\u201cBetween us is the genesis of ability to perceive and respond to the complexity of this time\u201d -Nora Bateson<\/p>\n
In the mid-’70s, my advisor at Columbia University, Paul Byers, gave me a copy of Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson. It was my awakening to what I call a “first-order change”: recognizing that something needs to be corrected. In my case, it was shifting from the narrow cause-and-effect perception shaped by my upbringing to realizing the world made better sense and offered more possibilities through the lens of ecological thinking. <\/p>\n
Years later, I experienced Nora Bateson and her Warm Data process, a way to understand the patterns of our interdependence through mutual learning with others. It helped me access many new levels, or orders, of change and the difference between how we think and how nature works.<\/p>\n
In Nora’s new and extremely relevant book to today’s problems and polarization, Belly, she offers solutions through the ecology of communication and systems thinking that emanates from her kitchen. <\/p>\n
It takes us on a journey that is an expression of our interdependency in what she describes as \u201cthe entire biosphere is ingesting and transforming everything into something to be ingested.” This reminds me of Pablo Neruda’s poem, \u201cWe go where nothing is expected and find everything waiting there.\u201d This is systems thinking, which pushes us beyond the assumed certainty of quick-fix solutions and to look at life from a wider lens.<\/p>\n
Nora’s ever-evolving insights are shaped in part by her grandfather, biologist William Bateson, and her father, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, an excellent example of intergenerational learning. She supports this by describing, in warm human narratives, how dinner at her kitchen table is an excellent forum for creating new possibilities for living. She believes this influences our evolution as a species. Through this magical book of poems, narratives, and art, we can understand how much we have to “learn about learning.” <\/p>\n
She encourages us to thread conversations through contexts that have been separated and moved toward fragmentation, such as schooling, business, government, and media. This transcontextual communication should include people of all ages and backgrounds. This is the reality and coherence of our interdependency. She reminds us with many examples that “you can’t take the grapes out of the wine.” We are part of, and regardless of our differences, always interfacing with, our forests, oceans, religions, media, meadows, etc., which are always changing and seeking balance with each other and ourselves. <\/p>\n
Nora asks the question, \u201cHow does change happen?” This is a difficult conversation, so bear with me, as Nora shows how the ecology of communication can manifest in her own kitchen or yours. She believes that \u201cthe recipe is not the meal,\u201d and emphasizes the importance of learning that situations are contexts that shift, grow, and change. <\/p>\n
She explains how, for instance, a refrigerator with its purpose and the origin of its contents relates to \u201can entire cosmos within which to discover being alive together,” such as the origin of your vegetables, their seeds, the farmer who planted them, the people who got them to the market, and so on.<\/p>\n
Nora narrates how, within systems thinking or ecology, the importance of having a beginner’s mind in this process is that a \u201cresponse to a situation is always limited by what possibilities are perceived.” This matters because different contexts, i.e., your kitchen or mine, do not fit rigid models; we all differ yet share commonalities and needs. This pressure for uniformity creates misunderstanding and a lack of context that is deadly to all organisms and their environments. We and all living entities can respond to our surroundings in many ways; for example, trees share information about their growth and dangers.<\/p>\n
Nora advocates fostering this way of understanding and change, what she calls a \u201cready-ing\u201d of mutual learning that informs and blends all organisms’ histories. Her descriptions of the different contexts in her own kitchen bring these thoughts into focus. She wants her kitchen to be \u201chomey with smells of recently cooked meals.” The complexity of life lies in the contextual possibilities that emerge in her kitchen, which she vividly brings to life in this book. This is poetically described as going beyond the linear cause-and-effect that stifles mutuality. She advocates breaking the matrix of content dependency and to “dance in the kitchen instead,” as you will surely do upon reading her informative personal story.<\/p>\n
Her profound description of her relationship with her mother, for instance, in her kitchen demonstrated how \u201cthe learning among organisms is an ongoing practice of trying on language” and then “trying again with new language.” She also shares her own messy but beautiful exploration of intercultural dynamics through her attempt to make Swedish meatballs now that she is living in Sweden. <\/p>\n
In the chapter that, to me, captures the energy of this book, “giving what was taken” (no capital lettering, page 121-23), Nora continues, as in each chapter, to intertwine the threads of interdependence through the nurturing that emanates from her kitchen. She describes how this creates mutual learning, which, to her, is “life.” This occurs through “graciousness” that is not for show: “…it is how life offers life towards life.” In other words, if someone takes what you make for them to eat, made with your hands, and accepts your care and love, “this is an intimate moment of contact and communication.” This is reciprocal interdependence and nourishment. It is nature’s mitigating gift of improvisation, occurring in all aspects and contexts of our world. <\/p>\n
When this occurs, possibilities expand far beyond what one can imagine. In ecological thinking, this change makes a difference. Sustaining and expanding these differences is a new level of change: from one interaction to the infinite interactions of our world, we can and should keep making differences. Nora explains that perceiving change is like zooming in and out, allowing us to simultaneously see the immediate and wider contexts at the same time. This is systems thinking at its best, whether in the kitchen or elsewhere: what is relevant in the moment combines more than ingredients, including the full gamut of social, seasonal, cultural, and time-dependent factors. Any system torn from its contextual relationships creates polarities. It is a process \u201centangled in many more processes of being alive than just speaking.\u201d Any and all fragmentation violates life.<\/p>\n
Another message she focuses on is the danger of our species becoming like vultures, getting used to feeding off unhealthy, soiled food. This certainty and generalization about what is good for us flattens our complexity, which, when tolerated, creates a false sense of respect. Whereas this form of reductionism may be attractive, it is an addiction<\/a> going up the wrong road. She advocates that we should acquire the need to be among, to mingle; \u201ckneading together may be nth order change,\u201d or infinite differences. Without this, competition<\/a> and conflict become part of that addiction and can be an escalating horror.<\/p>\n With mutual learning and respect for interdependency, Nora prompts us with “My story can change your story if we allow it to happen.” Then we can cherish what she calls \u201cquickening in non-linear living,” which is \u201cAphanipoisis,\u201d a word that she coined, meaning \u201cthe coalescing of unseen processes that make vitality.” The opposite of being “among” this vitality is isolation. <\/p>\n Ecological logic welcomes movement and interdependency. Rhythms and patterning are a way of being life. This process and patterning encourages progressive changes to our ecological benefit. In this wonderful book, Nora demonstrates, through narratives of warmth and love around the kitchen table, the need for more storytelling and mutual learning to help us tend to the needs of others and our world, and to respect these part-to-whole relationships.<\/p>\n I highly recommend this delightful, delicious book, with over 50 pieces of art and profound stories interspersed with genuine, incredible poems that relate to her intertwining narrative descriptions and invite you to savor it. Links to Nora\u2019s two other books I reviewed, which don’t need to be read in order because of their systemic interdependency, are listed below. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBetween us is the genesis of ability to perceive and respond to the complexity of this time\u201d -Nora…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-775354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}