daniel (w) on regen & self org
“Regeneration is the essence of life’s self-organisation..t” Fritjof Capra & Daniel Wahl in dialogue – (mar 2023)
what if self org is the essence of regen.. and maybe we only need regen in a disturbed/intoxicated/closed ecosystem
[for his twitter response to this see notes on daniel (w) on complexity]
daniel wahl on regeneration and self-organizing ness via daniel fb post on p2p page
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritjof_Capra]
Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He is on the faculty of Schumacher College.
Capra is the author of several books, including The Tao of Physics (1975), The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), The Web of Life (1996), and The Hidden Connections (2002), and co-author of The Systems View of Life (2014).
Capra advocates that Western culture abandon conventional linear thought and the mechanistic views of Descartes. Critiquing the reductionistic Cartesian view that everything can be studied in parts to understand the whole, he encourages a holistic approach. In The Web of Life, Capra focuses on systemic information generated by the relationships among all parts as a significant additional factor in understanding the character of the whole, emphasizing the web-like structure of all systems and the interconnectedness of all parts.
notes/quotes from 1 hr video:
1 min – fritjov: regen is the *essential process of life.. look at single cell.. simplest ie of living org.. cell is a network of processes.. all about the cell regenerating itself.. regenerating/replacing/renewing every component .. the cellular network does that itself.. **so it’s self organizing.. that’s the essential activity of life.. realize when regen stops.. life stops.. the very essence of life.. really important insight
this alone is why adding page..
[yet not certain about regen ness: ‘(of a living organism) regrow (new tissue) to replace lost or injured tissue‘ – yes need that now.. but is that because we’re all intoxicated from sea world.. hari rat park law et al.. would legit free people need that in an undisturbed ecosystem.. i don’t know.. more like it’s *essential to whale life]
i think **self org ness is diff than regen.. seeing self org as more offense (living alive) and regen as more defense (restoring/resetting intoxication/deadness)
huge to undisturbed ecosystem ness and our need to org around legit needs so that we can quit trying to manage (or detox) that essence.. that self org.. that alive ness..
in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
we need to quit messing that up.. to quit intoxicating/cancerizing that process
key element to our findings:
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
and how it’s (to me) so easy now to see:
any form of m\a\p as red flags that we’re doing it/life wrong.. that we’re missing it by not letting go enough
3 min – fritjov: id does not depend on actual material structures which are renewed/regen’d all the time.. id really is the pattern of relationships that defines a living being.. so it’s the relationships w/in ourselves and the relationships to our environ
and too.. perhaps id/label ness is (would be) irrelevant to legit free people..
5 min – also central message of gregory bateson – language of nature is language of relationships.. that understanding life means understanding relationships..
and i’d even say.. perhaps understanding ness ness is (would be) irrelevant to legit free people..
daniel: it is this moving away from the mechanistic newtonian science that describes what nora bateson would call now cold data of an objective world.. so its knowledge about objects and their relationships..
6 min – daniel: but the complexity worldview not only recognizes that we are emergent properties of this dynamic process but also because they’re complex dynamic systems.. they’re *fundamentally unpredictable and uncontrollable ..t invites us into a new way of relating that brian (goodwin) called the shift from the aim of prediction and control in science to **appropriate ***participation.. and to me that is so linked to the notion of what a regen culture would look like.. ****how would we .. as human beings, individuals and collective.. refit into this complex dynamic evolving whole that we fundamentally depend upon..t *****because that’s what brought us forth..t
[for his twitter response to this see notes on daniel (w) on whales]
*graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al.. and carhart-harris entropy law et al.. and the need to have organism as fractal ness et al
oi.. that’s pretty loaded .. **appropriate as socrates supposed to law and ***participation as invited vs invented et al..
