Why Systems Fail & Redesigning for the Better?

I am excited. My months of struggle is almost nearing its end to give birth to something new. I am almost on the verge of completing a book on 'Why Systems Fail & Redesigning for the Better? - A Nemetic Approach'.

Well, writing a book is something like birthing a baby. I can well feel the joy, worry, agony and ecstasy of women creating life on earth. Unfortunately, being a man I would never feel it exactly as they feel but writing is something similar - a process of creative enfolding and unfolding where intense pure emotions and clear cognition come together to create new flows.  

In this post I would like to share a part of that agony filled excitement with you by presenting the Preface (still in draft till publication):

 

Preface

 

For the last thirty three years I have tried to be attentive in finding an answer to an interesting and important question that occupied my mind for so long: ‘Why systems fail?’ This is just the opposite of asking: ‘How systems work?’

Though these two questions apparently oppose each other the answer is paradoxically the same. That is for anything to work or function smoothly it must not fail. Or stated more explicitly, smooth functioning or failure of any system is the outcome of the same interactions taking place within a system. I also believe that our human mind is designed for noticing failures much faster than noticing successes. Hence my professional journey began with that question, ‘Why Systems Fail?’ and the question has remained with me till date.

 

To my mind this is an important and relevant question in these times since as of now our world as a system has grown more complex and chaotic that shows erratic behavior, which at times, is not very pleasing. We feel it every day in our lives. Uncertainty of jobs or means of livelihood is no longer questionable but a fact of life. We are completely governed by various systems that we have created. Thus failures like famine, poverty, illiteracy, spread of diseases; infant mortality and unemployment that we see around us are outcomes of the systems that we engineered. So my hope is if only we clearly understand as to why systems fail we would also be able to re-design our systems with changing times to benefit many.  

 

This gives us the hope that you and I may do something about making our systems fail less often that they do now. Never before, mankind has been so dependent on the success of man made engineering systems (social systems are also engineered systems) to function smoothly in an uninterrupted manner. If this can be done, as the numerous examples in the book would show, it saves us time, money, resources (mainly energy) and effort. Isn’t it a sane thing to do? The approach is neither evolutionary nor revolutionary. It lies “in between” the two. Hence I call it ‘evorevolution’ – an interesting in between where big systemic changes may be brought about by small onetime efforts. Achieving the interesting ‘in between’ is the focus of the book.

 

A failure of our man made systems often proves too costly. It endangers human lives. It endangers the environment. It affects national economies. It affects productivity. It wastes material and resources that affects our own sustainability as a ‘species’. It affects costs and thereby profitability of our productive organizations. If we cannot put our human feelings and intelligence to work to eradicate such ‘failures’ then what is the use?

 

It is obvious that poorly engineered systems force an economy to spend more and thereby impoverish the economy and lower the standard of living of its citizens. Thus I can say that in today’s world, the success of engineered systems has created the fundamental divide between richer and developing (read poor) nations. Then the question of improvement of economy squarely rests on the how do we eliminate or contain failures of our engineered systems and make them work to meet the best performance standards. That is the essence of the subject of System Reliability through the discipline of Nemetics on which I would love to have a dialogue through this book.  

 

In this regard I must say that I was extremely lucky to have been associated with failures within manufacturing organizations. It could not have been any better. It proved to be a perfect field of study that is totally concerned with ‘surprises’, ‘failures that prove to be costly’, ‘randomness’, ‘complexity’ and ‘chaos’.  I have been lucky to engage with thousands of failures that take place in strange combinations. I have seen innumerable machinery problems. And each of those told me stories, which I internalized. I have seen countless problems and issues with the human part of manufacturing organizations and have learned from those stories too. I have seen problems with management and problems with workers and employees and those stories have been kind enough to teach me through silence, the lessons worth learning for life. Over time, I slowly got to see the underlying essence of the problems through the patterns that evolved on their own. And then I was in for some great surprise.

 

One day, it suddenly dawned on me that the lessons I learned from the dark and dim world of manufacturing organizations could be easily applied to any system whether local or global’ whether small businesses or big businesses; whether economies or nations; in short to every conceivable system even to social systems like healthcare, education, transportation etc. That makes life grand. It gives us tremendous hope for creating a better future.   

 

That does not mean that I have learned all the lessons life has to offer me. Far from it! I am still on that exciting journey learning everyday something new and exciting. But all I want to do is to share a simple enough framework with its methods, called Nemetics, that helps just about anyone find answers to how and why systems fail and what we might do about such failures to improve systems as time and need change.  

 

I must say that the framework of Nemetics, so to say, was quite accidentally invented and co-evolved through several conversations and dialogues on Twitter with my Twitter pals, coming from various fields. We soon discovered that this framework could be effortlessly applied to any field or context of human activity involved in a process or a system. The context changes but the metaphor remains the same.

 

So, with great enthusiasm and excitement I want to share with you the stories with the hope that the framework and the methods of Nemetics, i.e. to notice reality through failures & movements, engage with the interrelationships that play out, mull over the rules that create them, create and exchange value with new or re-engineered designs might help others to improve productivity, performance and profitability of the systems they are presently engaged with.

 

And there are two big advantages of using the Nemetics framework and its methods, which are:

 

1. A group of multiple problems can be addressed by “one time effort”. There is little need to address problems one by one. That saves money, resources, time and the pain of suffering failures.

 

2. Such ‘one time efforts’ to solve groups of multiple problems & paradoxes simultaneously also help individuals and organizations to reap on-going benefits for years to come before new needs accost us to disturb our peace of mind.

