What's in a link? - or - Who are you?

The theory

A commenter on the post about feelings talked about leading by example. This takes me back to networks and the question that some people asked when I sent the first mail-out telling them about this blog: "Who are you?"

Whenever somebody asks me "Who are you?" I can't help but being surprised at how people can say Zen koans without thinking anything about it. "Who are you?" is fundamentally impossible to answer. My instinctive response to that is always to shrug, palms up, as if to say: "Well, here I am."

Of course, when somebody asks: "Who are you?" they don't mean it at all. You can tell because they are quite happy if you reply to their question by telling them who they are. What they are asking, actually, is: "What is the link between you and me?"

In networks, links are more important than nodes. In a social network, the type of link you have with somebody will determine all sorts of things, including whether they will take your example. In a food web, the type of link means the difference between eating and being eaten!

Usually, a link will mean one or several of these three things:

• Time dedicated to the relationship: It's easy to fall in the trap of thinking that if I spend this much time with you, you spend the same time with me. This is often true, but not always. For example, a person may spend a long time writing and composing a letter that another person only skims through. A hunting animal may spend a long time waiting for and watching the prey, but for the prey it's just a very fast moment of fleeing away. As a general rule, the link is always more important for the side that dedicates the most time to it.
• Material flows: All sorts of things may pass from one node to another: gifts, food, raw materials, money, etc. As a general rule, the link is more important for the receiving side, though often a link will represent an exchange of one thing for another. In that case, the link is more important for the side that needs most what they are receiving.
• Information flows: We often think that information usually flows in both directions, but that isn't true. If you listen to the radio, the information only goes from the radio station to the listener (unless they're taking calls from the audience). If you carefully watch a cabbage, you may learn a number of things about the cabbage, but the cabbage won't be any the wiser. When information is the most important element in a link, the link will be more important for the side that receives the most information.

Also, in social networks, a link may mean an emotional attitude, that can be positive or negative. The link will be more important for the person who feels the strongest emotions about it.

Put it all together, and it's clear that a link is often more or less important to you than it is to the other side. And the more important the link is for others, the more likely they are to follow your example.

If you want to look at it another way, being the important side of a link means more or less the same as being rich, talented and/or famous. I don't think I'm telling you anything you didn't know, when I say that those people are the most important and followed. But it doesn't happen because there is some grave cosmic injustice against the poor, the unskilled or the boring - it's just that when some people have a lot more to give to others, whether it's in the shape of money, gifts, knowledge, or happiness, the others will put a lot of value on their relationship with them.

The practice

Experiment 1

You can do this in a garden or an area of wildlife you can access easily. Pick two animals, or an animal and a plant, that have what you would consider a close link. One of them could need the other as food, as a refuge, as a pollenizer, as a symbiont, as a parent, or any other link you are interested in.

Try to figure out for which one of them the link is more important by observing the three elements described above: time, materials and information. Consider also emotion if it seems relevant (it is if you are looking at a predator and a prey!). If the link is much more important for one than for the other, you would expect to see that the one that doesn't need the other is often on its own, even trying to get rid of the other. If that doesn't seem to be the case, you have missed some important aspect of the relationship. What is it?

Experiment 2

In the experiment suggested on the post on networks I described three possible kinds of links between organizations, "red", "black" and "green". A red link means that there is at least one person working in both groups. A black link means that the two groups work closely: there is a meeting between members of both groups at least once a week. A green link means that the two groups collaborate in some way, but not closely. This is a classification based on time dedicated to the relation.

Make a list of links between an organization you work for and other organizations, and classify the links looking at all four elements: time, material, information, and emotion. Usually the four go together: the more time dedicated, the more material and information exchanged, and the more positive emotions. Are there exceptions to this rule? Can you see why this case is exceptional? Are you happy that this case is different, or would you like to change it?

Also, try to estimate which organization finds the link more important on each case. If there is a big difference, there will be a power imbalance between the two organizations. Is there anything you can do to reduce it?

