Changing Emergency Response Operations: Pain and Freedom

Through the Ideas of Conservation, Pathways & Existence. An Antithesis Drawing from Maturana and Verden-Zöller, Yáñez & Others. A NoiseBox Publication, Cassette Series, Tape #1.

Author’s Note: This post marks what is intended to be the beginning of a series focused on emergency response operations with an overarching goal still being pondered, such as a book. Concepts already explored in this blog and new ones will be applied to the discussion of qualitatively changing emergency response operations. Somewhat uniquely included in this post is a detailed and expansive change process rooted in biology. A theory of change is critical to any initiative that desires to bring a new state of affairs into being. To be clear, the Cassette Series and some older works are focused on chapter-length posts that provide more exploration than the traditional shorter-read post that can unnaturally compress ideas.

Concepts have already been studied in this blog, and new ones will be applied to discuss emergency response operations. “Emergency” is not reserved for fields with lights and sirens responding to medical traumas, wildfire crews working to prevent forest fires from spreading, or search and rescue efforts. It applies to any field where an emergency can occur, meaning a situation where values are at risk; there is limited time to act to protect these values, and there are one or more hazards that add risk and often complexity to the response operations to protect them. Morin (1987) writes that when it comes to the word crisis, “Using the term merely allows one to say that something is wrong” (p.231). This definition is also applicable to emergencies.

The aesthetic of this series is essential. Music-related imagery, particularly the cassette tape, will be prominent throughout. It exemplifies a specific link the author understands between music and writing and an appreciation for old and new cassette culture. Lastly, this series sincerely recognizes the value and mystery one person can create through limited instruments, including a microphone, a synthesizer, a few effects, and a tape deck, equivalent to one person, a computer, and a couple of shelves of books—greg@gregoryig.com for contact. Use only with permission.

Side A:

1. Introduction

2. Design, the Future, and Operations

3. In the Flow of World Generation

Side B:

1. Pain and Freedom

2. Pain

3. Transitions Through Love (Pathway to Change, Extended Version)

4. Freedom

5. Conclusion

Introduction

Whether in emergency management, the emergency services, or somewhere within the broader area of public safety or beyond, there have been indicators of a desire for a new approach to emergency operations. Regardless of how operations should be structured, organized, and managed, the issue of moving from operations in the present to operations as they are desired remains. This is where design often enters the narrative, typically in a problem-solving capacity. It is instrumentalized in moving from the undesirable to the desirable. This mode of design thinking may also be helpful in transitions, transformations, and revolutionizing the present, but problem-solving is not the only way design can be used.

Design, the Future, and Operations

Design should not be relegated solely to problem-solving. It can also be pointed toward a future not formed in response to what is unwanted in the present (Nelson & Stolterman, 2015). Instead, the future involved in this design method is focused purely on what is wanted without any reference to the present, except the elements that exist now that, according to the firm opinion of some group of people, also have to exist later. Beyond these elements, whether many in number or few, those who follow this design practice strive to connect to what has already been designed. This allows designers to work freely within an opening to ponder how emergency response operations should be carried out and then work toward materializing this new method. This idea contradicts Ackoff (1999), who famously suggested that defining needs in the present is critical to knowing what would be desirable in the future.

How far an organization can project what it wants into the future is not limitless. The context (environment) the organization is coupled to and immersed in can quickly shift and render a particular way of responding to emergencies suddenly ineffective. Aside from a dramatic change, the organization may slowly drift into a state or setting in which the designed emergency response system gradually loses its efficacy (“system” referring to a similar construct as the Incident Command System, but not ruling out the possibility of the emergence of a complex system). Both movements lessen the effectiveness of the envisioned method of operating in emergencies. The longer the temporal horizon considered, the longer the desirable way of operating is intended to persist, and the more likely it will lose relevancy and effectiveness over time. A potential solution to the problem of increasing irrelevancy is to have more than one method for engaging in emergency operations based on different theories. One approach may fail, while another may be effective. This approach has several less-than-desirable outcomes, including accumulating more three-ring binders or PDFs, putting on training courses for each plan, conducting exercises, and hoping they remain relevant.

