strategies to be better humans by learning strategies from nature that tend to make use of emergence
strategy: military plan of action to move towards a goal
emergence: emergentproperties: when a not simple pattern come from a lot of simple interactions - nick obolensky
emergent strategy: plans of action, personal practices and collective organizing tools that account for constant change and rely on the strength of relationship for adaptation. With a crush on biomimicry and permaculture.
Biomimetics or biomimicry is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems.
imitation
purpose to solve problems!
permaculture is a system of agricultural and social design principles centered around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems
which agricultural practices are not like natural ecosystems?
parts
adaptation, interdependence and decentralization, fractal awareness, resilience and transformative justice, nonlinear and iterative change, creating more possibilities
call for action or design challenge
=How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?=
what we can do: “get dirty, get experimental. We embody. We learn. We release the idea of failure, because it’s all data. But first we imagine.”
what is imagine?
imagine = why, good, how we live, how the world works or should work
ideate = imagine + conceive
science fiction
Octavia Butler describes collective-intelligence as “civilization” and intelligence as “achieve adaptation”: “civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation.”
Grace Lee Boggs introduce the book by Margaret Wheatley’s work “leadership and the new science” about biomimicry and mycelium magic. then asked “what our movements would look like if we focused on critical connections instead of critical mass.”
the book sounds kinda crazy, quantum physics biology and chaos for organization and leadership effectiveness…
everything is about relationships, critical connections;
chaos is an essential process that we need to engage;
the sharing of information is fundamental for organizational success;
and vision is an invisible field that binds us together, emerging from relationships and chaos and information
haha she describe boggs as a thinker who is “voracious, efficient beast, and philosophy was her hunting ground.”
an organic intellectual who could take these concepts into daily life and community work.
Grace taught me dialectical humanism—the cycle of collective transformation of beliefs that occurs as we gather new information and experiences, meaning that, over time, we can understand and hold a position we previously believed to be wrong.
the logic is that the sensing-reaction feedback loop for acquiring useful truths probably need to adjust from the competition mindset to the cooperation mindset because the latter is closer to what works in nature.
one lesson from the nature: “natural selection isn’t individual, but mutual—that species only survive if they learn to be in community.”
humans also need to learn to be in community if they want to survive.
this is how i feel in my Titane and motherhood thoughts that evolved into “how to cultivate relationships” skill. and David Jay. Relationality book i have been listening to on this skill and its metric and its examples.
in community within the species and with other species and for a long time.
leadership
the type of leadership imagined in octavia butler’s books
who leads matters (young, woman, black)
adaptive: riding change
intentional in the adaptation: knows which direction to migrate to
interdependent: practiced through repeated vulnerability (in safe places of mutual support that let them vulnerable but held, so they can go adventure into the next evolution)
how does polyamorous tie in?
loneliness, pleasure, desire
longing for safety and abundance
what longings, what pleasure, what communities and connections, what philosophies and divinities.
pleasure evoke change, maybe more than shame - pleasure invite movement growth opening, shame make you small freeze invisible
decentralized:
which makes for more resilience (survival and direction despite disaster)
how?
makes for more solution
generative:
scaling:
interpersonal level help you understand the whole society too
(by simulating the emergence)
by practicing what you want to see at global scale on the local scale
fractal
radical ideas spread through 1:1 conversations, questions
adrienne maree brown describe herself in: environmental, food, reproductive, gender, economic, and other justice work
how people can come together for something greater than ourselves
love is an energy of possibility: the possibility of wholeness, in a Platonic understanding
radical love, when you love another race in a racist town
harm reduction
pleasure activism: claiming our right to experience pleasure, to be safe and respected in the pleasures we choose
premise:
“facts, guilt, and shame are limited motivations for creating change, even though those are the primary forces we use in our organizing work.” it’s about how much power/alignment a motivation force has on creating the change you want
“I suspect that to really transform our society, we will need to make justice one of the most pleasurable experiences we can have” — sustainable, survive a long time to really transform at the timescale of culture. (long now)
actions
stop demonizing pleasure. We try to leverage control over the natural world by making our emotions and sensations less reliable than our thoughts, and then burn at the stake anyone who stays attuned to the ways and power of pleasure in the natural world. It’s counter productive.
