Introduction

Earlier writings on design in wildfire are scattered across posts, and this is an effort to consolidate that work. This post positions itself as an integration of a design perspective vital to wildfire for the unique understandings design can produce. Design, as it is understood here, is defined as the decisions made about what should exist in the world at a time later than now and how to create it. There are various disciplines of design, including, at a minimum, graphic design, web design, user interface design, industrial design, service design, interaction design, environment design, and strategy design. However, as a matter of fact, we are all designers as we all envision preferred ends and develop means to attain them. We are all designers.

Unnatural Landscapes

There has long been discourse about returning to a pre-colonial state of wildfire, perhaps occasionally regarded as a natural state. It is curious as to how that will happen, given the shifts across the landscape since then, and the outcome of human purposeful activity being natural. To expound, the earliest burning that occurred in North America was an act of design. The igniters had designed tools and were designing landscapes while they were burning, as decisions were being made or had already been made about what the landscape should look like and how to burn to get it there. This is often confused with a natural landscape. However, design cannot produce the natural; it will always produce the artificial. Even when regarded as natural landscapes that should be returned to, they were created by design, and as has just been said, design cannot produce the natural, only the artificial.

Since humankind started intervening in them, our landscapes have always been artificial as a product of design. It is important that this point not be cast as a product of ill will. As centuries pass, the creation of increasingly artificial landscapes may have been an outcome of not knowing or of not situating oneself in time enough to be aware of what intervening in ecological processes would accomplish over time. However, humankind’s relationship with fire has been marked by the best of intentions, faced with an impossible paradox that will be discussed later: fighting fires can make subsequent fires worse.

Artificial landscapes, at least while fire was an integral part of them, may have been better off because they were maintained through the recurrence of fire. Still, energy was expended through the labor of preparing, burning, and through combustion to maintain the artificialness that had been distinguished as desirable. One must ask if there is an ideal landscape, how much energy would be required to return to it, and then hold it there?

It follows, then, that there is no return to a natural state, as any conceivable natural state precludes human activity. What would be recovered is an artificial state produced through the innate designerly abilities of humans, and landscapes would be burned to meet the desired end of their needs and wants. Only artificial landscapes can be returned to or created through the management of wildfire, and all the inescapably design decisions made to do so.

Risk Landscapes

Fire regimes are often unmentioned in this conversation, though their importance cannot be understated. Apart from fire regimes, elevated wildfire risk from increasing vegetation continuity and density is, in many contexts, the output of design decisions. Though they are fire management decisions, design’s ever-presence can be located. A needful and foreseeable end is identified, such as keeping the fire West of a location, out of a particular vegetated area, and critically out of a community in the path of a fire. This end is accomplished through suppression.

Wildfire incidents and proactive risk management are entirely complex, and in that way, both have difficult to see, understand, and navigate temporal extensions. For example, while achieving immediate success through stopping a wildfire, an unwanted long-term consequence emerges: the fire burns some areas, reducing the amount and continuity of vegetation, while other areas are left unburned through suppression tactics that corral the fire and keep it small. Such tactics are associated with burned footprints surrounded by vegetation that continues to grow and increasingly becomes denser and more continuous, producing a landscape with greater wildfire risk. Fighting fire can produce landscapes that burn with greater intensity at a later time. Suppression as a mechanism to defer and increase wildfire risk was never the intent, but the situation has arrived all the same. The outcomes of decisions as designers remain artificial and represented in the landscapes they produce.

To revisit the earlier paradox of fighting fire fueling later fires, it is not unheard of for fire managers to let unplanned (not prescribed) wildfire incidents burn additional acreage for forest health and to reduce accumulated vegetation that will reduce fire risk. Known as fire use, this tactic is a product of design decisions to create a healthier forest with a lower risk profile, and using fire to reach that end. Without question, this is a useful approach that exploits an unplanned wildfire situation, but it is hard to imagine it scaling to a level where it is changing the risk map on a regional or state scale. However, in parallel with the mitigative turn, both may together produce remarkable outcomes.

Mitigated Landscapes

From my perspective, we are in the midst of a mitigative turn, as is visible in insurance restructuring and private sector innovation. This is not to discount the decades upon decades of mitigation work completed by all levels of government and contracted resources. However, now, in the mitigative turn, technology is becoming further involved, enabling targeted and proactive fuels treatments on small to massive scales throughout the deployment of innovative technologies. Now, anyone concerned with wildfire risk can directly or indirectly access the tools needed to mitigate it. Empowering risk owners with the ability to quickly assess the risk posed to their assets and determine what actions to take, where, when, and of what variety, is adding momentum to the mitigative turn.

While suppression proceeds to make some landscapes increasingly artificial by designing them with a higher risk profile, mitigation also designs artificial landscapes in the continued interest of protecting values at risk, but it creates the artificial in new ways, prior to a wildfire. Thinning, grazing, firebreaks made from mineral soil, such as hand or bulldozer line, and prescribed fires produce landscapes less prone to carrying and supporting large-scale destructive fires and protect what is valued from wildfire proactively. Whatever the benchmark, mitigation at scale, even on parcels, is traveling in new directions. If it is all artificial, and if that is what humans create through their undetachable designerly skills, then perhaps the most significant realization of the mitigative turn is that the landscape can be intentionally and strategically designed to produce certain outcomes through an evidence-based approach.

Mitigation, in the many forms it comes in, can be clearly framed as the purposeful development of landscapes to create a desirable future where fire behavior is intentionally and continuously modulated. Mitigation is, and should be, dominantly concerned with protecting commercial and community properties, but it should also look to the future it creates to include how mitigation work done today can continue to produce desirable futures between humans and wildfire.

Conclusion

In this brief essay, there was a movement from the image of a nation pre-human intervention at scale labeled “natural,” to the artificial by design. The management of fire has not always been desirable in its externalities, but it was needful, or at the very least was framed as needful. However, as the fighting of wildfires was seen as needful, the more needful it became as the landscapes grew to become more artificial, including changes in vegetation composition and building homes in the wildland- urban interface. As designers, fire managers created landscapes through the interlocked decisions of deciding what should exist in the world and how to bring it into being. We are all designers, and fire managers and firefighters are, of course, not an exception. Recognizing the wildfire profession, or any profession, as being composed of designers is to say they are continually pursuing ends of their own preference that they have already envisioned. This is a new and fundamental re-imagining of daily professional life in fire and what it creates. Enduring landscapes that are often characterized by more or less risk than they were before intervention.

Risk owners living with wildfire currently may find themselves in the mitigative turn propelled by the proliferation of technologies and equipment. It is hard to imagine a future in the United States where there is no fire suppression, but a vision can vaguely exist where, over time, mitigation lessens the need to fight fire at the scale that is taking place now. As the situation exists presently, data-backed and validated mitigation is essential to making the mitigative turn.

Introduction

I am in the midst of writing a paper focused on tools for building community resilience. As the article writing process is long, and time is scarce, I wanted to release these tools into the world now, and the formal literature will follow. Please consider the following to be the exclusive property of Gregory Vigneaux in the interest of publishing, but I hope you will enjoy it nevertheless. If you would like to use a tool or concept found below, please get in touch with me at greg@operationalcoherence.com.

It is important to keep in mind that this material is not presented as a fix to a problem, but rather a paper-based tool to be leveraged to build wildfire community resilience. In doing so, the intent is that it will open a pathway for technological strategies to visualize wildfire community risk and then integrate social and organizational strategies to reduce it physically.

This post introduces two visual tools for designing, giving form to, and implementing community resilience-building strategies. The use of visual tools is intended to make resilience-building strategies clearer, more accessible, and readily understandable with reduced training times in comparison to heavier, text-based delivery methods. The tools, tentatively named EidosCube and SenseCraft, both include their own informed language intended to remain consistent across uses so that they may become familiar, further reducing the mental load required by designing and then implementing a strategy.

Strategy

Axelrod and Cohen (2000) define strategy as the way an individual or group “responds to its surroundings and pursues its goals” (p. 4). and is essential across all phases of the disaster risk management cycle. A resilience-building strategy is a specific strategy that outlines how an organization will ultimately pursue its goal of working with a community to co-create resilience within it. Strategy is an act of design. Meaning, making decisions about what should exist in the future and then acting in a way that materializes them. Design exists from the inception of the strategy itself, through how others are intended to interact with it, and how it should affect the community.

EidosCube Version I

The visual tool immediately below was introduced during the author’s talk, “Are you Transitioning or Refining the Present: A Theoretical Look at Wildfire Adapted Community Change.” It has since been referred to as “EidosCube,” meaning “FormCube.” EidosCube gives form to thought before giving form to action. The cube’s use is first formulating a strategy visually and then providing a visual tool for understanding and implementing it. The tool is about strategy, both in design and in how it should be implemented. There is a point where the tool use transitions from being a tool to define strategy to a tool to implement strategy.

EidosCube I

Both versions of the cube tool have the same functionality, though they have different forms and labels. The first version immediately below is visually simpler than EidosCube II, and used earlier language to describe the dimensions that were less clear, and were further developed later in version II.

The first version of the EidosCube maps an aggressive community resilience-building strategy, where each dot represents the end of each dimension. Designed only for demonstration purposes, such a strategy would likely never be deployed, as it addresses too many community variables at once, and has a high risk profile of disruption and harm while turning the scientific waters turbid and leaving implementers at a loss as to which specific dimension of the strategy produced which negative or positive change. Operating in the extremes of these dimensions, especially all at once, or for the majority, is far from prudent.

Version I does, however, represent a use case as to how the tool could be engaged with as designers and implementers. Designers map the strategy on the cube, setting where it falls along each dimension, organizing and materializing their thoughts until it is picked up by someone implementing the strategy, and then it becomes a visual tool to organize and guide their thoughts around implementing the strategy.

EidosCube Version II

The tool below in Figure 3 is Eidos Cube version II, or simply “EidosCube.” The value of the cube’s dimensions and the three-axis tool in the middle of Figure 3 are all explained in the list below. The three-axis tool within the cube does admittedly complicate the visual field in its expression of how complex, ordered, or disordered the strategy implementation environment is going to be or will even become. Over time, this version of the EidosCube may evolve. It is the second iteration, which formerly used three Y-axes to map order, disorder, and complexity. With the inclusion of the tool in the middle of the visualization, the EidosCube is more complete and offers a more comprehensive understanding of strategy implementation.

The EidosCube, shown below, has been populated to be a moderate strategy with knowledge certainty, duration, and the dimension of style taking the most extreme positions, while the remainder are relatively balanced. As the EidosCube and its dimensions are unpacked in the list below, the EidosCube gives form to the design of the strategy and what it is intended to accomplish, and how, and the predominant nature of the environment in which this work will take place, which is represented as complex.

The EidosCube Version II

Bottom of the Cube

Risk Attitude

Will the strategy be prudent, concerned, and risk-averse, or bold, confident, courageous, and risk-taking?

Strategy Duration

Will the strategy be implemented over a short or long duration?

Knowledge Certainty

Will the strategy expect steady, unchanging, certain knowledge of the community, or knowledge that lacks a stable state and evolves unpredictably?

Style

Will the strategy be prosaic, meaning “life made of practical, utilitarian, and technical chores” (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 138) or more poetic, which is to say “a way of life involving participation, love, eagerness, communion, enthusiasm, [and] ritual” (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 138)?

Top of the Cube

Change Focus

Will the strategy seek change at the level of practices or understanding (Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012; Spinosa, Flores, & Dreyfus, 1999)?

Experience

Will the strategy seek to change a moment or moments in the flow of someone’s living or alter the course of their everyday life?

Constraints

Will the strategy seek to create change within pre-existing constraints or change the constraints themselves (Juarrero, 2023; Morin, 1992)?

Approach

Will the strategy use established and accepted practices or utilize original methods (Snowden & Boone, 2007)?

Inside the Cube

Order

Will the strategy implementation process encounter an environment of invariance, constancy, repetition, a high degree of probability, operating as if placed under the control of law (Morin, 2008)?

Complexity

Will the strategy implementation process occur in a setting that is a fluctuating mixture of order and disorder, where the elements are tangled and impossible to grasp, describe, and explain completely, and where predictions are verified only after the fact (Axelrod & Cohen, 2000; Morin, 2008)?

Disorder

Will the strategy implementation take place in a disorderly context characterized by instability, randomness, irregularity, and divergence from established frameworks, with the possibility of developing into chaos, where there is no stability, and it exists “beyond our logical intelligibility” (Morin, 1992, p. 57; Morin, 2008; Waldrop, 1992)?

List 1. 2026 Gregory Vigneaux. All rights reserved.

The EidosCube was heavily inspired as a tool for wildfire community risk reduction by a reading of Morin and Kern (1999), even if their work is not cited in each dimension. As seen above, each axis is referred to by a particular label and carries a certain meaning related to building resilience, with a focus on what the strategy hopes to accomplish and the environment it will do so in. The intended use for this list, elsewhere provided in table format, is to accustom both user groups to the tool, so that they become less dependent on the descriptions and labels over time and are eventually able to use the tool without hesitation. It will then be imperative that the language remains stable over time, so it can be learned and executed.

SenseCraft

While originally presented in a different form and distinct language, the essence of the questions below was presented in a paper I co-authored titled “Research-into-Action Brief: Developing and Implementing Comprehensive School Safety Policy.” Years after it was published, the format in which the questions were presented was changed to the visual tool seen in Figure 4, with the language modified slightly. It now exists as a tool for strategy implementation.

The evidence-based questions in SenseCraft could only be produced after a study of complex adaptive systems and design studies. The knowledge gained from this study became the foundation for the questions and became embedded in them, and is intended to be passed on to the end user whose behavior it will shape. While there is extensive study underlying these questions, the user does not need to concern themselves with it, as the resultant knowledge has been delegated to the tool and may be enacted through use. SenseCraft is another example of how visualization can reduce training times through delegating knowledge to the tool and not the person, in its two main questions, with corresponding sub-questions.

There is a designed flow of the questions that guides the user through sense-making concerned with why the strategy’s goal is not already present in the community, asking further if it is due to opposition, and also seeking support for the goal, before the tools asks what would need to be changed for the strategy’s goal to become a reality, with three follow up questions asking what needs to be formed, reinforced, and reformed. SenseCraft’s seven questions are significant and may lead to new, additional main and sub-questions in the course of strategy implementation, which would be an effective use of the tool. As it is presented here, SenseCraft is a vital, core beginning to the implementation process.

Conclusion

This post has endeavored to communicate the value of visual tools in the wildfire community resilience-building space. Visual tools, especially those presented in Figures 2 and 3, have the dual purpose of driving the design process and the implementation process, in the name of coherence. While Figure 2 includes a list to explain its uses, Figure 4 is designed to be ready to engage with immediately. Both tools are theory-driven, though that theory may not be readily obvious and is instead enacted through use. The design of a tool that goes on designing as a tool for defining strategy and then shaping the actions of those who use it must begin with theory to responsibly guide its development.

References

Axelrod, R., & Cohen, M. D. (2000). Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications of a scientific frontier. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Juarrero, A. (2023). Context changes everything: How constraints create change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. (R. Postel, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Morin, E. (1992). Method: toward a study of humankind: the nature of nature (Vol. 1). (B. J.L Roland, Trans.) New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Morin, E., & Kern, A. B. (1999). Homeland earth: A manifesto for the new millennium. (S. M. Kelly, & R. LaPointe, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. London: Sage.

Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68-76.

Spinosa, C., Flores, F., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1999). Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Waldrop, M. M. (1992). The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York, NY: Touchstone.

Introduction

If I say, “a table is that entity that arises as I put a plate upon it”, I am not being peculiar, I am showing the operational condition that bring[s] forth a table being aware that the table is not a table by itself. Once I have done that and I have brought forth the table, tableness, and the operational domain in which tables exist, I can speak of tables as if they existed independently of my distinguishing them” (Maturana, 2005, pp.58-59).

According to Maturana (2005), the placing of a plate upon a table is the operational condition that brings forth the table and its tablness, articulating that “the table is not a table by itself.” Importantly, he comments that once he has brought forth the table and the domain in which the table is found, he is able to speak of tables as if they exist in the world independently of his act of distinguishing them. In the same paper, and elsewhere in Maturana and Poerkson (2011), Maturana writes that an observer can refer to something they have distinguished, independent of their drawing a distinction and bringing it forth with its domain into being. However, the observer who drew the distinction must not forget that they distinguished the object, person, or experience that arises in their world. Connectedness must be maintained over separation (Maturana, 2005; Maturana and Poerkson, 2011).

Maturana wonders how humans speak of entities that we can “only connote as features of our experience?” Time fits neatly in Maturana’s (2005) description of things humans can only talk about as from our experience. He said, “ All that we can do is to describe the experiential conditions under which such experiences arise, and as we do that, what happens?” (Maturana, 2005, p. 59).

In this short essay, the word “time” will refer to “internal experienced time.” Here, two questions about time are asked.

1. What is an operational condition that brings forth time?

2. What are some of the experiential conditions under which the experience of time arises?

Time is (first) not yet

Time may be experienced as something that just exists, entirely qualityless. That is, until questions are asked of it that make unexperienced time have substance, and in doing so, shatter the transparency that was time without properties (Varela, 1999). Questions that might be asked of time include whether time is fast or slow, whether things are happening in sequence or simultaneously, and whether there is or is not time for a behavior or activity (Maturana, 1995). It might also be asked if time is passing or if it is still, moving forward or backward, or “true or false, valid or invalid, good or bad, adequate or inadequate” (Maturana, Muñoz, & Ximena, 2016, p.665). Once such a question is answered, the broken transparency of time is endowed with initially obtrusive properties that make time a-thing while before it was not yet.

Duration

Duration, the amount of experienced time an event or events lasts, is also a consideration in answering both questions. In The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience Varela, in an experiment he discusses elsewhere, shows study subjects flashing lights, which if are “shown successively with an interval less than a period of 0.1-0.2 seconds, they will be seen as simultaneous, or in apparent simultaneity” (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1993, p.73). Alternatively, if the lights are made to flash faster, they appear to flash rapidly. If the interval between flashes is increased even more, the flashing of the lights becomes markedly sequential (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1993). In the ability to draw a distinction between “simultaneous” and “sequential” lies duration. Duration does not define time, but time is in duration, and duration is in time.

Duration, the passing of experienced time, may be where Maturana’s plate is eventually placed as the operational condition that brings forth time. The earlier experiment with flashing lights and the interval of 0.1-0.2 seconds largely fits in Varela’s (2000) 1/10 scale that ranges from 10 to 100 milliseconds, and is the span of basic elementary events (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008). Behaviorally, writes Varela (2000), the 1/10 scale is where basic or fundamental events occur, and its timing represents “the minimum distance needed for two stimuli to be perceived as non-simultaneous, a threshold which varies with each sensory modality” (Varela, 2000, p.117).

In simultaneity, there is no elapsing of experienced time, though there is the minute passing of chronological time. If no amount of time was experienced as the events occurred in simultaneity, then there is no time to bring forth by way of Maturana’s plate. Sequentiality, on the other hand, is a passing of time: one thing happens then, and another later, even if separated by a barely perceivable interval.

Duration can take the form of remembering what happens and converting it to an operational referent that will be used to experientially measure the interval that has passed in the ongoing flow of experienced time, and move forward into the event that happens at an anticipated later. A plate is placed somewhere in the moving flow from the duration leading from one operational referent and bypassing a field of other logical referents until it is connected with the one it corresponds to, showing definite duration. The plate moves with the flow and thus brings forth time as the passing of time, or duration. Time’s timeness, in the case presented here, is its ability to have duration. Time is not time by itself (Maturana, 2005).

Another way of approaching the operational condition of time is the evaluative questions that are asked of it: Is it still or passing, are things happening all at once, is it moving backward or forward, is it good or bad, adequate or inadequate? In asking questions of time, time transitions from being an unperceived experience by observers to something perceived and engaged with. The questions asked of time serve as an operational condition and move from time as perceived to bringing forth its timeness by representing the qualities of the questions. Time is the questions that we ask of time, bringing it forth in a particular way correspondent with the question or questions asked. Are we running out of time? Is time passing too quickly? Is time moving too slowly? Is the experience we are having in time good or bad? Are the assertions being made in time about time valid or invalid (Maturana, 1995; Maturana, Muñoz, & Ximena, 2016)?