****need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature ie: tech as it could be
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
*****(to me) not about what brought us forth.. that’s too connected to history ness and research ness of whales in sea world aka: non legit data.. rather.. in spite of or outside of that’s what brought us forth (in sea world)
[for his twitter response to this see notes on daniel (w) on eyes of world]
7 min – fritjov: brian goodwin (founder of theoretical biology and biomathematics. He introduced the use of complex systems and generative models in developmental biology..professor of biology at Schumacher.. et al.. made a Founding Fellow of Schumacher College shortly before his death – 2009) really influenced my thinking very much he was at schumacher college and came to every one of my classes.. he was just sitting in and always had very exciting dialogues.. one thing he said that i don’t think he ever published.. and it has stayed w me all these years.. one of his assertions: *‘complex systems are intelligible but not predictable’ and that is a really very subtle distinction.. that in order to understand something you don’t need the power of prediction.. or could say.. not predictable in the classic sense of a system behaving in a certain way/time.. but predictable qualitatively..
*and (to me) .. only necessary to claim/distinguish that intellectness/understandness part if speaking whalespeak .. is (would be) irrelevant to legit free people..
8 min – fritjov: when i teach i often use the ie of our pets.. can never predict exactly what cat will do at certain time.. but always know it will not behave like a dog.. ie: persuade you to go for a walk.. so a qualitative prediction.. determine the attractor that reps the dynamics et al..
(to me) .. this (would be) irrelevant to legit free people.. that’s more about still wanting to control things.. ie: what diff does it make if cat would persuade to go on a walk.. that’s preplanning ness.. so control ness
9 min – fritjov: eco level.. regen of life is ancient knowledge.. this is not something new.. ie: regrowth in spring.. all cells regen selves.. what is new in systemic understanding of life.. is that this regen works in all levels.. but regen itself is ancient human knowledge
what if regen ness is also whalespeak.. that if we trusted the self org ness of an undisturbed ecosystem more.. anything ‘re’ would be irrelevant
10 min – daniel: the adaptive cycles have both regen and creative destruction part.. release of rigidity.. and it is scale linked.. happens in locality/region and scales moving at diff time frames.. another related explanation w/o eco systems science
11 min – fritjov: of course.. regen and creativity are very related.. because what you have in a living system is a network of processes.. and embodied in that network are feedback cycles.. 2 kinds of feedback.. self balancing and self amplifying .. so most of time living org will balance itself and will stay in state of homeostasis in a dynamic equilib.. so when it regens itself it will renew itself to more or less the state that it was before
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
12 min – fritjov: but there’s also the self amplifying feedback which may lead to a state of instability and the breakthru of a new state of order.. and this is the process of emergence.. and it reflects the creativity of life.. so regen is *not always regen ing the status quo.. but could also be creating a **new state of order.. new state of the system
(to me) that’s whalespeak.. i think if we were legit free.. in a legit undisturbed ecosystem.. organism as fractal et al.. we’d *never be regen ing the status quo.. and we’d never call/see it as **state of order ness.. i think that (whalespeak) is the part\ial ness that won’t let go.. that keeps keeping us from us
we need to let go of trying to explain/label/color/understand everything.. for (blank)’s sake.. if it is about legit regen/self-org.. we need to just trust that.. trust us.. trust what is already in each one of us.. and listen to/for that
1\ can’t understand/explain.. 2\ trying to do so kills it/us.. 3\ huge energy/time suck
13 min – daniel: on health.. and falling out of it and bouncing back to it.. but also always a dimension of learning.. health is a dynamic process of learning.. every stressor makes the body learn.. so makes immune system stronger.. regen creates transformation.. new states of being.. exploration of novelty that whitehead spoke about
again.. what if regen and health/ill ness is also whalespeak.. that if we trusted the self org ness of an undisturbed ecosystem more.. anything ‘re’ would be irrelevant.. ie: that changing and unpredictability and surprise is just how we’d be.. how the aliveness of organism as fractal is..
our mindblock is that (to me) we’ve not been in an undisturbed ecosystem to date.. so all always have been already intoxicated/cancerized.. non legit.. not us
14 min – fritjov: health is good ie because all have experience of being well/sick.. well known that people who go thru severe illness and come out will feel healthier than before because made changes in life/physical-organism that are beneficial and lead to new state of being and new state of well being..