audre lorde (1978). uses of the erotic is foundational writing on the radical act of tuning into pleasure and not settling for less than the erotic sense of wholeness and rightness in one’s life.
ok i just listened to this essay.
erotic as “feeling alive”, not just sex related feelings and actions. — great!
lesbian - thinking about this.
power - force, motivation, change, energy, self propulsion… visualize it in a physics diagram?
when did you feel most alive?
i had a list of this…
but when i was thinking just about the romantic ones
when friend cries in a dark room talking about the experience in vermont and we are in the dark in their siblings room. i felt like i could help, i have the power to do something good, to hold her as she goes through this.
when after contact improv, which was after a tense call, i close my eyes and friend use the hand single touch point game to lead me up the stairs, the light outside adalbertstrasse was yellow and the walls had torn posters.
when i was sitting alone on 4th floor of turk the hallway reading a textbook for linear algebra and waiting for classmate. maybe that was more like a fear and disappointment and confusion not a pleasure and satisfaction. yeah.
ok im digressing. enough of erotic now search about leadership biomimicry
“healing happens when a place of trauma or pain is given full attention, really listened to. Healing is the resilience instinct of our bodies, a skill we unlearn as we are taught to pay for and rely on data and medicine outside of our own awareness to be well.”
what would it mean to be aware — using consciousness towards the place where the pain is? can’t the wound heal without the brain being there?
still not sure how my health or 二十面体 - 疾病 works in the sense of brain-body connection in psychosomatic diseases, placebo effect, causal effect of drug trials.
doula, or birth supporter, is specifically a person who supports a pregnant person before, during, and after childbirth. The role was traditionally held by women in the family or community, often working with a midwife or doctor in the process. Childbirth these days is one of the clearest examples of humans working against nature—hence the norms of sterile medicated hospital births with a drastic increase in scheduled inductions and unnecessary C-sections.
the soft matter and the feldenkrais in ∆ facilitating from tension and difficulty to easy and possible: Birthwork teaches us to engage tension, but not to indulge drama. It is another form of facilitation, making the miraculous experience of birth as easy as possible, intervening with any systems that make the process harder, helping the family attend to each other and listen to what the body is saying, staying focused on the possibility and wisdom of the body.
visionary fiction: If we accept the scientific and science fictional premise that change is a constant condition of this universe, then it becomes important that we learn to be in right relationship with change.
again about psilocybin trip 2022: Less prep, more presence. What you pay attention to grows.
ok ok leadership only attention
nature example
“Starlings. The synchronized movement patterns of a starling flock is also known as a murmuration. Guided by simple rules, starling murmurations can react to their environment as a group without a central leader orchestrating their choices; in any instant, any part of the flock can transform the movement of the whole flock. Collective leadership/partnership. Adaptability.” animal leadership
is there leadership in the flock of starlings?
how does leading adapt in starlings?
how do starlings orchestrate their choices reacting to the environment, without one leader?
intentional adaptation
adaptation: a change in a plant or animal that makes it better able to live in a particular place or situation; the process of changing to fit some purpose or situation: the process of adapting
better able to live in a particular situation: is there multiple optima? how fast? (is it by genes or a lifetime plasticity?)
what are the common ways animals adapt into group behavior? animal leadership
and how does the change happen, what’s the circuit or mechanism? (in cybernetics diagram)
intention: the thing that you plan to do or achieve: an aim or purpose
ok i read this section. my take away is that they are relying on what ecologists found out about how birds save energy by being together. it can be alignment to nearest neighbors. the interesting bit is “be in right relationship” might mean not collide. what is right relationship? and also i’m not sure if the birds or how they know which way to go in a trans atlantic migration like kolea. do they set a dream or is it gene instinct? what i read is that these activists are really experiencing the possible reactions to change (change as in industrial food toxic and also in organic food community garden). fear is one. saving energy and being easy is another. it seems like they want some guidance about how to find others who can get over the obstacles from outside (funding, skills), who share some core together (what is concrete about this?). i think probably there is some energy minimization and information flow going on in the swarm. also they mention predator evasion a lot - is that how they feel towards patriarchy etc? they said swarm might also just be together to pass time — i believe it. migration i still don’t get how they birds do it!
