Patterns, Flows, and

Interrelationship
By Molly Young Brown ©2002

I picked up a vague mystical feeling that we must look for the same sort of
processes in all fields of natural phenomena–that we might expect to find the
same sort of laws at work in the structure of a crystal as in the structure of
society, or that the segmentation of an earthworm might really be comparable
to the process by which basalt pillars are formed. (Gregory Bateson, in
Berman, 1984)

General Systems Theory (GST), arising out of the biological sciences, attempts to map
general principles for how all systems work, especially living systems. Instead of
examining phenomena by attempting to break things down into component parts, GST
explores phenomena in terms of dynamic patterns of relationship. This shift in focus–
from things frozen in time to dynamic relationships–underlies systems thinking.

What is meant by a “system”? We could use the term “system” for any pattern of
relationship, from an atom to a galaxy, from a cell to an ecosystem. As a system, I
function through relationships within and around “me.” These words flow onto this web
page through a myriad of complex interrelationships within this “body-mind.” As you
read them, the words create a relationship between you and me, as you process them
within the intricacies of relationships within your body/mind. My words are intelligible to
you because of the complexity of relationships that form the language and culture we
share.

Certain patterns of relationship and information flow seem to inhere in all living
systems, in plants, animals, ecosystems, social groupings, communities, and
organizations. Out of these patterns, our very universe forms itself, and all life within it.
I. Every living system functions as a whole, manifesting properties that are not evident
in its parts. As the old saw tells us, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. A
human being is something more than just a conglomerate of carbon, oxygen, and
water, mixed in with a few other minerals. A human is even more than a conglomerate
of cells and tissues. How these elements, or cells and tissues, are organized makes for
humanness, and for the distinctiveness of each individual human system as well. So at
each new level of systemic organization, new properties and capacities emerge, often
beyond anything we humans might predict.

Science has often tried to describe or define a system by enumerating the properties of
its parts, tried and ultimately failed. Describing electrons, photons, neutrons, and so
forth doesn’t give us a complete picture of an atom. Even if we try to include the
relationship of the electron to the nucleus, the protons to the neutrons, and so on, we
fall short. Similarly, in the macrocosm, we cannot define a nation by enumerating its
citizens and their characteristics, its laws, its institutional structures, and so on. A nation
is a “whole” comprised of all its parts and all their interrelationships, and the irreducible
properties that emerge from this dynamic process.

II. Remarkably, the “parts” of each “whole” are also “wholes.” Every living system is
made up of subsystems and in turn holds membership in one or more larger systems,
forming a kind of “nested hierarchy”– systems within systems, circuits within circuits,
fields within fields. For example, our bodies are made up of a respiratory system, a
digestive system, a reproductive system, and so on. Our bodies even contain tiny
ecosystems for various symbiotic microbes that help us digest our food and keep the
proper chemical balance in various fluids. At the same time, our bodies are part of
larger systems: families, communities, and ecosystems that provide them with food, air,
water, and other life necessities. Our “waste products” in turn provide food, air, water
and other life necessities to other parts of these larger systems. We are “nested” within
these larger systems, and “nest” other (sub)systems within us.
These nested hierarchies are of a totally different structure than the kind of hierarchy of
power so familiar to human societies. No one individual rules at the top; instead, in a
sense, the collective membership of a system governs the whole by the magic of
synergy. Mutual benefit and cooperation among the parts, and between the “parts” and
the “larger whole” guide the relationships. A subsystem may specialize to perform
needed functions of coordination, but we would hardly say the nervous system is the
“boss” of our body. It simply carries messages around about what is happening
elsewhere and what responses are required. Even when we look at business
organizations as living systems, we see that the “boss” is really only another “part” of
the system with a specialized job to do. The whole organization, including the lowest
paid employee along with the boss, comprises the “larger whole” in the hierarchy.