An organization might also imagine a durable future where it seeks to conserve adaptation. Adaptation is not purely for the sake of the responders and those involved. Instead, adaptation is a crucial dynamic that consistently and readily delivers value to stakeholders, including physical and virtual assistance, information, education, communications, mitigation work, etc. As a frame, adaptation connected to the invariable delivery of value is essential for the design team developing a new emergency response operations system to work with, as it requires considering flow and exporting value into the community.

An approach that seeks to emphasize and conserve adaptation (leaving space for other elements to change around it) might involve the Cynefin sense-making framework, which includes five contexts and the idea that different actions are appropriate in different domains. This means that if one finds themselves in a context where relationships between cause and effect are stable and likely to repeat themselves, concepts like Lean Management and centralization may be appropriate. If the opposite is true, it may be appropriate to decentralize control to operators during an unstable, but not entirely out of control, period of the emergency (Donaldson, 2001).

The design practice introduced here begins untethered to a problematized present focused entirely on what is desirable without constraints. Then, it works backward to determine what is technologically and socially feasible. A key consideration folded into the prior is the adaptive capacity of the emergency operation response systems as imagined. As discussed above, adaptation does not stand alone as a system’s ability to respond to fluctuations and the unexpected. Inextricably linked to adaptation is the ability to steadily and continuously provide value to those who need it despite changes in context. If an organization cannot produce value for stakeholders during emergency operations, it loses critical elements responsible for maintaining its identity.

In the Flow of World Generation

In their most basic form, pictured below, distinctions create a marked state and residual. The marked state is the focus; it is what is being observed. A valence of significance and value is placed over the marked state and what it contains. The residual is all that is left over from the primary incision made in the world brought forth, constantly being generated through distinctions. It is easy to cast aside the residual as unneeded. In less dynamic situations than an emergency, that may be so. However, in an emergency setting, the residual may very well reappear as being of importance.

It would be beneficial to read the post before this one, which focuses specifically on the creation of worlds. In the excerpt below from Yáñez and Maturana (2013), they deliver in the form of a systemic law that it is observers who generate the worlds around them by making distinctions (e.g., alive/not alive, this/that, important/unimportant, ours/theirs) that interlock to constitute a realm around the observer. It becomes the world they live in. Yáñez and Maturana list a few different types of distinctions. Relevant to emergency operations are distinctions that observers do not think could be made or could or would be made.

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 (p.77).

The distinctions highlighted above are relevant to the design of processes, guidelines, structures, tools, and concepts utilized in the design of emergency operations systems and responses. If designed to adapt and allowed to do so, emergency response systems can comfortably exist in the realm of making unexpected distinctions, making distinctions that follow these distinctions, or recuperating from being unable to make anticipated distinctions. An emergency operations system founded on adaptation has within it the possibilities of action to distinguish and move into areas that are opening and away from those that are closing.

Distinctions are a critical, foundational form of sense-making and an essential part of planning for any organizational change. The first distinction is how much of the current emergency operations system is being conserved. The more that is being conserved, the less is free to change (Yáñez & Maturana, 2013). This distinction should be drawn and become known before engaging in any design thinking focused on moving operations to the next state of existence. The meaning of “next state of existence” varies from organization to organization but generally entails a marked movement to a remarkably new way of approaching emergency response operations. This movement involves perceptual shifts in critical elements, including how emergencies, operations, adaptation, and the social response system works.

Pain and Freedom

Imagine two circles, a larger one a little bigger than a quarter and a second one a little smaller than a dime. These are two initial conditions of conservation for understanding moving emergency operations to their next state of existence. In addition to some of the core perceptual elements introduced above, achieving the next state of existence may also include changes to language, understanding, knowledge, structure, organization, management, processes, guidelines, safety protocols, risk analysis tools, job hazard analyses, plans, exercises, and an adaptive core that delivers value.

8. Conservation and change. Every time a set of elements begins to conserve certain relationships, it opens space for everything to change around the relationships that are conserved (p.77).