15 min – fritjov: so .. imbalance which is an illness.. can be healed by *going back to previous state of health.. or breaking thru and transformation and the emergence of a new state of health
*i don’t think that ever happens.. always different.. never the same..
and what if all the health/illness talk
daniel: another thing.. the whole notion of resilience.. people often misunderstand resilience.. only thinking of it in its first dimensions which is the capacity of persistence in the face of disruption.. and the adaptive capacity .. capacity to bounce back in face of disruption.. but the 3rd dimension of resilience is precisely again this *transformative resilience where the system actually learns enough that it changes the attractor.. it jumps into new systems state.. and that’s often in regen world misunderstood when people often dismiss resilience **thinking as something that is a ‘maintain level works’.. going back to the original state.. but resilience can also have a learning/transformative/regen dimension
*(to me).. all transformative.. small is {ginormous} beautiful so.. infinitesimally so.. et al
**(to me) it’s the thinking ness that is messing with us.. why do we think we need to think/explain/understand everything.. (to me) if we just let go.. the grokking ness of an undisturbed ecosystem will be able to dance.. free
16 min – fritjov: well.. *i’m all for being precise and defining your terms and distinguishing between certain terms.. but lately i’ve come more/more to the view.. that once you understand what life is all about.. the essential nature of life from a systems pov.. you see that there is this network.. networks w/in networks.. networks of processes.. that the processes are regenerative.. that they also imply creativity.. that the whole network is **intelligent.. we haven’t spoken about that yet.. ***once you realize that.. you realize that all these terms are diff ways of saying the same thing.. all diff ways of describing same situation..
*we all need to let go of that.. if nothing else.. it’s a time/energy suck.. but it’s also a cancerous distraction
**oi.. intellect ness.. but if saying in terms of.. quit trying to control it and trust it.. yeah that
***again.. describing ness.. time/energy suck.. is (would be) irrelevant to legit free people..
17 min – fritjov: it’s very exciting to me that when realize living world is *profoundly non linear and complex.. this means that if have this vast non linear network.. can start from any part.. can start w diff terminologies.. but will end up with same **insight about the very nature of the network..
*yeah.. so let go of **this.. or we’ll keep missing it/us/aliveness.. oi
18 min – daniel: i actually put that in my notes for this call.. and now you know why.. it’s in our very nature.. to be regenerative.. ‘when a complex system if far from equilib..small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order’.. what do you think he’s saying
do we need/want a higher order?
21 min – fritjov: 19th cent dichotomy physicist would say.. universe from order to disorder and created concept of entropy to measure the disorder.. so entropy increases in system till all comes to halt.. biologists said opposite.. living organism from disorder to order .. ever more complex/sophisticated.. (but guy he’s quoting – pregosheen) – every increase in order in life happens w/in larger environ of an increase of disorder.. 2nd law of thermo.. so correct overall.. but w/in that sea of chaos/disorder.. there are islands of order and order may increase continually on these islands.. other part of this quotation.. w/in increase of order doesn’t need to be a steady process..
24 min – daniel: the time scales of physics are so much vaster that of bio and eco.. for a few bn yrs in localized place.. … does’t mean goes against 2nd law of thermo..
25 min – fritjov: need to remember that 2nd law of thermo holds for closed systems and living systems are very importantly open systems.. t so very diff from situation physicists describe.. this constant flow of energy/matter needed for regen.. if no energy/matter entering into living org.. couldn’t replace.. this important concept of metabolism is very essentially linked to the essence of life which is regeneration
organism as fractal ness.. that deep otherwise spinning our wheels..
