This is a review of the book “The Wisdom of the Body,” written in 1932 by Walter B. Cannon, M.D.

Cannon was a physiologist, and was the first person to promote the idea of homeostasis in American medicine/physiology.  Homeostasis is the concept that the human body is a dynamic system composed of smaller subsystems that serve to maintain an ideal steady state (stasis) for the function of the body.

This book is absolutely fantastic.

First, from a historical perspective, it’s a wonderful look into the methodology of early twentieth century experimental science in the field of physiology.  This book is not for the faint of heart.  Descriptions of experiments on cats and dogs in which the animals were denervated, etc., abound.

The book also provides a wonderful introduction to the science of homeostasis, which has become a field unto itself.  My next read, “Rethinking Homeostasis,” by Jay Schulkin, will be an interesting follow-up, summarizing some of the research that led to the development of the concept of allostasis – the attainment of stability through challenge or change, rather than through a subtle balance of systems.  But that’s another review…

Finally, Cannon provides tons of wonderful nuggets of wisdom throughout the book.  On page 199 he mentions the practice of cold baths/showers and profuse sweating in exercise or saunas as methods of training the temperature-regulation system of the body.  I’ve often heard of cold showers as being tonic, but never for that reason…mostly just in reference to “folk wisdom.”  Interesting to see a “scientific” explanation for that practice!

On pages 240-241 Cannon discusses the role of the physician in maintaining health.  The physician isn’t there to provide health.  That’s provided by vis medicatrix naturae – the healing power of nature.  Rather, the physician is there to facilitate that natural process of healing, by being familiar with the functions of the body, the balance of forces/activities that are present in optimal health (homeostasis), and the ways of helping the body to achieve that ideal balance.

I loved this book, and highly recommend it to anyone who wants a clearer understanding of how their body works.  You will probably need/want a dictionary at places, and an anatomy/physiology reference book in other places, but the journey will be well worth it!

The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes® LLC, a New Jersey based think tank, has developed a new modeling technique for homeostasis that it believes shows a possible cause for autism.

The model appears to show that Autism Spectrum Disorders are triggered by disruptions in the homeostatic relationship of several variables:

“The Center’s Life Sciences group was able to formulate a scientifically verifiable model for the highly probable causal path of autism. Through the application of their model, it became apparent that autism is an outcome of several variables that, when the homeostatic relationship of each one is disrupted, a “perfect storm” scenario results in autism. The application of the model identified several of the variables that account for why boys have a 4 to 1 ratio of instances over girls as well as why not every boy is affected.

While the scientific community will have to validate The Center’s findings, the model for assessing homeostatic relationships indicates the “trigger” behind autism is an imbalance between a pair of amino acid neurotransmitters; glutamate and glycine.

According to The Center’s founder, William McFaul, a retired business person and not a member of the scientific community, “Because of its universal applicability, our Life Sciences group has already used the model as a tool to identify highly probable causal paths for several illnesses and disease entities. Autism was one of most difficult illnesses The Center had attempted to analyze. If it hadn’t been for so many parents insisting that vaccines were responsible for the condition, we might never have found the fact that the stabilizer in MMR and a few other vaccines is hydrolyzed gelatin; a substance that is approximately 21% glycine. It appears that, based on readily verifiable science, the use of that form of glycine triggers an imbalance between the amino acid neurotransmitters responsible for the absorption rate of certain classes of cells throughout the body. It is that wide-spread disruption that apparently results in the systemic problems that encompass the mind and the body characterized in today’s ‘classic’ autism.” He also added, “The use of our model indicates each of the disorders within Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is attributable to different disruptions in homeostasis. We look forward to sharing our findings relative to each disorder with the scientific community.”

Of course the implications of the model are profound. Vaccine researchers and pharmaceutical companies will bristle at the mere suggestion that core vaccine ingredients like MSG and glycine are dangerous. Government regulators at the FDA, CDC and NIH will realize that they have failed adaquately protect the public so will likely try to remain in denial about this. Time will tell if the model can survive scientific scrutinty and produce useful results for researchers. If it persists it may well revolutionize medicine and nutrition.