Distinctions

6. Generation of worlds. The world we live in every moment is the realm of all the distinctions that we make, that we think we can make, that we thought we would make, or that we thought we could not make as human beings in the course of our living as beings who exist in our reflexive operating as observers who live in conversation (Yáñez & Maturana, 2013, p.77).

If distinctions are how worlds are generated, then time must be distinguished as part of this generation, and the time that can be distinguished is sequential; it is duration. Worlds are not generated solely through the distinctions we have made in the present, but those made in the past, could have made, thought we eventually could make, or could never be made, will always make, or will never make. The distinctions we perform generate the world we are left to live in, for a moment, until we start making distinctions again. As written above, time is part of this world generation, but it is the way that time is distinguished that matters. If time is distinguished with duration as central, then in my world, time is the passing of experience until that experience ends by distinguishing some operational referent that is a memory, like the first referent, that tells me that which has been continuing is now over, and I will now distinguish the beginning of another period where time continues.

Conclusion

The above draws from two Varela articles and two book chapters, and some of Maturana’s works that were used in the Time Part I. The intent was to find the operational condition that brings forth time, and some of the experiential conditions under which time arises, which appeared in the narrative. An answer to the operational condition came to the fore through duration, and a secondary answer through the questions asked of time. Duration is the means through which observers experience time, and the distinction of time passing as the operational condition that brings forth time. Should time’s primary characteristic be that it passes at a rate that is perceivable and paid attention to by observers?

There are a a multiplicitiative of perspectives on time. The one presented here draws from duration, questions, and distinctions to answer the initial questions. This short essay leans heavily on duration as a means of explaining time and may serve as the foundation for later work in answering the central question: “What is an operational condition that brings forth time?”

References

Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2008). The phenomenological mind: An introduction to philosophy and cognitive science. Oxfordshire: Routledge.

Maturana, H. R., Muñoz, S. R., & Ximena , D. Y. (2016). Cultural-Biology: Systemic consequences of our evolutionary natural drift as molecular autopoietic systems. Foundations of Science, 21, 631-678.

Varela, F. J. (1999). The specious present: A neurophenomenology of time consciousness. In J. Petitot, F. J. Varela, B. Panchoud, & J.-M. Roy, Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in contemporary phenomenology and cognitive science (pp. 266-329). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1993). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Varela, F., & Shear, J. (Eds.). (2000). The view from within: First person approaches to the study of consciousness. Bowling Green, OH: Imprint Academic.

Over the course of some of the recent posts, order and disorder have been central to the focus. This post continues this thread by discussing how acting in order and disorder might be understood through connection with Morin and Kern’s (1999) perspectives on prosaic and poetic living. The following is an intentional pairing of polarities, order with prose and disorder with poetic, to see what happens through making these connections.

Prose and Order

A state of total order has been described in earlier posts as one where everything acts as if in accordance with law, regular, fixed, and predictable (Morin, 2008). In ordered environments where the entities and processes being observed are reliably unchanging, one may act prosaically in a way that fits the ordered context (Morin & Kern, 1999). According to Morin and Kern (1999), “We dwell on Earth both prosaically and poetically. Prosaically (when we work, aim at practical targets, [and] try to survive).” While poetically is the way of acting in disorder, a prosaic way of being is appropriate for ordered contexts.

Order has its place. If an ordered approach to acting mirrors the type of context it is in, then it is appropriate for the environment. If an order-based actor is functioning in a disordered environment, then it no longer corresponds to its surroundings. The actor (or agent) will start experiencing breakdowns and confusion that may escalate, paired with rises in disorder. Importantly, order is not bad; it is not a negative to be in an ordered environment instead of one that is disordered or one containing a mixture of order and disorder that is complex. Order is not undesirable, only incongruent ways of acting in it are. The prosaic as a model for acting may be appropriate for order.

Acting prosaically in ordered environments is possible due to their lack of variability and turbulence. It then becomes possible to define desirable interactions with the environment and functioning in it through target defining and seeking behaviors. Accompanying practical target-seeking is prosaic acting’s concern for “practical, utilitarian, and technical tasks” (Morin & Kern, 1999, p.113) and other “rational and empirical activities” (Morin & Kern, 1999, p.138). The prosaic state, as opposed to the poetic state and its acting, “sets up for us a utilitarian and functional situation with its goal being utilitarian and functional” (Morin & Kern, 1999, p. 138). The prosaic state seeks to create a situation that is functional and utilitarian that has the goal of being utilitarian and functional. Such a perspective exists as the ordered environment invites it to occur. The prosaic takes advantage of the ordered conditions it finds itself in, exploits them, in the name of what is efficient, what is technical, what is utilitarian, and what is functional (Morin & Kern, 1999).

Lastly, there is the hyperprosaic “(technicized, bureaucratized, and econocrattzed; Morin & Kern, 1999, p.112). The hyperposaic can be seen as a contributing factor or the underlying essence of the ongoing transformation of the workplace and the organizational membership’s work experience through growing technicalization, increasing bureaucracy, and an obsession with internal economics that predates Morin and Kern’s (1999) mention of it, but remains an important element.

Poetry and Disorder

What, then, is the way to act in a state of total disorder, chaotic, erratic, inconsistent, volatile, fluctuating, and a departure from any given structure; disorder is noise (Morin, 2008; Waldrop, 1992). Contrary to imposing order in total disorder, an idea that has clear established merit, paired with disorder, the poetic mode of acting would focus on enjoyment, dreaming, singing, and celebrating “life for life’s sake” ( Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Morin & Kern, 1999, p.140) and culminating in ecstasy.

Poetry is not only a literary genre, but also a way of life involving participation, love, eagerness, communion, enthusiasm, [and] ritual (Morin & Kern, 1999, p.138).

As part of the ongoing translation of poetry into disorder, Morin and Kern (1999) introduce wandering, noting that those who wander are not walking along a clearly identified and well-worn path, and as such can no longer put forth the law of progress as a heading and measure of success, while staggering through fog and the dark of night. The authors explain that unknown wandering increases poetry, bliss, and the genuine (Morin & Kern, 1999).

Although there is wandering, Morin and Kern (1999) note it is not haphazard, as the wanderers are following the direction of collaboratively reached values, ideas, and strategies that are continually improved through action, and not only the law of progress (Morin, 2008). With values, ideas, and strategies as headings, those who wander can be driven towards them with resolution and perseverance (Morin & Kern, 1999.

It is worth mentioning an observed negative correlation between an increase in distinguishing disorder and a decrease in years of experience in one high-risk occupation. Despite disorder not being distinguished at the management level, it may still be prevalent among the early-career workforce. Pairing disorder with poetics may suggest a different non-evidence-based approach than the established direction of imposing order to leave chaos. In Morin and Kern (1999), connecting poetry with disorder suggests celebrating its arrival, partaking in ritual, wandering in the disorder, and feeling enjoyment. Experience suggests that there are instances where abruptly leaving chaos is not probable. Management is capable of creating a highly ordered social system amidst chaos surrounding the system, but an environmental state of total disorder still prevails (Kurts & Snowden, 2003). This particular discussion could be expanded upon extensively, but this is an adequate stopping point for this essay.

Morin and Kern’s (1999) poetry provides some interesting insight for acting in a state of total disorder. First, it must be noted that the idea of poetic acting does not intersect with the idea of being able to see patterns in chaos, being in the eye of the hurricane, or otherwise making sense of disorder on a useful timeframe. Acting poetically in disorder would involve first enjoying it with jollity, eagerness, and enthusiasm. Pairing poetics and disorder indicates an interesting course of action - to enjoy the state of disorder, which raises an interesting question: What is there to enjoy in true disorder if everything breaks up before it has had a chance to form (Waldrop, 1992)?

Perhaps poetry is better suited for situations where there is a medium to high degree of disorder, but not entirely chaotic; it may even be called a disordered complexity. Approaching the boundary of chaos, there may be a presence of disorder to the degree that the environment is degrading and coherence is being lost, along with the previously stated characteristics of noise, inconsistency, fluctuations, and volatility, without crossing the edge into the chaotic or truly disorderly. In this state, enjoyment and jollity while having eagerness and enthusiasm for the situation may be possible. The experience of disorder and things breaking down, but not entirely, may inspire celebration, as there is still something to “hang one’s hat on,” and the energy can be electrifying, leading to enjoyment.

Ritual was also mentioned by Morin and Kern (1999), which may be appropriate in the state of near total disorder, as well as order. Rituals are meaning, behaviors, specific sequences of action, and language that are frequently and without fail enacted and adhered to by an organization. A particular ritual may facilitate the transition into disorder from order and back again, which signifies it is time to think, act, and speak differently to be effective in disorder and not be pulled under the waves (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Morin & Kern, 1999)

Conclusion

This has been an abbreviated exploration of interesting connections among order and prose and disorder and poetry. It may someday receive further development, but for now remains a successful translation of Morin and Kern’s (1999) ways of living into different modes of acting in order and disorder.

References

Kurtz, C. F., & Snowden, D. J. (2003). The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42(3), 462-483.

Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. (R. Postel, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Morin, E., & Kern, A. B. (1999). Homeland earth: A manifesto for the new millennium. (S. M. Kelly, & R. LaPointe, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Waldrop, M. M. (1992). The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York, NY: Touchstone.

Introduction

The cassette tape has become a rarity. It came after vinyl, before CDs, and well before iTunes and much later on Spotify. While some artists choose to release a cassette tape alongside a digital version, this strategy is far from common. In some cases, tapes are the only format music is available, and collectors search for these cassettes in all of their usual rareness. However nostalgic, cassettes are certainly problematic; their sound quality pales in comparison to Spotify, they can be difficult to work with, and they are easily broken. At the same time, cassettes started a networked culture of music enthusiasts; they are often cheaper to produce and sell than vinyl, especially on smaller scales, and artists have long been able to release music on cassettes within their homes and be in total control of the process without a record label.

The cassette tape gave way to the mixtape, which predated the mix CD, and far preceeded the playlist of digital music. Making a mixtape was a simple process that could be achieved in two different ways. First, a cassette tape in a cassette deck with a record button could be used to capture songs from the radio. The right songs were added one after the other, after the other, side A and side B. If your audio equipment had two cassette tape decks side by side, the second option was to play a song on the first tape and capture it on the second. It was time-consuming, but the process of collecting songs was worth it for your own or someone else’s repeat enjoyment.

Complexity

A mixtape with a considerable amount of variety was a distinct possibility. Variety was likely the purpose of the endeavor: to create a tape with various musical styles, sounds, and tempos that are intended to evoke certain emotions.

For mixtapes, variety may have been wanted, but for complex systems, variety is an absolute necessity and a large part of what makes them complex. The need for variety is counter to hierarchical, command and control style systems that seek uniformity, predictability, and clear alignment with the objectives of the day. These dynamics purposefully lead to the reduction of variety. While it might be discussed from other perspectives as well, variety, on the other hand, is exhibited by the actions of the members of complex social systems in the quantity and quality of ways they can operate and therefore the number of possibilities they can pursue for communicating, acting, interacting, and self-organizing, for example.

Cilliers (1998) draws from Luhmann (1985), who states:

Complexity entails that, in a system, there are more possibilities than can be actualised. This can hardly serve as definition, but perhaps one should not be surprised if complexity cannot be given a simple definition (p.25).

With variety linked to possibilities, a complex system has so much variety within itself that it could not possibly materialize all of the possibilities available to it. The inverse must also be true. If a complex or rather complicated system has a limited variety, then it is not likely to have a surplus of possibilities and may indeed be able to actualize all of them.

The mixtape fits into this part of the discussion as a complicated, but not complex system. A diverse mixtape contains within its track selection, styles, and genres a considerable amount of variety. As such, this variety can produce possibilities as the tape is played that include making different sounds, affecting the listener emotionally, physically, and cognitively, and inspiring the listener to perform certain actions, such as owning particular things. There are a number of possibilities that a mixtape might actualize in sequence or simultaneously, the quantity and quality of which depend greatly on the listener and their disposition while listening, and the contents of the tape itself. While there are many possibilities, they are not beyond the cassette’s variety to produce them. Although the mixtape contains a variety that can produce many possibilities that may change circumstances far beyond it, the cassette tape does not have the variety within its parts to adapt to changing conditions, such as heat or other environmental factors that could damage it over time. Its variety and array of possibilities do not include sustaining itself in variable conditions, which would be the variety expected to exist in complex systems.

Variety refers to a generally positive state of difference and diversity within a system that occurs in the earlier abbreviated list of communicating, acting, interacting, and self-organizing, each of which is a possibility the complex system can adopt through variety in some way, but not to the degree that all possibilities are materialized, as Luhmann indicates that would be impossible. The variety of the system comes first from many places, including the cognitive, perceptual, emotional, relational, patterning, problem-solving, and opportunity-exploiting. As a foundational variety, the prior makes the listed actions of self-organizing and acting, and so on, possible. The greater the foundational variety, the greater the variety in action, the more possibilities the complex system can produce. Through greater variety, the system has a higher capacity for taking advantage of the opportunities it encounters while having more variation within itself than whatever it is that is a problem for it, and thus continues to sustain itself. The variety within complex systems, or social complex systems in the present case, is essential to complex systems in that it can produce self-organized adaptive behaviors that are advantageous throughout the course of the system’s functioning and survival.

Conclusion

A cassette mixtape and a complex system both have variety. The mixtape has within its plastic and tape the variety of music recorded on it that produces possibilities in the listener or listeners, from a change in emotion to conducting themselves differently. The cassette has a great number of possibilities, though none of which are related to the survival of the tape and its music.

Complex systems have enough variety that they can respond in diverse ways to internal and external problems and opportunities. Variety creates a diverse repertoire of communication, action, interaction, and self-organization that can lead to an adaptable selection of strategies.

Management must always be toward the most possibilities. Complex systems and their constraint structure must open toward more possibilities than the system could ever realistically materialize due to its overwhelming amount of variety, which continually changes at the foundational and action levels, creating dynamic variety in the complex system and producing more possibilities.

References

Cilliers, P. (1998). Complexity & postmodernism: Understanding complex systems. London: Routledge.

Introduction

In August, I posted a shorter piece on Maturana’s time that I then posted to LinkedIn, which fortunately caught the attention of the Complexity Lounge and resulted in an invitation to come speak on the topic. I had delivered a talk in 2021 at the Complexity Lounge titled “Framing Complex Systems: Reality, Language, and Flow,” so this would be a most welcomed return to the community. I was excited to have the opportunity to present again, this time on Maturana’s time. I find time to be an interesting subject, and as I have been studying Maturana for years, it was natural that the two came together. Maturana’s writing on time is not extensive; it includes a letter of acceptance, which has received valuable commentary, and one journal article from 1995. The rest is scattered throughout his works. This talk is not an exhaustive look at everything Maturana wrote about time, but a selection of excerpts that create a complete talk on cultural and biological time.

Lessons Learned

I learn something from every talk I give by first submitting an abstract that is a few weeks or a month beyond where my knowledge presently is, and then closing that gap leading up to the conference. I am sure this is common. I have found this method to be the best way to learn and grow during the conference cycle, even if it is the most stress-inducing.

I did not expect to follow the same process when I was preparing my talk, “Humberto Maturana’s Time: Living in the Present.” I was practiced with the material, had written about it, and delivered a short presentation on the topic. I was feeling stable in my knowledge.

The same day the Complexity Lounge and I came into agreement about the talk on Maturana and time, I started putting slides together. I was fortunate that I had plenty of time and was able to read from Maturana, Heidegger, Husserl, Stiegler, and Varela. Early on, I endeavored to include the prior as part of the discussion, but as time progressed, I realized a singular focus on Maturana would produce the best talk. This was when I started to realize that I had previously made some errors in my understanding of Maturana’s time and had some unexpected opportunities to engage anew with the literature.

The first error was not distinguishing between cultural invented time and biological time (also known as autopoietic time or zero time more popularly). Drawing a distinction between biological time is critical to the entire presentation, and doing so early can provide some much-needed clarity. The biological phenomenon that supports zero time is distinct from the invented dynamics that constitute cultural time. The separation of zero time and cultural time that permeated the final talk was critical to its coherence, message, and flow.

As part of distinguishing cultural time and its past, present, and future from zero time and its continuously changing present, a study of the material revealed that my previous additions of past and present onto zero time were incorrect. Prior attempts failed to draw the distinction between zero, biological time, and cultural invented time, so this distinction made sense. However, in this talk, the two modalities of time were correctly distinguished, and as a result, it was not possible to attach past and future to zero time that has only a massive continuously changing present. In fact, towards the end of the presentation, it was mentioned that if zero time came into contact with the past and future, then it just became “the present,” although surely this is not the only avenue for having a present.

Zero time, the continuously changing present, begins with the autopoiesis, the dynamics of the living. Upon engaging with the material a little more broadly and spending some real time with it, autopoiesis is not something that can be captured in an image, despite the use of one by Maturana and Varela. Autopoiesis is too dynamic for that, and having looked at these images, I formerly thought it was just the change from the molecules interacting and producing molecules that produces the network that produced them that was the focus. However, I am now convinced that the pathways that the molecular processes follow change as well, in addition to how molecular transformations are carried out. As a result, there is a continuously changing present in an ongoing flow of structural transformation. The continuously changing present also gives some insight into the temporal structure of zero time. It is a constant flow of change in the present, as there is no past or future. It is, in other words, an unbounded change taking place in the present. While Maturana writes that humans are autopoietic systems, it seems there might still be a gap between zero time as observation and as a mode of living. Is our way of living also our way of observing if we allow it to be?

Within Maturana’s time, there is no chronological time, no clocks, no watches, no lock screens, no calendars. This makes it all the more mysterious and all the more wondrous at the same time. Cultural time is almost reminiscent of a version of internal time that Varela wrote about, but that becomes attached to Husserl’s three-fold structure of internal time consciousness, which is the wrong sort of temporality, as it is too immediate. Drawing from Husserl, the past of cultural time was labeled “recollection” and the future “expectation” to capture longer time horizons, while also allowing the past, present, and future to be adjustable dimensions depending on what the observer’s focus is.

Conclusion

There is enough material across the slides from this talk to support something larger, such as a journal article or a framework, or both. Although there were some prolonged periods of uncertainty during the process of creating this talk, I could always return to the literature and find my way back to solid ground. Sometimes it was new ground I had not expected, but ground nonetheless. It was an excellent process and has expanded and reworked my understanding of Maturana’s time.

This is a short, experimental post. The grounds for this experimentation is found in working through the experience of COVID-19, fighting wildfires and focused on stability during whatever you consider to be an emergency or a disaster, an incident. This post is about decisions made about what is in the world during periods of upheaval, namely, instability and stability. Upon ruminating on experience, I began to question the notion of stability and how else it might be used in the course of calamity.

Stability, Conventionally

Even in the flow of daily life, stability, the state of being stable, appears as the settling of instability, the slowing of the pace of experienced time, a decrease in turbulence and volatility, and the arrival of a situation that does not involve some kind of expedient action. Stability is evident when the swirling of uncertainty meeting velocity subsides. In conventional wisdom, gaining stability may mean that the storm clouds have parted, some, if not all the way, and the worst is over. In emergency and disaster situations, stability can be ephemeral and arise in periods marked on the timeline of the incident. As said in the last post, these are moments to exploit for all the value that can be tactically and strategically extracted from them before the worlds of those involved become unstable again.

The Stability of Instabilities

Stability can retain its meaning of the state of being stable while referring to conditions that are far from it. Written about in the above are characteristics of stability descending upon a situation. Their inverse is instability, simply the lack of stability; the state of being unstable. To repeat and expand the above from a different perspective, instability comes from quickly moving uncertainty stemming from unknown relationships of cause and effect, rapidly moving experiential time, turbulence, volatility, necessary expedience, and dealing with a situation that is not easily described or explained, and at worst, has the appearance of continually dissolving relationships between things and the things themselves.

Experience suggests that every incident stabilizes eventually, and it can then be grasped hold of, and then the next management phase can begin, though it should be noted that stability can be found during an incident as well. It also seems likely that it might be beneficial to talk about stability as less than an ideal state to capture and reference instabilities. For example, quickly moving uncertainty and change, turbulence, and difficulty making sense of the situation can all persist and be considered stable even though they cause instability. Although factors that cause instability, by definition, are the lack of stability, their persistence acting as antagonists to stability produce a state of stability all the same. Instability becomes stability as the state of instability continues despite being a state of stability that is undesired. The incident has stabilized as one that is unstable as long as the instabilities continue. In this case, the “state of being stable” refers to the staying power of instability that continues to spiral, but can be seen as stable dynamics because it endures. Continued instability is a stable state despite being highly active and unpredictable; instability becomes a stability. By being constant, instability becomes normative and stable despite also being in motion, but this does not negate its stability as a state, as the instability is stable by definition. Ongoing instability is considered a stability in describing the incident. Counterintuitive, yes, but a potentially interesting way of perceiving an emergency. The incident has stabilized as unstable, and this too may be short-lived before stabilizing with stability.