is there some energy minimization and information flow going on in the swarm to make it easier together? animal leadership
i read the all the miracle part. i think this is not so related to animals more about our nervous system. between stimulus and response you have the agency to feel positive vs negative. and stimulus includes the totality of your life situation, which is often what i don’t fully accept. if i really accept this as the start, what would i see in the spiritual path ahead? I suppose it’s about adapting my current academia labor town life in a big forest into something else… into training becoming a good kolea in a trans atlantic migration. or at least, figuring out how to live with those kolea when they land on the island? (how come dr chan only look at the white terns not the kolea?)
i read the section from Movement Generation (Oakland garden). this one is my flavor. they classify change (disturbance) in two types: shocks (quick change. eg hurricane), slides (slow change. eg inflation in egg price). they think the goal of their grassroots groups is to provide response for people to each change fittingly, complementary or as substitute to the current system.
what are the shocks vs slides type of change that animals experience and how do they respond to them differently? animal leadership
to harness the shocks
what is harnessing?
to get new ideas about how to act? to get new insight about what’s wrong?
achieving the systemic, cultural and psychic shifts we need to navigate the changes with the greatest equity, resilience and ecological restoration possible.
the structure of the optimal group that is responding to the change:
equitable
resilient
restoring the ecology
the goal
systemic, cultural, psychic state of…?
requires a shift or transformation from the current state
i feel like they are more focused on the delta than the goal. or rather the purpose is the goal state but the hard part is the how to get there?
case study of organizing a conference
- practices crowdsourced
- aside: I would also like to crowdsource practices! [[2025 goals]], #calm #emotion-to-action , [[to make "doing science" more an option]], [[what do you want to do career wise after phd?]]
- also how do animals crowdsource solutions? [[animal leadership]]
- less prep, more presence
- low ego, high impact
- building alignment, not selling ideas
- i can imagine a simulation where people are more into inventing than consolidating. the alignment-vs-originality scale.
- relationship is the measure of our strength [[animal leadership]]
- can we measure relationship?
- can we measure information flow as a result of relationship?
- this will be as amazing as you are
- trust your own work and each other
- how to be facilitative?
- keep returning to questions
- that's how i feel in [[2025-01-29#^271ee7|^271ee7]] where i return to questions or discussions from the past few months of writing and conversing in ling school. i feel accumulation and distillation sublimation.
- is there such a thing as a facilitator in the animal world? in the fish school? do they have roles?
- paradoxical things about tension and release ([[∆ facilitating from tension and difficulty to easy and possible]]) or maybe making use of placebo / psychosomatic reciprocity: relax under pressure! there is no form of freaking out that will make this job less challenging.
interdependence
interdependence is dependence between things, the quality or condition of being interdependent, or mutually reliant, on each other.
decentralization: the dispersion or distribution of functions or powers, the delegation of power
“When Canada geese are migrating, they take turns at the front of the V—turns being the leader, the weightcarrier, and being the follower, the rester.” —Kat Aaron animal leadership
is this true?
taking turns being the leader?
“When a goose is injured during migration, two geese will land with it and stay until it is healed or it dies, then catch up with their flock. Flocking is fundamentally about decentralizing the effort for safety and trusting leadership to come from any edge of the flock” animal leadership
is this true?
do geese mourn? do geese heal?
how do they catch up?
who choose to stay?
what is safety to geese
what is trusting to geese
what is trusting a leader to geese
(oak tree didn’t move in the hurricane katrina) “Instead of digging its roots deep and solitary into the earth, the oak tree grows its roots wide and interlocks with other oak trees in the surrounding area. And you can’t bring down a hundred oak trees bound beneath the soil! How do we survive the unnatural disasters of climate change, environmental injustice, over-policing, massimprisonment, militarization, economic inequality, corporate globalization, and displacement? We must connect in the underground, my people! In this way, we shall survive.” —Naima Penniman
the rightproblem : climate change, environmental injustice, over-policing, massimprisonment, militarization, economic inequality, corporate globalization, and displacement - how / do animals face these challenges animal leadership
Mycelium, the threading that makes up most mushrooms, communicates between trees, particularly about toxic growth, 59 a process called mycorrhiza.