Different kinds of motives

The theory

A commenter on the last post on feelings talked about envy. I didn't mean to give there a complete list of feelings, just a list of the most basic ones. Many feelings are a mixture of several basic ones, and I may have missed one or two of the basics (disgust, for example - I didn't put it there because it's so... yucky). There are also feelings that are rather a mix of emotion and thoughts associated with that emotion - envy, for example, is desire combined with knowing what your neighbour has and maybe a couple of ideas about your relative status in the world.

Talking of envy leads quite easily to think about motives. Motives are our guiding lights, those things that tell us in which direction to go. They aren't quite the same things as feelings. Feelings pass quickly, but motives are inclinations that stay with us for a long time. You could say that the difference between feelings and motives is similar to the difference between weather and climate: feelings are what drives you right now, motives are what drives you in the long run, what stays with you and colours all your feelings about something. Some things we call feelings we should rather call motives: love in a long-term relationship is more a motive than a feeling... of course, there are times you feel more romantic than others.

Whenever anybody is doing anything that takes some time to finish, you know that there is a motive behind it. Or two or three. When several people cooperate in the same project, they often assume that their motives are the same. This is often a mistake, and it can lead to endless problems. Once they realise that they have different motives, they may stop trusting each other. People with different motives can work together, but it's much easier if they all know from the start what is driving everyone else.

It was easy to find lists of emotions, and they are all fairly similar. Lists of motives are trickier. Everybody has their own opinions, and not always easy to match to what others say. This is the best that I can do:

• Short-term rewards and punishments:

Based on: Basic needs and emotions

Focus: Immediate activities

Good for: Watching

Relationships it creates: Competition

Basis for collaboration: Threats and rewards

Basis for giving something: Force or manipulation

Basis to keep a boundary: Fear

Loyalty to: Oneself

Reliance on: Oneself

Motive is satisfied when: You get the reward or avoid the punishment

Action will stop when: The threat or reward goes away

• Friendship/love:

Based on: Social relationships

Focus: Immediate results

Good for: Doing

Relationships it creates: Cooperation

Basis for collaboration: Unspoken agreements

Basis for giving something: Liking the person

Basis to keep a boundary: Sympathy

Loyalty to: Specific people

Reliance on: Friends and loved ones

Motive is satisfied when: You enjoy the activity

Action will stop when: It isn't fun for everybody

• Achieving a goal:

Based on: A specific goal

Focus: A plan

Good for: Thinking

Relationships it creates: Cooperation, competition, or independence, depending on what the goal requires

Basis for collaboration: Clear agreements or contracts

Basis for giving something: Requirements of the goal

Basis to keep a boundary: Requirements of the goal

Loyalty to: The goal

Reliance on: Others who share the goal

Motive is satisfied when: The mission is accomplished

Action will stop when: The goal is reached or it becomes clear it's unreachable

• Status, money or career advancement:

Based on: Fixed rules (laws, market rules)

Focus: A plan

Good for: Evaluating

Relationships it creates: Cooperation within teams, competition with other teams

Basis for collaboration: Contracts or fixed customs

Basis for giving something: Getting something in return of similar value

Basis to keep a boundary: Rules, regulations, customs

Loyalty to: Rules

Reliance on: Those who play by the same rulebook

Motive is satisfied when: The deal works as expected or better

Action will stop when: There is no money or the contract is breached

• Ideals:

Based on: What's right

Focus: The ultimate goals

Good for: Choosing

Relationships it creates: Cooperation or one-sided behaviour (giving without expecting anything in return)

Basis for collaboration: A sense of duty

Basis for giving something: What others need

Basis to keep a boundary: Justice or other ideals

Loyalty to: Principles

Reliance on: Those with the same calling/principles

Motive is satisfied when: You are proud of yourself

Action will stop when: Principles are betrayed

The same as it happened with emotions, you may not be sure about what kind of motives somebody has, but this handy list will give you some clear pointers of what may be going on in somebody's head. It's quite indicative if you note when they seem satisfied and when they stop or aren't keen. People seldom do things out of a single motive - but teasing out what are the main ones is often useful.

This can also help you to figure out your own motives, because we don't always know them clearly. If you find yourself procrastinating, it means that your motives aren't very strong.

The practice

You can do the same experiments you did for feelings, but this time round think about motives.