Pain

Conservation is an idea that belongs to the progression of lineages, including their “manner of living together” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.4). Once something is conserved, there is the possibility of change to take place around it. The larger circle represents expansive conservation regarding the existing emergency operations system. With so much being conserved, there is little opportunity for change, and this distinction is essential for designers to make before any attempt is made. On the other hand, total conservation is the ideal state for robustness (Di Paolo, Buhrmann, & Barandiaran, 2017). The present is being protected and held onto with such vigor that external events cannot trigger change within the system; the system cannot be buffeted around by the environment (Cilliers, 2006). Despite being a constraint to change and a source of pain in working to move forward, robustness is also a strategy for emergency operations, provided there is enough available energy to hold the present state in place. In addition, robustness as an emergency operations response strategy requires additional energy expenditure to return the emergency response system to the desired state if perturbed by an environmental factor. However, a steady state of near-total conservation is better known as a pathology in this context.

Lacking the space to create change due to extensive conservation foils plans to immediately implement a new emergency response system of any size, especially if there is no transitionary plan. A few new elements may be implemented after vetting by those concerned. The pain of being unable to change the system readily persists until a transition pathway is devised, followed, and revised along the way. The design group might present and establish the system as a new way of operating forcefully. This abrupt and violent hurtling to a new state may produce issues with buy-in, trust in the organization and the new system, resentment toward the design group, and lack of understanding. The end outcome may be a collection of workarounds that give the new system the appearance of working while the old system is still in use (Snowden, 2010).

Derived primarily from Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008), the first step in the transition pathway is to identify those who are aggressive toward the new emergency response operation system and deny their existence. At the same time, find all those who love the new system. Then, invite them to engage in conversations. Those who have been aggressive may eventually see the new ways of responding to emergencies as equally, if not more legitimate, than those already in place. Seeing “the other”(such as a system or design team) as legitimate as they arise in coexistence with oneself, referred to by Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) as “love,” is a biologically grounded concept.

Transitions Through Love

Creating the space for emotions to change is critical. While Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) are sensitive to goal-seeking terminology, it can be said that the dynamics of the conversation and language may transition the emotion of aggression toward a new emergency response operations system to the emotion of love. This is the transitionary pathway used here. It is not a rapid process and begins with the general statement that:

“The emotion we find ourselves in at any instant creates the relational conditions which conserve that emotion through penetrating all our doings at that instant. However, the emotion we are in may change when some inter-current circumstance, which may be a reflection, triggers a shift in the flow of our relational dynamics” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.40).

On a broader scale, Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) assert that human beings have arrived in the present through an evolutionary process in which the basic emotion was not aggression but love, which is a “biological claim, not a philosophical one” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.50). These important ideas will be explored later.

What is outlined here is not a paternalistic approach but one centered on engaging in conversation without authority roles. In these conversations that take place in love, the “others” who would like to keep things the way they are (or the design team, depending on perspective) do not need to justify their existence to include their point of view. At the same time, sharing in the emotion of love and the way of relating to one another love brings with it neither the team that designed the new system nor those who are reluctant to accept it demand anything from one another. Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) provide the popular definition: “Love, as we have said already, is the domain of those behaviors through which an “other” arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself”(p.69). Furthermore, “Love means or entails mutual trust in total body acceptance with no manipulation or instrumentalization of the relations” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.69). Maturana explains that instrumentalization and manipulation are illegitimate approaches to control and deny an “other.” Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) explain that “when the manipulated being becomes emotionally aware of this, mistrust and anger arise” (p.70). Manipulation is not born out of love but aggression, which will be discussed later. Love is neither good nor bad; “It is only the relational domain in which social life, trust, cooperation, and the expansion of intelligent behavior take place” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.80).

Maturana maintained throughout his life that he was a biologist, not a philosopher, as he is often referred to (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). Consistent with that understanding of himself, he presents love as a biological phenomenon capable of expanding our intelligence, “our cognitive domain” (Maturana & Varela, 1987, p.246). Maturana and Varela (1987) explain the expansion of

“our cognitive domain….arises through a novel experience through reasoning, through the encounter with a stranger, or, more directly, through the expression of biological, interpersonal congruence that lets us see the other person and open up for him room for existence beside us” (p.246).

This action is referred to as love. Maturana and Varela (1987) offer that “if we prefer a milder expression, the acceptance of the other person beside us in our daily living”(p.246; Italics added) is a substitute for “love.”

