At first this video made me a little bit more confused about how to actually act in this crisis. Now I feel like I see it all a little bit clearer. It feels great. Thanks for the effort behind this video!
Bateson made significant contributions to several sciences - anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and, most important of all, to the new interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, which he pioneered. But perhaps even more important is the fact that he championed a new way of thinking, which is extremely relevant to our time - thinking in terms of relationships, connections, patterns, and context. As we replace the Newtonian metaphor of the world as a machine by the metaphor of the network, and as complexity becomes a principal focus in science, the kind of systemic thinking that Bateson advocated is becoming crucial. To use a popular phrase, Bateson taught us how to connect the dots, and this is critical today not only in science but also in politics and civic life, as most of our political and corporate leaders show a striking inability to connect the dots. For example, if we improved the fuel efficiency of our cars by just 3 mpg, which could be very easily done, we would not have to import any oil from the Persian Gulf. But instead, they prefer to fight a war that kills tens of thousands of innocent people, while the greenhouse gases produced by our cars increase the force of hurricanes that make millions homeless and cause billions of dollars of damages. If we served organically grown food in our schools, to use another example, we would not have the current epidemic of obesity among our children, we would not poison our farm workers, and the increased carbon content of the organic soil would draw down significant amounts of CO2 and thus contribute to reversing the current climate change. In short, to solve the major problems of our time, we need exactly the type of thinking Bateson pioneered. Gregory Bateson was not only an outstanding scientist but also a highly original philosopher. He was very charismatic and, like a Zen master, he liked to jolt people’s minds by asking astonishing and seemingly mysterious questions. “What is the pattern,” Bateson would ask “that connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose, and all four of them to me? And me to you?” Bateson’s style of presentation was an essential and intrinsic part of his teaching. His central message was that relationships are the essence of the living world, and that we need a language of relationships to understand and describe it. One of the best ways to do so, in his view, is by telling stories. “Stories are the royal road to the study of relationships,” he would say. What is important in a story, what is true in it, is not the plot, the things, or the people in a story, but the relationships between them. Since Bateson’s favorite method was to present patterns of relationships in the form of stories, the essays and books he wrote do not give us the full flavor of his teaching. To experience the essence of Bateson’s message, you would really have needed to experience his own live delivery of that message. Fortunately, this is still possible, because we have many hours of film footage of Gregory Bateson talking, teaching, telling stories. This is why Nora’s film project is so important, in my view. It will be not only a priceless souvenir of one of the greatest thinkers of our time, but also an essential vehicle to deliver his message, which today is more important than ever. --Fritov Capra
dear james/fritjof - the systems view of life lies on my desk, and much of your other works. I do appreciate you are honoring Gegory Bateson, and Nora is one of his living system outcomes. Why don't you comment on her? -
@@antonvdburgt9416 Your’re right. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on Nora and her ideas. I just don’t know enough about her. I have the book “Angels Fear” which is a collection of Gregory’s ideas plus Nora’s additions. It is actually a book co-written by the both of them aqnd published after Greagory’s passing. I hope to someday give it a focused reading but as of right now I have nothing to consider.
Love this conversation existing in the virtual ether, addressing some inherent glitches in my linguistic programming and patterning when it comes to addressing systems change and transformation. Currently searching for a Master's design philosophy research program that could possibly lead to a PhD. Was speaking with an academic from a university here in Australia, and used the terms "transdisciplinary" and "multidisciplinary" to infer what I am looking for. Love the term Lora Bateson mentioned, "transcontextual" coined by her father, Gregory Bateson, embedded and embodies in her ongoing process-driven praxis. Also, relevant to Sadguru's virtual and on the ground efforts to spread awareness of the vital importance of soil through the "Save the Soil" movement. In a very tangible sense soil is the foundation from which life, plants and animals and humans, emerge and thrive, and return back to the soil humus layer. Inspiring to witness the construction of an eco-village.
We CAN create a better world together BY allowing the "raw lostness" together and designing the tools that allow our human existence to create the outcomes we want (end poverty, stop environmental catastrophes etc). I am not in this lostness anymore cause I know the starting place where we can move forward. I am working on creating that starting point with the people who WANT to do that. Come join me, all are invited.
"There is such a beautiful eagerness that is based on our very survival, but that eagerness is laser beamed into singular contextual processes. We're screwed if we win and we're screwed if we lose. If we don't make those changes and there's no shift in climate policy we're hooped. But if we do make those changes and we don't make them with care for the humanity, and the culture and the depth of that [aforementioned] stick bug question? We're gonna end up in full-tilt culture war." Preach Nora, preach.
It's a matter of priorities. Our priorities are way off - and the priorities will go still more off when the complex economic system collapses, soon. This is because of our vast numbers. We are like a lifeform (a bacteria, say) in a petri dish that has gone toxic. We reduce our numbers, soon (and it is easily doable), or nature will do it for us. It's the collateral damage that saddens me.
