Archive for the ‘dual nature’ Category
Signs of the Times – 1/19/12
Filed under: dual nature, emergent, signs of the times | Tags: bottom up, failing institutions, government, individualism
Leave a Comment I often come across items that I believe reflect the changes I’m describing on this blog. To me they are “signs of the times.” Here are a couple.
“The Rise of the New Groupthink”
The New York Times recently ran an article about a paradox in the way we work today. For many organizations, there is an emphasis on the idea of collaboration. As author Susan Cain notes:
Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
However, she notes that there is a problem with this approach:
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
Later in the article she says:
…I’m not suggesting that we abolish teamwork. Indeed, recent studies suggest that influential academic work is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individuals. (Although teams whose members collaborate remotely, from separate universities, appear to be the most influential of all.) The problems we face in science, economics and many other fields are more complex than ever before, and we’ll need to stand on one another’s shoulders if we can possibly hope to solve them.
But even if the problems are different, human nature remains the same. And most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy.
To me this is an example of a basic principle of the Quantum Age: contrary to the popular myth that we must choose between individualism and collectivism, we are inherently both individualistic and collective by nature. We often have a hard time grasping this because it’s impossible to see both qualities simultaneously. You can see a group or you can see a person in that group; you can’t see both at the same time. But just as subatomic particles have an intrinsic dual particle/wave nature, we humans have a dual individual/collective nature. We will only resolve many of our current problems when we recognize this fact and proceed accordingly, disposing of the prevalent mythology regarding individualism versus collectivism.
Country in Crisis: Looking to America’s Mayors to Rise to the Challenge
Arianna Huffington recently wrote an article regarding how America’s mayors are working to develop solutions to problems that seem to be stumping the politicians in Washington. As she notes:
We’re now in the midst of a battle to see who will sit atop the pyramid in official Washington. This battle will dominate the media in the year ahead, but what the last year showed is that the more important story is what’s happening outside Washington. It was a year in which Time declared “The Protester” its Person of the Year and “Occupy” was named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. It was a year of solutions and energy and activism from the bottom up. And given that top-down thinking not only brought us a Depression-level crisis, but also shows no signs of getting us out of it, it’s bottom-up innovation that will be more relevant.
The rest of her article offers examples of such bottom-up innovation.
These examples demonstrate the power of emergence, the principle that living, self-organizing systems develop from the bottom up, within the context of their environment. As I’ve written here and here, many heads of institutions believe things are best run from the top down; that is a major reason why many of those institutions are in trouble. The solution will not be to accord more power and wealth to the heads of those institutions. The solution will be to recognize the power of emergence, and to learn how to rebuild our institutions in a way that harnesses that power.
Self-reliance
Filed under: dual nature, interconnected, quanta | Tags: failure, Herman Cain, individualism, internet, linked world, reality, self-reliance, success, the rich, Wall St
Leave a Comment There’s a lot of talk these days about self-reliance. According to some, our lot in life – our success or failure – is all up to us. As GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain recently said:
“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.”
According to psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner, Cain’s perception of self-reliance is common among the rich. As MSNBC’s Brian Alexander reports:
…rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.
This focus on self-reliance can be found among the non-rich as well:
…a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.
As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.
However, focusing solely on individual self-reliance ignores the reality of our dual particle/wave nature. None of us exists in a vacuum; we are all dependent on people and forces outside of us. As Albert Einstein once said:
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.
Our focus on self-reliance can even blind us about our selves. Ernest Becker, in his Pulitzer-winning book The Denial of Death, noted:
We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center.
This preoccupation with self-reliance flies in the face of today’s interconnected world. It also limits our potential. To understand this, think for a moment about computers. A computer by itself can make you productive in doing things like managing a business’s finances or writing a book. But a computer connected to the internet can do so much more.
The same applies to people. To succeed in life it’s not enough to simply be self-reliant; we need to be connected to the world around us as well.
Who’s the brains of this outfit? Maybe all of us
Filed under: dual nature, emergent, interconnected | Tags: change, individualism, linked world, technology
Leave a Comment Robert Wright has an interesting piece in the NY Times titled “Building One Big Brain.” In response to concerns that modern technology is affecting the way we think, he has a suggestion:
But maybe the terms of the debate — good for us or bad for us? — are a sign that we’re missing the point. Maybe the essential thing about technological evolution is that it’s not about us. Maybe it’s about something bigger than us — maybe something big and wonderful, maybe something big and spooky, but in any event something really, really big.
He goes on to propose that
…technology is weaving humans into electronic webs that resemble big brains — corporations, online hobby groups, far-flung N.G.O.s. And I personally don’t think it’s outlandish to talk about us being, increasingly, neurons in a giant superorganism; certainly an observer from outer space, watching the emergence of the Internet, could be excused for looking at us that way.