 

Acknowledgements:

 

One must know a rather strange fact regarding the development of Nemetics. The discussion on Nemetics started out more as fun conversation on Twitter amongst Twitter friends. Since then it has come a long way to its present state of development through constant practice and theory. Therefore I acknowledge with thanks Michael Josefowicz (@toughloveforx) with whom the initial conversation on Nemetics started. He introduced to me his language of Nemetics waiting for real life applications. And I in turn slowly introduced to him my methods of solving ‘complex’ and ‘wicked problems’ waiting for a language to express the essence. There could not have been a better relationship that resonated at once fulfilling each others mutual needs.

 

Subsequently, such conversations on Twitter turned into a sort of an exciting game that we played along with other Twitter pals  Dan R.D (@ddrrnt)  Sean Grainger (@graingered) D. C. Padhi (@humanatom) and having Paula Thornton (@rotkapchen), Neus Lorenzo (@newsneus) @counterpane, @assesswell, Paul (reomahi), Steven Putter (@stevenputter), Mpule K. Kwelagobe (@mpulekwelagobe) as interested, engaged & curious observers and participants to our frequent but intense and passionate plays. And soon many others joined. I am grateful to them too.   

I am also greatly indebted to organizations like Tata Metaliks Kobutu Pipes Limited, Tata Metaliks Limited, UltraTech, Vikram Cement, Grasim Cement, Tega Industries Limited, and Hindustan Unilever for providing opportunities and the playgrounds where the action research of Nemetics (from 1990 till date) played out to resolve their complex issues and ‘wicked problems’ in manufacturing systems, design, incentive and learning systems.

 

Till date, the discipline and practice of Nemetics are being developed through active participation of many through numerous conversations, applications to live problems, training and education programs all of which form the significant part of the ongoing Action Oriented Research in the development of Nemetics. Such practical self organizing way of development of the discipline is what we call ‘praxis’ that informs our theory, which then goes on to develop the practice in an iterative manner.

 

However, I am immensely grateful to Prof Tim Henry, of the University of Manchester, whose gentle voice coaxed me along on the roads of Reliability, Design Improvements, Complexity and Chaos and to stay with that exciting journey, whenever tiredness overcame me. With his light I saw how all these seemingly diverse subjects are really entangled into one. He is my Guru.

 

I am indebted to my Dad, who spent countless hours at my study table from my young school days teaching me how to look at social systems, their birth, development, death and re-formation. It was and still is a pleasure listening to him explaining social movements and development. It not only shaped my young mind but also gave me the much needed understanding that we as a ‘human species’ simply do too much and unnecessarily waste too much. There are easier ways. This book is dedicated to him.

 

But without the immense patience and tolerance exhibited by my wife, Madhumita, for putting up with my crazy emergent ways of passionately engaging with this exciting work, this exciting book that reveals the magic of big changes through Nemetics would not have seen the day. I am grateful to her.

 

A sense of gratitude fills me for the immense support and constant encouragement provided by Core Common Press in taking the initiative to publish the book and exchanging the value it contains with many.  

In a way, like all complex systems, each and every one of them left their entangled and hard to segregate, imprints on the development of this important subject, which only enriched the discipline through spontaneous co-evolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simple to Chaotic Systems - Future Leadership & Role of #Nemetics

For the sake of simplicity we have classified different type of systems, which are the following: -

Simple System -> Wrist Watch: It has many parts but not very diverse, very interdependent and connected but it is very predictable with great accuracy of a few seconds over a year. Nothing funny happens on and off.

Complicated Systems -> Computer: Has many parts that are diverse. They are also interconnected and interdependent. Highly predictable with great accuracy. But since the computer is also connected to the environment (for e.g. the net) it can suddenly get affected, corrupted, spammed and some unpredictable things might happen. But it is mostly under control.

Complex Systems --> Chess game. There are diverse pieces. These are interconnected and also interdependent. There are few rules - say about 10 and those rules generate a great variety of responses which can't be predicted. This appearance of new situations is called 'emergence'. The situations completely change with every turn. And we are forced to take action (a sort of adaptation) to continue the game till it ends.

Complex Adaptive Systems -> Our human body. Diverse pieces. Interconnected and Interdependent. Few rules produce infinite variety of responses (emergence). And we can adapt by balancing, action and also inaction.

Chaotic Systems -> Our heart. More than a pump it is a vortex that sucks in blood imparts it with some additional energy and drains it out into the system. In this case very small changes trigger massive changes to the system.

Though it is very interesting to classify systems in this manner for academic reasons (helps to formulate theories) it is really very difficult for such definite classes of systems to independently exist in reality. This is because all systems ranging from the simplest ones to the most chaotic exist in interconnected and interdependent ways. In that case one is not more important or less important than another. Everyone plays the game together.

Hence if we take the right view, such classification is only good for our initial understanding of different systems. Theories spun out of such 'abstracted individual systems entities' are simply meaningless to say the least.

Once different types of systems are interconnected, two basic things happen.

First, they are no longer isolated (equilibrium and predictable conditions) by becoming a part of a larger system that is in a non-equilibrium and therefore highly unpredictable state.

Second, the combined effect of such a networked relationship between different systems is 'non-linearity'. This essentially means the effect can't be predicted with a high degree of certainty. In such a situation most of our static theories would fail.

When we combine the two conditions what we get is something called 'bifurcation'. In simpler terms it is the source of creativity. Something new emerges from the mix.

a) Knowledge would no longer be static. It would become 'dynamic', i.e. more fluid and changing where meaning would arise from interconnecting different parts and not lie in the interpretation of any singular part. In such a situation specific attributes of any parts would become insignificant to the behavior of the whole. All parts would enfold within it the whole as much the whole would contain the unfolding of the interactions of the diverse parts and systems. Once we perceive this view the design of our present education system might change. 

b) Such turbulent mixing of various systems generating 'dynamic knowledge' would help us to live more humane lives away from the prey predator model of the animal world, which we are practicing right to this moment only amplified and sustained through so called national or organizational interests created only in the minds to boost national or organizational supremacy of one nation or organization over the other. 

c) It would help the 7 billion odd people on the earth to reduce the income disparity which the majority suffers from and is being crushed by its cruelty.

d) It would enable free play of imagination and creativity to live more humanely with the hope of living in a liberated state of Non-Fear, where Fear presently shrouds the lives of most.