The same basis arrived at here, also applies to what is known as "political-ideology". The 2-D and 3-D templates of "liberal democracies" DEFINITELY ARE NOT THE BEST, THE MOST OPTIMAL, AND MOST VIABLE & FRUITFUL macro-organizational processes for humankind.
"Allowing people their complexity" sounds strangely paternalistic -- a kind of intellectual tough love, abandoning suffering people to their fate as if disease and misery are to be seen as Their Learning Experiences that we shouldn't deign to interfere with. The breezy intellectual carefree-ness of this discussion (mashed potatoes???????) seems terribly ungrounded in the lived reality, and grim futures, of billions of people whose fields are dying and who are killing their cattle for lack of water or feed. The cheery insouciance is disturbing, like aristocrats on the Titanic carrying their champagne flutes onto the escape boats, undisturbed by those left to sink.... "allowing people their complexity." The idea that linearity is somehow inherently defeating of complex solutions seems preposterous to me. Of course we need to include non-linear thinking, imagination, consultation, dialogue etc. to understand circumstances and envision paths forward --- but also, not assume that linear, logical, organized thinking and action are irrelevant, counterproductive, or self-defeating. The Frankfurt School and other's sociocultural critiques of failed capitalism and communism, authoritarianism, religious extremism, predatory corporatism, nationalism, militarism, vapid consumerism, cultural degeneracy, geopolitical power politics, etc. are far more illuminating forms of contextual thinking that we need to pursue, than what I hear here.
Chad Aitken, I am not sure, but I imagine you are responding to a gap in expectation based on the video title and the actual content? I went to your channel and saw your video on stress relief, and would guess you are a considerate person concerned with well-being. What I hear Nora saying is basically a larger scale issue of stress, and ways to listen to that deeply so that each person can find the best way for them to relieve it given the complex issues in the world. I'm a bit confused about your post. Speaking for myself, I would have been more alarmed by an interview in which someone presented a simple solution to such a complex problem in the first 14 minutes; I would be very suspicious that they left out more than they included. The point of this discussion is helping discover the shape of the problem (climate it otherwise) and the corresponding shape of the solution. Were you able to finish the interview?
Agree Chad, I hear nothing but blah, bah... Quitting at 30 min. I'm a 25-year vegan and see little progress. For each new vegan there are more newly-affluent meat eaters. More ICE-car drivers, more plane-flying vacationers, bigger house buyers, more babies, etc...
This talk is almost unbearably trite. These are the rambling observations of a privileged person who is complete believer that this world is coming to end because of climate change. Fact is the climate is always changing but unfortunately humans are not in control of the thermostat.
The problem with Nora Bateson is she is NO WHERE near her father's thinking. It is simply esoterically made-up speculation with no grounding in empirical/observational methodology or theoretical foundation. Her father was grounded in some theoretical framework backed by rigorous observation, but Nora Bateson's approach is very speculative with a free-flow consciousness of what she personally thinks. It's muddled - as opposed to rigor - thinking, something her father detested.
Don’t sweat it. Sometimes the acorn falls very,.very far from the tree. Nature and nurture have demonstrated this for years. Nora has been the subject of Bateson’s many metalogues--metaphorical conversations with Nora when she was younger.
We do not, any of us, achieve rigor. In writing, sometimes, we can take time to check the looseness of thought; but in speaking, hardly ever [...] I know that I personally, when speaking in conversation and even in lecturing, depart from the epistemology outlined in the previous chapter; and indeed the chapter itself was hard to write without continual lapses into other ways of thinking and may still contain such lapses. I know that I would not like to be held scientifically responsible for many loose spoken sentences that I have uttered in conversation with scientific colleagues. But I also know that if another person had the task of studying my ways of thought, he would do well to study my loosely spoken words rather than my writing. [Gregory Bateson] Steps to an Ecology of Mind ('Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry'), p.230
It seems to me that you are fundamentally an industry/mechanical thinker, and just dont want to let this loose. Your preaching of rigorous thinking leaves the taste of one, that has never found out, that some food needs to be marinated before it can be digested
Meta this / Meta that .. *that moment of surprise with the mashed potatoes* WTF is this person talking about ? There is a lot of metaphorical nonsense & over intellectualized word play happening here ~ i'm out 🙂
At first this video made me a little bit more confused about how to actually act in this crisis. Now I feel like I see it all a little bit clearer.
It feels great. Thanks for the effort behind this video!
Bateson made significant contributions to several sciences - anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and, most important of all, to the new interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, which he pioneered. But perhaps even more important is the fact that he championed a new way of thinking, which is extremely relevant to our time - thinking in terms of relationships, connections, patterns, and context. As we replace the Newtonian metaphor of the world as a machine by the metaphor of the network, and as complexity becomes a principal focus in science, the kind of systemic thinking that Bateson advocated is becoming crucial.
