Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns

I sometimes hold a notion that an anthology of poems might be the way to map the universe in its diversity. Each small piece would capture aspects, yet the anthology holds together the myriad ways the poems explore things in a unity that is sometimes clear, sometimes less so. This book might be considered that anthology. Nora Bateson writes with the intention of carrying on a family tradition. Her father was the anthropologist and cyberneticist, Gregory Bateson who sometimes talked about the "path which connects. Her work includes a film about him. In the book she talks about this and her grandfather William Beteson who was a Professor of Biology at Cambridge with achievements of his own, and how she is continuing to expand this legacy. But of course she is aiming for more. The essays and poems in this book look at a range of matters from ecology, philosophy, economics as well as experience of body, attitudes to nature, the complexities of human nature, bringing up children, rape and science. Many of the poems and prose poems capture moments, feelings and dillemas. In short this is a stunning survey of the contemporary existence written with a stunning brevity and precision. Each one is an arc of the larger circle which each piece is a fragment of. Such diversity perhaps has a problem that read as a whole it risks becoming too diffuse. But this is no more than any other anthology of verse or articles. The book it self could either be read as a whole or dipped in at random, like such volumes. There is scarcely a dud. This is a book to keep at one's side for a lifetime of wealth. There is much to enjoy here as well as a large sum of enlightenment.

Nora Bateson is the daughter of the British anthropologist-psychologist-philosopher-systems thinker (etc.) Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), a rather elusive figure who combined many disciplines and focussed very fundamentally on the essence of reality. He is best known for his Mind and Nature, 1979, in which he suggests that there is a global spirit that permeates and connects both living and non-living things (I know that with that description I undervalue Bateson, because his thinking is much more complex than that). Essential concepts for him are 'uncertainty' and 'complexity', which means that he connects directly with systems thinking and complexity theories. I read a biography of him, some loose texts, followed a seminar about him (thanks Philippe!), and even read a novel based on his views (Tim Parks. Dreams Of Rivers And Seas). But nevertheless his thinking remained fairly hermetic to me. His daughter Nora (° 1968) initially took a completely different path in life and became a film maker. But she has struggled all her life with the intellectual legacy of her father. In recent years in particular, she has made re-evaluating and re-interpreting Gregory's views into her main activity, for example through a film about her father ("An Ecology of Mind", 2010) and her chairmanship of the International Bateson Institute in Stockholm (° 2014) . This book bundles various articles she has written in recent years, readings, essays, but also poetry, drawings and loose musings. The great thing about this book is that it builds directly on the thinking of Gregory Bateson (which has now become much clearer to me) and also of her grandfather William Bateson (1861-1926, a famous biologist). Of course, she offers her own, albeit privileged, interpretation of their views, and alignes them with the problems we are confronted with at the beginning of the 21st century, hence my title "Bateson 3.0". For obvious reasons her emphasis is more on ecological thinking: looking at reality as a complex ecological system, which is interconnected in various dimensions and scales, and itself consists of a jumble of ecological systems that relate to each other in a particularly complex way. Nora Bateson's own contribution is to add contextual thinking: not only the interrelationships, but especially the different contexts of those relationships are important to her. She herself speaks of trans-contextuality. “Transcontextual description as a starting place opens the possibilities of better understanding the interdependency that characterizes living (and arguably many non-living) systems. With a transcontextual lens I find interfaces of mutual learning. This lens opens up entirely new dimensions of information where the data has otherwise been flattened into a single plane or a single context. I also find that the multiplicity of the descriptive process demands that I never lose sight of the many perspectives that are integrating.” She immediately adds that the key to reading trans-contextuality is above all the process of "mutual learning": various contexts are constantly learning from each other, so that an even more complex dynamic whole is created, which is constantly adapting and constantly interacting. I particularly like that dynamic aspect; as Nora Bateson herself indicates, it takes into account the time factor, a factor that is overlooked by most other analyses, making reality rather static, as represented in a model, a chart or a map. Of course, as a historian, I like her take on this. That shift in Nora’s view, compared to her father’s, stems from a discontent with the path that systems thinking and complexity theories have taken: although they are fundamentally anti-reductionist and anti-deterministic, they have become, according to her, more and more mechanistic, ending up in an engineer's approach that cannot really solve the fundamental problems of our time: “the linearity and the mechanistic principles of reductionism in western culture have wormed their way into the systems vocabulary. The result is that we get strategic methodologies and defined models for fixing isolated issues within complex living interactions that have a living context.” She is also critical about the recent tendency to connect systems thinking with holistic approaches and to constantly speak in terms of parts and wholes: “The very idea of interconnectedness has allowed lines to be drawn lazily between nodes or parts of the whole system. The world may be able to use the terms of systems thinking, but some of the thinking has lost its real value and become muddled into something more akin to ‘oneness’.” Hence her emphasis on trans-contextuality. And also - instead of engineering methods - a more aesthetic approach (and this is in line with her father's thinking): the artistic is a way of dealing with reality that is more transparent and above all shows more respect, in contrast to the control obsession of mechanistic thinking. “In all forms, art can offer an experience of integration that calls upon our cultural language of symbols, our imagination, our history, our intellect, and our emotions. (…) As I see it, art allows us to perceive from multiple perspectives simultaneously. In order for science to really work with complexity, we need art to help give scientists a more developed capacity to perceive context, one that includes all the disciplines, emotions, cultural symbols, and personal memories. As Blake said in ‘The Grey Monk’: “A tear is an intellectual thing.”” That may all sound abstract, and Nora Bateson admits that her discourse does indeed remains fairly theoretical. But for her that other way of looking at reality is the only way out of stalled scientistic thinking, of which many well-meaning approaches (such as holism, systems thinking, etc.) still are permeated. On top of that, for Nora, this new approach is really needed if we are to tackle the enormous challenges facing humanity, - the apocalyptic perspective of climate change and the decline of biodiversity -, in a much more appropriate way. With a typical Batesonian twist, she goes one step further in that thought process: why not start from the worst case? Can we make an exercise that takes the apocalypse as given, and think back from that perspective?: “Using this kind of ‘pre-hindsight,’ different directions for our actions may become imperative, and for very different reasons than we might expect. Looking backward from the rubble of our mistakes we may see our current priorities from another angle. While this thought exercise may appear to embody a loss of hope, it is also likely that leapfrogging on the timeline of consequences may provoke a kind of thinking we do not otherwise have access to.” That sounds problematic, but it is at least a challenging proposal. The multiformity of this booklet in itself testifies to the pluriform nature of Nora Bateson's thinking and how it is based on uncertainty and complexity, all in line with her father and grandfather. She remains modest, because she is well aware that her approach remains very abstract and theoretical, but it is at least a good, practical starting point: “In defense of a world that is characterized by mutual learning between variables in a given context—a world that does not stay the same, a world that won’t be mechanized or modeled—in defense of that world, I maintain that nothing could be more practical than to become more familiar with the patterns of movement that life requires. The goal is not to crack the code, but rather to catch the rhythm.” In one of her essays she makes an attempt to put her approach into practice in a more systematic, theoretical framework, with the central notion of the "symmathesy" instead of the term "system". I’m not sure this approach is the way to go, because it remains very abstract. Time will tell, but it is at least worth the effort to walk the path. She herself is rather optimistic: “I maintain, at the risk of being called abstract, that the possibility of an increase in our ability to receive nuanced information about the interactions in a complex system exists. This is my optimism. This is where I place hope for the coming eras. We need that sensitivity to live better lives. This is the sensitivity that will allow us to understand our spouses better, to raise our children better, to grow food better, study life better, and organize our world better. It will also make us into artists. I maintain that nothing could be more practical”.