Herein is the crux of future leadership since 'leadership' as we know of it today is a stale and sick replay of understanding of parts based on the infamous 'prey-predator' model of the animal world - a world where the possibility of conscious evolved living is simply non-existent.

#Nemetics is concerned about study and evolution of such Leadership through education and action research.

 

Leadership in Complexity

"Leadership in Complexity" maintains a position and a viewpoint that each one of us is a leader of his/her own life not only to change oneself but also to act as agents of change for others through their actions and ideas. For this, one needs the courage to look at his/her own thought process to discover the underlying assumptions, beliefs, perceptions that create the apparent complexity and paradoxes one is engaged with in life.

That in short is the essence of social and cultural innovation and entrepreneurship. However, the important thing to be kept in mind is that we are not going to create any purely imagined 'desired future' in our minds rooted in idealism and run after that. For example, we are not going to say that 'let us build a more resilient community' or let us aim for more 'structure and order' realizing that resilience, structure, order are products of self organization.

Why is that? This is because 'complex systems' would not listen to what we 'desire'. They produce their own emergence, which take on various forms. For instance 'failures', 'insight' 'learning', 'wisdom', 'strange behavior', 'shortfall in attendance' , 'bad quality', 'low productivity', 'obesity', 'disease', 'epidemics' and 'love' are all cases of 'emergence'. And these are never fixed or static. They keep changing over time.

So, it is indeed stupid to have any fixed plan in the mind and exert our will to achieve the 'desired mental model' we have in mind. That of course does not tell us not to have any 'intention' whatsoever. Nor does it ask us to submit to 'fatality' of reality. Our path clearly lies in balancing between the two wheels of 'reality' and 'desire' forged by our will emanating from intention. Such balancing act is fueled by the heady mix of courage to pay attention to our thought process and the deeply felt intention to balance.

Our intention in most cases would be to adapt to the ongoing emergent phenomenon by exploring the rules that generate the emergence and then examine the underlying 'paradoxes' that shape and sustain such emergence enabling us to adapt through balancing (the Indian concept of jugaard) to give shape to a better collective future. Our aim is not to achieve this or that. Our aim is to simply adapt based on the emergence. It is a delicate balancing act like walking on the sword's edge and being in the fire at the same time.

I believe it makes life simpler, fun to live, helps us 'survive' better and also 'collectively thrive'.

The philosophical base that we are going to use is 'Complex Adaptive Systems'

The process that we would use to do so would be #Nemetics

And the tools that we would use would be many but mostly Dialogs, Learning by Doing, Iterations, Improvisations and even employ mathematical tools, if needed, like Time Waveforms, Fourier Transform without losing sight of highly explosive techniques like Meditation and the use of Principles of #nemetics

While knowledge lies in selecting the right technique for a given context or situation wisdom lies in balancing and adapting, where both knowledge and wisdom are contextual emergence.

Nemetics - Some Questions and Answers

My Twitter pal Ms Rachel Pickett asked on Twitter very pertinent questions about Nemetics, which I would like to address in some details in this post.

Question 1:

I am still trying to figure out what nemetics is... Are there anymore slideshows or youtube videos about it?

Answer 1:

The objectives of Nemetics are the following:

a) To provide a Leadership decision framework to resolve 'wicked paradoxes' to improve performance.

b) To act as a discovery tool to make sense of reality viewing it in terms of interactions & emergence to help us strategize 

c) To be a design tool to improve any particular situation in life. It might be personal, organizational and technical

d) To act as an enabler to observe one's own thinking process enabling possible change in individual and collective consciousness.

Note: Care is taken not to define the discipline or its boundaries very rigidly. This is because once it is rigidly defined it also rigidly limits the development of the subject, its evolution and expanse it might cover. In short, any rigid definition would limit the discipline's adaptability to future changes in human conceptual understanding and knowledge or application in a different domain than what is envisaged right now.

Question 2:

I've read some of the posts by @graingered and @thedesignkata. It seems like a systems way of thinking, no?

Answer 2:

In Nemetics we consider insights, knowledge, frameworks and even wisdom as fluid and changing. It is an emergent view.

Nemetics is linked to many subjects & practices like Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, Complexity Theory, Complexity Science, Chaos, Dialectic Materialism, Complex Adaptive Systems, Physics (Newtonian, Quantum and Relativity), Engineering (Vibration and Wave Theory, Thermodynamics etc), System Dynamics, Mathematics and Spirituality as found in authentic works of Yoga, Buddha, Krishnamurti and David Bohm.

The present development of Nemetics is a result of a turbulent entanglement of all these disciplines. Hence what emerges isn't clearly attributable to any particular subject, discipline or practice since many of the concepts overlap and intermingle from one domain into another. I am sure it would embrace and lean on many other subjects or disciplines in the future as the discipline and practice of Nemetics grows. But this is the present status.

Therefore, Nemetics is not Systems Thinking as we know it today. At some level there are similarities but at deeper levels there are good reasons to be different as we shall discovery shortly.

In Systems Thinking we look at direct causal relationships between elements contained within a hypothetical system boundary. In Nemetics we don't need the intentional use of boundaries since we are paying attention to the emergences, nor we rely on finding the causal relationships to inform our decision, which would become self evident as we go along in this dialog.

Moreover, in ST we use knowledge which itself must be limited when we apply it to new situations. In Nemetics we become self aware, so to say of our own thought process just the way we become self aware when we physically move our limbs.