While this may feel to us like a new phenomena, Wright notes that it’s happened before:
If it’s any consolation, we’re not the first humans to go cellular. The telephone (and for that matter the postal system before it) let people increase the number of other brains they linked up with. People spent less time with their few inherited affiliations — kin and neighbors — and more time with affiliations that reflected vocational or avocational choices.
This earlier case, Wright observes, had a major effect on Americans’ social behavior:
In the 1950 sociology classic “The Lonely Crowd,” David Riesman and two colleagues argued that the “inner-directed” American, guided by values shared with a small and stable group of kin and friends, was giving way to an “other-directed” American. Other-directed people had more social contacts, and shallower contacts, and they had more malleable values — a flexibility that let them network with more kinds of people.
In other words, Riesman, like Carr, noted a loss of coherence within the individual. He saw a loss of normative coherence — a weakening of our internal moral gyroscope — and Carr sees a loss of cognitive coherence. But in both cases this fragmenting at the individual level translates, however ironically, into broader and more intricate cohesion at the social level — cohesion of an increasingly organic sort. We’ve been building bigger social brains for some time.
The phenomena of “bigger social brains” stands as an interesting counterpoint to the fervent passion for individualism expressed today by many in politics and the media. Perhaps in some way these passionate individualists are sensing this emerging change and, frightened by the prospect, are fighting it with all they’ve got. Perhaps this is partly at the root of the fierce anger we see expressed at Tea Party gatherings and the like.
Perhaps. But if that is the case, it seems pretty clear their efforts are doomed unless they roll back technology to a time before the internet and television…and probably the telephone.
If change is being created by technology, then the only way to prevent it would be to get rid of that technology. But that’s not going to happen. Advances in technology often give new power to those who have that technology. People tend to not give up such power, especially if they see themselves engaged in a mortal fight for the “good old ways” over what they perceive as “evil new changes.” Sooner or later they’ll decide to keep the power and adapt to the change.
In any event, I think this perceived tension between individualism and the collectivism inherent in “social brains” is another reflection of an outmoded way of thinking. Sooner or later we will come to recognize that the wave/particle duality applies to humans as well as elementary particles: we are always and simultaneously both individuals and members of collective groups.
Now if we could just wrap our brains around that – both individually and socially.
Improving the Norm
Filed under: dual nature, emergent, holism | Tags: bottom up, CeaseFire, change, government, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, social norms
Leave a Comment New York Times columnist Bob Herbert had a recent column about an effort to reduce violence in Chicago. He points out that a basic problem with violent behavior is that many believe it’s just part of life, noting:
One of the most frightening aspects of the murderous violence plaguing so many urban neighborhoods across the country is the widespread notion among young people that killing somebody who ticks you off is normal. It’s something that is only to be expected, like eating when you’re hungry.
Herbert goes on to describe an initiative in Chicago called CeaseFire, which is
…trying to intervene in potentially violent situations to ward off tragic outcomes. Individuals who are most likely to be involved in violence, either as offenders or victims, are personally engaged, talked with, counseled, cajoled — whatever it takes to prevent bloodshed. Those who intervene know the streets firsthand, and in many cases are former gang members and convicts themselves.
While the immediate goal of CeaseFire is to stop the violence, the long range goal is to “change the violent norms of big-city environments.”
The program appears to be having success. According to a study by Prof. Wesley G. Skogan of Northwest University,
Over-time trends revealed that violence was down by one measure or another in six of the seven areas that were examined statistically. The broadest measure of shootings (which included attempts) declined an additional 17 to 24 percent, due to the program. In four overlapping sites there were distinctive declines in the number of persons actually shot or killed ranging from 16 to 34 percent.
CeaseFire is just one of numerous programs that take a more holistic approach to dealing with aberrant behaviors. For some time now Hobart and William Smith Colleges have been using a social norms approach to reduce binge drinking, and the program has received national attention. As an LA Times article noted in June of 2001,
The practice, called “social norms marketing,” has grown rapidly in the last three years, along with the realization that scolding, scaring, educating and even passing laws can’t stop young people from harming themselves and others. In sharp contrast to generations of adults who argued, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” the new theory encourages the young to conform, since most of their peers aren’t up to much anyway.
“The reality is, we’re herd animals and we behave in accordance with social norms and the expectations of others,” said H. Wesley Perkins, professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., who is known as the father of social norms marketing. “We’re taking conformity behavior and using it in a positive way.”
The traditional approach to aberrant behavior is to view it in individualistic terms: if an individual misbehaves, it’s because there is something intrinsically wrong with them. The solution, according to this view, is to scare or browbeat the person into proper behavior.
However, if we take a cue from the wave/particle duality and recognize that people are inherently both individuals AND members of groups, we will recognize that only treating people as individuals is bound to be an incomplete approach. In addressing the context provided by the groups they belong to, the social norms approach helps create a complete approach to improving individual behaviors.