Unfortunately, few bosses or employees understand the relationship of subsystem to

larger system, and frequently act in ways that disrupt the healthy systemic functioning
of their organizations. For example, CEO’s may assume that because they are “on top,”
their own needs and perspectives matter more than anyone else’s; they may make
decisions based more on personal preference than on organizational needs. And even
organizations utilizing systems principles within their management philosophy may fail
to consider the larger wholes of which they are but subsystems– larger wholes like the
socio-economic communities and ecosystems upon which they utterly depend. Many of
us fall into the mind-trap from time to time of thinking of ourselves as separate from
everything else, forgetting we are completely interconnected and nested within the
human family and the biosphere of the earth.

III. Marvelously and miraculously, living systems respond to change; they survive and
thrive within constantly changing environmental conditions, and with the constant flow
through them of energy, substances, and information. This in-and-out flow would result
in the immediate demise of a system if it could not maintain its structure, its essential
patterns over time. But living systems do this; they maintain their form in a kind of
fluctuating, dynamic balance. Warm-blooded animals, for example, maintain a body
temperature within a certain range; all living creatures take in nourishment in some
form, and manage to carry out the necessary responses to receive that nourishment,
whether by absorbing sunlight (and leaning towards the light) or by seeking and
consuming other organisms. Although we can see changes over time in the faces of our
friends, we still recognize them; they maintain a coherency in the pattern of their facial
structure, as old skin cells die and slough off and new ones are created, as muscle tone
changes, and through variable weather conditions and life stresses.

IV. At the same time, living systems adapt themselves to changes in their environment
they learn, grow, develop, evolve.

When the mouse population in a region suddenly declines because of an epidemic, the
predators who adapt to a new prey survive; those who remain determined “mouse-
avores” starve. Life events affect us and change us, and we can see these changes
reflected in the nevertheless familiar faces of our friends. The ability of living systems to
adapt and self-organize allows them to defy the second law of thermodynamics, which
insists that everything runs down and returns to a state of disorganization and
homogeneity. Not so for living systems! They continuously reorganize themselves into
ever more complex patterns and interrelationships.

Feedback

Relationships and patterns happen through flows of information; I receive information

through my senses as systems within and around me interact, and my response joins
that flow. Riding a bicycle, I enjoy a relationship with the bicycle and the road and the
landscape through the feedback I receive from seeing, hearing, the sensations of
pressure against my body, and my kinesthetic sense of movement and position. When
information flow is impeded or interrupted, relationship suffers and my response to my
environment may be faulty. If I close my eyes, I may not receive information about my
bike/body’s relationship to a rock, and fail to make the necessary adjustments to avoid
crashing.
To maintain coherency of form, systems tend to respond to the flow of information in
ways that counteract any deviation from their established patterns of interaction.
Systems thinkers call this interchange between system and environment “negative
feedback” because it reduces deviation. Such responses change the system’s
relationship to the environment to restore conditions to a tolerable range. When we
become overheated, for example, negative feedback loops within our body create
perspiration, the evaporation of which cools our bodies back to within our optimal
temperature range, reducing the deviation of our temperature from this norm. Negative
feedback regulates every aspect of systemic functioning; it essentially defines and
delimits every system, in complex and interpenetrating webs.

However, things change in large ways as well as small. Changes in the inner or outer
environment may be such that the established patterns of response cannot
accommodate them. Systems must adapt themselves, must find new responses. They
must deviate from their established patterns; they must seek responses that will bring
them back into harmony with their environment. A response that formerly reduced
deviation fails to do so under the new conditions; the deviation goes unchecked and
even amplifies, becomes greater. Some systems theorists call this process “positive
feedback.” If this amplification continues long enough, it becomes “runaway positive
feedback” which eventually– or quickly– destroys the system. For the system to survive,
it must quickly establish new response patterns adapted to the new demands of the
environment and supported by negative feedback once again.

Positive feedback may not occur in nature by design unless it is pre-ordained to be part
of a more inclusive negative feedback loop (e.g. birth process), or by accident. Within
social systems, however, positive feedback can be deliberately induced or prolonged by
inputting a “kick” at some point in an existing loop, or by suppressing negative
feedback.