In Systems Thinking we focus on problems, multiple goals and the future consequences of action. In Nemetics we focus on 'emergence' and the best possible decisions we might take in a particular situation. For example, while Nemetics enfolds within it the concept of 'self organization' it does not eliminate the Newtonian concept of 'command and control', which is directly based on the concept of 'cause and effect' relationship, if that is suitable in a particular situation. In short, actions depend on contexts and situations and are not pre-meditated or idealistic in any sense. In other words decisions and strategy depends on the context and situation.

Moreover, in Systems Thinking we take relationships (feedback loops) as causes. In Nemetics we take relationships as emergence or resonance. Hence in Nemetics we term a relationship as nString (or NemeString) a number of which are enfolded into a tube called nTube (or NemeTube). The nTubes so to say contains the history of an emergence. So, the Nemetic view is that causes don't lie in relationships.  

Now, if we take the relational concept of ST as the 'ground level' then in Nemetics we drop two levels below this level with a distinct first and second level.

At the first level below ground level it is the same as aimed for in Complexity Theory that is to explain the rules that govern the interactions. This is where Complexity Theory aims to adapt which is not done in Nemetics. We wait to drill down to the next level.

Therefore, the second level below ground level is where Nemetics aims at. At this level we explore the underlying assumptions in our thinking process, the necessary conditions for development, the sate of social consciousness and the paradoxes that create the emergence we deal with at the surface level. At this level we gain new insights to resolve paradoxes to change our consciousness and wisdom to create new designs, strategies, decisions and knowledge for future practice and improvements. Various methods/techniques can be employed to achieve this.

My preferred methods/techniques of going through the second level are Dialog (Bohm's Dialog and Creativity), Meditation (as in Yoga, Mindfulness), Thinking by Doing (as in Design Thinking), Critical Thinking, Feedback loops, Agency Based Models, Fourier Transforms, Wave Analysis etc.... It might be useful to remember that wise choice and use of techniques and models matter but the quality of attention, self awareness and quality of outcome simply matter more.

That is what is meant by adaptation in Nemetics at the second level. It starts with practice (praxis) and ends up in theory that informs future practice but waits to be revised and changed in the process. It is quite the reverse of what is commonly practiced that is start with a theory and then apply it in practice, where the theory remains more or less constant till it is found wanting beyond a certain domain(s).

It is hoped that this would help us to live more consciously and humanely helping us to live in balance and good health. 

These, in brief, are the similarities in the differences and the differences in the similarities between the various disciplines that entangle in Nemetics both as a practice and a discipline.

Question 3:

How by resolving paradoxes we improve health?

Answer 3:

The underlying concept is simple and straightforward indeed. Our thoughts affect our body and health. Most diseases we suffer from are psychosomatic in nature. This is now a matter of common knowledge that diseases are created by the mind-body connection. Therefore, wrong assumptions within thinking and faulty thinking process affect our bodies and health. So by becoming self aware of our thinking process and adapting as necessary we save ourselves the trouble of suffering from ill health and diseases. Interestingly, paradoxes create diseases. I have used this concept of resolving paradoxes to cure myself of a terminal case of 'pancreatis',  'overweight', 'spondylosis', 'chronic colitis', 'gall bladder' and 'diabetes' without the help of medicines. Sounds strange but true.

 

 

Neme Cycle, Framework & Process for a Desired Future

Where does my breath vanish?

Take a moment to notice that we don't breathe equally through our nostrils. We breathe more through one nostril than the other expect for the fairly short transition periods that precedes switching of breath from one to the other roughly every hour.

This simple observation had had a profound impact on me when I first noticed this phenomenon around twenty five years back. It triggered me to see for myself few of Nature's closely held but open secrets, which were the following:

a) Nature works in cycles.

b) The cycles are never the same in intensity and duration. They are always chaotic.

c) But within this chaos there is also an implicate order, a sort of regularity and repetition of patterns though all patterns don't exactly repeat.

d) However, such implicate order and regularity is self organizing and self sustained by the continuous connection and interdependence of the inside to the outside all finely networked into a whole where parts are also wholes of the wholes.  

e) The beauty lies in coexistence of chaos and order creating complex patterns over time such as the one represented below:

The Beauty of Non-linear Spirals

Non-linearity & Spiral Phenonemon

This brings us to the next principles of nemetics (continued from my previous post):

13. There is always an inherent non-linearity in the patterns that keep repeating regularly and randomly, which we call emergence.

14. The movement in time follows the logarithmic spiral at times golden reflecting Fibonacci series where the distance from the centre increases at every turn making it necessary for the system to accelerate to catch up with the exponential growth profile as seen in a shell of crab and the tendrils of a plant and the rise of entropy in a machine. It has three important implications. First, the growth is exponential rising very fast to a limit from which it suddenly collapses. Second the significant changes that happen in any complex system can be seen through logarithmic jumps against self referral limits of steady oscillations. Third, all that movement through the exponential development process continues to rise through a struggle of opposites (paradoxes) till it comes to a steady state of new development within and across networks take place.  

15. However, after the complex system rises to meet a self generated limit to growth it suddenly collapses to start off a new cycle of development and growth similar to but more complex than the previous state from where it developed. This is significant for our understanding. of evolution and continuum. It means though the present state does not remain the same as previous it follows a time continuum as it jumps to the next state of transformation severing its ties to the previous state. Here continuity and discontinuity play out at the same time which often makes discerning the discontinuity difficult to observe more so because of the short and sudden quantum jump in transformation of state.

That brings us to the 16th principle of Nemetic, which is illustrated by the schematic below.

The RGB Waves

The RGB Waves

16. There are cycles within cycles that are responsible for self organizing, self governance, maintenance, emergences -- all that we notice in reality for complex systems of any type and nature. This is represented by the RGB (Red Green Blue) color schema.

