Heroes Not Zombies

Reality, which we can appreciate, and apprehend, directly in the natural, living world isn’t like the re-presentation, the model, or the map which is used most commonly in contemporary society.

What is that model or map? The machine.

A machine is constructed from parts, each of which is complete and independent from the others. It functions linearly, each movement or change leading to a predictable and exact outcome. The best machines are the ones which work most “efficiently”, producing the same outcomes time and again with the least amount of energy consumption.

The living world is not like that. Human beings are not like that. Reality is not like that. Machines and models are artificial. Complicated perhaps, useful perhaps, but not something we should try to emulate.

Reality is a constantly changing interactive flow of materials, energy and information. Everywhere we look in the natural world we see subjects, not objects…..living organisms which are born, grow and develop, flourish, reproduce, decline and die. We see unique creatures, every one with a different life story, living in a particular place over a particular period of time.

Living creatures are self-balancing, self-repairing, self-making individuals living in vast, intricate webs of relationships and connections, open to the flows of materials, energy and information from which they emerge, and into which they return.

A plant like the one in this photo lives abundantly. It produces as many blossoms as it can, it produces as many seeds as it can. An excess, some might say. It isn’t parsimonious and it isn’t “efficient” like a machine.

There’s a characteristic in all complex adaptive systems known as “redundancy”…..it involves having more ways to do something than you “need”. When some is lost, or some part of the system is damaged, there’s always more to come on stream or take over.

We seem to be in a bit of a mess these days, with crises and shortages everywhere. From airports, to ports, to supply chains, hospitals, GP Practices, ambulance services, or food production, the pandemic, we are told, has made them all collapse.

Well the pandemic highlighted something and made it worse, but it’s not THE cause. It’s a factor.

We entered the pandemic in the midst of a time when we’ve been trying to organise ourselves as if we are machines. Economic and management theories based on machine models – of identical, predictable parts working efficiently to produce the greatest financial profits with the least human input.

It’s not working because reality isn’t a machine.

We can try something different, can’t we? By seeing that each of us are living, complex, adaptive creatures who exist and flourish in a living world wide web of relationships and interconnectedness. We can create organisations and societies, as diverse communities and families of unique, singular, particular, unpredictable, uncontrollable, glorious, amazing individual beings.

What might that look like?

Not a machine.

But then the main focus would have to shift – from making money and consuming “stuff” to nourishing and nurturing Life.

Might be worth a try….it works in the natural world.