Positive and negative feedback operate together in living systems. If a system only
maintained itself according to established patterns (as most mechanical systems do), it
would be unable to adapt to changing conditions in the environment and eventually
wear out, or blow up, or collapse. This is why we humans must constantly tinker with
our machines to keep them functioning. If a system only experienced positive feedback,
it would have no “integrity,” it would maintain no pattern and instantly cease to exist as
a coherent whole. So while adapting to changing conditions when incited by positive
feedback, all living systems maintain themselves through negative feedback, and
reduce deviation around new response patterns as soon as possible.

And here we humans consistently get ourselves into trouble, because we suppress
negative feedback deliberately through lies and cover-ups, and unconsciously through
denial and self-deception. Negative feedback from the natural environment might slow
our industrial jihad; negative feedback from those impoverished by our economic
system might diminish corporate profits. So we allow positive feedback loops to
continue dangerously unchecked; for example, we continue to manufacture more and
more automobiles, requiring more and more oil to fuel them, depleting existing sources
and requiring the search for ever new sources, destroying more and more delicate
ecosystems, driving up prices, forcing indigenous peoples off their lands, increasing
poverty for many and wealth for a few, creating wars, and on and on. We ignore the
signs that resource depletion, pollution, and social effects are reaching lethal limits.
When those lethal limits are reached, negative feedback will finally bring the ecosystem
back into balance–but without us, and without thousands of other species under threat
of extinction today.

Remembering Our Interrelatedness

Within the earth-based cultures, both ancient and those surviving today, ritual and art
constantly remind people of their relationship to the larger wholes of community and
nature. Rituals, art, and social customs serve as negative feedback to self-maintain the
relationships of individual to the whole. Shamans and elders are systems thinkers,
applying systems principles quite effectively, although the language and metaphor they
use to express them may be quite different from modern systems thinking. Birth and
funeral rites reconnect people with the Earth from which they arise and to which they
return. Coming-of-age ceremonies help the individual feel valued within the embrace of
the community, honoring their individuality while reminding them of their responsibilities
to the whole. A hunter praying to the soul of the animal he kills reminds himself of his
kinship with the animal, even as he takes care of his own “self-interest” in acquiring
food. Seasonal festivals engender feelings of gratitude and respect for the elements
and life forms that feed, clothe, and house the people.

Constantly reminded of their interconnectedness with all of life around them, indigenous
people’s choices tend to be in harmony with the good of the whole. Earth-based
cultures tend to self-maintain and self-organize harmoniously with their environment.
Occasionally a community makes fatal errors and destroys its habitat. Witness the
inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico who apparently cut down all the
surrounding forests and eventually had to abandon their town site altogether. But their
numbers were few and their impact on the wilderness limited.

We modern humans in the Industrial Growth Society, however, have a huge destructive
impact on the planetary environment and the human communities that still live in
harmony with Earth. We “moderns” have forgotten who we are. We do not have rituals
and social customs that reconnect us with Earth and our fellow living beings. We ignore
our interdependence and interrelatedness with life around us, and our self-reflective
consciousness has become like a loose cannon, wreaking havoc wherever it rolls. We
have mistaken the tiny arc of “purposive rationality” for the whole circuit of information
and contingency. We have used our creative capacities to destroy rather than enhance,
to compete rather than celebrate, to respond haphazardly rather than carefully to
changes around and within us.

Because we have not understood that we are each a subsystem within the larger
systems of humanity and nature, we have constantly made choices as if our self-
interest was separate from the welfare of the whole. And these choices, made in
ignorance of the interrelatedness of things, have invariably lead to greater perturbations
in the whole, in what can be described as runaway positive feedback loops. When I try
to assert my own idea of my own self-interest, without regard to the effects of my action
on the larger systems of which I am a part, my actions set up perturbations in the larger
systems.