The Blue (B) wave is the wave of collective representation or the collective consciousness that prevails and affects people in a space - individuals, family, organization, community, state, nation, region,... etc.

The Green (G) wave represents the behavior of people affected by the B wave. So G is dependent on the B wave.

And the Red (R) wave represents the myriad events that take place or surface in space over a period of time.

Triple Hellix offers Hope

In a way all the waves are dependent on each other but generally governed by the B wave. The three waves together form a sort of triple helix that represents the whole reflecting in various ways and manner only to express differently under different conditions or context. The context and the existing productive conditions would change patterns. 

It is rather Interesting to note that 'frequency' distinguishes the RYB waves. Of the three waves B wave has the lowest frequency. The G wave that actually connects the B to the R is of medium frequency while the R wave possesses the highest frequency. We are fortunate that each wave has its own frequency and amplitude (the energy content). Hence the amplitude and frequency components may be represented as in a frequency spectrum where the specific frequencies would point to us the polarities of the surfaced paradoxes the amplitude would inform us about the severity of such dominance.

Therefore, in practical terms it is not surprising to see us, being so to say, inundated by thousands events or results produced by the interactions between people connected to each other and working interdependently. But what drives the behavior of people is the collective consciousness or collective representation of collective knowledge and understanding prevalent at any moment in time.

Evidently, it is therefore not possible to change the results (R wave) without changing the quality or frequency of the G wave which in turn depends on the quality and frequency of the B wave. However, all three waves would continuously affect or try to modulate each other.

This is helpful since it gives us a clue as to how to adapt to changes that continuously take place around us to build a progressively better future. The key to which is to change the collective mindset or consciousness.

I am sure that there are many ways to do so but the one I find effective is to engage in an open dialog based on free exchange of thoughts, aspirations, vulnerabilities exposing hidden fears, mental blocks, assumptions that hold people from achieving their best. These present themselves to us as paradoxes not problems. The objective is not to fix them or solve them as we do for simple problems that we face in our lives but to dissolve them through our sustained and courageous reflection. This brings about coherence in thought process that changes the collective consciousness or representation which in turn brings about the needed balance in the ecology of our minds, body, living and society at large nudging it along the desired path of collective good.

The Framework & Process - The NEME Cycle

The process to do so is also a cycle which is represented below.

The Framework & Process

This is called the NEME cycle or simple the Notice, Engage, Mull and Exchange cycle (I have discussed in more details about Nemes and Nemetics in the two previous posts (Intro to Nemetics and Nemetics, String & Fourier Transform). It depicts the movement of the mind through any meaningful dialog. The purpose is to provide a common language that translates any insight from all view of chaos, complexity or any other language into meaningful actionable terms.

The cycle starts with paying attention (Notice = N) to a Neme, which is anything in reality that we care to notice. It also represents our hope, waiting to be explored and exploited for the benefit of many.

It is similar to our in-breathe representing the female energy at work that takes in everything as it is with respect. It is the energy that immediately senses, without labeling or quickly jumping to conclusions or leaning on previous experiences. It is the attention in a space that gives rise to the quality of the moment bringing into sharp focus the paradox we face. This energy is full of feelings, emotions, thoughts that emanate from the steady attention that we bestow upon the paradox that confronts us. In such moments we are fully aware of the pleasures, pains and revulsions this energy might produce bringing along with it our history of innate desires, attitudes, choices, values, representation, intentions, thoughts, tendencies and emotions all entangled to the point of being almost indistinguishable.

Since it is a paradox we notice the movement between the opposites, the numerous relationships that are entangled within it and the inherent struggle to achieve balance and poise.

This naturally brings us to the next phase of our breathing (that is out-breathe) --> Engage (E). This is the male energy that is brought into play to develop our understanding about a Neme. It abstracts from what it had noticed (N) earlier. It discerns what is being seen, discriminates by abstracting - separating the necessary from the unnecessary, observes the specific nature of changes in quantities and qualities and their interplay. It examines the possibilities of the future complexities and emergences that would emanate. And it searches for the effective, actionable 'levers' for change and the 'triggers' to initiate adaption and monitor new growth cycles.

Completion of this exhalation draws in the new inbreathe which brings along with it a fresh charge of female energy -- the energy to create - free from rational, logical thoughts. This is because we can't ever uncover the truth to create anything new by the same thought process that created the delusion or untruth in the first place. This phase is represented as the Mull state (M). It brings into play all elements of creation - creating new relationships where new feelings replace the old, new insights and thoughts along with the necessary will and intention give birth (communicate) to a  new set of thoughts and feelings replacing old entangled NemeStrings (relationships) thereby bringing about changes in the collective consciousness. 

Having done that we are transported to the last actionable phase named the Exchange (E) phase. We again bring back the male energy represented by the exhalation. It takes on the responsibility to offer the value created in the previous state for Exchange. The value is offered for implementation, exchange, feedback and learning. The exchange is consistent with the will and intention expressed in the creation state making it 'authentically aligned'. The value is exchanged through resonance of specific NemeStrings both in the inner and outer 'worlds' that then get entangled with the individual and collective Neme cycles to change the collective consciousness or collective representation in order to drive new behaviors, actions resulting in either successes or failures triggering new Neme cycles of cognition, emotions, thoughts and learning through insights and reflection starting off new cycles of reflection, exploration and exploitation to effect quantum leaps in collective consciousness though the engagement would be more complex and possibly chaotic than the previous cycles. Evidently it gets harder all the time. 

The Way Forward

However, it provides both a process and a framework to face the onslaught of numerous and quickly accelerating paradoxes we face in life that create unwanted and most often undue dangerous stresses for individuals, communities and our human societies at large that threaten existence.

