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A Story-Centered Approach to Human SystemsBalder said Apr 12, 6:00 PM: |
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The following essay touches on a number of themes we've explored in different threads recently. I was going to copy some of its text into this thread, but the formatting is weird and it comes out mixed up and with large gaps when I try it. So, here's a link instead: |
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Re: A Story-Centered Approach to Human SystemsBalder said May 20, 8:02 AM: |
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Story and System
Now consider the following description (Tulku, 1987, 171-73) of what I am calling the lived story (in this case, what Tulku calls the “founding story” of the self). The same four properties appear:
In other words, the lived story can itself be understood as a system, a whole that is constantly remaking itself (encoding new patterns) through adjustments that take the form of subsidiary stories, all for the purpose of preserving homeostasis (the ongoing existence and ownership status of the self). To see the self-story as a system, however, does not yet address the “withinness” of human experience. If the self is the “founding story” we inhabit (Tulku, 1987), we should be able to see it as just that: a story about the way things are rather than the truth of our experience. Yet that is precisely what we cannot do. Instead, we always find ourselves within the story, and so accept it as the truth. Under ordinary conditions, the inhabited story is sealed off from systemic analysis. This is what it means to say we inhabit the story. Whenever we make the withinness of human experience our focus, we will find that systems analysis tends to miss the point. Consider Gregory Bateson's (1972a, 317-18) well-known example of a man chopping down a tree. Viewed in systemic terms, writes Bateson, the system (or Mind) at work here is the one consisting of tree-eyes-brain-muscles-axe-stroke-tree. He continues:
Bateson's mock consternation here (compare Dennett, 1992) is disingenuous. Bateson's systemic analysis offers a narrative—tells a story—that may be superior to a conventional linear causal account. But this account leaves unaffected the story we inhabit, a story in which it is incontestably the self that acts, decides, tells, objects, and so forth. It suggests a different way of living the story, a different view, but it lacks the purchase on our experience to become a different way of the story. Like the Underground Man, human beings acting within the lived story are beyond the reach of rational explanations. Experientially speaking, no one is a system to herself. The difficulty is that the method of science depends precisely on stepping outside the story, on emerging out of the darkness of prereflective experience into the light of reflection. There are certainly scientists who defend the need to engage the withinness of prereflective experience (Freeman, 2000, Dreyfus, 1993) and explore tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1962), but they generally concede that such familiarity is purchased at the cost of scientific knowledge and analytic rigor. Bateson's woodsman, involved in cutting down a tree with an axe, is not thinking to himself, “I am part of a system that involves the tree, the axe, impulses from the brain, the muscles of the arms, and so on.” But he is also not thinking, “I am the one cutting down the tree.” Within the story he inhabits, he does not think at all; it is enough for him to be within it. As Searle (1992, 98) writes: “Our idea of an objectively observable reality presupposes a notion of observation that is itself ineliminably subjective, and that cannot be made the object of observation.” This, then, is the challenge. Systems thinking recognizes the complexity of the lived story, but necessarily steps outside the story and thus loses touch with the essential withinness that makes human stories what they are. Yet from within the story, systems thinking is not possible, for as Bateson (1972a, 314), the elements that constitute the story are large inaccessible to consciousness. In fact, some writers sympathetic to systems theory have been prepared to accept that living a system is tantamount to abandoning consciousness (Hampden-Turner, 1982, 192; Berman, 1984, 303). We are on the horns of a dilemma. What are the prospects for a resolution through synthesis? The Lived Story: The System from Within Consider breathing as a system. The air enters the body and passes through the bronchial tubes, the lungs and rib cage expand, the diaphragm drops down, and so on. The usual principles of feedback, homeostasis, etc. apply. Breathing, however, is a special kind of system, because it is one we can be aware of from within. As the lungs expand, there is the experience of the lungs expanding. As the diaphragm drops down, there is the experience of that movement. We may not tune in to these experiences—in fact, we usually do not—but the potential is there. In this particular instance, at least, the system has its own within. But that is only the beginning of the story. Once I connect with the withinness of breathing, the whole realm of the within becomes available to me in a new way. For instance, as I am breathing, I may from time to have a thought. There is a withinness to the thinking that has the thought, one that parallels the withinness of breathing. Just as the breath breathes, so the thought thinks, and while thoughts have the special characteristic of being about something, the withinness of thinking (including the structure of aboutness) has nothing to do with the content of what is thought. In the same way, there is a withinness to seeing, to hearing, to swallowing, a a withinness to the mood that permeates my experience, the emotion or longing that frames my perception, and the intention that directs my action. Starting with breathing (one of countless possible entry points), I have gained access to the withinness of the lived story. Of course, the way things are for any particular person, the unexamined content of the lived story, may vary dramatically. For a person of faith, the withinness of the lived story might include the immediate presence of a divine being or force, accompanied by a flow of blessings. For a salesman, the withinness of attending a party might include a heightened sensitivity to clues that a potential customer is in the vicinity. Nor will any one such description be complete: In each case, multiple layers of meaning will be available. Like stars and planets sweeping through the ether, we swim within a sea of significance, inhabiting a world that ordinarily “makes sense” at each and every level we care about. My view is this possibility for experiencing the lived story from within represents the synthesis I asked after at the end of the last section. Tulku (1987, 300-301) explores this idea in some depth:
It is this “knowing between subject and object” that I have in mind when I speak of a knowledge accessible within the lived story. Let us return for a moment to Bateson's woodsman, chopping down a tree. It would be a rare individual indeed who experienced this activity in the way Bateson describes. But it is easy enough to imagine that same woodsman inhabiting a story in which the tree will serve as the central beam in the roof of a vacation cabin that he has planned to build for his family for years. Now we are in that rich domain of meanings that constitute the withinness of the story, alive with emotions, impressions, recollections, and so on. All that remains is for the woodsman to be aware, as he is cutting down the tree, of these levels of of meaning, and of how they inform his 'world system'. At that point, the lived story has become accessible to inquiry from within the story. One is both inside and outside the story. This “inside/outside” status is related to the systems analysis, which also turns away from the content of a story to analyze its working. To know within the story in this way, allows for what Bateson (1972c) calls “Learning III,” within which, as Heron and Reason (1997) put it, “the mind can choose its premises of understanding and action, can detach itself from all frameworks to peer into and reflect on their presuppositions.” With this, we can see how systems thinking relates to the knowing within the story that I have been trying to identify. “In a Batesonian framework,” writes Berman (1984, 275), “we can actually focus on the circuit, not just be immersed in it.” That is precisely the point of a knowing that knows from within the act of knowing, from within the lived story. Transforming the Story from Within: Implications for Democratic Theory Systems of government, and also nation-states, are artificial constructs. They are tools or machines, ad hoc “things” created by human beings to accomplish specific ends. As artificial constructs, they lack the defining characteristic of being human, for they have no within. In this respect they differ dramatically from cultures, which are defined precisely by the fact that they instill in their members—and in effect 'embody'—the essential elements of a lived story that make that culture what it is. Systems analysis may be effective for government, the mechanisms of which can be analyzed. But insofar as it seeks to explain the systemic structure of a lived story, systems analysis will not be relevant to the inhabitants of that story, for whom the story is simply not permeable to such external analysis. For modern, large-scale democracies, this impermeability of the cultural story to analysis is deeply problematic, for government must attempt to maintain order and safeguard the welfare of citizens who belong to a multiplicity of cultures, no longer united by a unifying lived story. When group identities conflict, when members of a single nation no longer find common ground, the result is conflict that can easily erupt into violence. We have seen the consequences countless times in recent decades. The situation is actually more complicated than this view suggests. We live in an era when lived stories have been brought into the open, have been made visible as stories. In the past, each culture had its own “way things are,” its own founding story, which remained invisible because it was all inclusive. Today, there is no one way that that things are, for today we have access to every culture, and as a result we find it increasingly difficult to maintain the truth of one particular story, one “totalizing narrative” (Lyotard, 1984). Those who insist on their truth nonetheless—fundamentalists—are likely to respond to this threatening cultural surround by growing ever more rigid, ever more ready to strike out at those who disagree with them. The rest of us are left holding on to stories we can no longer justify, but which for that very reason may go underground, more difficult to recognize and acknowledge than ever. The prevalent loss of faith in the lived story—the inability to justify it in terms of the logic of the appropriate narrative—is precisely what can make systems thinking applied to human systems especially attractive. For if the lived story comes to be reinterpreted as a told story, then it too is an artifice, subject to causal explanation and perhaps even rational reformation. If only, we may imagine, we could develop “systemic wisdom” (G. Bateson, as quoted in Berman, 1984, 258), we could find a way to live with one another and with our environing world. But here we come up against the same problem we have encountered before. Whatever narrative we may adopt, the lived story—even a lived story we can no longer justify in narrative terms, can no longer tell with conviction—remains impermeable to systems analysis, and thus impermeable to change. Shifting and fluid as it responds to the evolving situation of the moment, the lived story at a more basic level it is rigid and unyielding, strongly committed to the fundamental positions and identities around which the web of stories has been woven. In terms of the lived story in an era of contested narratives, there is no such thing as systemic wisdom, only the competing systemic wisdoms of each lived story. The natural response to this dilemma is to look for ways to create or identify a new lived story or modify the old ones. But how is this to be done, if not through rational analysis? It is a question similar to the question Berman (1984, 290-297) raises about Bateson's (1972) paradigm-breaking Learning III: how can we arrive there, absent a complete conversion to a new story that could as easily lead to fundamentalism as to freedom. One solution to this problem is to create a new cultural homogeneity: to communicate insistently a narrative that can gradually become a lived story. Advertising, the successor to classical rhetoric, is already busy working at this level, and the popular media does something similar: consider the unifying effects for the relevant community, at least at a superficial level, of a successful sports team, or the