Much of the time, the larger systems are able to self-maintain around these
perturbations, and I will receive feedback that causes me to change my actions
accordingly. But I may also respond competitively, self-assertively, and intensify my
behavior. This will perturb the larger systems even more, and the feedback I receive
may become increasingly intense as well. Thus I have set up a runaway positive
feedback loop by my careless and ignorant action, with damaging reverberations
throughout the larger systems, and within my own immediate sphere of life. Elizabet
Sahtouris (1989) writes:

Our greatest conflict is over whether individuals should sacrifice their

individual interest to the welfare of the whole or whether individual interest
should reign supreme in the hope that the interests of the whole will thus take
care of themselves. No being in nature, outside our own species, is ever
confronted with such a choice and, if we consult nature, the reason is
obvious. The choice makes no sense, for neither alternative can work. No
being in nature can ever be completely independent, although independence
calls to every living being, whether it is a cell, a creature, a society, a species,
or a whole ecosystem. Every being is part of some larger being, and as such
its self-interest must be tempered by the interests of the larger being to which
it belongs. Thus mutual consistency works itself out everywhere in nature (p.
26-7).

How do we fall prey to this nonsensical choice of “self-interest” over the interest of the
larger whole? Self-reflective consciousness tempts us with such choice, it would seem,
and allows us to filter the feedback we receive from the larger whole. We are able to
ignore feedback that other creatures, who respond instinctively, cannot. To some
extent, self-reflective consciousness demands that we do this, because we cannot
accommodate in our conscious awareness all the information that presents itself to us,
moment to moment. We have to filter and select.

Perhaps, then, our problem lies with the criteria we use to make these selections. And
even these criteria are determined by our assumptions about who we are in relation to
the world. We can screen out information that conflicts with our view, or that might
prompt us to act in conflict with our view. So, once again, if I think I am separate and
competitive, I will disallow information (feedback) on the harmful effects of my actions
on other humans, other living beings, or the ecosystem. That information doesn’t matter
much if I believe I exist separate from those others. I can ignore feedback about
environmental catastrophes, or even deny its veracity, because I believe I exist apart
from all that. “What is destroying our world is the persistent notion that we are
independent of it, aloof from other species, and immune to what we do to them”
(Joanna Macy, 1991, p. 13).

For millions of years as hunter-gatherers, humans regulated themselves in relative

harmony with the ecosystem. Then somewhere along the line, perhaps with the
development of agriculture, perhaps even later, a large group of humans fell into a kind
of madness, a hubris that led us to believe we could function outside the balance of
nature. We thought we could have our planet and consume it, too. We suppressed any
information to the contrary and went about reconstructing things more to our liking (or at
least to the liking of a powerful and wealthy elite). And we got away with it for a while,
because the earth is a big place with lots of territory to pillage and trash and then move
on. Globalization in recent decades has enabled large industries to extract what they
need from land and labor, and leave the toxic wastes and cultural destruction in areas
far from home, so that the devastating effects of their enterprises don’t directly affect
the people in control. But now we are running out of room and the negative feedback
loops are getting smaller. Our technologies are so powerful that their pollution circles
the globe and affects the climate of the entire planet. If we now begin to receive the
informational feedback available to us, we can respond in ways that reduce our insane
deviations from balance. We must pay attention to feedback about the effects of our
behavior, so we can regulate and organize our human systems intelligently and
maintain a viable habitat for humans and other living creatures on earth.

So we come full circle back to our original quandary: how do we remember who we
are? How can we create reminders within our cultures of our interconnectedness with
all of life? How can we set up better criteria for selecting information for our attention,
so that we stop ignoring the very information we need to self-maintain and self-organize
ourselves in harmony with the larger whole? We must grapple together with these
questions in seeking to transform our consciousness and our culture towards
sustainability.

References

Bateson, Gregory, in Berman, M. (1984). The Re-enchantment of the World. (New

York: Bantam).

Macy, Joanna. (1991). World as Lover, World as Self. Parallax Press.

Sahtouris, Elisabet. (1989) Gaia: The Human Journey from Chaos to Cosmos. Pocket
Books, Simon & Schuster.