This work of Nora has created in me a novel crisis of expression. She shows me a way to use words to capture ideas in an emergence of flexibility and dexterity that holds up life. Unexpected genre and yet cumulative and generative.

Small Arcs of Larger Circles is a finespun departure from the bores of Complexity Theory and Systems Thinking. The wispiness and warbling pages culminate in tones of another sort. Nora Bateson brings complexity down to where you can touch it. Pairing hushed relational dynamics with the nitty gritty textures of the breakfast table and all the everyday happenings grinding into something unknowable, untouchable. This book is an invitation to tumble into the cascading bliss of life. It is a gem.

A web of poetry, essays, lectures, and remembrances that comprise a life? A difficult book to describe, perhaps because it is collectively a diary Ms. Bateson has intrepidly made public. This is a book not to be read but experienced, but as one experiences it, one is lead to contemplate how we ourselves experience and how one’s own experience is wound up in how others experience and how culture colors perceptions that allows our peep into the unity of life. We are led to ask if life itself is a conversation between systems that dialogue and change perpetually such that we never are able to find the eye of the needle nor even the end of the thread. Ms. Bateson shows herself to be an agile gymnast of thinking who winks playfully and seductively as she and audience are stopped in time, upside down, wide-eyed, splayed and askew. We are led from the life of a twelve year old peering into a tidal pool with her father, Gregory Bateson, one of the founders of cybernetics, to that of a woman who reveals her search for this father lost to her so young. We journey into her maturation as a daughter, then mother confronting education systems, and personal difficulties brought home to be faced not as dilemmas but as learning opportunities. All difficulties are to be faced not in their polarity, but in their complexity and that is how we learn and grow. This book calls to mind the diary of Anais Ninn who so openly showed herself in the world. When an author is this intimate, it begins construct of intimateness between the reader and his or her own world, the creation of vulnerability that must occur as we face our future at this most precarious time. Nora doesn’t flinch as she contemplates what we want the world to look like after the failure of its current construct. Ecology is not simply the interconnectiveness of all of nature, humankind included. Where does perception and Mind fit? I cherish this collection. It is infused with integrity and grit and demands the same of us as we experience it. I am called to mind a song of Leonard Cohen and the lines: “you know that you can trust her for she’s touched your perfect body with her mind”. By Steve Glass, former attorney, environmentalist, disenfranchised Democrat, sometimes activist, and wannabe poet.