One of the most visible examples of where we desperately need a better understanding of how to achieve a coherent identity and unity that embraces diversity is the situation in Iraq today.
That we have a situation that calls for "nation building"or "national unity" is widely recognized now. It's also increasingly being recognized that the best a military force can do in that regard is to provide a temporary context of safety within which to create such organic coherence among such differing groups of people with so many grudges still echoing through the pipelines.
The doctor may be able to put the ends of the bone back next to each other and hold them in place, but it is an organic healing process that has to happen then, unless you want to wear a cast forever.
So, again, the question comes right to the top - who knows what about how to actually make such an organic healing process happen, period, at all, on any scale, in any theoretical framework or model?
What are the basic scientific principles involved here that we can fall back to confidently and start our design from? What would that specialty be called? What's it listed under in the phone book or on the web?
What do we know from extensive evidence and research will "always work"?
I'd suggest that we'd get farther if we start with general principles of organic coherence that we know always work, regardless of situation, and then put our energy into applying those principles to the particular situation in Iraq. What is coherence? What holds it together? How do we measure it? Is it a valid construct? Can we at least tell for sure whether it is increasing or decreasing, so we can guide action by outcomes?
What does coherence typically look like when it is in place? What does it look like when it is embryonic or develomental? What does it look like when it is falling apart? What are the most important issues in a stable, reliable, robust intervention based on implementation of coherence building?
If we know those answers, possible policies could be evaluated against them. If we don't know those answers, even if it is too late for this conflict, we should form a note to oursleves to put more resources into getting them so we'll have them next time.
These are major questions faced by every government - what does it take to "Hold the center together" against all the diverse centrifugal forces that are trying to rip the country into little warring factions? France cares about this. China cares. The US cares, and frets about issues such as a national language (English?) or a national religion, or national values, or what exactly it is that works? The US Episcopal church seems be be shredding into a civil war over differences. Everyone cares about how unity can be maintained while not destroying diversity in the process.
We need to pool our fragments of wisdom, whether from recent science or history or religion, on what it takes to bring and hold people together, aside from destructive repression and very tall walls that, at best, can keep the herd in one pasture.
We need to reach out to any natural models we have for design concepts that seem to work in practice, from bird swarms to slime mold, and see what "portable" concepts can be teased out underlying those observable results.
We have thousands of examples to draw on - the only problem is that our image has been broken into a thousand pieces, scattered across a thousand academic specialized disciplines that don't really talk much to each other, or read each other's literature.
So, again it's a bootstrap problem. We could solve the problem easily if we all worked well together, that is, if only we had already solved the problem. So, we will need to inch our way up a virtuous circle or spiral, slowly learning how to work as one to address the problem of how to work as one.
The good news is that even the very process of working on the problem gives us more information from one perspective about what feels like it is working and what doesn't feel right. We can follow that socio-bio-feedback trail upwards into the mist.
We can retain hope that there is at least one solution, because we exist as humans, composite organisms of ten to the 12th cells, working as "one". The fact that we're here at all to work on the problem tells us that there is an answer. It proves "feasiblity."
And, some metric of how well the "one-ness" works is that elusive thing we call "health", which has a lot to do with wholistic relationships, integration, coherence, systems thinking, etc.
I hope this discussion provides some thought that the question of the "health" of populations of people, organized into larger groups from relationships to families to neighborhoods to cultures or countries is a central question. "Public health" is not about health for "poor people" - it is about whatever it is that is the upstream key to organic health for people, for families, for corporations and economic prosperity, for good decision making on all scales, and for national stability based on health not violence.
Our joint question is "What makes this stuff work?"
We need to compare notes.
technorati tags:unity, Iraq, solutions, publichealth
5 comments:
Maybe it is a safe assumption that you can't build an organic whole unless the component pieces attract each other.
Back in college, one professor who had made an early synchrotron noted that it was made of tens of thousands of little flat metal pieces, wrapped in wires. He was sure when the current was turned on, one of two things would happen. Either the laminations would all attract each other, so hardly any external straps or bolts or glue was required, or they would repel each other, in which case very strong straps were required or the pieces would explode across the whole lab when the switch was turned on.
He computed they would attract. He was wrong. He admitted that he tended to "get the sign wrong" on calculations. So it was back to the lab for 20,000 card pickup.
So, similarly, if the components of a system repel each other, there may not be enough glue in place to hold them together, although hurricanes and tornadoes are an interesting case - held together by a vacuum created by thermal flows created by energy released by the process of drawing closer together.
But, for groups of people to "attact", they have to focus more on what they have in common than on what they have "in different." Otherwise, both sides' immune systems will detect a difference between "Them" and "us" and tissue-rejection will kick in.
All of which says that the first requirement for coherent unity is that, on a deep level, each group has to perceive that they have more in common than different with each other group. There has to be a sense of one-ness that precedes the accomplishment of one-ness.
(that's not an original idea)
Maybe we can take one more step. Assuming that most people are at least as emotional as they are coldly rational, it is not sufficient that people "see" or "recognize" that they have a lot in common. It would be even better if they actually cared, positively, and cherished the values that they have in common, and therefore cherished each other. It would be great if they had such a good feeling about the parts that worked that they were willing, for now, to agree to disagree and overlook the things they didn't (yet) agree on.
That would be a good state. That could work. It works for married couples.
Backing that up even one more step, such a strategy wouldn't work if the people involved had no idea how to "cherish" something or someone.
Maybe, in our rush to imitate machines and computers, we have over-valued rational thinking and under-valued our emotionally supportive capacities.
But, the effect of letting out positive emotional reservoir or flywheel or batter drain is clinical depression and incapacity to work at all. We're not machines.
Whatever we are, we need that socio-emotional battery charged up or we shut ourselves down.
If we neglect the art of taking joy and pleasure in small things, and being able to sustain that joy internally, we risk such a shutdown.
This is a downside of "What a great picture, I'll save it in this drawer" instead of "What a great scene, I'll save it in my cherished memories inside my head, where it keeps my spirits up and is there anytime I need it at no additional cost."
Similarly, maybe we have too much joyous music stored on our iPods, compared to the amount we have stored in our heads, accessible just as vividly on demand.
There's no way we can cherish someone else, let alone a former "enemy", if we simply don't know how to cherish anything or anyone.
I came across a great placemat at a restaurant once, with the saying "Happiness is a choice." We have a choice of what we put in our heads, and what we dwell on, and what we surround ourselves with, and what we store outside ourselves.
The choice matters. Way more than it should.
I can say that more simply: emotions aren't a "bug" they're a "feature."
And here's one more rather startling thought. If by some miracle, you really did cherish, say, 6 billion other people and they gave you joy just thinking about them, let one being near them or with them - then, by most definitions of the word, you would be rich beyond what stealable wealth could provide.
It would be a "trip" or a "rush" just to be alive, regardless of your material state or possessions. It's a kind of wealth that is, essentially, entirely under our own control.
Following that track one more step, someone could say they didn't want to care about another person, because it would hurt too much if they lost them.
Actually, through most of history, it was pretty common to lose loved ones, or children at an early age. It's only been in the last century that it became unusual, say, in the USA, to lose a child. Before that people had "a dozen" children partly in the hopes that a few would make it to adulthood.
The point however is this. If you deeply cherished, say, 10 people, then you could have the benefits of that and still be protected against total destruction if one of those 10 left or died.
It's only when there is only one other person in our heart that their loss would be proportionately huge.
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