I see it as a way forward to get ourselves out of the mess that we continue to create through our greed, violence and self delusions remembering however that our path lies in wading through this mire of self imposed delusions and cutting through the muck that engulfs our consciousness.

Along with the last two posts this post possibly provides the conceptual framework and process that hope to resonate and be read in any language or points of view. We march ahead with the Faith grounded in the tacit ground of shared meaning to discern the working of our own mind and transcend the self created boundaries and borders birthed by fears that imprisons and impoverishes us. By breaking open the strong bonds of fear that binds us we wait for Resonant Nirvana of the individual and collective consciousness to appear unannounced.  

Do you see the same?

Nemetics, Strings, Fourier Transform

In my previous post I introduced the discipline of Nemetics.

But what is a Neme around which the discipline is evolving?

To be fair, a Neme or more appropriately called a NemeSphere is not any physical object like a ball or a computer or an apple.

It may be aptly described as a bundle of relationships an object or event contains within it and the relationships such events/phenomenon have with other objects and events operating in a shared space at a given time.

That brings us to the first principle of nemetics that helps us view the world and nature in a different way. Simply stated -- there are no objects. Or in other words there is no self in anything. So a self is not a self (though it often appears as a form) but only an entangled bundle of relationships.

Isn't that true? Each one of us is only an entangled bundle of relationships, feelings, perceptions, understandings and our own mental constructs. Likewise every family is a entangled bundle of relationships, perceptions, understanding, unique behaviors and mental constructs. Similarly, every organization is an entangled bundle of relationship of policies, rules, human behavior, quality of performance, perceptions, feelings, mental constructs etc. Though there is a visible form in most cases the real self or rather the non-self remains invisible though constantly at work. This is therefore, the essence of the reality, the non-self full of relationships, in everything that we see or feel around us.

Note for the sake of simplicity we can group together similar relationships and imagine them to be contained within a tube, which we call a NemeTube. For instance Management of any organization takes various actions and frames many policies, rules etc. We can then club all these similar actions of the Management into one tube, which for example might be named as Management NemeTube. Similarly we might have something called Employee NemeTube or Customer NemeTube or Supplier NemeTube. 

In Nemetics, we happen to see such relationships in the form of NemeStrings and NemeTubes existing between lovers, parents and their children, organizations and their employees and customers, government and their subjects. To have a simple physical understanding each relationship within a possible NemeTube is represented as a string or NemeString, though invisible to the naked eye. There can be a number of such similar strings (like we see on a violin or on a guitar) clubbed together within a NemeTube. 

To summarize till this point:

1. There is no self. Whatever exists is Non-self that contains dynamically changing entangled web of relationships continually at play. Not to focus on an object but to focus on relationships is the new world view Nemetics takes. 

2. Nothing exists independently. There must be at least one relationship within and without of a non-self.

3. These relationships are not only interconnected to each other but also interdependent and therefore continually change over time.

4. The relationships are represented as 'strings' that connect and give meaning to create understanding.

However, since all interconnected relationships are continually at work in a dynamic and interdependent fashion the relationships do not stay the same over time. They change over time. So what we understand at this point of time might not be the same the next moment. It would become different. How does that happen? It happens because these relationships have energy content in them. We are fortunate since energy content in such relationships might be represented as vibrating strings (NemeStrings) sustained by continual exchange of energy (Nemex) with losses and addition to the energy content over time (the entropy function). 

Since relationships vibrate continually (having different characteristics like resonance, damping etc) the nature of the vibration characteristics change over time, i.e. both frequencies and amplitudes might change in a given space. In other words, though on the whole, vibration in a given space exhibits a pattern at any instant of time the probability that the pattern would change over time is 1 (one), which means it is certain.

That is true in every case. On a personal level my ideas, thinking, perceptions, understanding continually change over time being influenced by various energy exchanges (Nemex) when I am subjected to new experiences, new thoughts, new perceptions, new dialogs, new actions, new mental images, etc.. On an organizational level things are changing too. The relationships with various customers change over time. The demands change over time. The suppliers change over time. The processes change over time.... The same continually happens in nature.

However, for vibrations to happen we need Space and Energy exchange. Obviously, the space would contain many such vibrating strings dancing at different frequencies and amplitudes. But what keeps these vibration (or motion) going? 

Every relationship to remain as a relationship must enjoy the 'struggle' between opposites a characteristic inherent in every relationship - all of which are continuously in motion to survive. It is a paradox. Without this constant 'struggle' of opposites there can never be any motion.

Though it appears paradoxical it is relatively simple to understand. Think about our walking, a common experience for most. As we walk, different pairs of opposites immediately come into play. The first is 'friction' opposing the muscular energy that we spend in moving forward. Next, is the way the muscles release energy -- contraction and dilation of the energy flow. We can see that physically through the stretching and folding of our legs. Then the very act of walking involves 'falling down' and then trying to 'get up'. So we see that reality exists in different planes. It is upto us to discern and discriminate these. Note, that the different sets of opposites exist in every single event or phenomenon. Needless to say that understanding relationships and their own internal struggles immediately triggers off cascades of higher cognitive learning, which I call learning through moving meditation.  

So we may say, every relationship being exposed to the inherent 'struggle' continuously tries to 'balance' its position somewhere in between the opposites but never quite in the middle for any point of time. This act of automatically trying to balance between two opposites and changing automatically at the same time so long a motion is sustained through energy exchange (Nemex) is what we understand as self integration and self organization behavior.

This in-built feature in every relationship that enables a relationship to maintain balance in motion brings out another two interesting phenomena, which are 'chaos' and 'complexity'. How is that?

It is rather interesting that all such 'struggles' can be physically represented as acts of 'stretching' and 'folding', which is the typical generic pair of opposites that gives rise to chaos. In other words, the surprise possibility known as chaos is present in every relationship we come across. Chaos, apparently a disorder, is triggered by a small change in the relationship in its effort to maintain balance and change between two opposing tendencies.

