A piece of public art in Berne, Switzerland. Two chairs facing each other in dialogue, but chained to the walls behind them so they can never meet.
At the conclusion of Alicia Juarrero’s new book “Context Changes Everything” she writes:
“Neither puppets nor absolute sovereigns, human beings and the material and social forms of life they induce are true co-creators of their natural and social worlds. We serve as stewards of the metastability, coherence, and evolvability of both of these worlds. Matter matters. History matters. Social and economic policy matters. Most critically, however, because top- down causality as constraint makes room for meaning and value-informed activities, our choices and actions matter tremendously. In acting, we reveal the variables and the values that really matter to us, individually and to the culture in which we are embedded. We must pay attention to what we pay attention to; to which options we facilitate and promote and which we impede and discard. We must pay particular attention to what we do.
The influence of constraints has been dismissed because they do not bring about change energetically. Because they can be tacit and entrenched, their Escher-like characteristics also make them difficult to track. As background constants that go without saying, they have also been taken for granted. Foregrounding these enabling and governing conditions, so different from but as effective as forceful impacts, has been a central goal of this work.
Facilitating the emergence and persistence of validated coherence, of adaptable and evolvable interdependencies that can continue to form and persist in nature, among human beings and between nature and human- kind, is among our most compelling responsibilities. Facilitating the emergence and preservation of a thoroughgoing resilience that affords to both the natural and the human worlds the conditions not only to persist but especially to evolve and thrive is the most pressing moral imperative facing humankind today.
Facilitating the emergence and persistence of validated coherence, of adaptable and evolvable interdependencies that can continue to form and persist in nature, among human beings and between nature and human-kind, is among our most compelling responsibilities. Facilitating the emergence and preservation of a thoroughgoing resilience that affords to both the natural and the human worlds the conditions not only to persist but especially to evolve and thrive is the most pressing moral imperative facing humankind today.”
Alicia Juarrero, Context Changes Everything, p. 237
I think this is a really important point because it brings a moral imperative to understanding and working with complexity, something I have long felt is important for law makers, policy makers and citizens to understand. Without understanding the nature of complex systems, one is at a loss to effectively lead, craft policy or other solutions to emergent problems that plague our world. From planetary climate change to individual mental health, working with complexity dynamics – constraints, and, in my work, containers – is critical to approaching complex problems. It should go without saying I suppose, but it needs saying anyway. And it’s the reason I want these tools and perspectives out in the world in the hands of as many people as possible.