You can see the entire press release here

Not sure if I’ve said this before, but it’s a good idea to take it easy when doing new things.

Kids will “go for broke” a lot of times, but because they’re so small, and still so resilient, the injuries that result from that exuberance are usually relatively minor (scratched knees), and heal relatively quickly.

The bigger and older you get, the harder it is.

I want to relate this to the barefooting experience, but first, a personal anecdote:

Back in 2001, when I was just starting out as a trainer, I decided it was a great time to try skateboarding.  That was when I was 28, and weighed a good 200-210 pounds.

I bought all the gear, and started going to the skate park regularly.  I also started to appreciate ice.

When a little kid falls, they fall from a distance of one, or maybe two feet.  When I was falling, it was from a distance of three or so feet (as the skateboard shot out from under my feet).

What’s the difference?  Well, a 90k (roughly 200lbs) mass falling from a height of 1 meter (roughly three feet), will have an impact force of 17640 Newtons.  A 23k (roughly 50 pound) kid, falling from a height of .6m (roughly 2 feet), will have an impact force of 1352 Newtons.

I’m hitting the ground with a magnitude greater force than that kid is!

And that hurts.

Probably could’ve spent some more time getting familiar with the board.  Acquainting myself with standing on it on a carpet for a couple of weeks.  Progressing to using it in a parking lot or someplace very flat, but not very fast.  I maybe could’ve spent a few weeks or months in that environment, before moving into the very fast environment of the skate park.

But that’s not what I did!

Barefooters (or anyone doing something new) will experience similar problems in this regard, and it will pay huge dividends to think about this before you start your new exercise program or routine, rather than contemplating it from the recovery room later.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating.  If you’ve been predominantly shoe-bound most of your life, your foot and leg musculature are most likely not ready for a full-on barefoot (or Vibram FiveFinger) onslaught.

Keep your shoes!

Cycle the new activity in to your normal routine.  Do it in small doses at first.  Gradually build up your activity in that new pattern.  And by gradually, I mean, consider how long you’ve not been doing that activity.  Give yourself at least an equal number of years to be perfectly comfortable in the new activity.

This relates to weight-loss as well.  I have people ask me how long it will take them to lose a certain amount of weight.  My immediate response always is – How long did it take you to put that weight on, and how long have you been maintaining that weight?  Once they answer, they’ve answered their own question.

Plan on it taking you just as long to take off weight as you’ve been carrying it around with you.

While it’s possible to lose weight very quickly, such fast change is rarely permanent.  Your body adjusts its levels of (internal or external) activity to the ongoing demand it experiences.

This is like habit.  You have to form a new pattern of activity for your body to adjust to.  And then you have to maintain that pattern…

Anyway, the point is this – Take it easy.  Take it slow.  Take your time.  Pay attention to the process.  Feel the things happening in the moment.  Don’t rush by them.  Then you’ll be able to appreciate the end-result that much more.

Article Date: 19 Nov 2009 – 3:00 PST

During its research into the application of neuroscience in business, a New Jersey based think tank, The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes®, LLC (The Center) made an inadvertent and amazing discovery.

The Center examined the neuroscientific dynamics of logic and emotion in decision making while researching neuroscience in business. They found unique corollary relationships between various brain chemicals (neurohormones, neurotransmitters, etc.). This apparent pattern led to a new path of research for the team outside of business. By looking at extensive scientific literature they discovered a cascade of hormones that emanate from the brain (hypothalamus). This same pattern of correlations was again apparent throughout the cascade. The group added a research biologist and started to test the pattern on genes (proteins). It remained consistent. The Center then called upon advisors from chemistry and physics to see if the pattern would apply in physical sciences.