Critical to emergency response operations, Maturana and Varela (1987) explain love is the “biological foundation of social phenomena: without love, without acceptance of others living beside us, there is no social process, and therefore, no humanness” (p.246). There is no social phenomenon without love, the biological process that creates it, and without social phenomenon, both transitions to new states of managing emergencies and carrying out the operations themselves disintegrate. At a certain point in our history, Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) identify lineages that were unable to sustain themselves for long due to the loss of love as a grounding emotion underlying and cohering their daily living, and the group became “unable to survive ecological disasters” (p.79). Without love, those belonging to these lineages were unable to form stable communities “with the kind of inner emotional coherence that could lead to the expansion and conservation of the intuition and understanding that result in the necessary cooperation to overcome such disasters”(Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.79). Maturana and Verden-Zöller, knowingly or unknowingly, begin to situate love within the narrative of resilience, especially as it applies to the social context, to include organizations and communities.

Moving back toward conversations, Maturana and Varela (1987) address emotions and the historical significance of love:

To dismiss love as the biological basis of social life…would be to turn our back on a history as living beings that is more than 3.5 billion years old…..Love is a biological dynamic with deep roots. It is an emotion that defines in the organism a dynamic structural pattern, a stepping stone to interactions that may lead to the operational coherences of social life. Every emotion (fear, anger, sadness, etc.) is a biological dynamic which is deep-rooted and which defines structural patterns, stepping stones to interactions that may lead to different domains of operational coherences (fleeing, fighting, withdrawing, etc.; pp.247-248).

Disagreements in conversations where there is love and its manner of relating are openings to widen a conversation, concert actions, and not invitations to deny the “other’s” existence. This is the case even when one of the groups, whether for or against change, realizes that to continue being in the emotion of love with the other requires change on their part. The key word here, in alignment with Maturana and Verden-Zöller’s (2008) love, is “realization.” This indicates that the “other” independently concluded that they need to change their course of action to stay in the emotion of love and not move into aggression and its stalemate (Maturana and Verden-Zöller, 2008).

Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) refer to love as an emotion. A mood, not used in connection with love, lasts longer than an emotion. Love is also identified as a relational domain, leading to possible confusion.

We human beings live our daily lives speaking as if there were many different kinds, forms, or levels of love. This is apparent in adjectival expressions such as “mother love”, “filial love”, “aggressive love”, “interested love”, “innocent love”, and so forth, or in therapeutical practices destined to recover the experience of those forms of love. I think, however, that these many different expressions do not denote different forms, kinds, or levels of love as an emotion, but that they in fact connote only different relational dimensions of our living as loving animals (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.223).

Bunnell (2008) clarifies Maturana and Verden-Zöller’s (2008) use of the term “relational domain” in the editor's foreword. According to Bunnell, Maturana uses emotions and relational domains in similar ways.

Relational domains, which Maturana equates to emotions, are thus distinguished through different constellations of possible actions as one lives a particular local regularity. Again, we shift domains fluidly, so we flow easily from one relational domain or emotion to another (hence emotioning), and if we pause to reflect we see that the internal coherence, or logic, of these differs. We think and act differently in different relational domains (Bunnell, 2008, p.xiii).

Within the text, Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) write the familiar words that “the emotion of love, as a domain of actions, is the domain of those relational behaviors through which another arises as a legitimate" (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.39). Here, both emotions and domains of actions, or relational domains, where one relates to another in such a way their existence is legitimate, are used separately. Elsewhere, Maturana and Verden-Zöller describe love as a domain of relational behaviors “through which the other arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself” (p.223). It may be necessary to analyze each instance of Maturana and Verden-Zöller’s variable approach to love as an emotion or a relational domain to understand why one was chosen over the other. Whether approached as an emotion or a relational domain, other relational domains interlock with love as a starting position, such as romantic love, friend love, family, self, and so on. In the context of emergency operations, whether seeking an internal transition or working alongside other responders, the most common relational domains include friend love and compassionate love. Compassionate love relates to the “other(s)” in a way that there is commitment, understanding of their position, care for what happens to them, and a corresponding adjustment of actions.

Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) explain love is “not blind acceptance” and describe using the senses to evaluate the “other” and their legitimacy. Additionally, Maturana and Verden-Zöller continue, adding love not being blind acceptance only means the “other” does not need to justify their existence. This notion is prefaced by Maturana and Verden-Zöller, stating that “[Love] does not distort the relations in terms of what is expected or desired to happen. Love lets it be and is therefore ‘visionary'“ (224). Maturana and Verden-Zöller explain expectations, purposes, and aims deny love “as these become the center of attention and care” (224). There is a blindness generated by inserting goal-seeking into a relationship. As the objectives are worked towards, the “other” sharing in the relational domain of love disappears, and what was once in love moves toward manipulation and use. While the above is plausible if the rest of the theory is followed, it presents an issue for managing emergency operations. Given the above, how should those responding to an emergency know what they are expected to accomplish and when? In the context of moving an emergency response operations system to the next state of existence, how will the conversations be structured? How can the conversation proceed without agenda items?

Cooperation is a consensual activity in The Origin of Humanness in the Biology of Love.

“[Cooperation] arises in a domain of mutual acceptance in a co-participation that is invited, not demanded. The basic grounding emotion or mood in cooperation is love, and as cooperation takes place in the pleasure of mutual acceptance, its realization occurs in play (see Maturana and Verden-Zöller, 1993) in the enjoyment of actually doing things together” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.56).

The notion of inviting but not demanding participation may partially resolve the earlier identified issue of goal-seeking, causing the “other” to disappear. If working together in enjoyment is invited, this may negate some of the harmful effects of expectations, purposes, and aims. There remains the potential for the denial of love anywhere orders are given or implied through objectives. Both cooperation and its consensuality may further address goal-seeking’s effect on the presence of love. Consensuality is an interesting term used throughout Maturana’s work in need of definition:

Consensuality happens as a spontaneous coordination of behavior that does not require language to occur. Thus it is totally different from agreement, which is a stipulated coordination of behavior that arises only through languaging. As we reflect on what an agreement is, we may also notice that operations such as declarations, statements, expressions, promises, or requests, as well as orientations such as purposes, intentions, or desires, are also all secondary operations in languaging (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.31).

Additional research and thought will be given to how love could be placed into an emergency response context, especially those of a paramilitary nature.

Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) explain, “cooperation entails the pleasure of doing with the other, it is open to continuous expansion in the domain in which it takes place” (p.56). Maturana and Verden-Zöller explain a life based around cooperation, trust, as well as mutual acceptance – “that is, in love, the opening for consensuality is multidimensional, and, in fact, unlimited. In mutual acceptance and mutual trust, all situations of life become opportunities for… cooperation”(Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.56).

Whether the still unfolding biology found in Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) is used to engage with a group or a single individual living in the emotion of aggression toward a system or someone else, love can be used as a transition pathway. Idealistically, the transition pathway begins with those in the emotion of aggression observed as having an existence considered as legitimate as those who see them. This remains true even if those in the emotion of aggression do not see those in the emotion of love as legitimate in the same way. With those in aggression allowing disagreements to fester, the conversation over the new response system quickly expands. This is part of seeing those in aggression as legitimate in coexistence with the design team in the emotion of love. If there is no emotion of love and instead a mutual denial of existence between both groups in the emotion of aggression, the conversation “in love” approach is still valid. However, it has to begin with either the design team or those who will use the new system, breaking the stalemate by starting to see the legitimacy of what the “other” is saying. The above draws attention to the importance of emotions as it relates to the success and dynamics of the transition pathway. It is then essential to take a closer look at emotions.

Given the key roles of aggression and love, it is critical to understand Maturana and Verden-Zöller’s (2008) perspective that emotions and moods change the brain and body and are the grounding of how individuals arrive at conversations, interactions, and tasks. Moods and emotions change at any moment how one feels, who one is, and how one thinks. In Maturana and Verden-Zöller’s words,

“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” (p.56).