Conclusion

Making decisions that sustained periods of instability are a form of stability changes how the incident’s evolution is perceived. Although periods of instability complicate management efforts, the recurrence of the factors that cause instability is a form of stability, a state of being stable. The incident may be devolving, but it is moving from states of instability stability to stability stability. This produces a bounded and punctuated incident timeline at one level, while another seeks to understand how one state transitioned into the next.

The introduction of complexity to compliment or reimagine what was previously considered simple has the tendency to be presented as somewhat of an intense endeavor, beleaguering the audience with knowledge of feedback loops, open systems, boundaries, artifacts and agents, interaction, patterns, self-organization, adaptation, non-linearities, and the whole being in the part and the part being in the whole and then seeking integration of these concepts into daily or professional life (Axelrod & Cohen, 2000; Cilliers, 1998; Morin, 2008). This route to complexity communication in social or organizational contexts may introduce a considerable cognitive strain, as well as the demands of the array of associated actions, and result in incoherence and frustration. On the other hand, with certain audiences, such as those already familiar with systems thinking, for example, a highly technical approach may be suitable. This post points toward a different, much less technical way of introducing complexity that avoids the tangled mire of a terminology-centric approach focused on the experience of complexity and finding where understandings similar to, or embracing its essence, already exist. The goal is to dispose the audience toward the world in a complex way through a lightweight and clear approach that still has value.

In Context

Roughly, barely, situated in the context of the day, such as that in image one, a consultant communicating complexity, should begin by first seeking the pre-existence of complexity, or perhaps something like it, known and practiced in culturally specific ways. Searching for balances between order and disorder found in either work or daily life practices, as well as in understanding, may evince the presence of complexity or something similar that does not have to be grounded in the literature (Morin, 2008).

Another similarly coarse indicator of complexity, pre-existing efforts to have an audience adopt it by a consultant, is found in how people, places, things, and phenomena are related to and understood to relate to each other. Suppose interactions among entities are known to be fairly rich, meaning “any element in the system influences and is influenced by, quite a few other ones” (Cilliers, 1998, p.3). In that case, there may be a partial understanding comparable to complexity already held by the audience.

While the source may be non-linear causality, feedback loops, open systems, system history, and unpredictability of trajectory, these concepts may be lived as the experientially learned lesson that things do not always turn out as one would expect them to, a key characteristic of complexity. It is highly probable that complexity or a similar concept encountered in work or social contexts is found in lived experience and not in detached reasoning over the concepts involved.

As a consultant seeking to communicate and then ideally integrate complexity into an audience at the level of the whole or within aspects of it, perhaps finding its essence is equal to the initial success that is being sought. Complexity already exists, just not in the manner typically imagined.

It is very likely that a spirit of complexity found in the audience may be diffuse and not yet be established in a particular context, but still exists. As a consultant, the strategy would first attempt to scale existing complex manners of relating if they are found to be scalable.

If complexity-like understandings are not found throughout the audience, a consultant may elect to introduce complexity. Although potentially ethically questionable (you should relate to the world this way), if it is desired that the audience in question start to relate to the world in a complex way, then it is suggested that it mirror the relationality found in the above, where complexity is part of lived experience and not as much a matter of recalling and applying concepts.

For example, a consultant might teach about the rich interactions of the windmill in image two, such as with the farm that produces the grain that the windmill may grind, and the weather that makes production of grain possible and spins the windmill’s sails and moves the internal mechanisms and turns the grain into food products for a family. Of course, the grain must first be transported from the fields to the windmill in order for it to be ground by mechanisms powered by the wind over dirt roads and through variable weather. The windmill, the farm, the grain, the family, the weather, the transportation, the mechanical components, and the ground grain product are all affected by and affect other elements in this collective (Cilliers, 1998).

It should be taught that a high level of interactivity is not a reason for paralysis, but recognizing extensive interaction and deciding how to use that knowledge advantageously and carefully when intervening and making changes. This important interaction exercise may be repeated several times with elements familiar to the audience to offer an alternative perspective from isolated things to entangled components that are in a process of becoming exactly as they exist in the audience’s world (Holland, 1992). By using familiar elements, detachment is instead a continued immersion of the audience in their own context.

In an earlier post, Morin’s (2008) presentation of complexity as a mixture of order and disorder was central. Here, in the task of introducing complexity to others, it is relevant once again and must be taught. It is critical to communicate that the environment around the audience may be filled with areas of disorder, for example, the world around the windmill, that change constantly and unpredictably, that are difficult to distinguish, describe, and explain, and where the right answer emerges only in retrospect (Axelrod & Cohen, 2000). Immersed in these disordered areas, actions may not produce expected or even observable outcomes. Although it is impossible to determine the behavior of these areas over time, exploratively interacting with them may create information that can then be applied to subsequent interactions and form the basis of a strategy, however short-lived it might be as change continues.

It must also be understood that the world is filled with sections of order, for example, the windmill, characterized by certainty, stability, regularity, and actions that yield expected outcomes. Order is a platform for building and exploiting the current situation, such as using the wind to repeatedly grind grain (Axelrod & Cohen, 2000). At times, there can be more disorder than order in the world, and vice versa, and what was once orderly can become disorderly, and the other way around. It is best to teach adaptability and not to count on the world staying the way it is forever. Unexpected events are the rule and not the exception, and one must be prepared for them (Morin, 2008).

Conclusion

This post endeavored to provide an example of introducing complexity to others in a straightforward, lightweight manner that avoids what is perceived here as more technical, jargon-filled, and theoretically heavy methods, of which there are many exceptions. The focus was first on finding spots in an audience where an understanding similar to complexity existed before turning to how to impart complexity to others in an accessible way that is enough to act on, but hopefully not overwhelming. While incomplete, this post was a first attempt on this blog at communicating complexity to others in a clear, dispositional way with the intention of providing just enough information for others to act on. Interaction and a changing balance of order and disorder are central lessons to teach an audience that may be used to identify complexity and begin to act differently.

References

Axelrod, R., & Cohen, M. D. (2000). Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications of a scientific frontier. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Cilliers, P. (1998). Complexity & postmodernism: Understanding complex systems. London: Routledge.

Holland, J. H. (1992). Complex adaptive systems. Daedalus, 121(1), 17-30.

Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. (R. Postel, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Introduction

There is important ongoing work creating fire-adapted communities in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). I am fortunate to be able to interact with one of the involved networks, Fire Adapted Colorado, talk with others, and learn about the fire-adapted initiatives taking place around the state. The fire-adapted culture is significantly different from what I experienced in suppression, as it needs to be, but I recognize fire-adapted communities as a way forward, and that adaptation can be materialized in many different ways.

Time and Ways

Recently, I have been busy with a study of time in preparation for giving a talk on the subject at the Complexity Lounge this November. The process of studying and interpreting a specific time narrative has been fulfilling and has inspired many questions. Although it has been asked before, I have spent time contemplating the implications of different organizational levels on experiences of time, which led to a question about fire adaptation in the WUI.

I have become curious as to whether homeowners asking different questions about time might produce different responses from the perspective of fire adaptation.

The literature I have been studying specifies three questions about time.

The past:

• How does the past explain the arrival of the present?

The future:

• What if the present were conserved into the future?

• What if the present is transformed into the future?

These are not only the questions that can be asked about time, but they are some of them, and they are important. Questions about time are always asked in time, as time cannot be detached from, though different forms of time can be entered into other than pure chronological time. Even when time is questioned, we are still within it, in duration, sequence, and simultaneity, at a minimum.

How does this relate to the WUI and fire adaptation? It depends. Each of the three questions includes a particular temporal horizon of a certain length, width, detail, whether coarse or granular, and either a recollection or an expectation, all contingent upon who is asking and why. If some form of these questions (and more) is asked regarding time (in time), the nature of the question asked changes depending on its motivation and content, and then gives a different answer. As the answer changes, so does how the present is lived in, to include what decisions are made, and what actions are taken regarding wildfire risk.

If the nature of the question about how the past delivered the present entails a short time horizon, then the answer will only bring into the present a small segment of the past that can then be considered as an explanation as to how the present arrived. Shorter time horizons may only consider a period of time during which the community did not experience fires and thus explain (away) fire risk as “this community does not experience fires and we are safe here.” This is in contrast to asking a longer, rather than a shorter, question about time and folding into the present a much longer temporal horizon that recollects a destructive wildfire many decades ago that burned part of the community. The same longer horizon question about time may reveal fires that were quickly contained, situations where the community was in the path of a fire but it was stopped before it made contact, or prolonged periods where the community was under a red flag warning. Different questions about time offer varying explanations about how the present came to be: Either as historic disruption-free normalcy or through past adjacent or actualized calamity.

In addition to questions about the past, questions can be asked about the future that depend not only on how far into the future of fire risk they consider, but what specifically is asked. If it is asked about how things will stay the same, the question is preference-based on a desirable present in need of consideration. However, over a long enough time span, the conservation of a preferred present and its wildfire risk becomes less and less probable unless the involved dynamics can be artificially held static or at a distance through human intervention (which is resource-intensive). Nonetheless, if it is held by the person asking the question that the present will repeat itself into the future, then there is no need to take any action except for those already taken, as there will be no considerable deviations from what has already happened requiring adaptation.

The question about transformation may also be asked. How will the future transform itself away from the present conditions? Answers to this question are again contingent upon the amount of time taken into consideration. A time horizon of one to five years may not yield enough potential transformation to adequately inform what adaptive measures should be taken and may produce only short-term investments. However, a five to ten-year data- and speculation-driven view on transformation into the future may support longer-term investments into adaptive measures taken by homeowners that follow how conditions and dynamics are expected to transform over time. Following the transformation uneven trajectory may help communities overcome current and anticipated perturbations brought by wildfires.

Conclusion

This brief post has considered whether asking different questions about time would change responses related to fire adaptation. The result of this thought experiment is that asking larger questions about time relates positively to fire adaptive actions. Questions about the past that extend into history in search of answers are able to inform the now more fully, with the community’s history with wildfire brought to the fore, which informs the present. A component of informing the present that is produced through asking extended questions about the past is creating a disposition toward asking larger questions about the future and how it may transform over an extended time period. It is safe to conclude here that asking questions about time that extend far enough into the past to produce an informative horizon that incorporates key wildfire events may be disposed toward asking questions about how the future of wildfire risk will transform and what future to become adapted to.

According to Morin (2008), complexity is linked to an intimate combination of order and disorder. Morin (2008) might have more directly said that complexity is related to a balance of order and disorder. Not a balance on a tightrope or a knife’s edge, but a thicker, wider balance with space to accommodate change before any kind of considerable transition to a bordering state occurs. Nonetheless, Morin (2008) writes that “order and disorder are two enemies: one abolishes the other, but at the same time, in certain cases, they collaborate and produce organization and complexity” (p.49). If complexity’s mixture of order and disorder becomes dominated by disorder and unstable, void of local patterns, inhospitable to structures forming, and moving at a high rate of speed, the complex has become chaotic.

If the mixture of disorder and order were to become primarily orderly and overrun disorder with solid, rigid structures, order would exist where there was once complexity.

In organizations managed as complex systems, care and sensitivity must be exercised to keep the combination of order and disorder within the bordering states of order and chaos, and perhaps ideally more toward the middle. Every activity, formal and informal, within an organization, enacting Cilliers’ (1998) characteristics of complex systems or other ideas, can change the balance to be less or more orderly. If the goal is an organization as a complex system, part of achieving a balance between order and disorder is an appropriate mix of enabling and governing constraints that do not over- or under-constrain the system. By over-constraining the system, the number of possibilities that the system can adopt is reduced far enough that the system becomes ordered. If the system is under-constrained and too many possibilities are introduced, it becomes chaotic (Juarrero, 2023).

Order is defined by Morin (2008) as “everything that is repetition, constant, invariant, everything that can be put under the aegis of a highly probable relation, framed with the dependence of law” (p.62). On the other hand, disorder “refers to everything that is irregularity, deviation as regards a certain structure, random, unpredictability” (p.63). Morin (2008) observes that in a world dominated by order, there would not be any creation or innovation. At the same time, in a world of disorder, there would be no stability upon which an organization could be founded (Morin, 2008). Of course, organizations need both order and disorder. In fact, while discussing disorder, Morin (1992) describes its importance.

Disorder is active everywhere. It permits (fluctuations), nourishes (encounters) the constitution and the development of organized phenomena. It co-organizes and disorganizes alternately and simultaneously. All becoming is marked by disorder: ruptures, schisms, deviances are conditions of creation, birth, morphogenesis (p.72).

Morin’s (2008) definitions of order and disorder add depth and detail to the ongoing conversation of order and disorder in organizations. Layering on top of common conceptions of disorder, the term now also means irregularity, unpredictability, and deviation from a structure, while order is also invariant, constant, and repetition. To add to the earlier discussion of over- and under-constraining a complex system, managers who seek organizations as complex systems must be sensitive to how much repetition and invariance that is being added into the system through new strategies, policies, plans, and management styles that can overpower needed disorder with order. On the other hand, there must be an awareness of how much unpredictability and irregularity are being added to the system and overwhelming the stabilizing order needed to make an organization possible, while still enabling a degree of disorder that makes creation, innovation, and liberty possible before transitioning to chaos (Morin, 1992; Morin, 2008).

Morin (2008) is correct that organizations need both order and disorder. As this post argues, there needs to be a dynamic balance that maintains the organization’s complexity while allowing it to temporarily waver one way or the other and back again, while spending most of the time in the middle, in the complex. If there is to be an adoption of complex systems as organizations, beyond the positive local signs, the ability to maintain a dynamic balance between order and disorder will be high on the list of necessary competencies.

References

Cilliers, P. (1998). Complexity & postmodernism: Understanding complex systems. London: Routledge.

Juarrero, A. (2023). Context changes everything: How constraints create change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. (R. Postel, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Morin, E. (1992). Method: toward a study of humankind: the nature of nature (Vol. 1). (B. J.L. Roland, Trans.) New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Introduction

This essay provides a brief overview of complexity and chaos theory, along with their implications for emergency response operations. Chaos and complexity theory can reshape understandings and approaches to response operations, fostering new levels of awareness, more adaptive practices, and improved strategies for managing fluctuating patterns of order and disorder.

Chaos Theory and Some Insights

Chaos may begin as a system, meaning an interrelated whole that produces qualities at the global level that none of its elements could create on their own (Morin, 1974). Given the right energy and accumulation of disorder, the system can phase transition into chaos, where it loses coherence, and the constitutive elements become unpredictable and unstable, with relationships among them breaking apart as soon as they are formed (Waldrop, 1992). While the system as a coherent whole is lost, patterns may be visible if the elements, such as teams, resources, and individuals, can be observed over a long enough period and from a great enough distance (Waldrop, 1992; Wheatley, 2006). Chaos theory provides a powerful lens and language for describing and explaining an incident or resource when they disintegrate, lose their form, and begin to descend into a state where nothing persists or is stable. Operationally, knowledge of chaos provides a pragmatic set of understandings and descriptions for making sense of all phases of an emergency response. A general knowledge of chaos is of use to managers and resources alike, as it provides an understanding of where one is in the present on the spectrum of order and chaos and suggests what action to take.

Beyond the operational context and back at the resource’s station, chaos can be intentionally used as a method to foster innovation. The literature surrounding the Cynefin Framework, a sense-making framework used to aid decision-making, suggests that intentionally entering chaos can inspire innovation (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Snowden & Boone, 2007). A temporary chaotic state is achieved by removing the constraints that typically govern a system, such as a resource (Morin, 1992; Snowden, 2017). This disruption alters relationships, workgroups, and beliefs, moving the system into chaos. An intentional dive into chaos could be facilitated in a discussion-based exercise by forming attendees into new groups, suspending beliefs (what if “x” was not true?), or (what if “y” was not in place?), and proposing long-term transformative goals. In a less abstract setting, a brief intentional movement into chaos could occur during an operations-based exercise by removing central leadership and allowing others to fill the gaps. In either scenario, the goal is to disrupt the system just enough for novelty to emerge, whether it be new knowledge, new approaches, or new relationships (Snowden & Boone, 2007).

From at least one perspective, chaos is a state of total turbulence where nothing forms (Waldrop, 1992). In the context of emergency response operations, chaos might manifest as resources “going rogue” or “freelancing” in the absence of a coherent strategy, and as order breaks down. According to the Cynefin Framework, this is not a desirable state and should be left quickly by establishing order through proposing and implementing a plan (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003). In this way, chaos is understood as something one should swiftly exit once they realize they are in it. While Cynefin suggests leaving chaos expediently, emergency response operations might not always have that option, which is where having a general knowledge of chaos and understanding how it can occur is imperative for responding to and managing emergencies.

Lastly, chaos theory might also be leveraged toward managing responses that cannot easily be moved down the gradient to order. In cases of total turbulence, unpredictability, and unrepeatability, chaos theory indicates that even in the absence of a coherent system, patterns known as attractors may still be visible if enough data can be gathered over a long enough time frame or perhaps if the right set of eyes observes the situation (Capra & Luisi, 2015). While a response might look incoherent over shorter periods, coherence might be found over time even in the absence of a bounded system. Working with chaos temporarily rather than trying to eradicate and establish order may be a significant opportunity for emergency response, as the field finds itself situated on an increasingly dynamic landscape (Phelan, 1999; Wheatley, 2006).

Complexity Theory and Insights

In the words of Morin (1974), “Complexity begins as soon as there is some system, that is, interrelations between various elements in a unit which becomes a complex unit” (one and manifold; p.88). Such a system may be a complex adaptive system (CAS), defined as a system that adapts and evolves in response to changes in its environment and inside itself (Holland, 2014; Waldrop, 1992). A CAS exists on the edge of chaos, embodying a dynamic balance of order and disorder (Morin, 2008). This balance is first expressed in the internal environment, where transitory islands of order emerge amidst a sea of dynamic disorder (Waldrop, 1992). Within their boundaries, everything in a CAS is entangled, meaning that changes in one element produce changes in others. The relationships among the parts are also nonlinear, so changes in one element can lead to disproportionate effects on other distant elements, often long after the initial cause (Cilliers, 1998). Complex adaptive systems continuously evolve as their constitutive elements interact and adapt with one another and the external environment. This evolutionary trajectory is unpredictable in the long term and does not move toward a stable, global optimum, since the relationships among the elements and the elements themselves are always changing (Holland, 1992; Holland, 2014). Complexity theory has various applications in emergency response operations, but two stand out. First, it can be used as a lens for understanding the operations, and second, as a target state for managing and organizing.

Like chaos, understanding complexity is valuable to emergency response operations. While it marks a waypoint on the gradient between order and chaos, complexity also provides new insights into how the field of emergency response perceives itself. Response systems typically exist toward the ordered end of the order-chaos gradient in domains such as “complicated” or “simple” due to decisions made to structure them this way and maintain that structure regardless of the environment (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003). Routine aspects of emergency response should be preserved toward the ordered end, as they do not require innovation or adaptation and provide stability (Donaldson, 2001). For situations that demand quick responses to changing conditions and the discovery of new methods and understandings, CAS is promising.

If key steps are taken, such as using CAS as a basis for training, managing, organizing, and planning ahead of an emergency, it is conceivable that emergency response systems may ultimately benefit from CAS. The role of emergency response managers then becomes understood as more of a hub in a vast network that distributes information and resources rather than as a central authority figure (Capra & Luisi, 2015; Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Wheatley, 2006). From this perspective, strategy and tactics emerge from the interactions among the elements and their environment, rather than from solely centralized decision-making (Morin & Kern, 1999). Leadership still plays an influential role, intervening when necessary to support desirable emerging patterns and discourage undesirable ones (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003). It is also certain that ongoing movement within the system will occur due to interactions and the balance of order and chaos shifting. This will require an adjustment in expectations, as some degree of disorder will coexist with order. Recognizing that this is not only part of CAS but also a fundamental aspect of any human organization may unlock new potential from both the realms of order and disorder (Morin, 2008).