You may think that animals only have the first type of motive (short-term punishment and reward) but most pets are rather social and able to think in terms of goals. Dogs have a pretty sharp understanding of status as well, and that's part of the reason they are easy to train. They "get" that humans should be respected. And you may think that justice is a purely human invention - but actually, chimps will punish those among them that misbehave even when the effort involved isn't really worth it.

Feel - evaluate

The theory

A reader question, and one that crops up very often in environmental circles, is: "How do you avoid doom and gloom?"

The answer is terrifically simple: You don't. Giving out the negative messages is very important. People often believe that they shouldn't be negative because they have some very naive ideas about feelings.

Some people believe feelings are some kind of remnant of the time when people were monkeys, and that modern humans should be able to decide everything using their reason only. These people tend to think that negative feelings are a nuisance that should be ignored. The truth is, there are some specialised braincells, called spindle neurons, that exist only in humans and apes, and their mission seems to be to ensure that all our brain is well connected with our emotional centre - which means, in any case humans are more, rather than less, emotional than other animals.

Other people believe that feelings are very important, and are there to be experienced fully and override everything. These people tend to think that negative feelings are a very bad thing, that should be avoided at all costs, because they are - well, awful!!

Both views are very naive. The purpose of feelings is to move us, to tell us the difference between good and bad, to give us a clear indication of what we should do next. To feel is the same thing as to evaluate, but said in a shorter word.

Some feelings are very old, and just about every animal has them. Others have appeared more recently in evolutionary history. Let's go through the main emotions and what they mean:

• Desire: This is almost certainly the oldest feeling. Desire tells us what we want. Desire drives us towards everything we need: food, shelter, company, etc. The message of desire is: "Go towards this."
• Fear: This is almost about as old. Fear tells us the dangers to avoid: falling, predators, and anything that has caused us pain. The message of fear is: "Go away from that, or hide."
• Calm: This may be considered not a feeling, but just the neutral state when there are no other feelings. The message of calm is: "Rest, save your energy for another time."
• Anger: This is a feeling that doesn't seem to exist in the simplest animals, such as earthworms. Some insects seem to be the simplest animals capable of being genuinely angry. Anger tells us to attack when the boundaries of our territory are crossed. In the case of humans, this territory may exist only in our mind - for example, political parties have clearly defined mental boundaries. The message of anger is: "Attack."
• Joy: It may come as a surprise to some, but the simplest animals don't seem able to feel genuinely happy. This is because simple animals don't really have goals, so they can't feel positive about achieving them. Maybe the simplest animals that can feel happy are fish. Joy tells us that we are doing a good job of achieving whatever we intended to do, and we should keep on doing it. The message of joy is: "Carry on."
• Sadness: This is a feeling that is only seen in more complex animals, mostly mammals. Sadness tells us that something went wrong but it's too late to do anything about it now. The best thing to do after the danger has passed is to lie low and brood, because maybe reliving the memories of what happened will give us a clue to avoid this if it happens next time. The message of sadness is: "Lie low, remember and think."
• Boredom: Another feeling that is only found in fairly complex animals, birds and mammals. Boredom tells us that there isn't anything specific that needs doing right now, but we have spare energy, so we might as well explore and learn something new. Only animals that are complex enough that they can constantly learn about their surroundings can be bored. The message of boredom is: "Explore."
• Surprise: Surprise is an emotion derived from fear - that's why the expressions for fear and surprise aren't far from each other. All mammals can be startled, but it's hard to draw the line where startle ends and surprise begins. You need to be pretty complex to be genuinely surprised. Surprise tells us that something isn't as we expected - and only animals that have an understanding of the world good enough to try to guess the future can be surprised. The message of surprise is: "Look again, more carefully."

Going back to the original question, doom and gloom make people sad, which means that they feel more like thinking and ruminating the information they have just received - and that is definitely one of the things you would like them to do. But you would like them also to be driven to action - and for that, you need one of the active emotions: desire, fear, anger or joy.

Activist groups often use fear and anger to drive people to action - and it works, but sustaining these emotions for a long time saps people's commitment. Nobody wants to feel negative too often, negative emotions are fundamentally telling us that we are in the wrong path. And the easiest way of avoiding those negative feelings is to avoid the people who encourage them.

