Aporetic meditation and disorder

I loooove this!

Aporia

“an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory.” From Wikipedia.

This is my favourite place! 

The Cynefin model has a special space in the middle of everything else, where disorder reigns and where everybody should stand for a while before doing anything. This is a place where our usual orderly comfort disappears and where we are faced with ambiguity and uncertainty that will ultimately be our salvation.

But we usually do not like this state of mind.

Oh no, we love order.

We are addicted to simplicity and box-checking, sure-fire decision-making process leading to clear and logical solutions.

But hey … if life were simple it would also not evolve and die off rapidly.

Our distant ancestors are the direct product of uncertainty : the random mutation! I can hear you, however … this unicellular ancestor did not spend any time thinking about its (gender-neutral) future before becoming a victim of its mutation. Weirdly enough, this is similar to what we see frequently. The “thinking” about the future is cruelly absent from most contemporaneous decision-making process! The real distant future, not the one related to the bonus-related near future.

Oh we do follow our processes … our very complicated and convoluted, bureaucratic, mindless and overblown processes.

This is killing us!

We now live in a world where an exception is a sin to be punished by long periods of waiting over the phone (“You are important to us, we appreciated your business” … and your patience … and we will test it for the next 45 minutes!) listening to what should not be called music or in a long line outside in freezing weather.

We surrendered our liberty and our future to an army of technocrats whose main reason to live seems to be irritating you, their esteemed customer, their patient (what a description for a human being waiting for a doctor to stitch a bleeding open wound … a “patient”?!) their patriotic citizen. We are now in a position where being served promptly leaves us bewildered and astonished! 

And grateful!

We live in a world where simple and complicated processes rule and where chaos occurs too frequently where the very limited cognitive ability required to solve these simple and complicated problem is absent and turn a mildly atypical situation into a chaotic nightmare.

Oh no, my driving licence has to be renewed today and the FBI, (Effin’ Bureau of Imbecilities, we do have a lot of those nowadays) has been shut down for 4 weeks due to a software upgrade … and of course, in the meantime, nobody even remembers how we could do the day-to-day operations without a computer…

Just sign the damn document so I can show it to a police officer IF, and only IF, I get arrested for going over the speed limits for two seconds after having waited 2 hours in a traffic jam…

So back to the aporia.

Are we ready to stand still for a few hours (or a few days) in a state of being aware of our internal confusion? Being aware of our confusion, of the uncertainty and … of the endless opportunities that are available if we stop to ponder for a few more moments,

During a recent interview with Dave Snowden  he mentioned the triple point analogy that physics and chemistry students study in their freshman years.

I love this analogy.

It is a weird state of the matter that happens at a very specific confluence of conditions that balances the fragile equilibrium between pressure and temperature.

We are not used to this! Water freezes at 0ºC and boils at 100ºC. But then we also know that using de-icing salt will lower the freezing temperature of water … a condition that is most welcome by our unsuspecting behind on a cold winter morning! And seasoned mountain climbers (no, not me!) will tell you that “boiling” water on a high peak (and low air pressure) will not produce a very hot tea (68ºC on Mount Everest). We also know that water is in liquid form in the ocean … even in abyssal trenches where the temperature is up to 464ºC under pressure of 600 atmospheres … or 600X more than what we are used to (just to make sure … that is ONE atmosphere!).

Watching this video produces an eerie feeling … what is this? When matter itself cannot decide if it should be in a liquid, gaseous or solid state…

Talk about a dilemma!

This is a metaphor.

A great, an amazing metaphor!

Imagine yourself, standing calmly and being absolutely aware of the internal confusion inhabiting your mind … and having the opportunity to go resolutely to one form or another … or tentatively trying something new towards a glorious and uncertain future!

Think back to this unicellular organism, a long, long time ago! Having divided into two daughter cells, one of which, by pure chance, being subtly more adapted to its environment and reproducing a little bit more efficiently. Extrapolate this situation over millennia and bang, you have Homo sapiens.

Overnight success never happens overnight, however! Every successful musician is keenly aware of this. Years of practices and effort, one note at a time and always hoping that a manager will discover you and propel your career to unheard of heights … overnight.

Who would have imagined? Every musician remembers when he picked up his or her instrument the first time. The feeling of wonder … followed rapidly by desperation of not being able to actually play anything. The pain (in the fingers, the joints, the neck, the back, wherever) of using muscles that did not seem to exist before your initiated this journey towards perfection … and stardom!

Back to aporia!

This essential state of mind that allows you to consider alternatives. 

No box checking.

No strict rules to follow.

No process map or rigid road map.

No strategic plan.

Only an invisible path in the forest. A path to explore and discover a future that does not exist yet!

Yves Lusignan is a prospective expert, a futurologist. A few years ago, while discussing business imperatives, he told me : 

Stop thinking about the present as being the continuation of the past

but rather as the beginning of the future.

That struck me.  That opens up so many doors!

Unhindered by the certainty of our ordered world, we can see a new future, we can test alternatives, we can

“boldly go where no one has gone before”

 

(I could not help it … Star Trek is a source of inspiration!).

Think again about the prodigious leap into the future that our distant ancestor has unknowingly taken, eons ago. They could not control it. 

Neither can we.

The illusion of control in our society prevents us from accepting this harsh reality : “command and control”, the seminal motto from F. W. Taylor is a fallacy.

It certainly made sense for a while but not anymore. It still appears to make sense financially but looking at the growing gap between the ultra rich and the “regular” people, something is bound to break catastrophically eventually.

It is more than ever the ideal time to accept the meditation state of the aporetic disorder state of confusion.

Aporetic meditation and disorder.

Welcoming confusion to clear up potentials futures!

 

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