Suppose emergency response organizations recognize that they can thrive at the boundary of chaos in CAS. In that case, it may become an ideal target state for operations throughout the disaster risk management cycle. The dynamic balance between order and disorder embodied by CAS allows it to innovate and adapt without plunging into chaos or becoming overly constrained by order. In an emergency environment, a CAS can utilize a distributed power structure to respond to emerging needs, new information, and shifting priorities (Cilliers, 1998).

Whether considering emergency response operations or a new effort to enhance community resilience, CAS can provide a theoretical foundation. Central to CAS is the idea that one cannot forecast how a plan of action will unfold over time. Time in this context could be as short as an operational period or as long as a year. Planning from a CAS perspective emphasizes sense-making, includes methods to halt action, and enables continual adaptation. If the plan ceases to be effective, it is adjusted in place. A key element of this approach is that those implementing the plan are empowered to make decisions to modify it over time and incorporate new information. This creates a local feedback loop between action and information, unimpeded by organizational layers (Morin, 2008; Morin & Kern, 1999). By making these and other adjustments and reflecting them in management’s attitudes, a CAS may emerge from a previously ordered system.

Conclusion

Chaos and complexity theories provide emergency response operations with new foundations, language, and perspectives across various practice areas and self-perception. Rather than striving to eliminate disorder, both theories suggest ways to work effectively by balancing order and disorder, and in the case of chaos, overwhelming disorder. They offer insights into the natural states of how entities exist in the world. From these theories, various implications arise that relate to the operational context, emergency response resources, and their interrelationships. Policies, plans, strategies, and tactics can be developed to eschew chaos and embrace complexity as a method of managing, organizing, and observing the environment.

References

Capra, F., & Luisi, P. L. (2015). The systems view of life: A unifying vision. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Cilliers, P. (1998). Complexity & postmodernism: Understanding complex systems. London: Routledge.

Donaldson, L. (2001). The contingency theory of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

Holland, J. H. (1992). Complex adaptive systems. Daedalus, 121(1), 17-30.

Holland, J. H. (2014). Signals and boundaries: Building blocks for complex adaptive systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kurtz, C. F., & Snowden, D. J. (2003). The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42(3), 462-483.

Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. (R. Postel, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Morin, E. (1974). Epistemology - complexity. In E. Morin & A. Heath-Carpentier (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (pp. 86–108). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.

Morin, E. (1992). Method: Toward a study of humankind: the nature of nature (Vol. 1). (B. J.L. Roland, Trans.) New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Morin, E., & Kern, A. B. (1999). Homeland earth: A manifesto for the new millennium. (S. M. Kelly, & R. LaPointe, Trans.) Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Phelan, S. E. (1999). A note on the correspondence between complexity and systems theory. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 237–246.

Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76.

Waldrop, M. M. (1992). The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York, NY: Touchstone.

Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler.

I held a discussion-based lecture earlier this summer that was rooted in Edgar Morin's theory, combined with real-world experience, focusing mainly on organizational complexity during incident response operations. The term "incident" is now widely used across different communities of practice. Incident can be defined through Morin’s work, a French philosopher and sociologist, by substituting a more subdued version of the word "crisis” with the word "incident,” which then takes on the meaning that it “merely allows someone to say that something is wrong.” Using Morin's words as a working definition of incidents makes it broadly applicable across various fields.

This discussion provides an early introduction to complexity before exploring advanced applications. Morin has been writing about complexity since 1974, making him an excellent source to start and finish a comprehensive look at complexity applied to incident operations. The goal is to define what complexity is and how to adapt management to it when it is present. Its findings are applicable across contexts. Whether you are interested in complexity or already have expertise, I believe you will enjoy it. The video version is below.

Contact: greg@operationalcoherence.com

www.operationalcoherence.com

Introduction

What is already known that has the capacity to support processes of behavioral adoption and product engagement? This short essay continues where the previous one left off, with Maturana and others’ vision studies leading to the major discovery of the closure of the nervous system. The following discusses some of the implications of closure related to the opening question. The findings continue to draw attention to the relationship between humans and the world around them, which can be used to gain insight into human performance in the context of behavior adoption and product engagement.

Missing the Midas Touch

For this short essay on influencing behavior adoption and product engagement, the story of King Midas is an appropriate beginning. King Midas exchanged his services to the god Dionysos for the ability to turn everything he touched to gold, including flowers, the grass, his food and drink, the table, and most regretfully of all, his daughter when he wrapped her in an embrace (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). Regardless of the tragic ending, the King’s most significant failing, might the Midas touch be sought after by those doing the work of seeking behavioral adoption and product engagement? Might the Midas touch desirably circumvent the human performance challenges currently being experienced and increase the rates of compliance?

The story of King Midas is represented in Maturana (1983), who discusses the “instructive interactions” Dionysos made possible, where everything the King touched turned to gold. Maturana describes instructive interactions as those where anything touched by a human, including other humans, would adopt the features determined through their touch. As a result, everything would eventually look the same, and it would be impossible to tell things apart. It is on the basis of Maturana’s experiments with color vision that the nervous system was found to be closed and not admitting of instructive interactions, as was demonstrated in the previous essay.

Due to the nervous system’s closure, it is impossible to linearly transmit information, behavior, understanding, and properties from one human to another through touch or by any other means. The studies in color vision in “Of Remembering Old Wine” showed that the external world cannot be objectively communicated to the nervous system. Rather, it is the activity of the nervous system that can be correlated internally with color experience. This overturns the long-held assumption that humans merely process information from sources external to them, as if they are passive computers receiving pure signals from the world outside. Instead, humans, through the nervous system, bring forth the world they live in, which is triggered by the external world, but not specified by it. Midas also failed by asking Dionysos (and he who granted it) for an ability that violates the biology of the closed nervous system of his daughter, and the living and non-living things he touched along the way (next essay). Midas's most significant failing was breaking the biological order.

Looking at the findings of color vision, a component of perception and the nervous system it belongs to, and scaling it to all perceptual spaces, difficulties with behavioral adoption and product engagement emerge. Whether they are engaged with or not, they remain issues, but they can be made sense of through the literature, even if they cannot be changed. With instructive interactions made impossible by the nervous system’s closure, there is, as a consequence, no 1:1 correspondence between the world and anything put in it and the human perceiver. There are “things” external to humans, but they only trigger and do not determine activity within the nervous system and its internal correlations. What is presented to a human is not processed in a true, objective form, but rather encountered by the other on the basis of their nervous system, a situation which becomes challenging when individuals bring forth through their biology opposing worlds. As communication takes place between one world and the other, what was considered information and knowledge by one may be distinguished as noise by the other. What one world conceives of as excellent product design may be found to be inappropriate for its use by an individual in another world. Biology is at the core.

In some instances, it may appear as if instructive interactions were possible. Of course, this is not the case as the structure of the nervous system does not permit such interactions. Interactions that can be likened to those called instructive are instead representative of the variability of the nervous system when moving from individual to individual, making it appear as if an instructive interaction took place. It is probable, but not guaranteed, that in any population, individuals with a nervous system state complementary to the behavioral adoption or product engagement effort will be encountered, underlying the appearance of instructive interactions, but it is an illusion. It is important that the experience of a successful interaction, appearing to instruct another linearly, should not form the expectations of future interchanges, such as those where the outcomes do not align with the desired behavior adoption or product engagement. Situations where wanted outcomes are not produced do not constitute failings, but are rather indicative of the complexity of the nervous system.

Conclusion

King Midas’s golden touch may at first seem desirable to anyone who wishes to change the behavior of others, as well as how and if they make use of products. The myth’s tragic ending surely makes the ability seem less desirable, but the beginning of the story, where touch or interaction produced desired results, may still seem advantageous. Looking back on the path of seeking others to adopt certain behaviors, it may seem the case that Midas’s touch, known as an instructive interaction in Maturana’s (1983) work, was possible while in others, instructive engagements seem impossible.

Drawing from the foundation established in “Of Remembering Old Wine,” the nervous system was found to be closed and therefore not accept any instructive interactions. The next in this miniseries will discuss interactions between the world and the closed nervous system through Maturana’s notion of structural determinism.

Midas remains a myth. In some instances, there are power differentials that give the appearance of instructional interaction. All authority constraints on behavior have actually accomplished is reducing the number of possibilities that can be pursued by the person or persons being instructed, and in turn making compliance more likely.

The notion of instructive interactions belongs to the information processing and computation conceptualization of the human and non-human animal possessing a nervous system. Closed instead of open, the human nervous system does not passively receive and process into internally held images information from the outside objective world. It would be impossible for it to do so. Instead, the outside world is brought forth through the internal activity of the nervous system, triggered internally and externally (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011).

References

Maturana, H. R. (1983). What is to see? Archivo de Biología y Medicina Experimentales, 16(3-4), 255-269.

Maturana, H. R., & Poerksen, B. (2011). From being to doing: The origins of the biology of cognition (2nd ed.). (W. K. Koeck, & A. R. Koeck, Trans.) Kaunas, Lithuania: Carl-Auer.

For consulting, visit www.operationalcoherence.com.

Introduction

What is already known that has the capacity to support processes of behavioral adoption and product engagement? Ample applicable insight can be found in the research of Dr. Humberto Maturana, whose work has been studied throughout the essays found on this blog. At any point in the history of Maturana’s work, there are any number of avenues that could be pursued. Particularly interesting is his research from the 1950s to the 1980s, where he was preoccupied with studying vision, with a unique attention on color vision, which is the focus here. Why color vision? Color vision research communicates something indicative of the relationship between humans and the world around them, and something taken as fundamental in it. The relationship indicated by this research is supportive of understanding behavioral adoption and product engagement. This essay slowly builds toward the notion of “bringing forth” the world around us, expanded upon in the next essay, which offers insight into the variability in willingness to adopt behaviors and use products.

Old Wine

Revisiting Maturana’s work from seventy years ago and more recently revitalizes an important perspective. A discussion of his older work was more recently shared in Maturana and Poerkson (2011), which pairs with the original publications for a comprehensive understanding. The purpose of this post is to examine Maturana’s color vision experiments to set an important foundation for the rest of this miniseries.

Color Vision

Initially, Maturana’s objective was to demonstrate how the colors of the external world, defined by their spectral composition for experimental replicability, correlate with what happens in the retina (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). The goal was then to prove connections between colors and the retina's activities. Maturana supposed that he would be able to show an unmistakable correlation between the activity of the retina in the pigeon’s eye and color (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011).

Maturana was unable to prove the forecasted correlation (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). It would be found that the experience of a colorful world is not connected to a correspondence between the wavelength structure of light emitted from the environment and the activity in the retina (Maturana & Varela, 1992).

Maturana recalled that names are arbitrary, and he was conscious of the fact that, as humans, we use the same color name for a wide array of color experiences (Maturana & Varela, 1992; Nelson, 2011). Meaning, the names we use to describe colors are signs of an individual’s experience of color and not color in some objective sense. Maturana engaged with the odd question of whether or not activity in the retina could be found to be linked with color names, which manifest in humans as a certain experience. Was there a possible internal correspondence between the happenings of the retina and different states of nervous system activity (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011)? Could the activity in the retina be correlated with the human color experience (Maturna & Varela, 1980)?

The task before Maturana, at which he succeeded, was to establish a different correlation, one between the retina and particular color experiences characterized by the use of a specific color name. Maturana’s experimental approach completely reversed the normative one of drawing a connection between the retina and colors external to it, and instead focused on what happened in the retina correlated with the subject’s color experience (Maturana & Varela, 1980; Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). The experience of a colorful world is not connected to the wavelength structure of light emitted from the environment, but rather a correlation between the naming of colors and nervous system activity (Maturana & Varela, 1992). Color is not something externally caused but rather triggered by a hue beyond the human, which leads to a certain experience distinguished by a name separate from an objective measurement of color. Color is a matter of internal rather than external correlations. Beyond color, these findings apply similarly to form, movement, texture, and other visual experiences (Maturana & Varela, 1992).

Maturana (1983) stated that it was possible to create the entirety of the human color space through his approach of corresponding the naming of colors with retinal activity and not the usual approach of correlating external colors with the retina. In an earlier article, Maturana, Uribe, and Frenk (1968) explained that it is impossible to generate the color space of humans by attempting to correspond retinal action with color. Instead, the color space can be created by correlating different patterns of varying types of cells in the retina with the name attributed to the color experienced by the subject (Maturana, 1983).

Conclusion

The above insights effectively closed the nervous system, which, including the human or non-human animal that embodies it, was previously considered to be an open information processing unit. By showing that changes in the nervous system (retinal cells) correlated with color naming and experience, and not the previously held idea that external color wavelengths correlated with changes represented in the retina, the nervous system was discovered to be closed. External stimuli such as products or calls to action can only perturb a human being and trigger, but not determine, what change occurs. It is the nervous system’s structure that determines what change, if any, will occur in the vast network of neuronal elements and how the present state will unfold into future states of activity. The closure of the nervous system will be the topic of the next short essay.

The conclusions about color vision drawn by Maturana and others are remarkable and have implications for product and communication design. More significantly, the findings of color vision are representative of how individuals find the world around them. The world cannot be objective, as it is not purely and “truthfully” communicated to the nervous system; rather, the nervous system brings forth the world around it based on its state the moment it encounters a stimulus such as a color. At the same time, humans do not construct the world as they wish it to be in an entirely subjective manner, as the world experienced is a matter of nervous system structure and activity and not purely decisions about what and how the world exists (Varela, 2006).

References

Maturana, H. R. (1983). What is to see? Archivo de Biología y Medicina Experimentales, 16(3-4), 255-269.

Maturana, H. R., & Poerksen, B. (2011). From being to doing: The origins of the biology of cognition (2nd ed.). (W. K. Koeck, & A. R. Koeck, Trans.) Kaunas, Lithuania: Carl-Auer.

Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (Vol. 42). (R. S. Cohen, & W. W. Marx, Eds.) Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Maturana, H. R., Uribe, G., & Frenk, S. (1968). A biological theory of relativistic colour coding. Archivos de Biología y Medicina Experimentales, 1, 1-30.

Nelson, V. M. (2011). The specificity of immunologic observations. Constructivist Foundations, 6(3), 334-339.

Varela, F. J. (2006). Ethical know-how: Action, wisdom, and cognition. (T. Lenoir, & H. U. Gumbrecht, Eds.) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

What follows is an interpretation of time derived from the work of Humberto Maturana. Maturana’s perspective on time, spread mainly across one letter and one article, has interesting and important implications for relating to the present in both personal and professional life. Central to his viewpoint on time is the idea of “zero time,” presented as biological in nature (Maturana, 2008). The essential components of zero time are presented below, offered primarily as an alternative means for understanding and relating to human experience while engaging in craft-based activities.

This work and its interpretations were first presented at the 2024 Colorado Wildland Fire Conference in Snowmass, Colorado.

The Passing Present Does not Always Happen in Time

In what other ways could the present pass if not in time? Zero time is presented here as an alternative approach to the passing present in (time) for select members of an enterprise, a type of social system or, more accurately, a socio-technical system. In an enterprise where inflows are transformed into outflows that generate revenue, cultural time, which in this case is chronological “clock time”, is still needed at the management level and higher. However, zero time may be appropriate for those in the system who are engaged in activities that can be defined as craft, whether coding, having conversations, or otherwise designing. The members of the system who are engaged in craft should do so in zero time so as not to be encumbered with often distracting and panic-inducing clock time to open a wider space for craft activities. Still, it may be necessary for those who are living in clock time to manage those in zero time.

Chronological time grants total primacy to the passing of seconds, minutes, and hours, which tell the observer how much time has passed - the passing of time is in the watch. Zero time, on the other hand, is centered entirely on the continuously changing present of the environment.

We human beings find ourselves existing in the present, in a continuously changing present, when we ask ourselves how we exist (Maturana, 2005, pp. 56-57).

In zero time, the width of the continuously changing present relates to the craft-based task at hand. For example, the continuously changing present of cutting down a single tree with a chainsaw is far narrower than a sales conversation or designing a web page. Granting the continuously changing present primacy changes how the present is experienced, including its duration. What matters is not an external device that lays time over experience, but the observation of the present as it continuously changes and what happens within it.

Duration in the continuously changing present is experienced through watching the progression of transformation of objects, processes, relationships, and humans over time. The appearance of an entity marks the first referent, while marked points in their transformation serve as subsequent referents through which duration can be experienced and the velocity of change determined, which is relative to the observer. Several moving referents provide multiple durations. The continuously changing present passes, not in time, but through the experience of craft in a continuously changing present.

The continuous present is far from hollow. It is filled with the shifting totality of what the human observes as the present changes. To be immersed in the changing present with no sense of cultural time is to be in the flow of the changing present, with change both initiated by the observer as well as sources within the environment of the continuously changing present. Like seconds, minutes, and hours in clock time, in zero time, only the continuously changing present is relevant, including its contents, flow, smoothness, velocity, meaning, patterns, interactions, the creation of new knowledge, communicating, designing, and exploring. The continuously changing present is far from empty. Rather than living in watches, those who operate in the continuously present change live in it with all of its variables.

If prosaic clocks that are dwelt in throughout the day assist in producing feelings of dread, anxiety, and fear, living in the continuously changing present is a more pure, unadulterated, poetic, less anxiety-provoking mode of existence. Zero time is centered around the absence of time as the observer is immersed in what is, without the feelings of time compression or clock involvement. There is still experience of duration, contingent upon the referents the observer selects and their memory and attention.

Again, zero time is for those who are engaged in some form of craft-based activity that ought not to be measured by clocks, especially when the total time of production is unknown and the work is highly interactive such as the case with conversations that ebb and flow, come in and out with the tide, go left and then right and then left again. Compressing the process affects the means and, by consequence, the ends. Not everyone in an organization should make use of zero time, nor would there likely be a “pure” zero time without periodic engagements with cultural chronological time. Still, zero time would comprise the overwhelming majority of the experience of the continuously changing present for those who adopt it. Zero time is thought to increase attention, engagement, sense-making abilities, and the creation of constellations of events.

The Past & The Future

Maturana (2008) writes, “We human beings exist in the present, in a continuously changing present, the past and the future do not exist as such, and they are manners of being now, in the present” (p.2). As it is adapted to fit zero time here, in the continuously changing present, the past is an explanation of how the present arrived. Maturana (2005) explains: “We invented the notion of past as a negative dimension in the imagined space that we call time to be to be able to explain how is it that we become as we are at any moment in the flow of our continuous change in our here and now” (p.60). The size and significance of the past and future are relative to the breadth of the continuously changing present being observed and considered in zero time and its velocity, complexity, and chaos.

The future in zero time is presented in two different ways in the literature. Maturana (2008) imagines the following: “The future is a manner of living now in the proposition of what would happen if the operational coherences of the present being lived now are conserved in the continuously changing present being lived” (p.2). In the 2005 article, Maturana writes, “the future is an image that we live now of how our now will be transformed” (p.57). There is a tension between conserving the coherences of daily life into the future (the continuously changing present being lived) and positing the future as an image of the coherences being lived, transformed. This tension is not resolved in Maturana’s writings about time, though it has the value of inspiring observers to think about multiple futures their craft or its outputs may have to function in. For example, what if everything stayed the same? What if our daily being was transformed? What if the future moves at a higher velocity? What if the complexity increases?

As Maturana (2008) mentioned earlier, the past and the future are ways of being in the here and now, the nowness of the continuously changing present. Either the past or the future can be folded into the present as a manner of dwelling in it. In certain instances, it may be prudent to pull more of the future into the present to consider how the coherences of everyday living may be transformed or conserved moving forward, and what to design for. Being in the past in the present may be ideal for reflecting on how the enterprise arrived where it is or interrogating the past, so the same mistakes are not made in the now.

Time as a Spatial Dimension

Time is introduced in Maturana (2005/2008) as an imaginary spatial dimension: “Time is an imaginary spatial dimension, created to explain the course of the flow of change in a changing present” (Maturana, 2005, p.60). Traditional chronological time places events as exactly when they occurred, drawn out in a straight line: “to spatialise time, seeing it as linear moving it in one direction” (Willis, 2021, p.78). For cultural clock time movement, exclusively linearized is correct. It is mechanically possible to turn time backwards chronologically, but this is only an isolated example that has no implications for cultural time as a totality. Time marches on.

In zero time, it is appropriate to suspend the constraint of time moving in one direction and grant the observer the ability to manipulate constellations of cause and effect, relationality, influence, and meaning retrospectively, in the continuously changing present. The observer may find that the constellations they laid over the past and present are in need of modification, as they did not give way to desirable action, were found to be misunderstandings, or ordered elements in the wrong way. Re-constellating takes place in the nowness of the continuously changing present. Modifying relationships overlaid on the past, no matter how recent, will change how the continuously changing present is conceived and the future is projected.