After seeing that fear and anger aren't working, many activists are trying to turn towards joy. At first blush, it seems perfect: Doesn't everybody want to be happy? But it isn't as simple as it sounds, because the message of joy is: "Carry on", or to put it another way: "Don't change". When you are trying to get people to change, joy won't get you very far.

That leaves us with desire. Desire can change people, and it doesn't make them feel bad. The only catch with desire, you need to have a clear direction to go to. Unfortunately, many activists aren't too clear about where they are going. Those who are will be the ones that change the world.

The practice

Experiment 1

This one is best done with a pet. You can also do it with wild animals, but observing them for long periods is usually harder.

Watch your pet carefully and take notes on what it's doing. What feelings can you guess it has? Look at the list above, with the messages that accompany each feeling, to make your deductions. Which feelings seem to be dominant in your pet? Are they normal for this kind of animal?

Experiment 2

Do the same experiment as above, but on somebody you know well. Maybe this sounds a bit silly, because you think you already know quite well how they feel! They tell you and you see it in their face.

The truth is, people often lie to themselves and others about their feelings. The best way of knowing somebody's true feelings is observing what they do and comparing their actions with the list above. They may say they are excited about something and happy to do it, but is it in fact fear what makes their heart pound? You can tell by what they do: are they going about it enthusiastically, like they would carry on forever? Or are there mixed signals?

What makes problems difficult

The theory

The reader question I will consider for today's post is: "How does one make a group forward-looking rather than backward-looking?"

This takes me back to the wheel of life, that I have been talking about in other posts. Like I said at the end of the post, self-controlling systems can still go wrong. And they can go wrong at any stage of the wheel:

Jared Diamond, in a chapter of his extremely interesting book Collapse, tries to explain how societies can sometimes get into so much trouble that they collapse. He divides difficult problems in four categories, that can be mapped roughly to the wheel of life, and they apply not just to societies, but to any self-controlling system:

• Some problems are difficult to anticipate: People, like just about all living creatures, are naturally backward-looking: it's a lot easier to remember the past than to anticipate the future. Failure to anticipate a problem is a failure of thinking and feeling the right things when the early warning signals appear. It has to be said, humans are by far the best at anticipating on this Earth, but even the best can fail. You can try to avoid this by recruiting the best thinkers and putting them in touch with people with the best records for accurate "gut feelings", but there are no guarantees. Examples of problems difficult to anticipate are frogs failing to guess when it's a good time to cross the road (the problem is far too difficult for a frog's intelligence), and bankers failing to anticipate a global financial collapse.
• Some problems are difficult to see: It's pretty much impossible to do something about a problem if you don't notice it. This is a failure of watching. Examples of problems difficult to see are most types of chemical pollution if you don't have the right equipment to detect it (for example, if you are a bird), and people who don't believe in climate change because they can't notice much change in weather patterns.
• Some problems are difficult to act on: Jared Diamond says that, perhaps surprisingly, most problems that destroy societies fall into this category. This is a failure of choosing. People may notice that there is a problem, they think it's a problem and feel it's wrong, but still can't decide what to do about it or decide to do something that is clearly not helping. Many accusations of people being backward-looking actually mean that people are deciding to go for old solutions because they can't bring themselves to do something new. Examples of problems difficult to act on are a pigeon getting all confused in front of a mirror, and the trouble world leaders have every time that they try to sign a world treaty.
• Some problems are difficult to resolve: Even when a decision is made, the action to be taken can itself be extremely difficult. This is a failure of doing. For those that can't see how difficult it is, it can look like laziness, indecision, plain old stubbornness or inability to do something different. A good example is a fly trying to get out of a window. We all have seen them hitting the glass again and again until somebody opens the window, and they will still hit the glass a few times before they manage to get out. But from the point of view of a fly, there is really no other solution but keep bumping their heads (which must be somewhat painful) until they get out. They can't see the glass, and they are too simple to have the faintest clue of what the problem is. All they may know is that in the past, if they hit again and again this strange barrier of hard air, it will eventually let them go. It's tough, but for a fly, it's the only solution. A human example can be a famine. There are a number of things people can do if it happens to them, none of them pleasant or easy.