27 min – daniel: another piece of work of brian goodwin.. shift of science of qualities.. his view on complexity foregrounded the uncertainty that complex orgs bring to world.. diff between able to understand.. but not to be able to predict them.. led brian to say more than cold/analytical rationalism of positivist sci.. and find new ways of letting *informed intuition and qualitative relations inform science
*oi
28 min – fritjov: brian was a very special person because he was a mathematician, biologist and religious.. et al.. his emphasis on a diff kind of intuition.. coming back.. bateson had that too.. a very strong/intuitive approach to understanding nature.. of what its very essence was.. bateson disliked math/physics.. so had more philosophical/intuitive approach.. but brian covered all these bases.. had lots of discussions w him .. da vinci was the forerunner of this morphology.. but not known for that
33 min – daniel: goethe as the first phenomenologist.. his own way of observing.. cognitively participating in the phenom ..’what we observe is not nature.. but nature exposed to our method of questioning’
to me .. this is totally about whalespeak.. ie: none of observations are of legit nature.. and even if it was.. that observation ness would have killed it anyway.. et al
36 min – fitjov: they (goethe and da vinci) had hard time formulated a proper theory of living forms.. lacking the math to deal w non linear systems.. we have to be careful not to give the impression that we have a mathematical theory of life.. there are math methods that can be used and brian goodwin used many of them to built math models.. what we have math of non linear phenom which brought to light a number of new concepts.. ie: *emergence, nature’s creativity, regeneration, **and the concept of the intelligence of life.. none of this would have happened w/out non linear math.. but it doesn’t mean we have a full blown math theory of life.. and we might never have that.. but we have insights..
oi.. not yet scrambled ness.. and how kids intuit calc ness.. as long as not school-ized.. et al.. oi.. proper theory ness.. oi oi oi..
*those are all in us.. drilled out of us.. and now we think we’re discovering them.. thru ie: math.. which kills them again – aka: they become **intellect ness (and so too.. kills us).. oi
37 min – daniel: what complexity theory helps us to describe and non linear math helps us to approx.. is that *we live in a relational world..
oh my.. *totally describing grokking ness of not yet scrambled ness
28 min – daniel: have you had opp to talk to nora about emotional data..
warm data et al.. nora bateson
fritjov: no.. i’m over 80 now so i have to limit my research et al.. so i teach my own course of systems view of life.. give lectures.. but don’t reach out too far
39 min – daniel: i think you would enjoy it.. she’s coined warm data.. we have diff access to understanding that intelligibility is not only thru thinking.. but sensing/feeling.. jung’s work of 4 dimensions of knowing.. what we’re all capable of.. et al
oh my.. to me this is so convoluted w whalespeak and whales thinking.. ie: knowing ness (to me) is the least of what we’re capable of.. if we would just let go of trying to control that self org.. (which no one has been able to do to date)..
41 min – fritjov: makes total sense.. also related systems approach.. patterns, relationships, context.. our *rational mind is necessarily linear.. speak in sentences.. write that way.. however our **intuitive mind is non linear.. so intuition is a perception of non linear patterns.. this is ***why artists can be of great help.. they use their intuition much more than scientists.. of course always part of sci.. but not recognized in sci ed..
*oi.. rather whale mind.. and language as control/enclosure.. lit & num as colonialism.. et al..
**describing not yet scrambled ness
***and even more so.. children before we intoxicate/indoctrinate them..
41 min – fritjov: on discoveries coming from dreams/hunches/walks-in-the-woods.. then equation ize it to show/prove.. and intuition not taught..
taught?.. teach intuition.. oi
43 min – daniel: one more quote of brian’s.. ‘sci of emergent properties involves a break from the positivist tradition that separates facts and values.. and re establishes a foundation of a naturalistic ethic.. participation now as the fundamental ingredient of any human encounter.. human process of becoming (regen) and that of the other .. whatever this may be to which the human is attending.. feelings/intuitions are not arbitrary.. direct indicators of nature of natural process that occurs in the encounter.. by paying attention to these *we can gain insights into the emergent reality in which we participate’.. i think he really points his finger on something there
*oi.. taleb center of problem law et al.. missing it ness
44 min – fritjov: yeah .. that’s a lot in this paragraph of course.. it’s a heavy message.. what he reminds me of is the theory of consciousness by demassio.. one of leaders in cog sci.. that in the emergence of consciousness from neural processes.. which is not yet completely understood.. known as the hard problem.. demassio has shown that emotions play a critical role.. he distinguishes between emotions and feelings.. emotions go far back shared by all living.. when they become conscious they become feelings.. and that shift is related in a yet mysterious way to shift from neural networks and their emergent phenom to conscious awareness..