Chronological time places events in the order in which they happen. Zero time approached in this way puts events in order of which they matter and make sense. This “mattering” may take events out of the chronological story and rearrange them as they truly matter and make sense to the continuously changing present, its past, and its future. Constellations can be made that place recent events in the past, as they effectively change the perception of everything that has already happened, and influence elements in the continuously changing present, or link phenomena in the present together in whatever order they drive understanding. Through time (or something like it), the past can be modified needfully to constructively change how events are understood in the continuously changing present. Ordering in the future may entail constructing understandings that can steer or influence its emergence, and also provide an input into the present of what a desirable future looks like. The past and future are manners of the being in the here and now of the continuously changing present and entirely variable based on the observer’s preferences and needs. A linear conception of time is just that, a conception. Zero time is an alternative viewpoint to consider.

Conclusion

The above has explored a perspective on (possibly forgotten) zero time. There are many other theories on time, but zero time is one worth the investment due to its suspension of cultural chronological time in favor of the experience of dwelling in the continuously changing present, where referents and memory measure duration. Zero time’s continuously changing present draws focus to what is happening here and now, and selectively how the nowness relates to the past and present. Juxtaposed to living the fear, compression, anxiety, and hurry that accompany living in clocks, dwelling in the continuously changing present is concerned with what is presently happening and how it is changing. Zero time’s focus on the continuously changing present engenders increased engagement and awareness of the craft-based activity and external factors related to it. Zero time is concerned with the flow of what is and, at times, what might be and what has been in relation to the shifting here and now. Informal experiments indicate that zero time does, in fact, remove the worry that cultural time boxes can put in place, increases interactions with others, and makes one more aware of processes such as the weather. With no time bounds, exploration can proceed at any length.

As mentioned earlier, zero time is not intended for all members of an enterprise, nor is it for every occasion. If some members of the enterprise are engaging in craft-based tasks, especially explorative ones, where the ends and means are unknown, such as in the development of a new technology may make great use of zero time. However arbitrary, managers should be aware of the chronological time investment that has gone into the development of the new technology. Meanwhile, designers and developers in zero time put forth effort to avoid Maturana’s (2008) “shadow theater” and relate the right events, causes, effects, processes, influences, and meaning through the creation of constellations that connect elements in the present but also span across the past and future. In zero time, time is not fiercely linearized, and the past can be modified for the purpose of giving it, the present, and the future, different significance that can be operationalized in different ways.

References

Maturana, H. R. (2005). The origin and conservation of self‐consciousness: Reflections on four questions by Heinz von Foerster. Kybernetes, 34(1/2), 54-88. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920510575744

Maturana, H. R. (2008). Time: An imaginary spatial dimension or: Life occurs in the no-time of a continuously changing present. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 15(1), 83-92.

Willis, A.-M. (2021). The designing of time. In T. Fry & A. Nocek (Eds.), Design in crisis: New worlds, philosophies, and practices (pp. 74-88). London, England: Routledge.

There is a shorter version of this submission that was sent to both conferences mentioned above. A longer one prepared for Colorado University’s Complexity, Reduction, and Emergence conference is found below, featuring more context.

Abstract

Understanding a complex system's existence as a totality is crucial to informed observation, interaction, and efforts to influence systems. Significant attention has been devoted to the dynamics of complex systems, emergence, agent behavior, and gaining qualitative and quantitative understandings. However, there has been minimal exploration of the critical question of a complex system's existence. While existence has many definitions, Heidegger's Dasein is used here as an established narrative, though other perspectives, such as autopoiesis, could be used (Morin, 1992).

Introduction to Dasein

Dasein is a system’s "situation in an environment and in time" (Morin, 1992, p.123) and is the German word for "'existence' or 'being-there'" (Audi, 2001, p. 371). Morin (1992) explains, "every physical system is a Dasein (finite honor that we believed to be reserved for man”; p.134). According to Audi (2001), Dasein is not an object with unique properties, but the "'happening of a life course ‘stretched out between birth and death’" (p. 371). Dasein's temporality appears in Holland's (1992) discussion of complex systems: "It is the process of becoming…that we must study if we are to gain insight" (p.20).

Dasein understands its existence before reflection (Audi, 2001; Spinosa, Flores, & Dreyfus, 1999). Audi (2001) explains that unreflective engagement "opens a 'clearing' in which entities can show up as, say, tools, protons, numbers [and] mental events" (p.371).

Dasein has a futural orientation. For example, Dasein knows it will die, and death may occur randomly. According to Inwood (2000), "Dasein's awareness that it will die, that it may die at any moment, means that 'dying,' its attitude toward or 'being towards' its own death, pervades and shapes its own death" (p.69). Dasein reaches ahead of itself to a time it may die and pulls death back into everyday life. A Dasein that does not recognize its death always has unlimited time for work, pleasure, and deferment (Inwood, 2000). Dasein's existence forever takes a stand on its being and fulfills possibilities, and this behavior "constitutes one's identity (or being”; Audi, 2001, p. 371).

Dasein and Physical Systems

The term "physical system" introduced earlier requires clarification. Morin (1992) writes that he can distinguish himself as a "physical system of billions upon billions of atoms [or] as a biological system of thirty billion cells" (p.137). There is an evident importance in using atoms in one case and cells in another. Later, he writes that humans are not physical due to their bodies. Instead, the human is "physical by its being. Its biological being is a physical system" (p.380).

Morin (1993) expounds on physical systems, explaining that they "persist without living: they disintegrate without dying" (p.235). Only complex forms of living organization die. Morin (1999) also identifies self-organizing systems as a Dasein. The self-organizing and the physical system Daseins are merged when Morin (1999) writes that while observers distinguish processes of organization within a system, organization is rooted in "the physical world….The idea of organization, like that of a system, is physical for the feet and mental for the head" (p.114). Morin's (1999) use of feet and head aligns with Segal's (2001) distinction of two discussions, one analyzing a cake as a totality and one while eating it and describing the taste.

Conclusion

When a complex system, such as a social system, comes into being, it is concerned with sustaining its existence. A social system observed at the level of its agents reveals a complex system, as defined by Cillier's (1998) characteristics. Each agent is a Dasein and, therefore, has a unique understanding of its existence. In need of further analysis, existence at the agent level is only briefly recognized here as elemental to understanding existence as a totality. When observed as a complex system, human agents interact, producing emergent properties at one level that combine with those at another to create emergence at the level of totality, such as the system as a Dasein.

At the smooth level of totality is the social system's being as a physical system with a singular Dasein. Enabling Dasein is the system's openness to elements that flow through and perpetuate an identity connected to taking a stand on Dasein's continued existence. As a Dasein, the physical system knows its birth, understands it will die, and integrates eventual death into its existence. The physical system "dies by disintegration" (Morin, 1992, p. 134) while the human agents cease to exist. The disintegration of the physical system as a Dasein and the being of the social system may preface death.

Dasein is a window for understanding the existence of complex social systems through their physical being. However, Dasein is also complex. Some of this complexity is in Dasein’s everyday practice of richly interacting with other complex systems that show up with different meanings. Complexity is also found in the feedback loop from a distant image of death back to existence in the present, and a second loop reaching forward to a death it shapes (Audi, 2001).

References

Audi, R. (Ed.). (2001). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.). USA: Cambridge University Press.

Holland, J. H. (1992). Complex adaptive systems. Daedalus, 121(1), 17-30.

Inwood, M. (2000). Heidegger: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford.

Morin, E. (1992). Toward a study of humankind: The nature of nature (Vol. 1). (J.L. Roland Belanger, Trans.) New York, NY: Pete Lang.

Morin, E. (1993). For a crisology. In E. Morin & A. Heath-Carpenter (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (T. C. Pauchant, Trans., pp. 231-245). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Retrieved 2024

Morin, E. (1999). Organization and Complexity. In E. Morin & A. Heath-Carpenter (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (pp. 109-115). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.

Segal, L. (2001). The dream of reality: Heinz von Foerster’s constructivism (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.

Spinosa, C., Flores, F., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1999). Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action, and the cultivation of solidarity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Preface

The purpose of this essay is to explore social processes in transitory survival-focused groups that unify purely for survival, then disperse, and are speculated to be of growing importance from now into the future. This essay is concerned with how they are possible. The exploration of these groups first focuses on theory building and then situating the theory in the narrative of an emergency.

This essay is the seventh installment of the cassette series. The cassette series celebrates the influence of music on the writing process and the “Do it Yourself” style of the blog format that resonates with cassette culture. A link exists between music and writing that is powerful and meaningful, and becomes part of the process. Like other installments of the cassette series and other recent writings, the objective is to write essays or chapter-length pieces to allow for greater complexity and more room to unpack the subject.

Introduction

In the cassette series, tapes four, the white tape, and five, the black tape, looked ahead fifty years and imagined what life could be like from social, economic, and ecological perspectives. Both tapes focused heavily on natural hazards, how they may worsen over time, and what the human experience of increasing hazard disruption frequency and severity would be. Tape number four makes dystopian speculations founded on data, while tape number five draws from the experience of the author, defined possibilities, and the platform established by its predecessor. Both tapes concluded with the exodus of a population. Tape number four expands this point further and discusses a diaspora from Arizona leading to the resurgence of ghost towns to escape often deadly heat and regular mass disruptions caused by natural hazard events. Both tapes four and five set important precedents for tape number seven, which discusses survival in the period from 2074 to 2124, in which it is assumed most lives will be concerned with surviving either continuously or periodically.

The focus of surviving is social, in particular, the small, transitory social group. While many of the social dynamics are based on the literature, the reader should be reminded that looking ahead from where the earlier tapes left off is speculative dystopian fiction to fill in the unknowables and their experience.

Community

If warming and catastrophic trends continue, living between 2074, as described in tapes four and five, and 2124 will likely be a harrowing experience dominated by scarcity, suffering, fear, struggle, and survival. By the time the phone calendars turn to “2100,” the United States landscape will likely have transitioned markedly through many “states,” where the prevailing season is now “heat and disaster,” more so than previously imagined. The sports industry, particularly snow sports, has become nothing but a memory. During the majority of the year, other outdoor sports, including climbing, running, cycling, hiking, basketball, baseball, tennis, and track and field, are unsafe due to hot temperatures. Due to the extremity and uncertainty of the weather, series competitions are impractical. The decline and then disappearance of 2025 normative athletics at (and very likely much before) the turn of the century began to change the social landscape as physical interactions decreased. From 2074 onward, the expansion and intensity of the heat and disaster season had already started changing the social order by dividing it into families and individuals who could no longer rely on the outdoors for physical interactions. They now had very limited opportunities for enjoying time together and engaging in in-person social activities that build up social process, meaning the development of socialness among or between people. Going to the movies, large-scale and multi-purpose indoor athletic facilities enable community members to continue engaging physically and socially in the place of outdoor activities, though not with the same draw or capacities.

As discussed in tape number 4, being online indoors to stay protected from the heat and engaging with friends through likes, comments, and video chats and clips allows community members to engage in virtual interactions and maintain some resemblance of community and social process. Virtual interaction cannot wholly take the place of physical social interaction. Physical interactions provide a superior space for the temporal processes of structural coupling, where a congruence among individuals and their environment appears over time, forming social process (Maturana & Varela, 1987). In a physical environment, structural coupling is aided by the ability of the group to interact with one another’s emotional states, smelling, touching, and hearing one another (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). Proximity contributes richly to structural coupling and, in turn, is involved in building cohesive, coherent, and resilient social groups. As noted already, structural coupling is a temporal process, and as such, it requires time to form mutual congruence among group members and the environment. How much time will there be for structural coupling in the presence of upheaval from more severe heat and disasters, political and economic instability, and the introduction of new technologies? How will the temporal forming of mutual congruence underlying social process involved with survival take place when there is no time for it to? This important question of congruence, or synchrony, in the context of survival is addressed later, though not at the relational depth of structural coupling.

Calamity

In the decades past 2074, it indeed continued to get hotter, and disasters became more frequent and severe. However, this was not all. There was an increasingly hostile environment at home and around the globe caused by divisive politics, politicians perpetually unsure about what action to take against the rising tide of calamity, primordial arguments over what is real and causally related, and what is not, and what the appropriate social order is. As apparent as these divisions are in the present day, in 2100, they have grown wildly in intensity and severity and become more visible and electrified. Divisions can no longer be ignored or circumvented; there are too many, and too large, like towering cliffscapes that violently fragment society. The ongoing division is amplified by a world that is too hot, the routine loss of property from disaster, constant uncertainty, and disagreements over politics and religion, all leading to regular violence (Keen, 2008). In almost all cases, political enmity mixed with other grievances following a disaster, as expected, made response and recovery more difficult and dangerous.

In 2100, homes were constantly being lost to hazards such as wildfires, and depending on terrain, homes that were not lost to wildfires were often lost to the mass land movements that followed. Other hazards, such as hurricanes and intensified winds, became more frequent and deadly and destroyed increasingly more homes and structures, like wildfires, leaving communities without utilities for extended periods, leading to another variety of outrage. Heat, droughts, heatwaves, tornadoes, wind events, hurricanes, wildfires, outrage over the economic and political system, repeated government shortfalls, disaster response and recovery, food prices, resource scarcity, supply chain breakdowns, and a lost national identity have made the country volatile and threatening. In varying degrees of materiality and frequency, enormous swaths of the country are concerned with survival.

A Theory of Transitory Survival Groups

Of those whose lives consist of regular survival, there are three main archetypes. There is the independent survivalist, the transitory survival group, and, uncharacteristic for the times, stable communities formed for survival purposes. The independent survivalist and stable groups are not presently of interest, while groups formed out of the need to survive a certain situation are. These groups are predicated on the rapid establishment of social process and have the potential benefits of increased safety, collaboration, cooperation, and combining resources.

Quickly converging social groups are essential to survival in the far future as individuals live in a world of danger, upheaval, instability, and quick materializing disruptive events with natural and social sources. Groups that form for the purpose of surviving certain circumstances only exist as long as the circumstances persist. Much less likely, they may become or join stable groups, but that is beyond the scope of this essay. Social process needs to be established urgently, and naturally, the common bond of a shared purpose is important but insufficient (Maturana & Varela, 1987).

There are three key elements involved in establishing a theory of transitory survival groups: Phase locking, the legitimacy of the other, and consensuality.

Phase Locking

Phase locking is the first element of the theory of transitory survival groups and provides a different perspective than the more normative structural coupling to explain the forming of social process. This biological phenomenon of phase locking is defined below in two quotes.

More generally, phase locking refers to the ability of a neuron to synchronize or follow the temporal structure of a sound” (American Psychological Association, 2025).

Recordings made from neurons in the auditory phase locking, the consistent firing of a cell at the same phase of a sound wave (Bear, Connors, & Paradiso, 2007, p. 367).

Phase locking occurs when a group of neurons or neuron fire at the same time, along the same place in the structure of a sound, as pictured above. As such, part of the nervous system has become synchronized with something external to it, similar to structural coupling’s “congruence” (Maturana & Varela, 1987; Thompson, 2007). However, it does not appear that phase locking involves the same duration as structural coupling to produce congruence or the same depth of meaning.

Structural Coupling: We speak of structural coupling whenever there is a history of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems (Maturana & Varela, 1987, p.75).

Further, in the auditory context, phase locking involves temporality and the localization of sounds. Below, phase locking is presented as one of the vital elements involved in temporal encoding, which is the way the auditory nerve conveys the timing information of sound stimuli, localizes sounds in space, and is involved in understanding speech. Healey (2005) notes that in the case of lower frequency sounds below one to two kHz, “nerve fibers can fire in synchrony with the peaks of the sound wave [as pictured above]. This allows the brain to track the timing of the sound precisely. Above a certain frequency (typically around 1-2 kHz), individual fibers can no longer fire in synchrony with every cycle of the sound wave” (n.p.).

Temporal encoding refers to the way the auditory nerve represents the timing of sounds. This is crucial for perceiving rapidly changing sounds, such as speech, and for localizing sounds in space. One of the key mechanisms for temporal encoding is phase locking, where auditory nerve fibers tend to fire at a specific phase of the sound wave (Healey, 2025, n.p.).

Compared to structural coupling, phase locking happens readily. In the words of Healey (2005), “this is crucial for rapidly changing sounds” (n.p.) in reference to phase locking’s temporal encoding. Phase locking between speech and the environment and the auditory nerve is not the only type of phase locking taking place.

Receptors in the skin are also capable of phase locking. The skin has two types of mechanoreceptors sensitive to vibrations: pressure receptors situated deep within the skin and touch receptors closer to the surface of the skin. Pressure receptors (Pacinian corpuscles) “are rapidly adapting and are present in the deeper layers of skin, ligaments, and joints where their function is to detect high-frequency vibration and deep pressure” (Bajwa & Yasir, 2025, n.p.). Touch receptors (Meissner’s corpuscles) “detect low-frequency vibration and are present in glabrous (smooth, hairless) skin on fingertips and eyelids” (Bajwa & Yasir, 2025, n.p.). The research indicates that both receptors can also phase lock to vibrations, but point strongly to Pacinian corpuscles (Turecek & Ginty, 2024). There is, then, a massive field in which phase locking can take place in the present without the time being tied to effectiveness, and involves a biological response triggered by environmental stimuli wherein nerve cells fire in synchrony with the stimuli and can rapidly change.

Phase Locking in Social Process

Phase locking, as it is explained biologically, lacks social significance. The task now is to make phase locking, a biological concept, intelligible within social process, particularly that of transitory groups formed for survival. Applied socially, phase locking refers to synchrony among a rapidly forming group of people and their environment for survival purposes, enabled by a multitude of neurons firing at the same time at the peaks of the vibrations emitted by members of the group including hearing the other members, feeling them, and hearing and sensing their surroundings through the skin and ear, temporally encoding the stimuli perturbing the auditory nerve and localizing it in space.

In short, in the survivability context of transitory groups, phase locking refers to the local and spatial synchronization of group members with each other and their environment through biological processes in the auditory nerve and at different layers in the skin, ligaments, and joints. This synchronization is the sub-foundation of social process.

The Legitimacy of Others

Building on phase locking in the auditory nerve and skin is the emotional mode of relating called acceptance. In a group rapidly assembled for survival purposes, each member must quickly emotionally relate to the other members in the same way. In particular, they must each view one another’s existence as legitimately as they see their own. The members of the group are not acting in uncritical acceptance. Rather, the emotional manner of acceptance does not require any other member of the group to defend and rationalize their existence. As a result, in the group, it is held that each member’s existence is as valid as everyone else’s, leading to coexistence, cooperation, altruism, and protective actions of others, and a stable, cohesive group with the resilience needed to overcome disaster, but not persist as a group. Acceptance forms the relational foundation for survival by establishing the substrate of social process (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008).

Consensuality

According to Baeza-Flores (2022), “‘consensual’ implies that there is consensus, and there is consensus when there is unanimous consent” (p.82). To contribute to the meaning of consensuality, Mingers (1995) writes that language is a “consensual domain, implying that the tokens we use in our language do not have meaning of themselves but depend on a consensus among the people involved in the language” (Mingers, 1995, p. 36). Between Baeza-Flores (2022) and Mingers (1995), language arises as a domain where the symbols of verbal or non-verbal language are not meaningful in and of themselves; rather, meaning is dependent on the agreement of the members of the domain arriving at a unanimous consent as to what the symbols in the domain mean. Of course, a consensual domain could be widened to include other tokens, such as tools and environmental cues, including threats, hazards, rates of change, and trigger points for different patterns of action. There does not need to be a logical connection between what is in the consensual domain and the behaviors and interactions they orient people toward. The tokens within the consensual domain are significant only in the action and language they trigger (Maturana, 1978). The ongoing act of adding tokens to the consensual domain is a social activity, as it requires unanimous agreement, or it is just something added to the domain. As a social activity, it adds the last layer of social process to this theory as the members of the consensual domain continuously decide what “things” mean together.

A consensual domain is one of shared meaning. Baeza-Flores’s (2022) “unanimous consent” is dissimilar to standardization, where one symbol means one behavior or set of behaviors. The energy to establish one universal meaning (and what it triggers) per token would consume energy and time that the group assembled for survival does not have to spare. Instead, it is discovered that tokens often have different meanings. Although they have different meanings as tokens to different members of the consensual domain, these different meanings are unanimously agreed upon when this situation arises. Shared meaning can still exist when tokens have unalike meanings, provided that dissimilar meanings are shared and are commonly held throughout the group and lead to the same behaviors. It is far faster to accommodate someone’s culture and its meaning than it is to change it.