In short, being forward-looking and having all the right new solutions to new problems is anything but easy. But a good understanding of why problems can be so difficult is a first step towards finding those exciting new solutions. If you can identify which step of the wheel of life seems to be broken, you can apply your energies to fixing it.

The practice

Experiment 1

Do you have a pet that keeps doing something that you would like it to stop doing? Do you have a garden that is giving you too much work? Instead of trying to fight the problem constantly, try a new approach: why isn't this animal or plant already doing what you would like it to do? It's already self-controlling, why isn't it already keeping itself to the boundaries you would like? It already knows how to keep within a boundary, that's for sure.

This little story may give you inspiration:

The palace gardens of the Emperor of New China were famous in the whole world, and justly so: the chief gardener was a real artist. With the passing of years, the style of the gardens changed slowly, and they looked wilder, more like a forest than a garden. But still, it was an incredibly beautiful forest, and the Emperor loved it.

One day, the Emperor died and was buried like an acorn, and his son took his place. He heard unsettling news about the gardener: he had dismissed most of his helpers, he never pruned the trees and he almost didn't work. When the new Emperor asked the gardener, he mused strange things about talking with plants in a language they could understand. He said plants and trees didn't understand scissors, because they kept growing the same way; he said one should explain them what one wanted with light and water. The Emperor thought the gardener was a bit crazy, but the gardens were lovelier than ever, so he kept him at his service.

Time passed, and one day a messenger came and told the new Emperor, who was old by now, that the gardener had died at a very advanced age after a long illness. The Emperor was very surprised, because the gardens weren't neglected at all. But the surprise was much bigger when he knew that the old gardener had never gone out in the last ten years. He'd made a garden that didn't need care at all: just rainwater and sunlight. The shapes of plants weren't cut with scissors, but modelled by water and light and different kinds of soil.

In more practical terms, try to identify what kind of problem your pet or plant has:

• Is it too difficult to understand for a simple creature what you want? Can you make it far simpler?
• Is it difficult for your pet or plant to detect what you want? Can you use something that your pet or plant can perceive easily?
• Is the choice itself difficult? Can you make your preferred option much easier to choose?
• Is what you want to difficult to do? Can you make it easier?

Experiment 2

Pick your pet peeve: a favourite personal problem that you still haven't been able to resolve. Try to figure out what makes it difficult according to the points above. Is it difficult to anticipate when it's going to happen again? Is it difficult to notice until it's too late? Does it present you with difficult choices? Is it that what you have to do is, in itself, difficult? Or is it a combination of two or more of these?

Once you have identified what are the problem steps in the wheel of life, try to see if there is any way that you could strengthen those very steps. Some future posts will have more guidance on this, but try to think something yourself for a start.

Kinds of networks

The theory

The reader question I will try to address for today's post is: "How does one make a group outward-looking rather than inward-looking?"

This question takes us again to the theme of networks. Because what makes a group look inwards or outwards is fundamentally the kind of communications network it has, both for internal and external communications.

Let's have a look at different kinds of networks and how they work:

• The line or chain: This is the simplest kind of network there is, so simple that many people wouldn't even call it a network. When people talk about it, usually they are thinking about a part of a bigger network, as when they say "a food chain" or "a command chain". The most important thing you need to know about a chain is that anything that is passed along that chain (information, food, materials) has a risk of being lost or degraded in some way at each step, and the transmission from one end to the other will be slow. An animal at the top of a food chain has only access to a small percentage of the available calories, but at the same time, it has a higher risk of accumulating pollutants in its body. And we all know that information tends to get degraded or lost when it goes up or down a command chain.
• The ring or cycle: A cycle can compensate, to a certain extent, for the losses that happen along a chain. In ecology cycles are common, we have for example the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle and the nitrogen cycle. What is lost at one end may be recovered at the other end. Good organizations have feedback mechanisms that will allow people to know if the supplies or information provided at one end arrived intact at the other end, and if not, some mechanism to recycle.
• The star: A star is a network with a central node, called hub, connected to several other nodes. It has the advantage that the connection between the hub and the other nodes is direct, with minimal losses. The hub has the best access to information, food, etc. On the other hand, links often need some kind of maintenance. The hub may spend a lot of time, energy, money, or other resources, just keeping those links working. A good example of a star network is a mother that provides for her young. The mother has often complete control over what she will give to her young, and they are completely dependant on her. But keeping her young will take out a lot of her energy and time.
• The bus: The idea of bus comes for computer networks, where a simple cable can do the function of a central hub. Sometimes, what is doing the function of a central hub is very different from the nodes, it's something big and passive. For example, a river connects in some way all the plants and animals living inside and at the banks of the river. Or a website could keep all the members of an organization in touch with each other. You could say that the river or the website are buses.
• The tree: A tree is a network that combines some of the best characteristics of stars and chains. On one hand, it keeps the distances between two nodes reasonably short, avoiding the problems of a long chain. On the other hand, each of the hubs has a reasonably small number of links, avoiding the problems of a big star. Trees are found in all sorts of situations, starting with... trees, with all their leaves connected in this way. Another well-known example is hierarchical trees in organizations.
• The fully connected network: A fully connected network is one where every node is connected to every other node. They are usually rather small networks, because maintaining a link is often costly or difficult. For example, in an embryo all the cells will be touching each other up until the point it reaches eight cells: from then on, they lose direct contact. An example from human communication networks is mailing lists: everybody receives all the messages. As soon as there are too many people sending too many emails, they lose popularity.
• The mesh: A mesh is a network where the links are easily done and undone, and are often changing. In some species, networks formed by family ties are very stable, while in others, they are a mesh. Human social networks are often a mesh, as well.

When it comes to communication networks, looking inwards or outwards depends on how many links a node has and how stable they are. Unstable links promote looking outwards, looking for new links to form. Also, the less links there are, the more time a node will have to look outwards. In the types of networks described above, the most inward-looking nodes are (in this order) those in a fully-connected network, the hub of a star, and the hubs of a tree - the closest to the root, the more inward-looking. Nodes in chains and cycles also tend to be quite inward-looking, partly because communication problems also increase the focus inward. The most outward-looking nodes (in this order) are the nodes of a mesh, the outer nodes of a star or a bus, and the outer nodes of a tree.

The practice

Experiment 1

This is a useful experiment to see how a network can look very different depending on which parts of it we are looking at. The network in this experiment will be a food web. To do this, you will need access to a patch of wildlife.

1. Pick a common plant you can see. If you don't know the name of the plant, ask or look in a plant guide to find out what it is.

2. Sit and look at it until you see an insect that will eat it. Identify the insect.

3. Find out a bird or other animal that is likely to eat that insect. You could do this by direct observation, if you are patient enough, or just find out from books or the Internet.

4. Continue up the food chain until you reach an animal that doesn't have natural predators. You have just identified a complete food chain.

5. This food chain, in fact, can also be seen as a cycle. Find out which microbes will decompose the final predator when it dies, converting it into fertilizer for the original plant.

6. Find out what other animals this final predator will eat. Now you can see this part of the food web is a star.

Experiment 2

Start with the experiment 1 in the post on networks. A few questions after you have drawn the red, black and green networks:

• Do you think that the red network is a mesh? Do you think that the green network is a mesh? Is this good or bad?
• Does any part of any network look like a long chain? Is there any way of making that chain shorter?
• Does any part of any network look like a cycle? Is this helping for feedback? Could it be used for feedback if it isn't working like that now?
• What parts of the network look like a star? Do you think the hubs may be overworked? Is there any way you could create something like a bus?
• Does any part of any network look like a tree? Are the people involved aware of this?
• Does any part of any network look like a fully connected network? Is this taking up too much time and resources? Should the groups merge?

The steps of the wheel of life

The theory

An issue that was raised in the emails that I have received so far could be summarized in the following question: "How does one avoid the strange 'new age' beliefs that are found in many green groups?" I had to smile because this comes from a Buddhist that gave me a Tarot deck as a parting gift. In his defense I must say he didn't say exactly that, I'm paraphrasing, but I'm sure you recognize the feeling is common enough.

The truth is that most people are uncomfortable, to different degrees, with any religious / spiritual / philosophical beliefs that are too different from their own. And at the same time, many people see a religious / spiritual / philosophical dimension in their relationship with the environment. Put both together, and you often will see people drifting apart for reasons they don't dare to say. Nobody likes to tell anybody: "Listen, you are in awe about such ridiculous things!"

