Role of stories and narratives in feedback control

Well, this is how I think it works today. If you "click" on the picture, it should expand to a size you can actually read.

I see this as one huge normal goal-seeking feedback loop, which surrounds the blue bar.
The parts that are mental and affected by stories are in yellow.
The parts that are physically observable are in green.
Purple boxes are two really important "resolution" points,
one where image data is finally resolved into a stable pattern that can be locked down and "latched", and the other where thousands of impulses to action are finally resolved into "a decision" or "an intent" that can be locked down and self-sustaining. (at least for a few days after New Year's day, anyway.)

Upper right has a reverberation / feedback echo loop shown. This is to capture that the effects of an action or state may never be fully known, any more than the impact of teaching something to a class. Various pieces keep dribbling in over a very long time. So there are multiple lags, and multiple amplifiers, and a lot of stored energy, so it doesn't necessarily get smaller over time and then die out. The repercussions of any action or state can come back far later.

I put "future events" on the top row, and "past events" on the bottom row, with "current events" in the middle. It is of course a continuous loop so everything changes with time in an intricate reciprocal causality way.

I show two things affecting the "goal" of the feedback loop in the upper left. This is a goal-seeking, self-aware, reflective control loop, so it needs a goal that varies over time. The goal may increase if success is happening, or the goal may decrease if too much conflict is showing up and the actor decides to just give up on that goal.

Actual "outside" forces are a small box at the top. Most of the "outside" forces on the system are lagged effects of prior states of the system itself. Mostly, as I've said before, we are like helicopter rotor blades - trying to make way in our own wake turbulence.

And the most important thing about the diagram isn't instantly evident. Every quantity in this diagram is a "VECTOR" quantity, or, in Ken Wilber's terms, a "holon." It's not really "my" goal, but "the ladder of goals ranging from my cells to my tissue to my pancreas to my endocrine system to my body to my peer group to my work-team to my company to my nation or culture". It's not really "my" perception, but the whole ladder of perceptions for each of those semi-independent actors - loosely coupled in the short-term, and, due to vertical feedback, tightly coupled in the long term. It's not really "my condition" as "our condition ladder". All that is important because nothing ever happens to just PART of a ladder that doesn't ultimately affect the whole ladder. If my body gets sick, my cells are affected. And vice versa. If my company or nation gets sick, I am affected, and possibly vice versa (as the terrorists on 9/11 in New York showed.) There is only ONE equation here, but it is a VECTOR or "TENSOR" equation, and everything in it is a higher-rank quantity than a scalar number, and everything in it changes over time.

This is the baby I'd like to "diagonalize" and "solve" for the eigenvalues and success modes and failure modes, for those who have any idea what I'm talking about there. In particular, if we cut through the infinite amount of variability and assume there is a vertically symmetric solution, or set of solutions, what would they be or look like or behave like? Are we near one? Can we head towards one if we see it and get the "story" before the whole house of cards collapses and the giant Ponzi scheme runs out of steam?

So, in that, you can see biomedical health, personal health, corporate health, population health, national health, and religious group health all rolled into one neat picture.

Every part is trying to sustain "homeostasis" or at least return to its own identity and own goals and protect its own values and cherished cargo. Question is, can we connect all the pieces so that EVERYONE wins simultaneously? Can we create a VISION that is COMPELLING not just for people, but for corporate CEO's, and labor, and management, and politicians? Can we find a middle ground synthesis that can pull Sunni and Shia together? Etc. That's the big question between us and World War III - the war that may end all wars forever cause we'll all be dead.










We'll see if I still think this after class.
Sorry for the poor resolution. I'll fix it
in a few weeks.

wade