impact of megahit televisions shows such as American Idol. Another example, less successful, is the attempt to impose “political correctness.” But in a world where so much information competes for our attention, this approach either drifts inevitably toward the lowest common denominator, to what will appeal to the most people at the simplest level, or is ridiculed as a clumsy attempt at thought-control. Another solution is to create a new lived story, one that large segments of the population can accept. In recent times, the most sustained attempt to do this is the ecology movement, insofar as it seeks to redefine being human as standing in a stewardship relation to the earth. There is no doubt that this approach has had some success, perhaps because it appeals to the lived dimensions of human being (the simple power of encounters with nature). Whether it can hold its own when it comes into conflict with other lived stories that focus more on self as consumer, etc. remains to be seen. Here I want to consider a third approach, consistent with the focus on “knowing within the story” that I developed above. If we can understand the story from within the story, if we can analyze the story systemically without stepping outside the story, the prospect opens that we can give up our commitment to the content of the story. This can happen without changing our story (though the very act of knowing, arising within the story, will work some sort of change) or adopting a new one. In effect, we are trading on the fluidity of story-structures to undermine their concurrent rigidity. And we are using our own capacity to know systemically to do so. When we are no longer committed to the content of the story, we are ready to ready to let that story merge with the stories of others. We have created a basis for interaction among cultures and for individual representatives of those cultures. Such interaction happens not by learning to accept the prima facie validity of the stories told by the other, but by letting go of the claims made by our own stories. It is an openness that emerges from within. A good metaphor for such an openness, based on the notion that each lived story is its own world, is the image of a fusion of horizons (Gadamer, 1986). I have discussed elsewhere (Petranker 2005) how such a fusion can come about. For our purposes the key point is that a fusion of horizons does not depend on abandoning or even modifying our particular lived story, but rather on letting go of its claim to be decisive and authoritative. The shift is ontological, for it has to do with the status of the way things are. It comes about by activating a knowing from within. In some cases this may happen through challenging specific aspects of the story. More fundamentally, however, it happens simply through learning to appreciate the story as story. A person ready to see her own most fundamental stories in operation, to know them from within, is ready to be a citizen of a multicultural and postmodern society, one in which no story commands complete loyalty from all, but core stories continue to operate at deep, unacknowledged levels. If that is the sort of citizen we want and need, there are clear and immediate implications for education in a democracy. It is not enough to accept diversity. Instead, we must educate citizens to tune in to the stories they live, both personally and culturally. This will involve a three-step process. First, they should gain skill in the kind of analysis that makes those stories available to inquiry. Second, they should learn to experience stories from within, in all their depth and multiple layering. Finally, they should move beyond their truth claims, ready to accept that others live stories that are different. It is this third step, of course, that is vital. My claim, which remains to be investigated, is that it will come about naturally as members of society learn to know from within the story. For it is only narratives that insist on their truth. The lived story, experienced as story, makes no claims at all. It only sets up a world. And worlds imbued with the kind of inner knowing I have been exploring here are inherently available to fuse with the worlds—the stories—of others. |
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Re: A Story-Centered Approach to Human SystemsBalder said May 20, 2:08 PM: |
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I have been wanting to comment on the above article, and have had trouble finding adequate time to put a post together. Hopefully soon. For now, briefly… |
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Re: A Story-Centered Approach to Human SystemsNickeson said May 21, 12:28 PM: |
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Hey, |
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Re: A Story-Centered Approach to Human SystemsBalder said May 22, 9:28 AM: |
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First of all I want to point out the non-rare nature of these situations. Athletes call it being in the Zone. And I use the sculpture incident (that came into being through the operation of the first excerpt) because it involves thinking that is not linguistic but nonetheless involves a constant evaluation of the sculpture. It also involves, in almost the same way, a constant evaluation of the perceived environment, beyond oneself and the sculpture, that is now apprehended as something like a system, an all encompassing, communicative flow of almost undifferentiated energy. And it also involves a constant evaluation of the subject from the environment's p.o.v. In this aspect it is almost like being in a dissociated state such the desperate kid who watches from the door as this zombie doppelganger of himself is over at the counter robbing the 7-11. But here there is no dissociation. The point(s) of view are equally operational but they aren't exactly two, and then again they aren't exactly one. And most assuredly it is not a loss of consciousness, but an enhancement of it. There are any number of other aspects to such a state, but in this post I just want to emphasize the apprehension of the organic systematized nature of the situation, it is like being a functioning, totally interrelated, non-reducible part in a large non-reducible machine. |
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Re: A Story-Centered Approach to Human SystemsNickeson said May 24, 3:37 PM: |
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Story notes, page 2. |
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