The problem, of course, isn't exclusive to green groups. It's a general issue in our society. We may have tolerance for other belief systems, but that's as far as it goes. I think the fundamental problem is that belief systems deal with a general area of life that our society still doesn't know very well how to deal with. And I won't say that this area is mysterious, mystical and trascendent stuff. I think this dark area is the two sections of the wheel of life that are most often missed: Feel and Choose. I can't think of a single spiritual belief (including atheist beliefs) that isn't directly related to one or both of those.

So it's the perfect moment to look in a bit more detail at each of the parts of the wheel of life:

• Watch: The meaning of "watch" here is using all your senses and all the available sources of information. To watch properly, you need to take your time before you start thinking, not jumping to conclusions. This is something that most people find very difficult to do, but once you learn the trick, you will avoid many mistakes.
• Think: Thinking means connecting everything you have watched now with everything you have watched in the past, and trying to find any patterns. Most of the time, the pattern will be so clear that it will need very little thinking. But if there is time, it's often worthwhile to give something a bit more thought and see if any other patterns emerge.
• Feel: We live in a society that often misunderstands completely what feelings are. They are not some archaic remnant from our past as monkeys that is meant to disappear when we evolve further, and they aren't either there to experience fully, wallow in and help you ignore your thoughts and justify any choice. Emotions are fundamentally evaluations, they tell us immediately if something is good or bad, and what kind of good or bad. And they are meant to work together with our thoughts, that's why there is an arrow going back from Feel to Think. Thoughts affect our feelings and feelings affect our thoughts.
• Choose: This is also often misunderstood. You may even have heard somebody saying that choice doesn't even exist, that people believe that we choose but our environment, genes and brain structure completely determine what we are going to do next. But clearly we choose, and clearly we often make wrong choices. The trick to making good choices is to do right all the steps that come before, and when you get to the point of choosing, pick the one that feels closest to right.
• Do: How often people go through all the steps, make a firm decision, and then don't do it? Once you decide to do something, it's best to take action immediately. Don't tell yourself that you can't do anything right now, a first step is usually very simple. It may be something like setting an appointment, finding some information or talking to somebody.
• Watch again: This is often forgotten: the wheel of life closes back on itself. If you do something, and then don't watch to see if you got the results you expected, you might as well not have bothered to do anything in the first place.

The practice

If you haven't done the experiments in the previous post, the wheel of life, what are you waiting for?

The wheel of life: the basic self-controlling loop

The theory

I have received several questions by email from friends who have read the blog so far. One of them, a telecomms engineer, made several good points, among them one that could be summarized in the question: "How does one avoid the anti-technology attitude that many green groups have?"

This is a complicated issue that would deserve several posts to reply. And with my mathematical background, I'm inclined to start from the beginning and look at a much wider question: How do people, groups, living creatures and ecosystems stay in the right course and avoid going in the wrong direction?

The answer is that all living beings and ecosystems are self-controlling systems. And in every self-controlling system you can find some variation of what cyberneticists call a self-controlling loop. I prefer to call it "the wheel of life", because it's typical of living systems, and, let's face it, it isn't so much of a mouthful. The wheel of life looks like this:

If this looks a bit confusing, a very simple example will let you see how it works. Imagine a bee trying to get to a yummy-looking flower. The bee will first watch her surroundings. Then she will do a tiny bit of thinking, as much as a bee can do, which isn't a lot. She may think something like: "The flower is a bit more sunwards" or "The wind is a bit stronger than before". Then she will feel something like: "Hmmm... sunwards is good" or "I want to beat my wings harder". All this is more complicated than what a bee can think or feel, mind you, but there isn't any easy way to put a person into the really simple mind of a bee. Then the bee will choose a flying course and follow it. And continue watching her surroundings...

I like using short, simple words because most people understand them without any trouble. But if you have seen some variation of the loop before, they were probably using the long words in brackets. Brainy people like long words, they can't help themselves.