New Terms for New Times
Filed under: complexity, dual nature, emergent | Tags: Democrats, liberals, liberaltarianism, libertarianism
Leave a Comment Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
- Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”
It’s tough enough to live in a time like the present, when things are changing in so many ways. What makes it even tougher is that language often fails us. While we may have vague ideas about how things are changing, we have two problems in talking about those changes.
The first involves the uncertainty that inevitably revolves around great change. We find ourselves asking “what’s going on?”; “what does it all mean?”; and “how do I deal with it?” If we aren’t sure about what’s happening and what it means, we won’t be able to talk about it with any great assurance.
But beyond that there’s the problem of terminology. The words we use are based on shared past experience. If you tell a friend “my car has a flat tire,” the sentence is understandable because you and your friend both know what a car is, what a tire is, and what getting a flat tire means. If you could somehow go back in time 150 years and tell someone “my car has a flat tire,” they wouldn’t know what you are talking about because they’ve never seen a car or a tire, and have no idea why it would matter if the tire is flat.
An example of this terminology problem is the recent flurry of blog activity about a relatively new term: “liberaltarianism.” The word, coined by Will Wilkinson, apparently points to a new perspective on creating workable policies:
I predict Democrats will become somewhat more receptive to arguments that certain less centralized, more market-oriented policies do a better job of achieving liberal goals than do the more heavily centralized, technocratic policies favored by current Democratic opinion elites.
A problem Wilkinson has here is coming up with a suitable label for such adaptable Democrats. Apparently believing that Democrats are associated with liberalism and market-oriented policies are associated with libertarianism, he uses the conjoined terms to reflect the conjoined concepts.
However, both “liberal” and “libertarianism” carry a heavy load of conceptual baggage: many people have strong beliefs and associations with each word, and the discussion of Wilkinson’s concept seems to often founder on that baggage. Liberals express concern about libertarians taking over the Democratic party; libertarians dismiss any possibility of change among Democrats. In both cases, the argument revolves around the labels.
I believe it is possible to have Democrats who favor “market-oriented policies” rather than the old, centralized approach to problem solving. I think in many cases it’s even essential for Democrats to adopt such approaches. The problem is, what might we call such people?
I have a suggestion.
While he may not be aware of it in so many words, what Wilkinson is really talking about here is a shift from the inflexible, mechanical world view of Newtonian mechanics to the adaptable, organic world view inherent in the modern science of complexity.
John F. Schmit, a military consultant and writer who has been closely associated with Marine Corps doctrine since 1986, gave a lecture at the National Defense University in 1998 titled Command and (Out of) Control: The Military Implications of Complexity Theory. He concluded that military success required a shift from the prevalent mechanical world view:
The physical sciences have dominated our world since the days of Newton. Moreover, the physical sciences have provided the mechanistic paradigm that frames our view of the nature of war. While some systems do behave mechanistically, the latest scientific discoveries tell us that most things in our world do not function this way at all. The mechanistic paradigm no longer adequately describes our world—or our wars. Complex systems—including military organizations, military evolutions, and war—most definitely do not behave mechanistically. Enter complexity.
Complexity encourages us to consider war in different terms which in turn point to a different approach to the command and control of military action. It will be an approach that does not expect or pursue certainty or precise control but is able to function despite uncertainty and disorder. If there is a single unifying thread to this discussion, it is the importance of adaptation, both for success on the battlefield and for institutional survival. In any environment characterized by unpredictability, uncertainty, fluid dynamics, and rapid change, the system that can adapt best and most quickly will be the system that prevails. Complexity suggests that the single most important quality of effective command and control for the coming uncertain future will be adaptability.
For the same reasons, liberal Democrats need to shift away from what Wilkinson describes as “…heavily centralized, technocratic policies favored by current Democratic opinion elites.” Such policies are based in a mechanical world view; they seek out control over problems just as a driver seeks to control a truck. We might describe supporters of such policies as “mechanistic Democrats.” (I thought for a moment of using the term “machine Democrats,” but that has its own history and baggage – especially here in Albany.)
As for Wilkinson’s more adaptable Democrats, I would suggest using a label that reflects their non-mechanical approach. As adaptability is a quality inherent in all living organisms, we might refer to them as “organic Democrats.”
Clarifying this distinction between the old and new ways of evaluating policies will help us understand how they differ, without getting bogged down in discussions of labels. And any terms that help us understand our changing world has got to help us in adapting to it.
As John Schmit observed, adaptability is key.
As We Are Now
Filed under: As We Are Now, dual nature | Tags: America, gravestones, photos
Comments (1) This post is now also part of my new blog Dave Higgins Photography.
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From my early childhood, I remember numerous family visits to cemeteries. It wasn’t that we were abnormally morbid, or a large family with many relatives who had already “passed on.” In fact, we didn’t know any of the people whose markers we examined.