But what happens when many relationships are entangled and play at the same time? It gives rise to complexity out of which something that we know as 'emergence' appears, seemingly out of thin air. How does that occur?

It is not surprising to find many entangled co-existing and interconnected and interdependent relationships within one phenomenon or event, where each exhibits its own element of chaos. When number of such 'chaos' possibilities get together or play out together a new phenomenon appears -- something we know as 'emergence'. Such 'emergences' might take different forms. They may exhibit as failures, surprises, problems, opportunities, threats, value, and even our own creativity, which we exchange for something (Nemex).

For example, the economic downturn we experienced from 2008 is a simple case of 'emergence'. Though we might be led to believe that an 'emergence' might always be a sudden occurrence it is not so. The possible appearance of a growing 'emergence' can be spotted through a 'trend' over time before they finally manifest or emerge. A leader's role would be to spot such a trend over time in order to come to grips with 'emergence'. 

This brings us to the next set of principles involved in Nemetics, which are:

5. The whole of reality is nothing but Space and Motion. 

6. Relationships represented as vibrating strings (NemeStrings) change over time. That is everything around us is 'becoming' rather than 'being'. Believing something as being fixed is nothing but a mental delusion.

7. In every relationship there is a struggle of opposites where the relationship tries hard to maintain a balance between these sets of opposites and relationships do change automatically.

8. Within each event there is always a explicit possibility of experiencing more than one set of opposites at play.

9. The automatic tendencies of any relationship to balance between two opposites is known as self organizing and self integration.

10. The act of trying to maintain balance creates the 'stretching' and 'folding' effect

11. The stretching and folding effect gives rise to the inherent possibility of existence of chaos in every relationship, where even a small change in the relationship triggers chaos. Apparently chaos seems to be an act of disorder but the order is still maintained in a relationship's struggle to maintain a balance between opposing tendencies. 

12. When there are many interconnected and interdependent relationships entangled to each other & operating at the same time within a given space, the possibilities of chaos inherent in every interdependent relationship interact upon one another to manifest as 'emergence' in different forms.

Before we get any further it might now be important to consider as to how we learn. After we do that we then briefly touch upon as to how many events and phenomenon playing out in a given space might be represented to make our learning easier.

For this we need to consider as to how we discern and discriminate the various sounds emanating from various types of musical instruments we hear while attending a concert? For example, how do we discriminate between the sounds of a violin and that of drums? Obviously, this is done by our brain by a very clever trick. It does a Fourier Transform of all the sounds that enter through our ears (at the point of entry into our ears all sounds are sort of mixed up -- meaning all relationships are mixed and entangled together into an indistinguishable form).

What the brain does next is to split up the mixed up sound their distinct frequency components and the corresponding amplitude against each frequency. This splitting up process helps us to discriminate and distinguish the various chracteristic sounds coming from different instruments be it a violin or drums. What the brain did was to present to us a 2 Dimensional vibration frequency spectrum which is nothing but a plot of frequency vs amplitude that enables us to distinguish different frequencies and discern their corresponding amplitudes.

In fact the brain presents the direction of the sound too that gives us the 3 Dimensional effect of listening to live music.

However, the brain does something more. It also stores the vibration frequency spectrum as an image for future retrieval that might be used for various purposes. 

Same happens when we see something. The different frequencies of the colors we see are again split up into their various frequency components along with the amplitudes of the vibrations (intensity of the light emanating from the various colors in all their shades). The way it is done is exactly the same as described for sound. And the brain very easily stores the vibration frequency pattern/spectrum for our future use.

The same goes for all the other senses too.

So, when we have any new experience the pattern in form of a vibration spectrum is immediately generated and the brain then fetches out the other stored patterns for comparison, discrimination and most importantly connections. Our innate ability to make several connections at the same time and come up with a meaningful understanding is called 'insight', which I term as 'feelings' -- an important sense in a way -- making sense of the complex reality that surrounds and engulfs us.

The point I am driving at is all that we see, sense, stores, compare, create first through our minds and then through our bodies are patterns/spectrums in form of Fourier Transform (a plot of frequency vs amplitude).

If that be so, why the reality we experience every moment around us can't be represented as Frequency Spectrums (Fourier Transform in terms of plots of frequencies vs amplitudes)?

Fortunately, this can be done, more so since all relationships can be described as vibrating elements, vibrating at different frequencies.

For instance, let us take an organization. Different activities and events (motion) simultaneously go on within an organization under a given space. Management is busy framing rules, guidelines, policies, which we can club under Strategic decisions (a bundle of nemestrings called Management NemeTube). These strategic decisions taken by management from time to time affect human behavior of the employees, customers, suppliers and other stake holders. And these behaviors give rise to other activities like improvement activities that affect the performance, productivity and profitability of the organization on the whole.

Now we effectively have three sets of NemeTubes (each composed of several NemeStrings) -- all vibrating at different frequencies each having different energy content in form of amplitudes. While the Management NemeTube (A) has the lowest frequencies (activities over time are not that thick and fast as others) among the three NemeTubes. Human behavior as a result of Management NemeTube (interdependent) would be vibrating at a higher frequency than the Management NemeTube but not higher than the thousands of activities that are set in motion affecting Performance, Productivity and Performance. So while the Human Behavior NemeTube (B) has a frequency higher than Management NemeTube the Performance NemeTube (C) has the highest frequency (considering the number of activities over a similar period of time).

The relationship as it turns out is A < B < C. Therefore it is easy to have a frequency plot of the various NemeTubes operating in a given space and time. Obviously the amplitudes depending on the energy content in each would differ. But the advantage such a plot might offer is great. It immediately tells us which affects (since interdependent under a complex setting) what and how much and what we might do to improve the situation. Deeper attention would tell us that A, B and C are all fractals of the different events or motions playing in a given space. That makes it even more interesting.