And there are good chances that you have seen some version of the loop before. If you know anything about permaculture, you have seen the loop observe > analyze > design > implement > observe. "Design" there is shorthand for "evaluate and select". Another place you may have seen the loop is as the rational planning model, that is summarized with the loop observe (define goals and system) > analyze (generate and analyze solutions) > evaluate > select > implement > observe.

The wheel of life is what keeps things going in just about anything that self-regulates: people, bees, big organizations, computers to some extent, etc. Because it's a loop, if there is a mistake at any point, it tends to correct itself automatically. For example, let's suppose that our bee didn't see very well where she was going. She might have thought that the flower was somewhere else, and corrected course to the wrong direction. But then, watching again, she would have noticed her mistake and corrected course again.

But the wheel of life, wonderful as it is, doesn't always fix every problem. There are situations when a self-controlling system can still go wrong. But that is for another post.

The practice

Experiment 1

If you are running any project, no matter at what stage it is, it's always useful to see it as a self-controlling system and compare it with the wheel of life. The project should go through something like the following stages:

1. Watch: Look at the current situation. What is there that makes you want to change it? What are your goals? What obstacles are there to change? What means do you have to change it? Collect as much information as you can.

2. Think: Now that you have all the information, what is the picture that emerges? Do you still want to change the same things as before? Do you still want to change anything at all? Do you have a clearer idea of what your goals are? (you should, really, or you haven't done your homework properly). Do you know how to deal with the obstacles? Would it be better to wait for ? Or does the issue look more urgent than before? And the most important question: what are your options, realistically?

3. Feel: This is the point that a lot of people just don't know how to do. Everybody has feelings, it's just that most people don't have the slightest idea of what to do about them. The best thing to do is think about all the options, one by one, and ask yourself how you feel about them. Happy? Sad? Scared? Angry? Surprised? Like you really want to do it? Some mixture of several feelings? Which one makes you feel better? How do the other people that are involved in this feel about the different options?

4. Choose: If you have done right the step above, and you are the main decision-maker, the choice should be pretty clear and straight-forward by now. If this is a project involving several people, they may disagree and you will need to follow some kind of group decision-making process. This is something I will touch on future posts.

5. Do: This is often easier said than done. You will find that during the "do" stage of any project you go many times through several small wheels of life: you have to keep watching, thinking, feeling, choosing, and doing all the time.
6. Watch again: This is the most often forgotten part of any project. Now that it's finished, what does it look like? Are you satisfied with it? Did it accomplish the goals you had at the beginning? Will you need to repeat the whole project again at some time in the future? Will it need regular maintenance? Is there anything that still needs change? Were you correct in the expectations that you had at the beginning?

No matter where you are currently in your project, it's often useful to look back at what you have done so far and check if you followed the steps as thoroughly as you should have. And the wheel of life will give you a blueprint for the steps that you haven't done yet.

Experiment 2

Do you grow anything in your garden? Do you have a pet? Do you have access to any place where you can watch wildlife? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you can do this experiment.

This is about watching living creatures and learning how they self-regulate. Observe them and try to figure out how they do each of the steps of the wheel of life:

1. Watch: What can this creature sense? Light? Colour? Sound? Taste? Chemical products? Warmth? Pressure? Humidity?

2. Think: Can they solve simple problems? "Simple" may mean really, really simple. When I was little, I had a book about scientific experiments that included one called: "A maze for a plant". It involved putting a beansprout in a closed box with a really simple maze, and the sprout would quickly grow towards the place with the most light. Apparently earthworms can also learn a simple T-shaped maze, and eventually know that nice compost is always found on the right side.

3. Feel: Everything else being equal, what does this creature prefer? Hot? Cold? Wet? Dry?Sunny places? Dark places? Particular types of food or soil?

4. Choose: What does this creature do when given a choice? Is it shy? Does it try a bit of one and then the other? Does it just pick one, whatever is nearest?

5. Do: What can this creature do? Can it move? How fast? Does it have different ways of moving? How does it eat? How does it grow? Does it always grow in the same way? Can it communicate with others of the same kind?

Finally, try to put all this together until you have a clear idea of how this creature manages to keep alive every day and deal with the difficulties that it normally comes across. People often discover that after an experiment like this, they stop looking down at other living beings and realise that they are perfectly capable of managing without the help of humans or anybody else, thank you very much.