(Well, mostly. There are interesting gravestones of some family ancestors who were “murdered in a most brutal and cold-blooded manner” in New Jersey on May 1, 1843 – a story still talked about today. Miraculously, two children survived that massacre.)
Anyway, my family was doing something that’s not uncommon in New England: checking out old gravestones. Since my father had been a history major in college and his parents lived in New England, it seemed natural that we should find ourselves exploring old cemeteries, looking for memorable epitaphs and designs.
Beyond the consideration of their aesthetics, gravestones and monuments offer us windows into the lives and cultures of other people from other times. In summing up individual lives, cemetery art tells us something about what people of a certain time and place collectively valued and how they defined their lives.
Around 1980 I discovered that some modern gravestones featured something of a revival in gravestone art. Since about the start of the Industrial Revolution, gravestones mostly offered the basic facts: name, date of birth and date of death. But in the 1970s gravestones began to feature art work that told us something more about the person or persons they marked. This included images of worldly possessions or pastimes, representations of work occupations, and notes either from or to the deceased.
I took a lot of photographs of these gravestones in the early 80s, but then dropped the project as my attentions focused on other aspects of my life. Last fall, equipped with a new digital camera and visiting my sister in Texas, we explored some local cemeteries and found that modern gravestone art has flourished. I have been taking photographs of these gravestones ever since.
What are today’s gravestones telling future generations about us? And what does that tell us about ourselves? That’s what I’m exploring with these photographs.
The title of the project – “As We Are Now” – comes from part of a popular epitaph on old New England gravestones:
“Stranger pause, as you pass by. As you are now so once was I. As I am now so you must be. Prepare for death and follow me.”
My approach of photographing these gravestones in color on sunny days was inspired by a more recent observation of modern life, taken from the Beatles:
“Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes, here beneath the blue suburban skies.”
Here’s an initial sampling of photos.
Rabbits - Pittstown, NY 7/6/2009
“In every tear, there is a river of sorrow and memory. In every tear, there are oceans of love and loss.”
Enterprise - Delmar, NY 8/17/2009
Shopping Cart - Albany, NY 5/23/2009
House - Colonie, NY 5/13/2009
Fishing - Schodack, NY 5/22/2009
Cowboy & Indian - Joshua, TX 10/16/2008
Tweety as Angel - Delmar, NY 8/7/2009
The last gravestone, featuring the cartoon Tweety Bird as an angel, is an interesting contrast to early New England gravestone imagery.
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All photographs are copyrighted by Dave Higgins; all rights reserved.
What We Measure Is What We’ll Get
Filed under: dual nature, uncertainty | Tags: economy, reality, systems thinking
Leave a Comment Many people share the belief that there is a solid, objective reality “out there” somewhere – outside our heads, presumably – and that we can perceive this reality by assuming a detached, objective approach to understanding things. It’s also assumed that numbers, being abstract and seemingly objective themselves, are a key ingredient in achieving an objective knowledge about, well, things.
And so we hear every day a litany of numbers – the Dow Jones indices, unemployment rates, durable goods orders, interest rates, the GDP, etc. – from which we are supposed to conclude (objectively, of course) how we are doing economically. Being Americans, it’s taken as a given that if we’re doing well economically, then we’re doing well in general and all is right with the world.
The only problem is that our faith in the value of objectivity is just that – an article of faith. We don’t have any way of proving that our presumed objectivity, and objective reality, are the be all and end all of things.
As it turns out, quantum physics has discovered that reality can be understood in a number of ways, but it is not just some giant slab of objective Truth. As is demonstrated by the famous double slit experiment, what we measure for will have a major influence on what we get.
I was reminded of this fact by a piece in the New York Times titled G.D.P. R.I.P. The author, Eric Zencey, argues that using the Gross Domestic Product as a way to measure our economic well-being is flawed because it is incomplete. Only certain things are measured by the GDP:
A mundane example: If you let the sun dry your clothes, the service is free and doesn’t show up in our domestic product; if you throw your laundry in the dryer, you burn fossil fuel, increase your carbon footprint, make the economy more unsustainable — and give G.D.P. a bit of a bump.
The incompleteness of the GDP winds up shaping our priorities:
In general, the replacement of natural-capital services (like sun-drying clothes, or the propagation of fish, or flood control and water purification) with built-capital services (like those from a clothes dryer, or an industrial fish farm, or from levees, dams and treatment plants) is a bad trade — built capital is costly, doesn’t maintain itself, and in many cases provides an inferior, less-certain service. But in gross domestic product, every instance of replacement of a natural-capital service with a built-capital service shows up as a good thing, an increase in national economic activity. Is it any wonder that we now face a global crisis in the form of a pressing scarcity of natural-capital services of all kinds?
