“[Relaxation and rigidity are at opposite ends of the spectrum], and the rigidity of our quantitative way of understanding our world has boxed things and set up very complicated, but still linear, relationships. This is a product of industry, of mechanization, [and] this kind of thinking goes way back. And the problem with this thinking is that it works. That’s actually the problem. When you’re talking about relaxing, and being able to see complexity, you can’t build a train like that. You can’t actually do a lot of things with that thinking. But the converse of that is that you can’t have a family with a mechanistic approach without really causing damage to the relationships by mechanizing them. When we start to talk about human beings having roles—my role as a mother, your role as an interviewer, this role, that role—really what we have to be very careful of is the deep metaphor of some kind of Swiss watch that makes me one cog and you another, and if we just stay in our roles the mechanism will work. But life isn’t like that. We aren’t cogs. We’re messy.”

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“Allowing flexibility to enter our understanding of the way we’re perceiving. Not of the way we perceive, but to think about HOW we’re perceiving. Can we bring some flexibility just to that point? Then we are going to see in another way.”

Above is a transcribed quote by Nora Bateson, film maker, thinker, writer and daughter of the 20th Century philosopher Gregory Bateson.

Nora was interviewed recently by Jeff Carreira, and they talked about some fantastic things including systems theory, complexity, non-linear dynamics, and contexualism. I particularly liked the phrase “relaxing into complexity” that Nora and Jeff used. I think it’s a great way to sum up the need to “zoom-out” frequently to re-calibrate and recognize the larger picture of which we are but a small part.

Also, the notion of just relaxing in general is important here, I think, especially in our culture. After all, if we’re honest, it’s plain to see that we are working ourselves to death and destroying our planet in the process. It appears to be  intensely hard for Americans to just enjoy life, and treat relaxation or play as an end in itself. A major part of the reason for this is that, as Matt Segall has written, capitalism “commodifies everything, placing a monetary value even on time itself. Of course, time must first be falsified into a measurable quantity, namely industrial clock-time, before it can be monetized…The time-anxiety experienced by the modern working person is a direct result of this falsification. Leisure time and recreation, when measured in terms of clock-time, is impossible, since genuine play is always an end in itself, never a means.”

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Art Installation Above by: Jeppe Hein

Tags:capitalismcomplexityeconomicsintegral theoryprocess philosophysystems theory