Most animals, including humans, sustain parasites and bacteria along and within our bodies, some of which manage waste and keep us well. “Parasites can be symbiotic and help each creature thrive—stronger together rather than divided. Fish cleaning barnacles from sperm whales—cleaner and pilot fish rule!” —Hannah Sassaman
symbiosis, parasitism, mutualism: are these inter species relationships also leadership? when they are different? animal leadership
collaboration examples
Ants tell each other where food is, not hoarding individually, but operating on a principle that the more of them that gather the food, the more food they will have as a community. “
There are hummingbirds and flowers that are in such deep coordination they need each other for survival. — Karissa Lewis
mainstream idea of what charismatic leadership looked like (male, straight, loud, individualistic, articulate, handsome, charming, etc.).
andre?!
what to do: If you are in a leadership position, make sure you have a circle of people who can tell you the truth, and to whom you can speak the truth. Bring others into shared leadership with you, and/or collaborate with other formations so you don’t get too enamored of your singular vision.
“leadership development: how?
Protocols are ways that principles look in action—the actual order, boundaries, practices, and paths towards being in principle.
Indigenous People’s Power Project. I was so moved by the clarity of the protocols—in each community there are ways to honor and respect the culture, the elders, the leadership, the history, and the power dynamics.
what are the protocols of animal communities to honor and respect … the culture, leader, history, power dynamics?animal leadership
Asians4BlackLives’s principles and protocols:
We are a diverse group of Asian voices coming from the Philippines, Vietnam, India, China, Pakistan, Korea, Burma, Japan, and other nations, based in the Bay Area. We are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, educators and organizers, students and teachers, artists and techies, dancers and workers, youth and elders. We are immigrant and U.S. born, we are queer and we are straight, we are many genders, we are families. From our many walks of life, we have come together in response to a call from Black Lives Matter Bay Area (including the BlackOut Collective, Black Brunch organizers, Onyx Organizing Committee, and more) and the larger Black Lives Matter movement, to put forward these principles and protocols as a model for why and how we, as diverse Asian communities around the country and the world, can show up in solidarity with Black people in this struggle.
PROTOCOLS: How we believe in doing this work
Organize Our People
Strive for a strategic diversity of tactics so all who want can play a role
Build Trust & Practice Transparency
Move Boldly and Swiftly: Take Risks, Make Mistakes, Share Lessons
this might look like having ways to share what happened from what try
Embody self care & humility, community accountability, collective healing
this might look like “my bad”
another tool - i think this is breakitdown of what leaders need to do in the activities granularity animal leadership
DARCY: Decider/Delegator, and who is Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, and Informed about decisions. DARCI is the ultimate “play your position” tool
decider
accountable
responsible
consulted
informed
leadership includes transition! (as well as during, before, after, transition… ) - this is the dynamics of leadership. in geese that swap the V head, do they have succession and how? animal leadership
Succession Planning
Yes! The horizon for your group should include leadership transitions, as well as plans for what happens if any members of the team are suddenly unavailable for any number of reasons (a movement moment requires their attention, they get sick, someone in their family gets sick, etc.). Everyone should have an exit strategy from the day they walk in. Too many organizations suffer because they expect one person, or a core group, to stay in place forever. Some groups even lose their shape and focus trying to make everything work for one person, or a core group of people, instead of planning for succession and change. In the longview, the whole organization should be able to imagine its own conclusion—not working to perpetuate your current structure, but rather to perpetuate justice.
ruckus (feminist 1996) case study
lessons
Impacted leadership (the leadership of communities directly impacted by economic and environmental injustice);
instead of people deciding things who are not affected by the problem
Privileged support (the intentional support for impacted leadership from communities/people that can identify their privilege and want to see a rebalancing of power);
instead of people not affected and have resources having to name their victimhood too or feel guilty but do nothing
Feminine leadership (not just women leaders, but leaders who shift our understanding of how power can be held).
what is feminine power holding?
how do they practice this value/belief in reality?
prayer
Octavia Butler says | (amb notes) | I note
All successful life is
(Fractal)
successful… staying alive and passing down the life?