Zencey goes on to explain:
The basic problem is that gross domestic product measures activity, not benefit. If you kept your checkbook the way G.D.P. measures the national accounts, you’d record all the money deposited into your account, make entries for every check you write, and then add all the numbers together. The resulting bottom line might tell you something useful about the total cash flow of your household, but it’s not going to tell you whether you’re better off this month than last or, indeed, whether you’re solvent or going broke.
As I said before, we have a great faith in the power of numbers to give us a perceived objective reality. But this faith is misplaced if we don’t cover all aspects of a system. An in-depth study of what happens when we shoot photons through a single slit will show us one objective reality; a similar study of what happens when we shoot photons through a double slit will show us another. Only when we cover all the bases and account for reality’s multiple facets will we approach a deeper understanding of the way things are.
As Zencey notes, having an economic measuring system that only accounts for one aspect of the economy will inevitably lead to an incomplete and unbalanced sense of economic well-being:
We’re in an economic hole, and as we climb out, what we need is not simply a measurement of how much money passes through our hands each quarter, but an indicator that will tell us if we are really and truly gaining ground in the perennial struggle to improve the material conditions of our lives.
Out of Many, One
Filed under: dual nature | Tags: cancer, cycling, individualism, Pan-Mass Challenge
Leave a Comment When my father was dying of leukemia in 2001, I learned that with cancer it’s not death so much as the dying that is so terrible. I also learned that while we may feel helpless as individuals in confronting this disease, we can find tremendous power as a group.
Clearly in pain and ready to go, my father lingered for a number of days, slowly losing those aspects of life – mobility, speech, awareness, dignity – that were so much of what he was. In a few short days he melted from “Dad,” an 81 year old man who had been athletic, active and mentally sharp for as long as I’d known him, into a semi-concious organism lying inert in a bed. We were lucky at the time to have home care provided by Hospice of Central New York. (My father wanted to die at home, near my mother, my sister and me.) But even with their help, it was a very trying time.
Watching someone close to you die from cancer creates such a helpless feeling. You want to do something to fight back, to stop the pain, to exact revenge against such a terrible disease. But what can you do? You’re just one person, without any special healing powers or even any medical knowledge. I could ensure that Dad’s last wishes to die at home were fulfilled, and that final arrangements for his remains were carried out. But I couldn’t stop his pain and I couldn’t cure the disease. I was only one person.
But sometimes what is impossible for a lone individual can become possible when you are part of a group.
Since 1995 I have been riding in a “bikeathon” called the Pan-Mass Challenge that raises money for the Jimmy Fund and cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Before 2001 I had felt the emotional power of the ride: there are countless people and signs that cheer the riders on along the route, as well as personal messages and photographs many riders carry with them during the ride. Cancer has caused a great deal of pain to many people, and the PMC is one place where people feel free to express and confront that pain.
Rider at Saturday finish, Mass Maritime Academy
Seeing such things made a deep impression on me when I rode in the PMC. I can still remember quite clearly climbing the first big hill back in 1995, slowly passing a bagpiper playing Amazing Grace in the early morning haze. The poignancy of that moment brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes as I sensed the depth of feeling associated with the ride.
Although I had lost friends and co-workers to cancer over the years, I didn’t truly understand the power of the PMC until my father died from cancer.
I started out the ride that year apathetic and depressed, feeling very much alone even though there were over 2,000 riders around me. Over the early part of that ride I had an internal conversation in which I asked questions and just waited for answers to arise from where ever. I asked why suffering seemed so integral to life – why did people have to suffer from cancer like my father had, and why the pain of the bike ride was such an important part of the PMC. The answer I received was that suffering is the path to redemption – and rising to our best. I questioned why such suffering and redemption were necessary; the answer I got back was that we all need redemption, to get beyond whatever negativity and guilt we may feel about ourselves.
After 40 miles or so it began to rain, lightly at first. Around 80 miles into the ride I was part of a paceline that gradually lengthened as we went along. I started to notice flashes of lightning, the rumble of thunder and an increasing intensity of the rain. The storm became more severe, with occasional vivid lightning followed by loud crashes of thunder. With no reasonable place to stop, we rode on, the energy of the weather and the energy of the other riders increasing my energy to ride quickly and to get through the storm. Everything became a dimly lit, watery blur; I had no idea where we were, how far we’d gone or how far we had to go. We were just a stream of cyclists rushing down the flooded road, with the splashing wake of oncoming cars occasionally washing over our calves and feet.
Eventually the storm tapered off and the sky brightened. We soon came upon the 101-mile waterstop, and I realized we’d ridden right by the previous waterstop in the middle of the storm. After stopping briefly, I rode on to the finish, barely six hours after I’d started 111 miles away. It was the fastest I’d ever ridden the route from Sturbridge to Bourne.
That ride gave me a deeper sense of the power of the PMC. I had started out a lone rider, emotionally cut off from those around me. But riding with that group of riders through that storm had transformed my perspective. My alienation and bitterness had been washed away by the storm and the experience, and I happily joked with friends when I joined them at the finish line.