The notion that emotions and moods affect the brain and body held by Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) and Maturana and Varela (1987; and now many, many, more) is grounded in a conception of the architecture of the nervous system. This architecture includes the understanding that the brain is distributed throughout the body in sensory-motor activity and sensory-motor correlations that make connections through the brain. This knowledge of historical importance comes from Maturana’s early work earning his Doctorate at Harvard, conducting experiments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and continued work at the University of Chile (Maturana & Poerksen, 2011). In the words of Maturana and Varela (1987):

“This is the key mechanism whereby the nervous system expands the realm of interactions of an organism: it couples the sensory and motor surfaces through a network of neurons whose pattern can be quite varied….In humans, some ten to the eleventh exponent (one hundred billion) interneurons interconnect some 10 to the sixth exponent (one million) motorneurons that activate a few thousand muscles, with some 10 to the seventh exponent (ten million) sensory cells distributed as receptor surfaces throughout the body. Between motor and sensory neurons lies the brain, like a gigantic mass of interneurons that interconnects them (at a ratio of 10:1000,000:1) in an everchanging dynamics (p.17).

Sensorimotor activity structures our emotions, how we act, and what we sense. At the same time, our emotions, how we act, and what we sense structures our sensorimotor activity. Given what has been said, emotions are not limited to feelings in our heads or expressions on our faces, such as being red with anger, sadness, or concern. They involve the whole body and create a disposition toward the world, including a certain rationality. The above excerpt demonstrates a significant amount of activity previously thought to be located within the head distributed throughout the body. This blog’s author maintains that the above idea expresses a fundamental concept that has shaped understandings of cognition moving forward. The nervous system architecture presented here is relevant to any field seeking an informed understanding of how to interact with others and understand their behavior, including management, communications, design, and psychology. Additional fields include biology, cognitive science (see the book The Embodied Mind), and various related fields such as neurophenomenology, cybernetics, and disciplines concerned with emergencies due to their interest in understanding humans and social behavior more accurately. Relevant to transitioning to the next state of existence, the ideas presented in the last few paragraphs provide a deep look at emotions and what they entail. Understanding the nervous system (or perhaps “humans” is adequate) and its role in emotions will be necessary for anyone interested in using love, an equitable and sustainable pathway to change. What we do changes our emotions, and our emotions change what we do.

After completing an analysis of love, it is essential to understand aggression. Aggression is the opposite of love and is centered around the denial of the “other’s” existence. The quote below describes relations of power and their negation of the other. Added is the need for these relations to be continuously created and recreated. Power relations can slide into tyranny and conserve the relations associated with aggression, such as submission and domination, the inverse of love relations.

Emotions as domains of relational behaviors constitute the relational space in which they exist and are conserved. Thus, relations of power exist in the negation of the other (who could be oneself), and those who like to be in them must live in the continuous creation and recreation of relations of domination over others. The result is that relations of power continuously slide into tyranny, and tyranny conserves relations of domination and submission. Relations of love generate freedom and invite collaboration, even when due to their uni-directionality they are lonely (p.40).

Maturana and Verden-Zöller (2008) explain, “The emotion of aggression as a domain of actions is the domain of those relational behaviors, through which another is denied as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.39). This denial of legitimacy may have several sources, including expectations about what another should be or act like (Maturana & Verden-Zöller). The culture of the present-day is described by Maturana and Verden-Zöller as dominated by aggression’s denial of the existence of the other. It appears in greed, mistrust, domination, submission, control, political manipulation, indifference toward the “other” or total denial of their existence, competition, violence, wars, abuse, and torture (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). Taking stock of all these factors, including the day’s culture, modern-day humans are asserted to be the present day of a biological history existing in a particular way of living centered around love, cooperation, and trust. Given what has already been said about the manifold ways aggression manifests itself, the idea that humans presently exist in love seems delusional (Maturana & Verden-Zöller). The authors explain that it is incorrect to assume all biology must align with what they call “cultural emotioning” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller). Referred to as the “basic emotioning, that brings joy and happiness in healthy human beings, we find love in its simplicity as the domain of those relational behaviors through which another arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with us” (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008, p.77; italics added).