To use a popular phrase, Bateson taught us how to connect the dots, and this is critical today not only in science but also in politics and civic life, as most of our political and corporate leaders show a striking inability to connect the dots. For example, if we improved the fuel efficiency of our cars by just 3 mpg, which could be very easily done, we would not have to import any oil from the Persian Gulf. But instead, they prefer to fight a war that kills tens of thousands of innocent people, while the greenhouse gases produced by our cars increase the force of hurricanes that make millions homeless and cause billions of dollars of damages.
If we served organically grown food in our schools, to use another example, we would not have the current epidemic of obesity among our children, we would not poison our farm workers, and the increased carbon content of the organic soil would draw down significant amounts of CO2 and thus contribute to reversing the current climate change. In short, to solve the major problems of our time, we need exactly the type of thinking Bateson pioneered.
Gregory Bateson was not only an outstanding scientist but also a highly original philosopher. He was very charismatic and, like a Zen master, he liked to jolt people’s minds by asking astonishing and seemingly mysterious questions. “What is the pattern,” Bateson would ask “that connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose, and all four of them to me? And me to you?”
Bateson’s style of presentation was an essential and intrinsic part of his teaching. His central message was that relationships are the essence of the living world, and that we need a language of relationships to understand and describe it. One of the best ways to do so, in his view, is by telling stories. “Stories are the royal road to the study of relationships,” he would say. What is important in a story, what is true in it, is not the plot, the things, or the people in a story, but the relationships between them.
Since Bateson’s favorite method was to present patterns of relationships in the form of stories, the essays and books he wrote do not give us the full flavor of his teaching. To experience the essence of Bateson’s message, you would really have needed to experience his own live delivery of that message. Fortunately, this is still possible, because we have many hours of film footage of Gregory Bateson talking, teaching, telling stories. This is why Nora’s film project is so important, in my view. It will be not only a priceless souvenir of one of the greatest thinkers of our time, but also an essential vehicle to deliver his message, which today is more important than ever.
--Fritov Capra
dear james/fritjof - the systems view of life lies on my desk, and much of your other works. I do appreciate you are honoring Gegory Bateson, and Nora is one of his living system outcomes. Why don't you comment on her? -
@@antonvdburgt9416 Your’re right. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on Nora and her ideas. I just don’t know enough about her.
I have the book “Angels Fear” which is a collection of Gregory’s ideas plus Nora’s additions. It is actually a book co-written by the both of them aqnd published after Greagory’s
passing. I hope to someday give it a focused reading but as of right now I have nothing to consider.
Love this conversation existing in the virtual ether, addressing some inherent glitches in my linguistic programming and patterning when it comes to addressing systems change and transformation.
Currently searching for a Master's design philosophy research program that could possibly lead to a PhD. Was speaking with an academic from a university here in Australia, and used the terms "transdisciplinary" and "multidisciplinary" to infer what I am looking for. Love the term Lora Bateson mentioned, "transcontextual" coined by her father, Gregory Bateson, embedded and embodies in her ongoing process-driven praxis.
Also, relevant to Sadguru's virtual and on the ground efforts to spread awareness of the vital importance of soil through the "Save the Soil" movement. In a very tangible sense soil is the foundation from which life, plants and animals and humans, emerge and thrive, and return back to the soil humus layer.
Inspiring to witness the construction of an eco-village.
How to think outside the box when thinking is the box? Dr. Gabor Maté
We CAN create a better world together BY allowing the "raw lostness" together and designing the tools that allow our human existence to create the outcomes we want (end poverty, stop environmental catastrophes etc). I am not in this lostness anymore cause I know the starting place where we can move forward. I am working on creating that starting point with the people who WANT to do that. Come join me, all are invited.
"There is such a beautiful eagerness that is based on our very survival, but that eagerness is laser beamed into singular contextual processes. We're screwed if we win and we're screwed if we lose. If we don't make those changes and there's no shift in climate policy we're hooped. But if we do make those changes and we don't make them with care for the humanity, and the culture and the depth of that [aforementioned] stick bug question? We're gonna end up in full-tilt culture war." Preach Nora, preach.
Loved the talk, but I am listening in May, 2020 and it seems old. The topics are stale but I still shared it because therr was valuable content too.
Nora, I love you so much. I am still feeling inspired to speak with you about the Khora Project.
It's a matter of priorities. Our priorities are way off - and the priorities will go still more off when the complex economic system collapses, soon.
This is because of our vast numbers. We are like a lifeform (a bacteria, say) in a petri dish that has gone toxic.
We reduce our numbers, soon (and it is easily doable), or nature will do it for us. It's the collateral damage that saddens me.