A theory of transitory survival groups is assembled through phase locking, the legitimacy of the other, and consensuality. All three social processes can be animated to take place expediently to form cohesive and effective transitory groups quickly. With such a theory put forth, it must now be situated in the survival context in which it aims to explain.

To Survive

In the context of natural hazard disruptions, dystopian speculative fiction does not have much heavy lifting to do. All one needs to do is imagine what has already happened, for exmaple, heat events and seasonal changes, the 2024 Hurricane Season, and the early 2025 Fire Season in Los Angeles while considering the trajectory that is already present and the assumption that it will not reverse direction. A dystopian and speculative fiction approach makes the imagining material through the written word and takes the future situation further in terms of severity to illustrate a scenario that could occur. It is important to note a few key assumptions. The first is regular resource scarcity, not only in public safety resources but also in food. Second, there is a vastly different hazardscape than is present in 2025, and a much different social landscape that has been thoroughly divided. To situate this theory, consider the following scenario:

Pressure I

1. It is 2100, and after years of successful suppression, wildfires occurring from Los Angeles to San Bernardino have been burning for weeks. The situation was continuously worsened by new starts caused by arson. It was a highly complex situation with nowhere near enough resources, extreme fire behavior, no means to gain anywhere near total situational awareness, no legitimate strategy or tactics, overwhelming home loss, mass evacuations, and frequent extreme winds. One day, seasonal winds with gusts up to one hundred miles per hour sent a fire fueled by wind and drought-stricken vegetation up to a large community settled mid-slope at the edge of towering brush-covered mountains.

2. In 2100, across public safety, there are no fixed ideas of what a hazard event will do or is capable of. It is assumed that each event will transcend what anyone involved was even capable of thinking of or imagining. There was a strange comfort in that. The new fire's rate of spread was estimated at forty thousand acres an hour as it defied modeling. There was now, once again, another large community threatened by a wildfire that no one could accurately and confidently map its perimeter. It was spreading and sending spot fires ahead of itself too quickly to have any accurate account of where the fire was burning, where it was not, and at what velocity.

   

   It was not until the late hours of the night that an evacuation order woke up the community. One cul-de-sac of ten homes backed out of their garages in unison, got out of their cars, peered over the guard rail, and considered if they would be fine. They took this opportunity to introduce each other after having lived together for over five years, as communities were largely reclusive in 2100 due to the heat and various social divisions. Another homeowner pointed to the flaming front and, yelling over the wind, named all the communities that had already been lost based on the path of the fire, entering them into the group’s consensual domain. The same homeowner saw the legitimacy of everyone else's existence and stated they needed to evacuate right now, as none of what they had was worth running a high risk of dying for. Their words disengaged many others from their previous thoughts of surviving the fire by staying.

3. The group contemplated for a few seconds. Though they had just met, they could not help but locate each other's voices spatially and their timing while feeling the vibration of the wind on their arms, superficially and deeply. They were synchronized to a key element in their environment and the speaking, or shouting, of the people in it. Another voice was heard saying they agreed and that it was absolutely time to leave, and the rest of the group concurred.

4. In their first act of survival, as they quickly became a group, the caravan of adults and children left the cul-de-sac that they assumed would be gone by morning. As the evacuation notice had no specific details, they turned left and headed downhill for ten minutes before encountering a few embers that collided with their windshield like snowflakes. They thought nothing of it until the eight-foot-tall brush on the side of the road started igniting as if it were made with gasoline and started burning in their direction. After awkward ten-point turns between guardrails, the caravan, through a text chain of the recently shared numbers, took a risk and headed towards the only option left: Summerville.

5. Summerville was about an hour away along a mountain road that posed an extreme risk in the current situation. There was a fast-moving fire that they did not know where it was, and they would be traveling along a road built into the side of the mountains. The text chain unanimously agreed that "run" meant to abandon the vehicles and head to safety. Seeing as there was no other way out, they would have to make one of their own. They also consensually agreed that "fire" meant there was a fire along their route, while "fire threat" meant there was a fire that was going to impact the vehicles. A second person a few vehicles back volunteered to monitor social media regarding the fire. It was mainly the front vehicle's job to communicate these tokens from within the consensual domain. Less than an hour of knowing each other, the group had started forming a consensual domain. No one else could walk into this group and its consensual domain, even at this low level of sophistication, and entirely understand its meaning and the actions the language within it triggers, yet everyone in the group did.

Pressure II

1. With no information on the evacuation notice, it became apparent that many others had the same notion of escaping to the tourist mountaintop town of Summerville. It had an enormous lake separating the mountains from the tourist areas, including hotels, which were generally filled for the summertime and wintertime for the ski areas. The group encountered traffic on the way into town, heading into the hotel quarters. Much to the chagrin of the occupants of the caravan, the mountainside glowed orange from a fire started a few days ago, which the group knew nothing of.

   

2. Each car surmised correctly that many mountain communities had been lost. The person in the group who had offered to monitor social media circulated a screenshot of an official release of "massive home loss," and offered hotels for evacuees. At the same moment, the growing line of cars fleeing the fire from down below the mountain appeared to be proceeding unnoticed. It was as if no one knew the evacuees were there and continuing to arrive by the second. After a while, emergency resources directed vehicles to this hotel or that hotel.

3. The group stuck together and arrived at the same hotel to stand in line for an hour before they finally were face to face with the hotel manager. The text chain read: "We have to get out of here." The group asked the manager about food in town, and they replied that the one grocery store in town had not received a shipment in two days due to the fire, and inventory was certainly thin, but many of the restaurants were still serving. Due to the local and more distant evacuations, it was two families in a room, which the group was fine with. In closing, it was asked if there was any other way out of town. The manager replied that the way they came up was now an active fire scene along the highway, and was threatening to come this way. There was one more road out of town, but it was closed as the fire from two days earlier had burned on both sides of it, leaving hazardous trees.

   

4. The group gathered in one room and made plans to try and find breakfast and check the grocery store. They decided to leave half the group at the hotel and take orders over the text chain. Five left the hotel room and headed down the hill to where the restaurants were. They went to the first one that was open and stood in a very long line in the smoke and heat. Two left to check the grocery store. While the remainder were getting to know each other and mourning the loss of their homes that were within the burned area on the updated map, a large group of armed people forming what the group members called a militia, came by yelling that this food was for locals only and should not be given to those from out of town. They yelled that the town had lost a lot, too. There was plenty of face-to-face intimidation and failure to ask to check identification to ensure only the locals would be fed. The three stood their ground, now standing on the steps of the restaurant, ordering food while the militia yelled that out-of-towners should not be served.

5. The five made it back with everyone's food and communicated that they had heard the restaurants were running low. It was also explained that there was not much left at the grocery store, mostly items that would require a full kitchen and random cookware. Most importantly, it had only been hours, and there was already a division forming between local and non-local. One of the five who had been down in town communicated that it could very easily become dangerous. In the course of their speaking, "militia" entered into the broader consensual domain, which triggered actions of avoidance and a distinction containing violence and rage.

6. A trip to the restaurants for lunch turned into a patchwork of moving from one to the next, still harassed by the growing militia. Signs that there was no food left adorned many windows. The four cobbled together a meager lunch for the group, knowing it would likely be their last until more food was delivered. Back at the cars, all five phones chimed, and in the text chain was an official release from the emergency resources indicating the National Guard would bring food at some point tomorrow, depending on flight conditions.

7. The five from the group went out to the restaurants one last time at dinner and drove up and down the streets. When they started seeing people walk away empty-handed, they held out hope for a while longer until the crowd passing by their vehicles was chanting that there was no more food. They attempted to leave and return to the hotel quickly, but found themselves in traffic as the sun started to set.

8. Outrage swelled in the streets. One of the five said “militia” anticipatorily right before the militia turned the corner and walked down the main street. Some evacuees from down the mountain engaged them and other locals. After a rapid escalation, physical violence erupted so vastly that it filled the street. It was soon after that the breaking of store windows, outdoor stores, liquor stores, candy shops - anywhere where there was something to eat. The local police soon got involved, but the scene was too large. Arrests were made where they could be, but the now-mob went from street to street fighting, robbing, and destroying property throughout the night. To everyone’s amazement, it took, for some, only a day’s worth of not eating, or just barely, for physical violence and destruction to emerge at scale. At this point in the future, an impressive amount of society was just waiting for an excuse to erupt.

   

9. Back at the hotel, through words, descriptions, and explanations, the group communicated in a way that belonged to them through unanimous agreement. The five told the others that there was no food left, and they had narrowly escaped being swept up in a wave of violence and destruction. They had watched the entire tone of the town shift as food vanished. Pressure had been building since before the group had arrived, with the loss of so many homes and their scenic mountains earlier in the week. Tonight was not the end of it, everyone agreed.

10. In the morning, a police barricade blocking downtown could be seen in the distance, and wisps of smoke rose into the air. An upside-down vehicle could be seen on the other side of the blockade. Unfortunately, the food arrived about eight hours past its estimated time at the high school football field, where the earlier release said it would be. Rows of people were pressed up against the fence that bordered the running track that lined the football field, shouting at the local and additional law enforcement that had arrived by helicopter earlier in the day. Many others were sitting on the grass, waiting for their turn to receive food. The orderly line that had been established earlier in the day had devolved hours ago. The group continued to relate to each other as legitimate and, in doing so, saw that they should continue to divide the group and, once again, leave the children with caregivers back at the hotel, and the same five would gather food and any water that may be available. They did not simply and unquestioningly accept the existence of the children, but accepted that they were children with an existence that was equally legitimate as their own, but in need of additional consideration and protection to be treated as equals.

Pressure III

1. They were heard before they were seen. Multiple helicopters soon came into view with large nets underneath them. Everyone was suddenly on their feet, ignoring the gate protected by local police in riot gear. The implicit social order had already decided this would be a free-for-all, and the majority were simply waiting for the food to be on the ground. One by one, the nets touched down, and emergency resources unpacked them. Following protocol, they then began to count each case of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) and twenty-four packs of water. The delay infuriated and confused the onlookers, and any type of reason was drowned out by yelling. In the minutes that followed, the pressure overcame the rows of people stretched all the way around the perimeter of the running track, and those who had been sitting down moments earlier were on their feet.

2. Anyone who might have been identified as militia was the first over the fence in all directions, running at a sprint towards the food. Some were stopped, but the totality of the circumstances did not merit action by law enforcement, who started running towards the food to support the emergency resources, who had already left the scene.

3. Nets were ripped open rapidly and ravenously, and boxes of MREs and cases of water disappeared under the arms of militia members, townspeople, and out-of-town evacuees. The five from the group were running toward where the nets had been let down, and each had their assignments: three would grab food, and two would grab water. They then followed the mob back over the easily scalable fence, back around the bleachers, and towards the parking lot, which is where they stopped suddenly.

   

4. They could feel and hear the yelling of the mob. A traffic jam leaving the parking lot had left too many with food vulnerable. Militia and militia types were rocking cars back and forth and smashing windows, setting them aflame, leading to widespread violence and clashes with law enforcement and some arrests. Food continued to be stolen. Even the threat of continued hunger had turned the town and its visitors into something they were not.

5. The five who had taken one vehicle that was parked in the lot referred to it as a loss and ran back to where they had come from. They slid down an embankment and ended up on an empty suburban street and hid out of view while calling to be picked up and suggesting to take whatever route would keep them away from the school. One of the individuals shared their location.

6. A phone call to the five was received, and they communicated that violence had entered the hotel district, and they had to prove to militia members they had no food before they were able to leave. There would be a delay. The five moved deeper into the thicket they were in listening to the yelling and shattering of glass.

7. The others eventually retrieved the five, and they distributed the food and water throughout the caravan, which was now missing one car. It was decided over text chain that their best chance of survival was to head down the only other road from the mountaintop that had been burned over a few days before the group arrived. They would be traversing the road now without daylight, but all agreed this would be safer than staying in a town overrun by a riot. They came to the junction and turned right, heading down a hazard-filled road.

   

8. It was decided in the group chat that once they were ten miles in, they would stop and eat. The first ten miles went by quickly and without incident, and there was time to heat meals and open a case of water away from trees before carrying on. Still, they could not help but feel they were being chased or watched from above the road. While they were eating, every tree that fell inside the burn, every tumbling rock, led them to believe that they were not alone briefly. Yet no one came.

9. The GPS said they were a half hour from a populated area, and that was not showing any fire activity. The drivers were anxiously awaiting an impediment. Soon enough, they found one. Five trees spanned the roadside hill cut and the guardrail. They were not large trees, but moving them would still require considerable strength. Most of the group who were not with the children or watching behind them responded swiftly. They noted they did not need to clear the entire road but just one lane. They climbed up the bank and felt their feet, for the first time, move through ash. Through a concerted effort, and one hour later, the trees were carried and slid halfway across the road, and the caravan rolled on. The vibrations of the trees sliding along the pavement and guard rail had been felt at everyone’s fingertips. Being blocked by downed trees occurred periodically, frequently one tree, seldom more.

10. The group would have been afraid to learn how many trees had already fallen behind them. With five miles to go, they were stopped in their tracks as the broken trunk of an enormous tree lay across the road, with half of it protruding beyond the guardrail. Exhausted, the group emerged to move the obstruction, which took many original ideas, the sensing of vibrations, dangerous maneuvers, three close calls, enormous strain, one injury, sweat, and the continued cooperation and coordination that had led to their success all night as they all saw each other as equally legitimate and would never imperil another member of the group or let them do so themselves.

11. The group proceeded with only a few small trees to clear out of the way, and then they found themselves coming to a main road. The GPS instructed them to turn left, and once the way was clear, they headed toward food and lodging. It was now three in the morning, and one person from each house went to secure a hotel room. Meals were being heated up for the group by those back at the car on the pavement. Covered in ash, they enjoyed one of the finer meals of their lives and stayed in the parking lot until four in the morning, talking about the militia, the food shortage, the riots, attacking people in their cars, and the loss of their own homes and what the next steps would be. They suddenly found themselves with no place to go.

12. The group said they would stay in touch, but the purpose of the group had come to a close. They had survived the fire, a riot, food scarcity, a food shortage, a violent mob, and traveling a dangerous burned-over road together. Perhaps survival is a precondition for lasting friendship in 2025, but in a divided society, it has lost its value as a relationship adherent. They went into their hotel rooms and left at different times in the morning, and the text chain was silent. They had all survived, and that was the purpose, and through phase locking, consensuality, and the legitimacy of others, they had quickly come together in the name of survival. Deeper connections could have been formed over a great time period, but they were not required for survival.

Conclusion

The group was formed for the purpose of each member surviving, and it dissolved after this purpose was met. While it remained a group, its social process, behavior, and capacities can be explained by the theory assembled earlier. Phase locking begins the post-analysis of the group's social behavior and is perhaps the most prevalent, as it is autonomic; one cannot help but do it with the spoken language of others and the environment. Even in the wind gusts up to 100 mph, as the group was starting to come together, voices could be detected and localized with roaring background noise due to phase locking (Peterson & Heil, 2020). Vibrations from the group's verbal language resulted in phase locking throughout and additionally through the Meissner corpuscles when moving logs across the pavement and over the guard rail. Phase locking offers a rapid way to achieve synchrony but does not replicate the congruence achieved through temporal structural coupling. As a result, the same depth, richness, fit, and synchrony of relations among people is not present with phase locking as it is with structural coupling. However, phase locking in the context of transitory groups is sufficient and functional for communications and environmental sensing.

The group consistently demonstrated an omnidirectional relationality to the other members, where they saw their existence as legitimately as they saw their own. Doing so made the other members more than just a loose association. By seeing each other as equally legitimate, social process began above the autonomic level of phase locking.

The case of the children requires some additional consideration. Their existence was unquestioningly accepted as being as valid as everyone else's. However, to maintain this validity was the added provision was that to maintain this existence and treat it as legitimately as their own, additional measures would have to be taken. For example, not bringing the children down to a tension-torn town to get food from restaurants was, in a manner of relationality, treating their existence equally to everyone else's. Their existence was seen as equal, and for that reason, the children were excluded. This shared view of everyone's existence is as valid as everyone else's contributed to cohesiveness. The members acted in the interest of the group in their decisions and actions, and no one left the group in pursuit of their own individual or family success. The shared validity of existence is exemplified by the five who eventually found themselves in hostile territory but kept going back into town anyway. They still saw their existence as legitimate as those back at the hotel, but to actualize that, they needed food, as did the five standing in the street, whose existence was still valid; they were assuming risk for the existence of themselves and others.

Consensuality was a cornerstone of the group's behavior, social process, and operations, and is only loosely tied to the duration the group has existed. The group came into form between the failed first evacuation and the trepidation-filled climb to Summerville. During this time, they referred to canyons and communities by their locally known names and introduced tokens (words) that would trigger emergency-reactive behavior. The word "militia" became part of the consensual domain and served as a significant distinction for those who wanted the town to belong to the locals, who were mostly armed and posed a danger. The group was continuously forming a consensual domain as if they were rolling out a carpet ahead of them to walk on. It was the consensual domain that allowed the five to describe the riot from the first night accurately, and then the one the next day at the food drop. While they had not been together long, they had been communicating enough that words, explanations, and descriptions came to have shared meaning quickly and improved the cohesiveness, coordination, and operational capacity of the group.

Given this fictitious dystopian speculative setting, it appears that the theory of transitory survival groups may have some value in understanding their formation, functionality, and effectiveness. The three elements presented can all act or be applied quickly and support the expedient forming of a cohesive group. Of course, this remains highly theoretical and speculative, but it may have some utility in events already taking place.

References

American Psychological Association. (2025). Phase Locking. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved from https://dictionary.apa.org/phase-locking

Baeza-Flores, M. (2022). Humberto Maturana: Biology of the knowing for beginners.

Bajwa, H., & Yasir , K. A. (2025). Physiology, vibratory Sense. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31194428/

Bear, M. F., Connors, B. W., & Paradiso, M. A. (2007). The auditory and vestibular systems (Third ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Healey, V. (2025). The hearing mechanism. Oslo, NO: Publifye AS.

Keen, D. (2008). Complex emergencies. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Maturana, H. R. (1978). Biology of language: The epistemology of reality. In G. Miller, & E. Lenneberg (Eds.), Psychology and biology of language and thought: Essays in honor of Eric Lenneberg, (pp. 27-64).

Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). The tree of knowledge. Boston, MA: New Science Library.

Maturana, H. R., & Verden-Zöller, G. (2008). The origin of humanness in the biology of love. (B. Pille, Ed.) Exeter, Devon, UK: Imprint Academic.

Mingers, J. (1995). Self-producing systems: Implications and applications of autopoiesis. New York, NY: Plenum Publishing.

Peterson, A. J., & Heil, P. (2020). Phase locking of auditory nerve fibers: The role of lowpass filtering by hair cells. Journal of Neuroscience, 40(24), 4700–4714. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2269-19.2020

Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Turecek, J., & Ginty, D. D. (2024). Coding of self and environment by Pacinian neurons in freely moving animals. Neuron, 112(119), 3267-3277. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2024.07.008

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To be human is to have the ability to perceive pain. The lived experience of being human is to feel pain of varying intensities, even in the absence of a noxious stimulus. Pain has something, and in extreme cases everything, to do with being and existence. As a term, pain itself needs clarification. Pain in Dubin and Patapoutian (2010) “has been defined as a ‘complex constellation of unpleasant sensory, emotional and cognitive experiences provoked by real or perceived tissue damage and manifested by certain autonomic, psychological, and behavioral reactions’” (p.3760).

The topic at hand is severe pain. A pain so intense that it sears, tears, gnaws, burns, causes misery, suffering, agony, and despair. Severe pain changes posture, facial expressions, and breathing, and pain can become part of identity, grow, and modify who we are. When “pain” is written here, it indicates severe pain, unless context suggests otherwise. Sensations of severe pain, particularly severe pain, can be produced internally, given, and received, caused by exogenous sources, or by the suggestion of them (Maturana, 1983). Severe pain is an interesting area of study, as it anecdotally appears that the majority of the population has experienced or is living with severe pain and can articulate the lived experience of it. Following the study of pain and being, this essay explores how music and art can connect with, make explicit, and even amplify severe pain already within being, before exploring distinguishing pain, and pain and identity.