You might think, given the cause of the ride and the depth of feeling of the riders and those along the route, that the PMC has a somber, funereal quality to it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What I learned in 2001 was that the PMC enables individuals who have been personally shaken by cancer to join together in a meaningful, powerful way to fight back. The collective power of thousands of riders raising millions of dollars for cancer research and treatment is tremendously uplifting. Aside from the pain of the actual riding, the PMC is really a quite festive affair.
Saturday Finish, members of Team L.E.G.S. ("Legs Ending Great Suffering")
We’ve all been touched by cancer in one way or another; we’ve all experienced feelings of helplessness and despair when confronted with this dread disease. At the PMC, we all have our individual stories about cancer. But we come together in early August as one, sharing a common goal of fighting back and of eventually overcoming cancer. As the years have gone by – it was the 30th PMC last weekend – the riders share the growing confidence of the doctors from Dana-Farber who speak each year at the opening ceremonies on the night before the ride. The tide is turning, our collective knowledge and understanding of how cancer works is growing, and it’s only a matter of time before we – as a group – beat cancer.
Wave Riding
Filed under: dual nature, energy/flow | Tags: cycling, individualism
Comments (1) The Tour de France – the world’s greatest bike race – ended yesterday. The Pan-Mass Challenge – America’s greatest cycling fund raiser – takes place this coming weekend. In honor of those two major cycling events, I’m reviving an essay I wrote twelve years ago about cycling and the wave/particle duality. (Hey – blogs didn’t exist in 1997!)
Many people who are not avid cyclists – or French – have a hard time understanding bike racing. What they usually get from the mass media focuses on the individual accomplishments of riders like Lance Armstrong or Greg Lemond. A lot of people are surprised to learn that bike racing is really a team sport.
Especially in America, where we constantly hear arguments based on the idea that we must chose between either individualism or collectivism, the idea that the interests of both the individual and the group are intertwined seems alien and unfathomable.
In spite of any preconceptions we may harbor, the fact is that bike racing, and high performance cycling in general, revolve around this both/and dynamic of group and individual interests. For those of us avid riders and Tour followers, the interplay between these interests is part of what makes cycling so appealing.
What I’ve said so far is pretty abstract; my essay spells things out more clearly. The only thing I’d note is that it was written twelve years ago; I’m not quite so speedy on a bike these days…
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During the summer, I spend a fair amount of time on a bicycle, riding over 3,000 miles per year. I find cycling offers a number of benefits, including better health, an enhanced sense of self, and the opportunity to explore the suburban and rural countryside in New York State’s Capital Region. It also gives me a lot of time to think. And sometimes, cycling gives me an insight that could be pertinent to living in the Quantum Age.
To introduce you to this particular insight, let me begin by telling you about my cycling experiences over the course of a week in July, 1997.
On Tuesday, I decide to squeeze in a quick solo ride after work. I ride from my house to the nearby state office and university campuses, each ringed with a lightly traveled access road. The route is generally flat and I’m able to ride at what feels like a fairly quick and constant speed. After a little over an hour of riding, I return home, having ridden at an average speed of 18.2 miles per hour for 19 miles.
On Thursday, I meet a group of friends for our weekly ride. On this sunny summer evening, I ride with the group up and down over the rolling countryside of southern Albany County. Although we’re often cruising at 20 to 28 miles per hour on the flat stretches, I’m feeling relaxed and enjoy some spectacular views southward to the dark green peaks of the Catskills, looming over bright green fields glowing in the late day sun. However, after an hour or so I begin to feel the effects of the hills we’ve been climbing, as well as an apprehension about a long, steady hill I know we’ll have to deal with near the end of the ride. Near the turn for this hill, I slow a bit to drink some water and consume a packet of energy gel. In doing so, I get slightly separated from the pack. This separation widens when I see the group go by the turn we’re supposed to take for the big hill. I slow a bit and yell to them that they’d missed the turn, but they continue down a steady grade. I try to speed up to catch them, but they fade gradually from view. I continue on my own, not as quickly as before, but fast enough to finish with an average speed of 18.3 miles per hour over 32 miles.
On Saturday, seven of us gather in the morning at a lake house in Bolton, on the west shore of Lake George in the Adirondacks. Our planned route is fairly straightforward: ride around Lake George. We start out shortly after 9 AM, heading south to Lake George Village. We ride easily as we warm up, focused on the steady flow of traffic passing on our left as it heads south to the village. But as we head east out of the village, we pick up our pace. When we stop in Whitehall to take a short break after riding 35 miles, our average speed is 21 mph. This average drops a bit on the rolling hills between Whitehall and Ticonderoga, and drops some more as we ride over Tongue Mountain on the way down the west side of the lake back to Bolton. Still, we average 18.4 mph for the entire 94 mile ride.