Finally finally finally!!! Thank U !!!
Loved this conversation
Shouldn't you be called "present thinkers"?
❤
The same basis arrived at here, also applies to what is known as "political-ideology". The 2-D and 3-D templates of "liberal democracies" DEFINITELY ARE NOT THE BEST, THE MOST OPTIMAL, AND MOST VIABLE & FRUITFUL macro-organizational processes for humankind.
Great channel, only thing I view different is my belief in the Christian Bible, other than that, great stuff here.
Composing music is like fixing a truck.
"Allowing people their complexity" sounds strangely paternalistic -- a kind of intellectual tough love, abandoning suffering people to their fate as if disease and misery are to be seen as Their Learning Experiences that we shouldn't deign to interfere with. The breezy intellectual carefree-ness of this discussion (mashed potatoes???????) seems terribly ungrounded in the lived reality, and grim futures, of billions of people whose fields are dying and who are killing their cattle for lack of water or feed. The cheery insouciance is disturbing, like aristocrats on the Titanic carrying their champagne flutes onto the escape boats, undisturbed by those left to sink.... "allowing people their complexity." The idea that linearity is somehow inherently defeating of complex solutions seems preposterous to me. Of course we need to include non-linear thinking, imagination, consultation, dialogue etc. to understand circumstances and envision paths forward --- but also, not assume that linear, logical, organized thinking and action are irrelevant, counterproductive, or self-defeating. The Frankfurt School and other's sociocultural critiques of failed capitalism and communism, authoritarianism, religious extremism, predatory corporatism, nationalism, militarism, vapid consumerism, cultural degeneracy, geopolitical power politics, etc. are far more illuminating forms of contextual thinking that we need to pursue, than what I hear here.
I’m 14 mins into this and nothing! Which means if you can’t get to it, it means it’s not true and fake news.
Uh...?
Chad Aitken, I am not sure, but I imagine you are responding to a gap in expectation based on the video title and the actual content? I went to your channel and saw your video on stress relief, and would guess you are a considerate person concerned with well-being. What I hear Nora saying is basically a larger scale issue of stress, and ways to listen to that deeply so that each person can find the best way for them to relieve it given the complex issues in the world.
I'm a bit confused about your post. Speaking for myself, I would have been more alarmed by an interview in which someone presented a simple solution to such a complex problem in the first 14 minutes; I would be very suspicious that they left out more than they included. The point of this discussion is helping discover the shape of the problem (climate it otherwise) and the corresponding shape of the solution.
Were you able to finish the interview?
Agree Chad, I hear nothing but blah, bah... Quitting at 30 min. I'm a 25-year vegan and see little progress. For each new vegan there are more newly-affluent meat eaters. More ICE-car drivers, more plane-flying vacationers, bigger house buyers, more babies, etc...
This talk is almost unbearably trite.
These are the rambling observations of a privileged person who is complete believer that this world is coming to end because of climate change. Fact is the climate is always changing but unfortunately humans are not in control of the thermostat.
The problem with Nora Bateson is she is NO WHERE near her father's thinking. It is simply esoterically made-up speculation with no grounding in empirical/observational methodology or theoretical foundation. Her father was grounded in some theoretical framework backed by rigorous observation, but Nora Bateson's approach is very speculative with a free-flow consciousness of what she personally thinks. It's muddled - as opposed to rigor - thinking, something her father detested.
I'm curious how you define rigor?
@@julieregalado6086 eagerness to do the hard and careful work, examine multiple perspectives, go deep.
Don’t sweat it.
Sometimes the acorn falls very,.very far from the tree.
Nature and nurture have demonstrated this for years.
Nora has been the subject of Bateson’s many metalogues--metaphorical conversations with Nora when she was younger.
We do not, any of us, achieve rigor.
In writing, sometimes, we can take time to check the looseness of thought; but in speaking, hardly ever [...]
I know that I personally, when speaking in conversation and even in lecturing, depart from the epistemology outlined in the previous chapter; and indeed the chapter itself was hard to write without continual lapses into other ways of thinking and may still contain such lapses.
I know that I would not like to be held scientifically responsible for many loose spoken sentences that I have uttered in conversation with scientific colleagues. But I also know that if another person had the task of studying my ways of thought, he would do well to study my loosely spoken words rather than my writing.
[Gregory Bateson]
Steps to an Ecology of Mind ('Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry'), p.230
It seems to me that you are fundamentally an industry/mechanical thinker, and just dont want to let this loose. Your preaching of rigorous thinking leaves the taste of one, that has never found out, that some food needs to be marinated before it can be digested
Meta this / Meta that ..
*that moment of surprise with the mashed potatoes*
WTF is this person talking about ? There is a lot of metaphorical nonsense & over intellectualized word play happening here ~
i'm out 🙂
Why can't all Americans give up meat?