While the emotion of aggression may take the form of any number of relational domains (as love can also), such as war, abuse, and competition, aggression begins with negating the legitimacy of another’s existence. This emotion is dysfunctional in any emergency, even if one person scouting the emergency denies their existence due to a lack of confidence or a mistake. As this series moves forward, it must contend with the notion that the denial of self in the interest of acting in service of the group to complete a difficult task over an extended timeframe is normative. As the antithesis of love, aggression denies the “other,” even if they receive love in return. If the love sent in the initial aggressor’s direction wanes, love disappears, and aggression dominates, resulting in mutual manipulation and denial of the “other’s” existence. This results in a collapse of social processes and humanness (Maturana & Varela, 1987; Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). In this case, the emergency response is fragmented, with resources continually aggressive toward one another. This contradicts the unified operation needed to respond to the emergency where all individuals and groups see the “other” as having a legitimate existence. The same is true about the change process. Once love disappears, it may be very dynamic within the boundaries of the change process, but nothing is being accomplished. This is a route to deep chaos.

Aggression will be present during the work to transition emergency response systems. The amount of aggression may positively correlate with the amount of conservation. Earlier, approaching those in the emotion of aggression with love through conversation was described, which could widen to accommodate disagreements. Aggression is a formidable opponent to getting there during the work to facilitate change and move from one state of existence to the next. Those in the emotion of aggression must not be met with more aggression but a sensitive and gradual engagement rooted in the biology of love. The conversation arena might be used transparently to influence the emotions of others by introducing objects, language, emotions, and relational domains that those in the emotion of love and aggression could coordinate their actions and possibly their emotions around. The understanding of emotion offered here is an advanced step towards a transition (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008).

Freedom

Earlier, expansive conservation caused pain and frustration. Introducing a new way to understand and handle emergency response operations in an organization with far-reaching conservation dramatically decreases the space available for change. Culture, tradition, and history can also produce emotions, grounding the act of holding on to the way things are.

If there is only about a dime size worth of conservation, there is more than adequate space and freedom to change. In instances of minimal conservation, it is possible to incorporate the elements being held onto into the new design as there are so few. If necessary, the transition pathway based on the emotion of love can be deployed, and even more space might be opened for change. Where there is pain in total conservation, there is freedom in minimal conservation. Freedom may be the preferred choice context despite its adverse effects, such as the dizziness of being confronted with so many possibilities for making change. Even when moving with freedom, there is still the occasional twinge of pain.

In instances where only a small amount is being conserved, the design team may feel overwhelmed with all of the space and the different possibilities for installing a new emergency response operations system. With so many different routes available for bringing the new system into practice, there may be a surge of divergent thinking and communications regarding expanding on the ideas already developed, finding new ways to utilize the available space, and making revisions to the design. What matters most now is that the incoming system integrates the number of conserved elements, as designers will not find themselves in a blank space, tabula rasa. Something will always be conserved. As the new system is implemented, designers must know how much space it occupies and how much is expected to be conserved moving forward. There must be enough space to allow for adaptation, self-organization, innovation, and creativity, increasing the number of possibilities available to the system, variety, and diversity in thought and action, and increasing liberty throughout the new emergency response operations system. These desired elements belonging to the new system that arise through design must be given adequate space to be actualized and bring the emergency response operations system to its next state.

Conclusion

The above explored instances where minimal and total (or near total) conservation were the initial conditions for designing and using a new emergency response operation system. More conservation is related to less space for change, while less conservation opens up more space for change. To approach making a change in either setting, a transition pathway was established based on the emotions of love and aggression and was explored in depth, including a discussion of the nervous system and its role in emotions. The pathway also included how love could be used to engage with others in an expanding conversation to make room for any disagreements and help others see each other and their existence as legitimate. Perceived legitimacy of existence of the “other” is critical to moving forward when some deny new ways of approaching emergency response operations. The intent is to avoid goal-seeking language and mutual denial of existence and look for opportunities to cooperate, advance the emotion of love, and use objects, emotions, and language to provide a space where those in aggression can have realizations on their own. Additionally, the transition pathway is functional beyond total conservation and in situations of minimal conservation when the design team searches for additional space.

Incorporating a defined pathway for making change into a research project is critical. Exhaustively studying the problem will not reveal a way to make change and achieve what is desirable. However, a transition pathway such as the one presented here from the work of biologist Maturana requires study, contemplation, and design beyond problem analysis. They are two separate acts and likely two papers to be brought together when put into practice.

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