There are many things cyclists disagree about, from what is the best bike equipment to where the best places to ride are. However, pretty much every road cyclist will agree that it’s easier and faster riding in a group than riding by oneself. This is generally attributed to the aerodynamic benefits that come from cyclists taking turns drafting in the pack. But I think there is something else at work here as well.
As I’ve noted before, through quantum physics we know that everything can be seen as both a wave and a particle. However, we are accustomed to thinking of people from an individual, particle perspective. If we see a group of cyclists riding together, we tend to think that they are staying together through the individual effort of each rider, and that the only benefit they get from this grouping is aerodynamics. And from a particle perspective, we’re right.
But there is another, less tangible benefit at work here. Riders in a group will often feel a higher level of energy, as well as an inclination to “get in synch” with the others in the group. This can lead to a higher level of performance. The effect is like that of waves moving in the same direction: just as such waves amplify each other and create a larger wave, riders in a group can amplify each other’s performance.
But this doesn’t just apply to those riding within the aerodynamic “cocoon” of the group. Individual riders close to the group may feel this effect as well. If I suddenly see a group coming up behind me, I may feel a rise in my energy level, urging me to either stay ahead of them or (more likely) to prepare for the faster pace I’ll need to maintain to keep up with them when they catch me. If I’m close behind, I will push myself to speed up and join the group. In either case, my attention will tend to focus on the group, and my inclination will be to synchronize my pace with its own.
However, there appear to be several variables that can alter this effect.
One is the difference in speed between the individual and the group. If a group is going either too fast or too slow, I will not feel much inclined to join them and will feel little effect from our passing each other. I have to be going at close to the same speed as the group for me to feel the effect of their presence. Even if I do join the group, the effect will be more or less powerful depending on how closely I feel in synch to the group’s pace. If they’re going somewhat faster or slower than I’m inclined to go, I may gradually feel less attuned to the group’s energy and either break away or drop behind.
Another variable is the size of a group. All other things being equal, I will feel more energized from a group of 50 than I will from a group of 2 or 3. It is as if the larger the group, the more anonymous I become and the more I can lose myself in it. By giving a part of myself over to the group, my sense of my own aches, pains and limitations seems diminished, and I’m able to perform at a higher level.
One other variable is the distance between myself and the group. The farther behind or in front of me the group is, the less effect I’ll feel from it and the less inclined I’ll feel to join it. If the group is too far behind, I’ll be inclined to disregard it until it gets close enough to judge its speed and size. If I’m too far behind a group I’ve been dropped by, I will get a sense that it is out of reach and adjust my pace to a rate I can sustain by myself. However, if I catch a glimpse of a group ahead of me that I hadn’t seen before, I may quicken my pace a little to see if I can catch up to it.
While I have been discussing this phenomena in terms of cycling, it can be seen in many other areas of life as well. I believe it is at work on the highway, where you can often see cars grouped together in packs while other stretches of highway are virtually empty. It could also apply to spectator sports, in which teams often seem to play much better “at home” then they do “on the road.” It might even explain why people tend to live together in villages or cities, and why the energy level and tension seems to be higher in areas with higher population densities.
Some of the problems we face today come from our thinking of people only from the individual/particle perspective, disregarding the importance of our simultaneous group/wave nature. Laws often appear to be written to prohibit individual behaviors, usually without due consideration of the social or group dynamics that might be encouraging such prohibited behaviors. Social programs often seem to focus on an individual’s needs for food and shelter, without consideration of his or her needs for social interaction and involvement. And in the workplace managers frequently relate to workers as a collection of isolated individuals, disregarding the subculture of the work group that is usually the ultimate shaper of employees’ values and beliefs.
In the midst of all this, we tend to view our selves as solitary souls, overwhelmed and powerless against the monolithic corporations, bureaucracies and other obstacles that confront us. We describe ourselves as merely “cogs in the machine” or “pawns in the game of life.” And all too often we avoid confronting the stupidity or inhumanity we encounter, settling instead for an uneasy peace.
Maybe we need to broaden our perspective, and recognize the power that can come from our wave-nature as well. Life is a balance between the particle and the wave, between the individual and the group. And just as an expert cyclist recognizes that maximum performance comes from being able to ride both alone and in a group, maybe we need to transcend our one-dimensional Newtonian solitude and draw power from our quantum duality.
An Illuminating Paradox
Filed under: complexity, dual nature, emergent | Tags: bottom up, individualism, regulation, traffic safety
Comments (2) One time, while driving on an interstate highway when the weather was gray and misty, I noticed a curious paradox.
Although it was only sprinkling occasionally, nearly every car had its headlights on, complying with an obscure New York Sate law requiring headlight use when it rains. However, nearly every car was also going 65-75 miles per hour. This was certainly not in compliance with the well-known and publicized 55 miles per hour speed limit in effect at the time. It also didn’t make sense. Why would people obey a law they were unlikely to get ticketed or punished for breaking, while at the same time they disobeyed a law that they could easily get ticketed for, with substantial costs in fines and higher insurance?