I leave the discussion for now which I hope to continue in my subsequent blog posts.

 

Emergent Nirvana - The Dialectics of Living with Honor.

1st Jan 2012. We call it a start of a New Year. But I can't understand what is so new about it? I can't feel the coming of a New Year. It is so disconnected from Nature. Nothing much has changed in Nature. I still feel the cold. I don't see new leaves bursting forth to clothe the naked trees. The sun is still mellow in the northern hemisphere. The days are still shorter than the nights that induce me to sleep more than I do in summer. But the darn clock on the wall would not let me do any of that. I would have to get up and run and rush playing our daily games by the rules that we (my friends and I) have set up. I would have to adapt to the timepiece and all the routines that are entangled with it. I am continually caught out of breath in the vortex of meaningless rituals into which we are desperately trying to breathe life into to create the inauthentic lives we live. I am not allowed to adapt to the rhythm of nature as per my own natural tendencies and inclinations. But still we keep shouting hoarse asking people to follow their hearts and save Nature and adapt to her ways to prolong our continuation of life on earth.

Wonder as to why we have gradually synchronized with thousands of mental concepts and constructs that we formed with impunity and fancy aided by a system called formal education much of which goes against basic human rights that might have otherwise allowed us to live like members of the human race. For whom? For what? For whom the bell tolls? What is so special about the human race that makes us believe that we are separate from nature?

What made us follow thinkers and leaders who till date haven't been successful to create the 'desired future'. Are we still continuing our nomadic journey through the heavily inhabited deserts of our unkempt minds in search of the 'Promised Land'. Where might be this land? Whose land is that? The Capitalist got it wrong. The Communist got it wrong. The religious teachers got it wrong. The scientists got it wrong. The Gurus got it wrong. The Governments got it wrong. The lives of common men and women continue to be crushed and even the thin line that is left behind after their death is mercilessly obliterated by the grinding wheels of our 'structured civilization' that takes no cognizance of such events and phenomenon. We are still no where. Our food, clothing, shelter, living, meaning in our lives are all threatened. That surely isn't civilization.

Where did they all go wrong? I think it is our ritual of honoring the false concept of rise of the 'individual' based on the belief of a 'self identity'. Therefore, we want to improve ourselves. Therefore, we search for definite traits of a creative individual. Therefore, we are madly searching for so called 'leadership traits' that make us better leaders. Therefore, we define ourselves, the things that we see around us, the factories, the organizations, our love or sense of belonging, in fact everything around us. And then we define what is good and what is bad and what is desirable and what is not so desirable and what we must do to improve ourselves and what we must do to get richer and better. And how might we teach others the same. We are so concerned with being an individual. All these are simply 'false'.

This is a lie that can never be supported. We simply can't live alone. We are never ever alone. We live in relationships -- with other humans, animals, plants, objects, the energy fields that fill up the cosmos or the universe itself. And as the nature of the relationships change they evolve in terms of strength, quality and complexity. Caught in the web of numerous relationships we are constantly being modulated and changed. Our choice, therefore, lies in the way we pay attention to those various relationships, constantly responding to the pulls and pushes of those relationships, living for those who bring meaning in our lives and learning from those modulations in our relationships. It affects our collective mind, health, learning and living. Death is experienced in the closure of a relationship giving birth to a new one or strengthening an existing one.

These relationships are teeming with thousand possibilities of every kind that we need to care about, provided we learn from the continuing dialectics contained in each relationship. It allows us to see truth in different perspectives and dimensions -- all valid but never totally encompassing. It brings in the possibility of the 'excluded middle' as the real possibility of creative living or living as a real member of the human race. 

Since it is all about relationship in the dialectic mode it is not about improving ourselves and making ourselves better, stronger or richer. It is all about improving one or many relationships that entangle us. We are as good as the web of relationships itself. The individual improves through the dialectic motion exhibited by the relationships one is entangled in.

We can't live the path unless our web of relationships becomes the path itself. There is no shame, guilt or fear of being such a changing path informed by the nature, quantity and quality of the connected and interdependent relationships. This is because the path is constantly evolving to new states of becoming through its constant movement shaped by dialectics of the relationships. The path goes nowhere in any linear fashion but evolves to the subsequent stages. We can only be the change by remaining open & attentive. There is no manipulation. We don't play a zero-sum game. There is no need for any personal ambition to excel since all improvements are matter of co-creations. The relationship evolves or gets stuck.

The co-creation would depend upon recognizing reality through detached application of discrimination.

Such co-creation would be creative only when it flows from insights gained from a situation.

Such co-created evolution would be about actions that spring from the depth of choices made by the elements with the web of relationships fuelled by the collective will power of the relationships.

It is about harmony, melody, dancing to the rhythms of nature and enjoying the freedom of flow that comes from being centered in the middle of the dialectic play of energy fields within relationships.

Our collective ability to negotiate increasing complexity of such collective evolution would depend on whether the relationships bounded by space, energy fields and time acquire the --

Right Dialectic Mindset of viewing reality

Right Centering, Attention & Intention

Right Will and the power of communications

Right Practice

Right effort to co-create, design and facilitate the higher and complex evolution of relationships

Right Learning

Right Living

Right Actions to bring forth into reality the lessons learned from living the relationships

I call this "Emergent Nirvana" that has a rhythm of a collective moving through cycles and exhibiting patterns, which gives us the power to design our own lives centered on co-evolving relationships developed through co-operation, collaborations and co-creation.

To be this path of Emergent Nirvana and to live this path we would be our own Gurus where the existing relationships would offer us the necessary lessons of Relevance, Resilience and Reliability to be the change and evolve to increasingly complex planes of a fulfilled existence.