A further step is taken with the work of Maturana through distinguishing pain that was in the process of occurring but was not recognized and lived until it was distinguished. The understanding is that if pain is not distinguished, there is no pain. Maturana’s use of distinction is initially extreme; a hardline approach taken to distinctions where nothing exists until it is distinguished (Maturana, 1992; Maturana & Poerkson, 2011). This position can be softened if the direction is followed that pain preceded the distinction, but was not noticed until either it was distinguished, or it was distinguished as the pain became overwhelming. This is a forced distinction that is an adaptation of Maturana’s earlier writings.

Pain can be severe, enduring, and worsening. It can cause disabilities, it can change the course and content of a human’s life, and it can persist with no solution. Severe pain can change a person’s identity, and it can change their facial expressions and how they breathe, act, think, and move. The human who existed pre-injury and severe, lasting pain vanishes, and a new, different, pained human emerges. Its depth, richness, and harshness make pain an interesting and worthy topic for essay number two.

To aid the reader, it is recommended that essay number one be read first to gain an understanding of the setting this essay appears and, more importantly, the author’s use of the terms “existence” and “being”" “The Issue of Common Existence Occluding the Nature of Being.”

Dedicated to all who suffer.

Below is a biological account of pain. It is not graphic, but may evoke images and sensations.

Being and Pain

Pain not related to emotional pain in existence’s mind and self-conscious is found in being’s sensorimotor structure. Pain receptors perceive pain, or what are formally known as “nociceptor sensory neurons” (Pinho-Ribeiro, Verri & Chiu, 2016, n.p.), or simply “nociceptors.” These sensory neurons, which belong to the peripheral nervous system, “protect organisms from dangers by eliciting pain and driving avoidance. Pain also accompanies many types of inflammation and injury” ( Pinho-Ribeiro, Verri & Chiu, 2016, n.p.). Nociceptors have also been referred to as “cutaneous nerve fibers” that have sensory functions, “nerve fibers,” “cutaneous (meaning anything related to affecting the multiple layers of skin) sensory nerve fibers,” which are located in the soft organs, muscles, and joints and “bare nerve endings of primary sensory neurons innervating the skin, muscle, and viscera” (Norcliffe-Kaufmann & Gutierrez, 2014). Located along the surface of skin, joints, and organs, nociceptors are ubiquitous, as is the body’s capacity to perceive pain. The perception of pain initiates at the bare nerve endings, which are tendrils from the primary neuron. While they are bare at the nerve tip, Schwann cells surround the remainder of the nerve and create a myelin sheath and perform additional functions (Kendroud, Fitzgerald, Murray, & Hanna, 2022).

As sensory nerve fibers, nociceptors “respond to mechanical, thermal, and chemical stimuli” (McMahon & Snider, 1998, p.629). There are nociceptors for each stimulus and other specialized nociceptors, including mechanoreceptors, thermal receptors, polymodal receptors, and silent receptors (Kendroud, Fitzgerald, Murray, & Hanna, 2022). Silent receptors are unresponsive to the initial stimuli of heat or pressure; “they become responsive only after tissue damage causes the release of inflammatory molecules” (Kendroud, Fitzgerald, Murray, & Hanna, 2022, n.p.). In action, the authors explain that nociception is “the neural process of encoding and processing noxious stimuli” (Dubin & Patapoutian, 2010, p.3761). Alternatively,

Nociception provides a means of neural feedback that allows the central nervous system (CNS) to detect and avoid noxious and potentially damaging stimuli in both active and passive settings. The sensation of pain divides into four large types: acute pain, nociceptive pain, chronic pain, and neuropathic pain.

Nociceptive pain arises from tissues damaged by physical or chemical agents such as trauma, surgery, or chemical burns (Armstrong & Herr, 2023, n.p.).

When nociceptic neurons are stimulated, they send “high-threshold noxious stimuli to the central nervous system” (Armstrong & Herr, 2023, n.p.). The signal from the nociceptive neurons may either be routed immediately “in a spine reflex loop, producing a rapid and reflexive withdrawal, or transported to the areas of the brain responsible for integrating the information with higher-ordered sensations such as pain (Armstrong & Herr, 2023, n.p.). Said another way, “Activation of the nociceptor initiates the process by which pain is experienced, (e.g., we touch a hot stove or sustain a cut). These receptors relay information to the CNS about the intensity and location of the painful stimulus” (Dafny, 2020, n.p.).

There are two primary nerve fibers involved in nociception: A and C. While it is more complex than presented here, it is sufficient to understand A fibers as myelinated, which innervate hairy skin, and C fibers as unmyelinated, where the speed of transmission from the nociceptors depends on myelination and the diameter of the fiber sending impulses away from the nerve cell to other parts of the body (axon). Ringkamp and Meyer (2008) write that:

Unmyelinated C-fiber “nociceptors are responsible for the burning pain sensation from noxious heat stimuli and from prolonged mechanical stimuli. Myelinated A-fiber nociceptors are thought to be responsible for sharp, pricking pain associated with intense heat and sharp objects (n.p.).

Kendroud, Fitzgerald, Murray, and Hanna (2022) add additional layers of insight into fibers.

A-delta fibers are lightly myelinated and have small receptive fields, which allow them to alert the body to the presence of pain. Due to the higher degree of myelination compared to C-fibers, these fibers are responsible for the initial perception of pain. Conversely, C-fibers are unmyelinated and have large receptive fields, which allow them to relay pain intensity (n.p.).

Thresholds for nociceptors have been established. For example, “nociceptors respond to mechanical forces of only 10mN (millinewtons) or so, forces that, interestingly, are not generally rated as painful in humans” (Snider & McMahon, 1998, p.629). Dubin and Patapoutian (2010) explain that the threshold for heat pain perception is between 104°Farenhit to 113°Farenhit. The authors continue and explain, “The threshold for pain perception to cold is much less precise than that for heat, but is about 59° Fahrenheit” (Dubin & Patapoutian, 2010, p.3765). Returning to A fibers, Dubin and Patapoutian (2010) refer to a class of fibers known as A-HM Type 11, stimulating “hair skin responding to temperatures slightly cooler than the perceptual pain threshold for heat are proposed to mediate first pain in humans. These fibers rapidly activate, adapt during prolonged heat stimulation, fatigue between heat stimuli, and are sensitive to capsaicin” (p.3764). While only related to thresholds, the previous quote brings greater clarity to nociceptor nerve fibers ( Pinho-Ribeiro, Verri & Chiu, 2016).

On a daily basis, humans seek medical attention after injuries caused by mechanical force, exposure to noxious chemicals, high heat, extreme cold, or chemical stimuli. Armstrong and Herr (2023) explain that in the case of these injuries, humans are only aware of them due to the nociceptors distributed across their bodies. The authors continue, “Nociceptors transition acute pain into inflammatory pain when the duration of stimulus persists, and nociceptors release their pro-inflammatory markers, sensitizing local, responsive cells” (Armstrong & Herr, 2023, n.p.). This activity takes place along the surface.

The previous essay focused on the closure of the nervous system, indicating that stimuli do not determine what happens within the nervous system, but do not determine the response (Maturana, 1983). An important capacity of the closure of the nervous system is its ability to generate, through its internal dynamics, states of neuronal activity, including nociceptive pain. Anticipation may be possible if the states of nociceptor cells are generated interneally from activity at the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and other sensory surfaces.

Pain is described as having different qualities and temporal features depending on the modality and locality of the stimulus, respectively: first pain is described as lancinating, stabbing, or pricking; second pain is more pervasive and includes burning, throbbing, cramping, and aching and recruits sustained affective components with descriptors such as “sickening”….As opposed to the relatively more objective nature of other senses, pain is highly individual and subjective and the translation of nociception into pain perception can be curtailed by stress or exacerbated by anticipation (Dubin & Patapoutian, 2010, p.3760).

The Art of Severe Pain

A certain feeling of recognition may be derived from the moment when an obscure, sorrowful artist’s self-proclaimed “dead music,” or the “worst music I could make,” discovers, evokes, connects with, and amplifies feelings of severe pain. The music begins suddenly. A tortured synthesizer plays foreboding, menacing, and whirring tones. A reverberating, repeating, twisting, and grating array of noises, similar to the descending of an airplane’s landing gear, adds complexity and further distress to the sounds. There are random samples from non-English speaking films distributed throughout, and constant meddling with effects and sounds. The top layer is constituted by the random, distorted, echoing, initially croaking, turned frustrated screaming voice of the artist exclaiming “no more!” and “you can’t escape from here!” The disturbed voice, embodying pain uncomfortably and obtrusively, penetrates the distressed barrage of random noise, yet not wholly without patterns. To most, it is a violent cacophony of painful sounds. For some, there is music in the pain, and pain brought forth through the music. There may be clarity in knowing the pain inside oneself, for this is how being and the mind, and self-consciousness of existence move through time. The music is composed in a manner in which the internal dynamics of the nervous system may trigger the sensation of nociceptor pain by changing states of sensory bare nerve endings to give the feeling of approaching or actual tissue damage or noxious cold without either being present (Maturana, 1983).

Such music lies beyond the margins of margins. The artistry above is part of a genre centered around death, dying, pain, and other extreme themes, popularized outside of the United States. Each cassette, vinyl, and CD produced by related artists serves as an instrument of introspection sharply thrust into the relational web that constitutes human life. This infiltration of conspicuous albums is composed to grate along inner and outer surfaces by exogenously introducing music intended to align with or evoke the severe physical pain only talked about in doctors’ offices, with family, or close friends. Having severe pain and even death projected onto and into the human deliberately through music beyond what film alone could ever hope to accomplish forces a reckoning with severe pain itself: torture, agony, despair, excruciation, and suffering.

The music is heard as real as it feels. It draws out of the abyssal depths and entangled complexity of being and into existence. A severe pain that dwells in being may not yet have been openly and inwardly given a name until its essence is heard in the music. It is pulled outward and given a clear presence in being, and starts to take up space.

Music can resonate with and even locate and bring forth severe pain, just as Käthe Kollwitz does with lithographs.

Here, Kollwitz expresses misery, agony, suffering, and endless excruciating pain. A person steers the individuals in front of the beam, who are hunched over due to the strain of dragging the moldboard, share, and colter through the dirt to till the field. The replacement of animals with humans (not without precedent) adds a thick layer of severe, inescapable pain to tilling the soil. Rows have already been plowed, yet an expanse remains beyond what Kollwitz made visible. If the pain the individuals experience increases, it will become unbearable. Every day life can imitate the plight of those pulling the plow through the dirt. The monotonous and relentlessness pain that often accompanies dragging the beam and its blades through tough rocky soil can be felt elsewhere, even if there is no real noxious stimuli. The emotions of pulling the plow align with the experience of having an everyday experience, whether in existence’s mind and self-conscious, in being, or both. In everyday life, the plow may feel as if it is never untethered from the one pulling it, and the grade never gets any flatter. Still, the pulling and plowing continue, and the nociceptors are steadily sending noxious stimuli to the brain as the ropes tear and gnaw at the tissues beneath. The silent nociceptors become activated once the inflammation begins. In some cases, being and existence both may feel like there is pain, even if there is no source of pain present.

Distinguishing the Pain(s)

An artist creating music about severe pain (likely in pain) may provide the right sounds for a human to distinguish pain in their being for the first time. According to Maturana (1992), if pain is distinguished, it exists; if it is not distinguished, it does not. Pain is distinguished, cleaved from its surroundings, and given a past that explains the origins of the now-recognized pain. In distinguishing sources of pain, existence’s understanding of being in pain is more complete. To engage in the hardship of distinguishing all of the pain in being is to add misery to a sense of the whole human. Pain before it is distinguished is present in being but covertly exists before it is acknowledged within it. Covert pain remains illegitimate as it has yet to be brought forth. Pre-distinction pain occurs, but it is not yet made legitimate and brought into humans’ awareness.

But at the same time we distinguish ourselves doing what we do. Listening, observing, in experience. And by speaking about experience I refer to that which we distinguish as happening to us. I'm listening or I'm bored, I'm interested, I'm tired, oh my back! All these are distinctions of what happens to us in that moment. If I don't distinguish that my back [aches] , my back doesn't [ache]. Aha, when I distinguish I may say “Oh, it has been [aching] all this afternoon.” And we know this. We have been doing things and suddenly we make a distinction that we extend to the past. But unless we make the distinction, nothing happens (Maturana, 1992, p.4).

Pain of any variety, whether it be emotional or physical, minor or severe, fills being with a complex essence. The kettle fills the mug, and often fills it over. Distinguished pain adds, while it can, to the lived experience of being human. Some levels of pain can be distinguished in a positive sense as motivation in athletics, or an avoidance pattern of behavior that reduces future encounters with sources of pain. Pain in the middle of the gradient may not be chronic and ebb and flow over time, but it makes the sufferer more appreciative of its absence. Severe pain adds agony, misery, and torment to the lived experience as long as it endures. Even severe, it still adds, before it has the potential to take away. There may be enlightenment through suffering. It is possible that there may be moments of clarity in severe pain, insight gained, and associations made that did not exist before the onset of severe pain. Understanding may be achieved, and an appreciation for life without pain. Even severe pain adds to the experience of being through activated nociceptors.

Part of living is to continue to distinguish sources of pain arising through language as they occur in being, and their place in the mind and self-consciousness belonging to existence. The pain is either exacerbated or dulled by the behaviors of existence. Bringing pain, more pain, into existence is the only potential way to make it less than. As noted before, pain is constitutive of humans. However, this is not to make pain supreme, but instead an important element distinguished by existence in the mind, self-consciousness, and being.

Pain and Identity

The human form is arranged in such a way that pain is inevitable. Its external surfaces and some of its internals await stimuli that will be perceived as pain. How being can be in nociceptor pain has been studied. Focus now shifts to how humans can become pain through integrating it into their identity. Identity, as pictured below, is a bounded entity with impermeable areas, the rusted barbs on the rusty wire, and permeable areas in between the barbs where consciously or unconsciously elements, namely severe pain, are allowed to enter and become part of identity.

A severe pain, such a tissue damage, burns, or the long-term deleterious effects of the inhalation of noxious chemicals, can linger long after the initial stimulus is gone, even for the rest of one’s life. The earlier solution to pain was not to distinguish it, but this was described as illegitimate. Instead, pain must be distinguished by drawing a boundary around it, and bringing it forward into our awareness endowed with properties and a context granting it significance, meaning, history, and a future (Maturana & Poerkson, 2011; Mingers 1995). This process, Maturana (1992) describes as requisite for anything to exist. When confronted with pain so overwhelming, it forces the afflicted to distinguish it while it is endured. The distinction is not optional, though it still does occur. From the distinction that adds the temporal elements of past and future and injury and healing, as well as significance, properties, and context, there is another boundary with properties unique to each human called identity. Transitioning from pain that is recognized and lived experientially, to identifying with pain and making it part of who one is at the level of their existence, pain becomes part of who they are, their identity. Pain cannot always be distinguished and set aside. In some cases, gradually or all at once, pain can be so severe that it barges across the semipermeable boundary of identity and unconsciously becomes a dominant component of identity. Severe pain’s integration into identity will alter how the other components of identity are perceived, weighed, relate to one another, and hang together. Pain may clear away that which was once important, turn negative what was once positive, and change the way the constitutive elements dynamically interact to product the emergent property of “identity” that is created through the interaction of components and not their aggregation. Recruiting being and existence, a prominent shift will occur in mood or emotion (moods are sustained longer than emotions), which is far from inconsequential. As pain becomes identity, it is probable that it will create a shift toward negative emotions that embody a human’s pain, including fear, anxiety, aggression, grief, and helplessness. As mood and emotions shift, the human changes.

In a way, a change of emotion or mood is a change of brain and body. Through different emotions, human and non-human animals become different beings, beings that see differently, hear differently, move and act differently. In particular, we human beings become different rational beings, and we think, reason, and reflect differently as our emotions change. We move in the drift of our living following a path guided by our emotions (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.38).

As mood or emotion shifts to represent perceived severe pain, changes are made in being and existence involving the whole human (Thompson, 2007). Important, mood may change elements or the totality of a human’s microidentity, which Varela (1992) explains is a readiness-for-action and its “corresponding lived situation a microworld” (p.). Varela (1992) introduces a flow of different microidentities and microworlds that change in the space of breakdowns of experience. The readiness-to-action of a microidentity changes with mood or emotion, and with consideration of having the experience of having a lived microworld. Should the changes of a negative emotion reflective of severe pain be conserved across microidentities that do not relate to one another, identity itself may be changed and conserved to be expressive of pain. As mentioned earlier, changes in identity are manifested in how the elements (more than those represented here) of identity relate to one another, are understood, ordered, addressed, and handled. Important to Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) are elements such as reflection, rationalization. thinking, reflecting, acting, hearing, and seeing, all of which change with mood, and the mood of severe pain will change them severely. Once pain moves from the sensory bare nerve endings of the nociceptors and affects the rest of the nervous system as a neuronal network, it is possible for identity held across being and existence to change and embrace severe pain. There is a movement from someone who has pain to someone who embraces pain, conscious or unconsciously, at the level of their identity that fundamentally changes who they are in a manner that expresses the experience of severe pain.

What emerges is an identity that is founded upon or embraces pain. Is it possible that a mood of severe pain worsens the severe pain itself? Perhaps the mood of pain sustains the perception of pain beyond the occurrence of pain itself?

Conclusion

Humans are disposed toward feeling pain. Their being is arranged in such a way that they have nociceptors distributed throughout the body. The pain can be severe, involving a noxious stimulus to the skin, soft organs, muscles, or joints. The distribution of nociceptors creates an enormous capacity to feel pain. It is unavoidable. Regardless of whether the state of nociceptors is triggered due to an internally generated nervous system change affecting the related bare nerve endings due to art or a memory, or a noxious stimulus. Being has many dispositions, one is toward pain. The ability to feel pain and the perception of pain itself are both intrinsic to humanness. As addressed in essay one, in athletes, existence is disclosed at its best through generating or distinguishing the pain that is within. Pain in the mind and self-consciousness are not discounted, and the pain can be as severe a tissue or organ damage, but it does not involve nociceptors and is therefore not a subject of this essay.

Maturana (1992) writes that his back does not ache until he distinguishes it. In cases of moderate to severe pain, Maturana’s (1992) use of distinctions is idealistic. For example, pain can become overwhelmingly severe and is experienced before it has been properly distinguished with a past denoting the source of he injury, the future of how long it will take to heal, what caused it, and what the properties are. Drawing this distinction may be forced, but the pain pre-existed distinguishing it.

One of the more menacing features of severe pain is its infiltration of identity that changes the existence and being of the human in pain. The integration of pain into identity is wicked and produces a human consumed with and defined by pain that changes the value, significance, and arrangement of the elements that constitute identity. Significantly, emotional changes toward more harsh moods or emotions that are conserved across time have a considerable influence over the dynamics of identity.

References

Armstrong, S. A., & Herr, M. J. (2022). Physiology, Nociception. In M. Abdelsattar, W. B. Ackley, T. S. Adolphe, T. S. Aeby, & S. E. Agadi (Eds.), StatPearls. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing.

Dubin, A. E., & Patapoutian, A. (2010). Nociceptors: the sensors of the pain pathway. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 11(120), 3760–3772. doi:10.1172/JCI42843

Kendroud, S., Fitzgerald, L. A., Murray, I. V., & Hanna, A. (2022). Physiology, nociceptive pathways. In M. Abdelsattar, W. B. Ackley, T. S. Adolphe, T. C. Aeby, & S. E. Agadi (Eds.), StatPearls. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing.

Maturana, H. R. (1983). What is to see? Archivo de Biología y Medicina Experimentales, 16(3-4), 255-269.

Maturana, H. R. (1992, September 10). Explanations and Reality. Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Retrieved from https://www.hyperkommunikation.ch/texte/maturana_explanations.htm

Maturana, H. R., & Poerksen, B. (2011). From being to doing: The origins of the biology of cognition (2nd ed.). (W. K. Koeck, & A. R. Koeck, Trans.) Kaunas, Lithuania: Carl-Auer.

Maturana, H. R., & Verden-Zöller, G. (2008). The origin of humanness in the biology of love. (B. Pille, Ed.) Exeter, Devon, UK: Imprint Academic.

McMahon, S. B., & Snider, W. D. (1998). Tackling pain at the source: New ideas about nociceptors. Neron, 20, 629-632.