This question stuck with me for a long time. While the behavior I witnessed did not seem logical, I was inclined to believe there had to be some reasonable explanation for it. After all, I was doing the same thing most of the other drivers on the road were doing. But beyond that, I sensed this observation might provide a key to getting people to be better drivers. This was particularly relevant to me at the time, as I was on my way to a traffic safety conference when I observed this paradox.
Around this time, I was reading M. Mitchell Waldrop’s book “Complexity.” While I was vaguely familiar with the concept of entropy, in which things are seen to be perpetually running down, I was totally unfamiliar with the new science of complexity, in which things are seen to be perpetually evolving into ever more complex and sophisticated ways of being.
And yet, while I had never heard of complexity, I recognized many examples of the phenomena it focused on. The cars we drive today are much more complex than even those I had admired in the 1960’s. Likewise, the economy we work in that enables us to produce and purchase those cars has also grown in complexity from that of the seemingly straightforward days of the 60’s; that economy in turn was much more complex than that of say, 100 years ago.
Perhaps, I thought, the paradoxical behavior I had observed on the highway was somehow a reflection of this tendency to evolve to increasingly more complex patterns of behavior. One of the qualities that Waldrop discussed was the “bottom up” nature of self organizing systems. Increasing complexity comes about because that is what the users of a given system want; it is not imposed from on high somewhere. Cars today are increasingly complex largely because we expect more and more from them.
This seems to be a natural function of the way we are. The more something like a car can provide us, the more we tend to want. Even if our present car is reliable, luxurious and sporty in its performance, after some time has passed we are likely to be drawn to a newer car that is better designed, more luxurious and sportier. And to provide us with such qualities in a car, manufacturers have to continually strive to use more refined and complex technology to improve on their product.
I felt this “bottom up” quality was important in understanding the motorists’ behavior I had observed. Clearly, the authoritative power of the State, conveyed both through the raw power of the police and the cajoling power of slogans like “55 Saves Lives” did not seem to be greatly altering their behavior. Something within each motorist seemed to be propelling them forward in the behavior they were pursuing. But what? And how?
Some time later I stumbled upon what is arguably one of the most revolutionary concepts in modern science. This is the dual, wave/particle nature of matter. I vaguely remembered something from the few weeks’ of high school physics I’d had about the dual nature of light, and how it behaved as both a particle and a wave. But I had always assumed, as most people do, that some things were particles while other things were waves. In a foggy kind of logic, I had presumed that tangible things like a table or a chair were made up of particles, while forms of energy like light or sound were composed of waves. However, modern science has discovered that, at it most basic level, everything is both particles and waves simultaneously.
At first I found this concept hard to understand. But with more reading and thinking, I gradually realized that the world around us is full of examples of this dualism. The catch is that at any one time you can only perceive something as either a particle or a wave. For example, you can see the ocean’s wave quality in the way it rhythmically crashes on the shore. Take a drop of sea water and put it under a strong enough microscope and you would see the particles that water is made up of. But you cannot see the particle and the wave nature of the ocean at the same time; you have to adjust your focus to perceive either one or the other.
The same is true of a crowd creating a “wave” in a stadium. You can either focus on the movement of the wave or you can focus on some individuals participating in it; you cannot focus on both at the same time.
With this new awareness, I realized what had been happening on that highway that morning. Viewed from the individual, particle perspective, the behavior of those motorists did not make sense. They were obeying a minor law while flagrantly disobeying a much more important one. This did not seem to be in their own, individual/particle interests. But viewed from a group/wave perspective, there suddenly appeared a logic to their seemingly inconsistent behavior. In terms of both the minor and the more important law, their behaviors reflected those of the other motorists they observed on the highway.
If I see many other drivers turning on their headlights because it is raining, I will feel an inclination to do the same. If I see them going ten miles per hour over the speed limit, I will feel an inclination to do that as well. In both cases, the behavior reflects the “bottom up” quality complexity science focuses on. The drivers themselves create the norms for their behavior. While the State may establish a context for this behavior, through headlight laws or speed limits, the actual behavior has an ad hoc quality to it.
The reason often given by traffic safety authorities for drivers mirroring others’ behavior is because they (the drivers) feel there is less possibility in a group of being caught. However this reflects only the self interest, particle perspective, which leads us back to the original paradox. It might explain the speeding, but what about the minimally enforced headlight law? Why did they obey that?
I believe the answer to this question lies in recognizing the group/wave side of our behavior. We are individuals, yes, but we are also social beings with a strong inclination to synchronize our behaviors with those of a larger group. Even when that group happens to consist of anonymous motorists on a superhighway.
A version of this post was originally published on the web site Quantum Age in October, 1996.
