In my last post on adapt to chaos I asked – What changes in our meaning creation practices should we integrate to adapt to a world that is often more chaotic than complex? I received 12 comments here and ten other comments on Liendin. Confusion was a commented theme and Chris Corrigan referenced an excellent article on this subject – Confusion exhaust.
In the field of confusion, the first and most important action, I believe, is a consciousness that you are there. Without conscience, you are lost. Any action that you take from this place is likely to be based on packaging without any sensitivity to your context and which can be incredibly dangerous. In fact, if you look at the Dave central domain map, you will see that confusion is adjacent to clear, complicated and chaotic areas. The division of the central domain in confusion and aporia implies that you cannot complex confusion without taking what Dave (snowen) calls the APORÉ turn.
Nollind Wachell, with whom I had a lot of discussions on Google+ several years ago, commented that, “In fact, often real growth and development do not occur without a form of pain and suffering, because it is necessary to awaken a person, slow them down and help them perceive and see things to which they were blind. Something that, I think, must happen (that is to say an awakening) not only in America, but in many places in the world, in Canada. ” Maybe we need the shock of confusion in order to head to the aporia, then wake up. Nollind also suggested a MPRA paper 2007,, Triple loop learning for a deep change, individual culture and radical innovation.
Michele Martin, another old friend, joined us and commented that, “A large part of our objective is the creation of intellectual meaning, but what people really experience is visceral – disorientation, exhaustion and feeling that the soil moves under their feet.”
And the creation of meaning in the chaotic era is not only to think differently. It is a question of moving differently – by pressing the original way when the soil continues to change, how to continue when there is no clear card and how to maintain confusion without collapsing in fear or false certainty. I started calling this orientation process – the practice of learning to pass through uncertainty when the guarantees have disappeared and the stable terrain is not found. The finish does not consist in repairing chaos or forcing clarity; It is a question of developing a new relationship with the unknown. The question is not only “how can we understand this?” But “how do we live inside?”
I like the idea of orientation instead of the creation of meaning. This reminds me that in an unexplored territory, a compass is more important than a map. I think we will all have to get used to a feeling of disorientation at the moment. Shaun Coffey, another good friend, recommended this book: Leadership of orientation: revolutionary wisdom for development leaders.
We guide you on a development course of leadership which requires entering the unknown, to develop sharper observation powers, to be more comfortable with uncertainty and to find new and better ways of attacking situations, by relying not only on rational thought, but also on the much wider intelligence sets with which each of us is. A leader of Finder is motivated by curiosity and is imbued with wonder. Wayfinder leaders seek to develop everyone's potential and to believe permanent that “we are in the waka together'.
Later in the discussion, I refer to this poem that I often share at the end of my PKM workshops.
He is fast, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting his clear images;
I become sharp, suspicious of my broken images.
Trust his images, he assumes their relevance;
Distrusting myself with my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
By questioning their relevance, I question the fact.
When the fact fails, he calls into question his senses;
When I miss the fact, I approve of my senses.
He continues quickly and dull in his clear images;
I continue slowly and clear in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.
—Robert Graves (1885) In broken pictures