Mingers, J. (1995). Self-producing systems: Implications and applications of autopoiesis. New York, NY: Plenum Publishing.

Nachum, D. (2020). Chapter 6: Pain principles, section 2, sensory systems. Texas: Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, The UT Medical School at Houston.

Norcliffe-Kaufmann, L., Axelrod, F. B., & Gutierrez, J. (2014). Pain, Autonomic Dysfunction and. In M. J. Aminoff, & R. B. Daroff (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences (Second ed., pp. 720-724). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.

Pinho-Ribeiro, F. A., Verri, W. A., & Chiu, I. M. (2016). Nociceptor sensory neuron-immune interactions in pain and inflammation. Trends Immunol., 38(1), 5-19.

Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

More content is coming for those who follow this blog exclusively for wildfire! But do not leave just yet! Please enjoy a post that has been waiting to be published. Imagine it as a reel in a recording studio that has never been heard until now.

We all design constantly. This post is about how music can define and support distinct design styles that may be used in wildfire innovation. As a design expert, I welcome all readers to enjoy this unconventional post, which offers valuable insights into understanding music, design, and their intersections.

In addition to fire, GregoryVig also explores design, complexity, biology, and resilience, which are all part of the larger project of this blog and apply to wildfire and any other risk management work. The following post explores design by analyzing two forms of music composition that can be translated into two distinct product design styles.

All fields should recognize design as innate to human behavior. Design is roughly comprised of the two connected acts of deciding what should exist based on data, preference, vision, need, or desire and intentionally bringing it into being. My work in design around wildfire and emergency management dates back to 2016. This post represents my current thinking on design. True to the Cassette Series, music is integral to this post, forming its very foundations.

If you are new to the Cassette Series, it is an aesthetic and the celebration of a perceived intersection between music, writing well, and early cassette culture's subversion of formal music institutions. While the author does publish, it is firmly held that not all writing should be behind paywalls. Early cassette culture saw the appearance of now-famous artist-owned labels that would publish avant-garde music at a rapid pace. Embracing this culture to the degree feasible had always been the goal. A “Do it Yourself” attitude prevailed. For releasing writing (cassettes), blogs are equivalent to the artist-owned label.

From its first tape, the Cassette Series has made it clear that the author recognizes a unique link between listening to music and writing. The series has also been open about its influence, namely older industrial works released early on, such as tapes ranging from noise to power electronics to death industrial and a few extreme metal bands. This post emphasizes the cassette and music and the role it can play not only in writing but also in other design contexts.

Introduction

In 1993, an unwell industrial artist whose death-obsessed tapes cut across death industrial, power electronics, and noise subgenres started to record and release works under the artist’s independent label and their moniker. Two years into a frenzy of abrasive, foreboding, violent, and yet engaging and emotionally evocative releases, on October 14, 1995, the artist put something out into the world that is nearly impossible to make sense of, and very little has been written about. The release was packaged in a VHS case and advertised on the cover as a Limited edition of "000000000000000000" copies.” The famed Slaughter Productions released it based in Sassuolo, Italy. The VHS cover also indicates:

“‘000000000000000000’ is an example of real ‘dead music.’
Note: Do not use a tape recorder for listening just use your brain and think that music is DEAD.”

There is plenty to unpack there, but first, an image of the contents of the VHS case:

The blog “Anomaly Index: Music's conceptual anomalies and wanton obscurities” (2020) reports, “It was a box for an old VHS tape which, when opened, revealed the mangled parts of an audio cassette laid on a bedding of burnt cotton” (np.). In the blog, this work is called an “anti-cassette” without an obvious motivation. The author or authors of the blog include, “but the packaging includes a clue, the cover describing it as ‘an example of real ‘dead music,'” which suggests this was yet another manifestation of his long-standing fascination with death” (n.p.). The central theme of death and surrounding topics of pain, isolation, and suffering found in this artist’s tapes are consistent with the writings on the blog last year. The artist's occasional deviations from these emotions and related topics are far from endorsed by this blog.

Alive Music

This strange release questions whether death is pervasive among living and non-living things. It is necessary to consider whether music can be alive and become dead or vice versa.

“The strictly physical systems persist without living: they disintegrate without dying; they are half-alive or merely half-dead. Only the most complex form of living organizations corresponds to being that undergo the completion of death” (Morin, 1993, p.235).

Morin (1993) doubts the inability of dead music to exist, at least as it relates to the cassette, which will “disintegrate without dying.” The artist has aided this process by destroying the tape, which was never alive but always half-dead.

Is music alive? Maturana's autopoietic criteria will be used as a litmus test to evaluate whether or not music can be considered alive. As an author who uses biology as intended, any determination will be made through metaphor, imagination, and contortion of the original meaning. Still, this will be useful for the ongoing discussion moving toward design.

Maturana and Poerkson (2011) explain that living systems are constituted by a “network producing molecules that interact with each other in such a way as to produce molecules, that in turn, produce the network producing molecules, and determine its boundary” (pp. 97-98). This type of network is autopoietic, and the primary example is the cell (Maturana & Poerkson, 2011).

A fabricated scenario will be used to demonstrate this point.

Even a small sampling of the artist’s work reveals a wide range of possibilities a tortured mind can create with even a simple setup where a synthesizer is dominant. A synthesizer, effects, a mixer, and a microphone made incredibly meaningful, haunting, sinister, and complex music. It is visible that the different sources of sound form and exist in a network pattern where past, current, and anticipated activity at one node, or source of sound, affect changes in the other nodes in a continuous reciprocal exchange. In this network, each key on the synthesizer is considered a node, as are the effects built into the synthesizer, any external effects applied to the node, mixing, sparingly used vocals, and any effects added to them.

The network's remarkably uncomplicated arrangement quickly increases the number of nodes and connections during composition. At any moment, the network of instrumental activity produces sounds that interact with one another to make the shortest portion of a musical track. The networks created by the artist each produce a single or collection of sounds constituting an instance of the entire piece of music and establishing its boundaries. It is the way the products of these networks relate to one another in such a way that, from these interactions, music emerges. An entire piece of music is an emergent property. It is not found in any of the networks or by adding them up, but how they interact from the song’s beginning to the end. How a section of music heard in the here and now is perceived is influenced by what has already been heard and what the listener anticipates will be heard next. Music emerges from instant to instant on a small and medium scale and a large scale from beginning to end. The emergence of a piece of music includes the overall impression and emotion it leaves behind as the next one begins.

In live music, there is a variance from Maturana’s criteria in that the network producing sounds that create a part of a song does not then reproduce the same network that created it. The composer creates a network of instruments and vocals, but the prior network pattern is rarely reproduced; the network is not sustained. Instead, new networks are created. In a departure from Maturana’s conception of life, barring the artist’s use of repetition, new networks are perpetually being created as the song progresses. The exact node activity and the interaction pattern among them depend on the sound the artist deems appropriate based on the sounds already made, the anticipation of what should come next, after that, and so on. The preceding sounds created by artist-designed networks influence but do not determine those more or less likely to occur as the song progresses. The artist creates networks to produce sounds that will carry their expression forward.

Using Maturana’s autopoietic criteria, this analysis shows that the music-making process can be alive, even though the same network is not continuously produced. Instead, barring repetition or choruses, new networks continuously sustain the music as alive. 

After the music is composed, its aliveness dissipates. The listener responds to the emergences throughout each track. What is heard is something made through a process that was (metaphorically and imaginatively) alive through the continual creation of networks, one after the other, that are in some way related but generally not the same. The networks continue to carry some melody or artist’s intent as a thread that runs through the networks, even during transitions. As a listener experiences it, music is not alive as it was during composition. What the listener hears is half-alive and reconstructed through their listening to the artist’s work. The artist’s process of continually bringing life into each track has ceased. This process has been completed and no longer requires an artist or someone else to bring life to each track through composition by intelligently creating the right sounds at the right time to convey the correct expression. After the album is completed, it is released in physical or digital formats with notable traces of the artist’s pursuit to create something full of life during recording.

Recorded music is not alive. It was during composition. The physical cassette is undoubtedly half-dead or half-alive. Either one can be debated. However, the music heard involves the same networks brought together in composition and the properties they create in a flow of varying network configurations. Together, even a simple array of synthesizers, effects, and vocals, through talent, anticipation, and involvement in the world of the track, creates coherence, melody, and pattern. As it is heard, alive music is experienced more half alive than half dead. This depends on the motivation during the composition process and the style adopted - alive or dead.

Dead Music

A slight stretch of Maturana’s autopoietic criteria suggests that creating music produces something alive. A fine line is walked in making this declaration, but it is sufficient for the conversation. Dead music does not arrive through the artist’s destruction of a cassette that is “half-alive or merely half-dead” (Morin, 1993, p.235) and can be destroyed with dying. The artist asks us to think that the music is dead and not to use a tape recorder to play it, which would be impossible.

If dead music is not created through the destruction of the tape, how is it made? Dead music is a broad dismissal of live music principles and a style of composition as the same arrangement of mixers, microphones, and synthesizers can be used to create alive music. Perhaps a broken cassette labeled dead music is simply another obscure expression of the artist’s obsession with death materialized through low, haunting, harsh, and sometimes erratic synthesizer tones with occasional vocals, samples, and effects. Dead music renders the likely contents of the tape not only music about death but death in composition. Would-be listeners will never know for sure.

Elsewhere, referring to the previously mentioned side project, the artist continues to describe their musical style as dead music but expands on the idea. They say it is cold, like a corpse, and beyond life, space, and time. Dead music is composed by an artist with nothing left for a brain that creates music that travels into nothing, an empty space that continually repeats itself, a space where there are no exits. The artist continues to live but is dead, similar to Morin (1993). Their obsession with death takes on the form of dead music made by a dead brain. From this perspective, composing dead music may arrive naturally for some.

Dead music can be created intentionally through composition. Like alive music, dead music may include any number of instruments and effects, creating an overwhelming number of possibilities for interaction and generating entangled network shapes capable of producing any number of sounds that could contribute to an instant in the flow of music. What makes dead music dead is the intentional absence of interaction or relating among the nodes that would form a network. At one level, each instrument and effect may operate without concern for what the others are doing, or just barely and not through time. A style of composition where sounds are not concerned with one another avoids interaction. Groups of networks may produce coherent sounds over shorter time frames. Still, dead music uses unexpected and violent transitions that destabilize and deconstruct melody, stability, and the ability to anticipate what will happen next. Dead music does not aim to produce recognizable melodies and themes in the ongoing flow of the track. Instead, it is cold, obtrusive, anxiety-provoking, foreboding, and unexpected. Dead music does not flow; it is forced by the artist and driven by negative emotions into a space of nothingness without exits. With no exits, the steadily increasing nervous and anxious energy cannot escape and cannot be bled from the track. It is a gift to the listener. Listening to dead music, there is a growing tower of cognitively unresolved harsh sounds without specified meaning that continue to reverberate with no coherence in the emptiness evoked by the “music.” From the minds of the maniacal, obsessed, and even those who find themselves alive but know they are already dead, there is dead music.

Looking at a mesoscale, dead music is also produced through an intentional lack of concern for networks relating to networks to a certain degree. For example, some artists compose static with slight dynamics, while others stop short or produce white noise. As mentioned, dead music can contain stretches of networks that produce a melody, such as in the background of a repeating suspenseful arrangement of tones that lasts the track’s duration. In the foreground, networks may exist as already specified without constructing “musical” sounds. Networks of nodes are designed in weak association with those to follow or not at all. There is no causality to make sense or answer why one instance of sound came after the other without repeat listening and analysis. There is also no chorus to create a repeating pattern. Intentional disorder reigns. When speaking of dead music, it is a random and indecipherable sound designed to be something not to be understood, but by a microniche of listeners. Dead music operates almost on an emotionally evocative level. There is death, pain, suffering, and anxiety to be felt. This is quality inspiration for writing in troubled times, communicating a horrible experience, or genuinely feeling and describing the world. As none of the sounds in dead music typically interact, there is no emergence from moment to moment. Regardless of the section studied from a piece of dead music, it has no conceivable connection with those that came before or will follow after, so there is also no overall emergent impression, meaning, or significance that can be derived from each song. Finding meaning is left to the listener.

It is a far gentler task to think about dead music than it is actually to listen to dead music.

The independent use of the various instruments and effects that do not form an intelligible network and arrangement of networks and the rare patterns and sections of a track that have some consistency and repetition produce dead music. Dead music is post-music, such as the disturbing and mysterious “group” Gulag. This group is undoubtedly dead music, as they exclusively create abysmal sound with constant screaming without coherence, melody, or ability to anticipate or discern what is being heard next. Gulag is devoted to dead music through violent, harsh, overwhelming, and disturbing sounds. The point of Gulag is not to release alive music, or anything of the sort. It is dead music, by definition. There is no sense. In a way, the group has not created anything to hear. It is the A.M. radio on maximum volume with painful sounds calling out for death. Both alive music and dead music are made with commitment and conviction. Dead music requires a certain amount of discipline, not following what may be a natural tendency to create rhythm, pattern, and melody and overcoming these instincts. Instead, dead music artists act well beyond what is normative to express something from a place of severe pain, malcontent, malice, social observations, loss, grief, and isolation that resonates with a loyal niche audience.

Within the broader context of the 1995 release, the two-album run of Project Death (translated) by the same artist debuted in 1996. Project Death can be categorized in a few different ways, one of which is dark ambient. There is an unusually heavy use of untranslated Italian vocals. Interviews suggest the English-speaking audience is missing the value of these lyrics. These two albums are categorizable music despite being a project about death. It may be supposed that Project Death would make dead music, but this is false. While the distinction between music and non-music is listener-dependent, much of Project Death has recurring sounds, more considerable repetition, and an ongoing flow with various transitions. Overall, Project Death does not deliver the dead music theorized above. Music can be about death without being dead music. Music can even be alive music and be about death. It is not the subject but the composition.

Why Write About Dead and Alive Music?

In addition to dead music’s connection with one of the themes running through GregoryVig’s 2024 blog posts, the idea of dead and live music has implications for design. Regardless of what is being designed, whether it is a blog post on an obscure anti-release from decades ago, a plan or strategy, a floral arrangement, a chair, a table, a carefully manicured social media post, a poem, a song, a or hammer, dead and alive music can form a design style. In what follows, a dead music design style is identified as uneven design and an alive music design style is termed even design.

Uneven Design

Is the design process alive or dead? Whether the design process is even or uneven is consequential for the finished and released design outcome. Bad even design can be experienced as uneven. The resultant user experience of a designed product that knowingly or unknowingly was brought into the world through an uneven process is discontinuous, mentally taxing, and demands something from the user. It does not simply hand itself over for use, as with even design. In uneven design, the lack of networked nodes within the user experience leaves the individual to figure out how to put the elements they can interact with together, requiring mental exertion. Like in dead music, in uneven design, concern with how all the features make sense across the scale of the interface is minimal. The designers did not provide the user with the cues and constraints needed for a smooth user experience that does not demand energy or attention. Uneven design may produce a no-thing requiring the user to identify how to engage with it. Design modeled after dead music is not entirely without merit. Dead music, or the idea of it, may provide the basis for an uneven design style. Dead music is a fitting inspiration if the idea is to confuse, scare, misdirect, make the relationships among events unclear, and provide an austere and uncomfortable experience desired by a microniche audience, just like dead music. Uneven design may be desired by those who want to figure out the design themselves, the “D. I. Y. or Die” crowd, and those who want to customize it, understand it, or have a specific experience with a product and its use.

A document written in an uneven style may produce content similar to the scattering of ideas like stones tossed across a frozen lake. The stones are strangers to one another. Their connection is that they are present in the same location; it is nothing more than this. Writing a paper (design) is not unlike writing a song; it can be an uneven paper as just described or a paper following even design that presents networks of ideas that fit within the more extensive network of the paper. There is a hermeneutic between the sentence and the paper, and the paper and the sentence that increases user experience through even design that makes everything obvious.

Even Design

The use of dead music to inform a designer’s uneven style, including process and outcomes, also applies to alive music and an even design style. Even design is founded on the principle of not asking for attention; the designed artifact does not beg for the user’s attention to be able to understand and interact with it. Even design is easy and pleasant, avoids breakdowns in user experience, and is intuitive.

A written document in the composition phase, whether a blog post, a white paper, an industry publication, or an article for peer review, may be brought into being through even design. For high-level analysis, the author may share the key, abstracted insights, and emergent properties from the networks, not the networks themselves, to provide a better user interface that delivers only the desired value. In the greater body of text, with transitions varying from sudden to smooth, the even design writer presents ideas in a way that makes sense with where they are in the paper and within the larger context of the paper itself with coherence, consistency, and flow. The pursuit of continually keeping the narrative alive through relating one network to the next. A project completed through an even design process produces an outcome experienced by the recipient dominantly in the domain of half-alive rather than half-dead. Even design is intended to be experienced exclusively as half-alive. However, experience breakdowns and the user feeling empty-handed, even briefly, can be considered half-dead.

A designer striving for evenness decides what to disclose to the user. The question is, "How much of what makes this thing a designed thing needs or should be available?” It is a problem of conceal versus disclosure, and even design considers this early. What is “backend,” and what is “frontend?” What needs to be available to work evenly, and what else might be disclosed to go beyond pure functionality and allow customization? Given the market and its diverse array of users, how can the various design requirements be integrated while still creating an even interface?

Conclusion

To the majority of people, dead music like Gulag and artists across many Industrial derivative genres, some of which have been known to release a wall of static with various effects and digital instrumentation, is abhorrent to almost anyone. Dead music is beyond the typical boundaries of comprehending what music is and is not. This distinction of being “not music” does not hurt dead music artists; instead, they embrace it as reaching a goal. Dead music is not for everyone (almost no one), and this is perceived as a measure of success. Relating positively to being labeled “not music” only adds to the strangeness and value of the music. Despite the grating uniqueness of dead music, it can serve as the source for the style of designed artifacts beyond music.

Again, designing unevenly to evoke feelings of strangeness, frightfulness, intrigue, and puzzlement causes the recipient to exert themselves cognitively to determine what is happening or how to use something. Depending on the recipient and their domain, a dead music-driven design style may be entirely appropriate by offering the recipient what they want. The niche or specialist market ideas pursued by uneven design can be a starting point. Through the user’s effort, uneven design may transition to even design in a resolution that moves the user into a smoother and gentler domain that makes clear and immediate sense.

This blog post draws from an enigmatic anti-release of a destroyed cassette in off-putting packaging labeled as dead music that could not be played, only thought of. To understand the possible meaning of dead music, Maturana’s criteria for life grounded in the cell were used first to define alive music. Even design strategies based on and pursuing the characteristics of alive music will appeal to a broader audience. Artifacts produced through an even design style will be easier to use, more consistent, expected, and operate with a better experience, requiring less cognitive load. The aliveness of the artifact being brought into being ends with completing the design process. The resultant outcome is half-alive throughout its use.

The focus of this post is dead music. Dead music is created in composition, not in the destruction of a cassette tape that makes it unplayable. Instead, dead music is created by an artist who generally chooses not to sustain anything within the song, not even in disjointed here and nows. In an uneven design style, emergent properties are recipient or user-dependent and vary greatly. A designer who embraces an uneven style is not seeking to make sense, at least immediately or easily. Still, sense could be made from the designed elements given with difficulty. It is also possible the designer created an artifact that sense cannot be made sense of to encourage a particular array of possible emotional responses. However, this is primarily an approach to music. Uneven-designed artifacts are for niche audiences who enjoy the experience and labor. Either way, there are design choices, and more than one can be made in a process. Will the outcome of a design process be even or uneven?

Sincerely,

Gregory Vigneaux, M.S.

References

Anomaly index: Music's conceptual anomalies and wanton obscurities. (2020, May 2). Atrax Morgue – 000000000000000000 anti-cassette (Slaughter Productions, 1995). Retrieved from https://anomalyindex.com/2020/05/02/atrax-morgue-000000000000000000-anti-cassette-slaughter-productions-1995/

Maturana, H. R., & Poerksen, B. (2011). From being to doing: The origins of the biology of cognition (2nd ed.). (W. K. Koeck, & A. R. Koeck, Trans.) Kaunas, Lithuania: Carl-Auer.

Morin , E. (1993). For a crisology. In E. Morin, & A. Heath-Carpenter (Ed.), The challenge of complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin (T. C. Pauchant, Trans., pp. 231-245). Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Retrieved 2024