continue reading

We’re not sure about the story line for now guys, so I’m going to have to get back to you on this one, but it sounds as if though it may be a bit like Gray’s Anatomy, but a Disney version of it

I recently read about an interesting idea called “Risk Homeostasis”, an idea expounded upon by a certain Dr. Gerald J. S. Wilde, from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

Before we get into that, let’s talk a little about the words separately – “Risk” & “Homeostasis”

• To take a risk - to expose oneself to a potential loss
• Target risk - the level of risk a person chooses to accept in order to maximize the overall expected benefit from an activity
• Homeostasis - a regulating process that keeps the outcome close to the target by compensating for disturbing external influences.  For example, the human body core temperature is homeostatically maintained within relatively narrow limits despite major variations in the temperature of the surrounding air.

With that, Dr. Wilde’s theory of Risk Homeostasis essentially says that we all have a certain preset/predetermined level of risk acceptance – an equilibrium, if you will – and that we will act consciously or subconsciously to preserve this level of risk exposure.

In his book, Target Risk 2: A New Psychology of Safety and Health (PDE, 2001), Dr. Wilde makes an example of the our current traffic safety and regulation efforts to illustrate the idea of risk homeostasis.  Long story short, he says that safety advances like ABS, airbags, seatbelt laws, speed regulations, etc. do not achieve what they intend to because they don’t fail to influence people’s willingness to take risk.

In other words, the safer you make me (ABS, seatbelt), the more risk I am willing to take (drive faster, weave through traffic) – to maintain the equilibrium.

I think this is a brilliant notion that can be extended into all facets of life.

The real question then becomes what is the level of our risk equilibrium, and how do we effectively influence it?

For example:

If the true requirement to graduate with a degree in engineering was simply to score a C in every class, my subconscious would adjust its acceptable risk level to high – ie. Although I would consciously make an effort to study the material, my subconscious would allow me to deviate from this to a high degree, or at least a degree that is deemed high by it.

I like it.  No amount of safety devices (studying, seatbelt) can stop an individual from taking his or her predetermined amount of risk (partying, driving fast).  So what’s the key to change? Maybe it’s simply a matter of rephrasing the statement?

What was done cannot always be undone.

But if it doesn’t concern anyone else, ie. only yourself, it usually can.

Adjust your level of acceptable risk so the outcome of your actions always fall within a known confidence interval.

nsf.gov – National Science Foundation (NSF) Discoveries – With Help from a Bacterium, Cockroaches Develop Way to Store Excess Uric Acid – US National Science Foundation (NSF).

Posted by Jim:  Here’s a neat study showing a clever way by which one clever, but nasty, insect has worked its way around a problem that many animals have: how to storage excesses of nutrients that later might be limiting.  Cockroaches got some gut bacteria to do it for them.  This is a new wrinkle on “stoichiometric homeostasis” and another reminder that when you have an insect (or any other animal) in your hand, you’ve actually got many many species and many many many individual organisms in your hand.  Because you can’t forget the symbionts and commensals!

Wonder if this also happens for P?

Queridos,

Esta es la última unidad que será evaluada en la prueba coeficiente dos. Les dejo el material para que puedan estudiar, en caso de que no lo tengan.

Encontrarán a continuación:

Las diapositivas de la actividad práctica, que ahora podrán descargar haciendo click aquí! La libro de clases en pdf.

Ahora…

¿Por qué es importante la función renal?

Ya habíamos conversado en clases, que la homeostasis es una capacidad que tienen los organismos para regular el equilibrio interno, pese a lo variable que es el ambiente en donde nos encontramos. En este mismo momento, mientras leen, su cuerpo está preocupado de regular la temperatura interna, la cantidad de iones de su plasma sanguíneo, la función y cantidad de sus células inmunológicas, el pH, etc.

Pero ¿qué órganos y sistemas son los responsables de realizar esta regulación? Principalmente el sistema nervioso y el sistema endocrino, a través de la recepción de las señales y la secreción de hormonas para la regulación.

