisions about it, other had to follow. The right word for that attitude and position is ruler, manager or boss. Leadership is something else entirely.
True leadership starts with being conscious you are part of the web of life. Your actions impact it in many ways you can’t know. Even an off hand remark, as I personally experienced, may alter careers or spawn marriages. Your future great grand children might eat your garbage in their fish. Leadership is taking decisions on all levels and taking responsibility for it, from each facebook forward or delete to a decision to cut or plant a million tree forest. A single mother trying to give her child the best future possible in a desperate situation is a leader and, in my book, a high ranking officer following crazy orders from a madman is not.
Thus leadership is the decision to take part for the wellbeing of the web of life, support what needs help, taking responsibility to help where it is needed. It is accepting you have a role in whatever position and breathing life into it. As the place where I park my bike has several men making a party of the parking, always bringing smiles to bikers, or a young girl who started art projects to change the mindsets of inattentive people around here. And then when we open our eyes to it, we see millions around the world, starting initiatives to make the world a better place for fellow beings in a multitude of different ways. They act often with little or no money, and touch lives of people even outside their own culture or nation, just because they see a need and feel they can act upon it.
If only the elite was as willing to take part like that, to stop the limited focus on their own interests and starting to serve the whole, with all their funds and possibilities. (more on leadership by being part in Swarm Leadership II)
Wisdom
“Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” Lao Tzu
Achieving by not-doing.
The act of enforcing, using force to obtain control over others, to be willing to do damage to serve only your own interests comes with a cost. I met managers who after years of hard work realized they never saw their children grow up. I met young people depressed, because pure ambition didn’t brought them love, recognition, let alone a life they enjoy. I’ve seen teachers and bosses attempting to control their flock through force and, instead of order, got paid back with disorder and resistance. Actually almost all dictators got more disorder than order through their actions. From inner turmoil, such as paranoia, to full blown civil war. If you feel any friction due to your action, it might be you’re still trying and willing too much.
The Chinese concept of Wu-Wei or ‘not doing’ sounds strange to most Western ears. The principle comes from the Tao. Not-doing is actually not doing nothing. Wu Wei is to dance with life as it unfolds, without trying to enforce anything. Wu-wei means not seeking to convince anybody. It’s dancing when your body wants to, find food when you’re hungry. It speaks about how babies can cry for hours without getting hoarse. I felt it when dancing all night at a concert, while thinking at the start I wouldn’t be able to move a muscle out of fatigue (and no drugs!). Thus without forcing yourself you can still act.
Perhaps this is the most radical idea. Perhaps we safe the world by stopping to control it to our desires. We might even seek trying to safe it less. That doesn’t mean continuing as we do now. It means leaving no marks. It means not seeking to bath in stuff and riches, rather enjoy what is. Going for experience more than increase in position. It means using no power in all moves, nor letting others do it for you. It means not going to war, not cutting trees, not harming animals. And if you act, move with grace and beauty, for every act done in flow is part of the whole and may be of service. And yes then, perhaps like dancing all night, you can stick to a task to make a difference. And you’ll make that difference, because moving by not doing is always in harmony with what is unfolding. And take it from me, that state is the richest you can experience.
(more on using staying free to get things done: The Art of Foolkido.)
Co-Creation
“Diversity is the mix. Inclusion is making the mix work.” Andrés Tapia
Collaboration through diversity.
Management books used to advice getting all noses in the same direction. They talked about how to facilitate change according methods that would impose unity. “We’re all part of the same team here.” Uniformity, alignment, branding are all used to get that special feel, few really feel, especially when ty don’t trust the top. The companies mission means little for workers, when profits go before care of employees. It means little for interim managers hired to get people out or profits up. Collaboration based upon playing along is never real collaboration. It’s closer to making people part of a machine. A more and more we find top down decision making can be severely flawed.
A bee or ant swarm allows huge diversity in research, opinions and trial and error exploration. Why? Because they really live the shared purpose. A swarm is much more like a cooperative than a profit driven shareholders company. Nature is build on diversity of forms of life, capable of adjusting to many eventualities.
We all really benefit from any collective advancement through diversity. Any organization really interested in what’s best for all, will have open ears to every opinions and will accept criticism as advice towards improvement. I teach like that. I hardly get criticism, or don’t even notice it as such, as I see it as help. Real freedom is not allowing everyone to say what they want (and then ignoring difficult voices). For me real freedom is when everyone feels their seperate input is valued, and at the same time seeks to offer input that helps the whole.
For that last paradox to work, diversity must be allowed. What do I really lose when my neighbors cook foreign meals? Is my culture really lost when many don’t agree with me, even with this idea? Of course not. We already accept huge differences. We understand a mother forbidding things and the child exploring beyond her rules. We understand doctors looking closely at your body and prefer bakers to stay behind their counter. If only we understood that cultural differences are outcomes of explorations to different conditions in life, that as the baker and doctor may enrich our own. It’s only when you have no self confidence, or think there’s one right answer to everything (as schools sadly train too much on), that different voices seem scary. But in fact the more different eyes look at a problem, the better change we find (often many) different solutions that work.
GLOCAL
“Global vision, local win.” Jack Ma
Local actions supporting global impact.
The most destructive are giant corporations reshaping whole regions to their interests. They turn the vibrant diversity of a forest into a monoculture of soy fields planted with GMO’s (and sprayed with poisons to keep all other life out), or industrial cattle ranches (read concentration camps for animals and major Global Warming contributor). They rip out minerals and leave barren poisoned country sides behind. And, through the externalization of all costs, we all pay for their robbery. It seems our culture totally considers it normal, as we question to little what happens behind our own horizon. Not that we see much, as our horizon is polluted by miles of concrete, media distractions online and huge advertisements, hiding walls where once was green.
Once almost all regions in the world were resilient self sustaining economies, that had relationships with the forests & wild around them. We now find that economical implosions, like the 2008 bank crash, or disasters such as Fukushima, can influence large parts of the planet. We need to be locally resilient and self sustaining to be able to buffer against international economical crashes. We realize more and more that indigenous people are not backward barbarians. They hold life sacred and so should we. How could profits ever be more important than health of life and nature as a whole? My gut says even to consider that idea is a travesty and crime to the web of life.
While few of us, do have directly global influence, let alone access, all of us live in a locality. In the knowledge even one balcony might raise about 400 euro’s in vegetables; we can start acting and buying local. We can buy fair trade and organic. And most of all we can start living as we’d dream of. Why die with regrets, when you can start being of meaning for yourself and your community?
(More thinking on how you can aid economic change: Economic Overhaul.)
The Power of Love for What Is (possible).
So stop trying to become better, stronger and more in control. Instead using the principles above become more in tune, more alive and better connected. For underneath the five principles is love. And through that love seeking to be of service to that of which you are part; to ‘the ocean inside and around you’, as Rumi might have put it. The principles are also about acting on what is needed/possible right here and now. And while most management books try to show the way to the top, the actual way forward, in my experience, includes a bow more down, more humble. Or as Charles Eisenstein put it: ‘help bring forth the better world our heart knows is possible.’
For learning to live/work with these principles check these: swarming exercises. (or hire me to offer a workshop ;)
Some further reading:
- The New Rises out of Chaos. Why clear solutions are broken, and playful togetherness is very healthy.
- A Simpler Way. Hopeful insight how we are growing together.
- Smart Swarm. Igniting collective intelligence.
- Google ‘Swarm Intelligence’ for applications in robotics and A.I.
- Swarm Leadership as described by P2P foundation.
- Swarm Leadership and the Collective Mind. Practical application in idea creation.
- SwarmWise. Tactical Manual to change the world.