46 min – daniel: i know brian really didn’t like idea that consciousness in chain of emergent ness.. makes more sense that consciousness is there from start..
47 min – fritjov: this is a very old/ancient view.. it’s not what i call the systems view of life.. in systems view cognition emerges at same time as life emerges.. but doesn’t emerge from vacuum.. from a material universe.. may be embedded in the universe from beginning.. but certain process of evolution
oi.. this is too much whalespeak for me
49 min – fritjov: on bateson saying.. i don’t know of any matter that is not ordered.. as matter becomes more complex.. networks form that are self organizing.. and at that point have the emergence of life.. and we don’t know how that happened.. but when life emerges.. cognition emerges at same time.. relationship between process (cog) and structure (living matter) .. organisms become more complex biologically.. they’re cog processes become more/more complex.. always go hand in hand.. at point.. so complex they develop coordinating organs .. ie: the nervous systems and brains.. as they become more/more complex.. conscious awareness emerges.. that’s the systems view.. but it doesn’t say consciousness emerges out of nothing..
oi
53 min – daniel: have you run into gerald h pollack.. on 4th state of water.. it’s cutting edge at moment in a lot of cellular bio.. how a lot of self org is possible.. how life does its syntropic (repeated symmetrically w/o being reversed) magic
54 min – fritjov: never hard that.. but i know water is more complex that we thought.. uni of sienna investigated these more complex concepts of water.. research into mysterious properties of water.. i think we’ll have to stop before you throw too many things at me
55 min – daniel: can i ask one more question.. i wanted to highlight piece of work you’ve done that maybe people don’t know.. important here.. work w late hazel henderson..
fritjov: yes.. qualitative growth..
daniel: yeah.. you and i don’t like that growth is the evil..
56 mi – fritjov: first of all when have systems and look at major problems of our time.. you realize that they’re all interconnected.. energy, environ, covid, climate, econ.. systemic problems which need systemic approach to be understood/solved.. underlying these problems is the obsession of our politicians w unlimited quantitative growth.. which is impossible on finite plant.. then say.. let’s do away with growth.. or degrowth.. but then.. growth/regen is essential to life.. but it’s qualitative growth which means.. not everything can grow all the time and in an infinite unlimited way.. so in nature.. in an ecosystem.. certain parts grow.. others reach maturity.. decline.. disintegrate.. and liberate their components which become resources for new growth.. can call this qualitative growth a regen process.. what we need urgently to shift from quantitative to qualitative growth .. that’s what hazel and i talk about in this paper..
59 min – fritjov: when you look at these (shift) curves in detail. see they are shaped by feedback.. mult feedback loops that allows system to self correct.. all these global catastrophes.. climate.. they’re all gaia’s feedback loops.. you’d think we’d be able to recognize them and switch to qualitative growth..
so dang.. excited at first.. but now.. too embedded with that perpetuating assumption ness.. of ie: regen, intellect, order, et al.. to tweet/share any of the quotes w/out it (to me) perpetuating it myself.. oi
[then (4\ daniel (w) on (non) natural and 5\ daniel (w) on tech)]
___________
__________
_________
_________
- daniel (w) on boundaryless
- daniel (w) on complexity
- daniel (w) on eyes of world
- daniel (w) on (non) natural
- daniel (w) on regen & self org
- daniel (w) on tech
- daniel (w) on whales
_________
_________
__________
_________
__________
be you. 