Nosotros iniciamos estudiando la función renal, porque el riñón se encarga de formar la orina y es, a través de ella que eliminamos los residuos del trabajo celular, sustancias indeseables y el exceso de agua en la sangre. Es un líquido de color más o menos amarillento, cuya densidad y cantidad dependen de cada organismo, su equilibrio, la cantidad de agua ingerida y las actividades realizadas.

En condiciones normales una persona puede excretar entre 1,200 mL a 1,500 mL de orina. Y su composición es como se indica en el siguiente esquema:

A este nivel, es donde actúa el riñón, más específicamente el nefrón, donde ocurre la filtración, reabsorción y secreción de sustancias al plasma sanguíneo.

1. Filtración: ocurre en el glomérulo. La mayor parte de la sangre es filtrada por la membrana glomerular, luego pasa hacia la cápsula de Bowman y toma el nombre de filtrado glomerular. La composición de este filtrado es la misma de la sangre, excepto por la ausencia de proteínas y células sanguíneas.

Un 80% de la reabsorción de agua ocurre en la primera porción de los túbulos renales (TCP) mediante osmosis (reabsorción obligatoria); y el 20% restante se reabsorbe en las regiones más lejanas de los túbulos (TCD) (reabsorción facultativa) y depende de las necesidades del organismo.

Por lo tanto la orina es el resultado, principalmente, de un filtrado y de pequeñas cantidades de compuestos que son secretados.

Como resultado de este proceso, podemos decir, muy coloquialmente, que “lo que había en el plasma” fue modificado para que lo “que nos sirve para reutilizarlo” sea reincorporado a la circulación y lo que no, sea eliminado por la orina.

Observa la siguiente tabla:

Como te habrás dado cuenta toda la glucosa filtrada es reabsorbida al plasma, y toda la úrea que es filtrada es excretada en la orina. El caso de las proteínas es especial, porque pese a que en la tabla diga que la cantidad filtrada es “cero” debemos recordar que los aminoácidos (constituyentes mínimos de las proteínas), sí son filtrados y todos reabsorbidos en el TCP.

¿Qué sucede entonces cuando cambia nuestra dieta o la cantidad de líquido que ingerimos?

La composición del plasma cambia y entra en acción la regulación neuroendocrina, encargada de la función homeostática. La cual está a cargo del hipotálamo y la hipófisis. El hipotálamo censa la cantidad de electrolitos del plasma y estimula a la hipófisis anterior a que secregue la hormona vasopresina (ADH ó antidiurética).

La ADH o vasopresina es uno de los componentes más importantes en la regulación del flujo urinario y, por lo tanto, del balance de agua. Esta hormona actúa sobre los conductos colectores, haciéndolos más permeables al agua de manera que se reabsorbe más de ésta y se produce un pequeño volumen de orina concentrada.

Cuando una persona consume un exceso de sales o bebe poco agua, se produce la formación de orina hipertónica.

To go just a little further in depth as to what we meant last time when we discussed the characteristics of living things, I wanted to make a follow up post.  I’ve been putting this off, but it’s time to bite the bullet.

• All living things are made up of 1 or more cells.  Cells are the basic unit of life.  Most are smaller than you can see with the naked eye, but they are composed of different parts called “organelles” that work together to allow the cell to function and reproduce.
• All living things reproduce.  Reproduction creates offspring, which are similar, but not identical to the parent(s).  Reproduction can be sexual (two parents) or asexual (one parent).
• All living things are based on a genetic code.  Usually that code is DNA (but sometimes RNA in the case of some viruses, which remember are technically not living), which is a molecule that tells your cells what to do in order to function.  Essentially the genetic code is a set of instructions for your cells.
• All living things grow and develop.  Some organisms simply grow larger and prepare for reproduction.  Other organisms may develop legs or wings for movement, or teeth for chewing, or breasts for feeding their young.
• All living things obtain and use energy.  Just as you need food, so do plants, fungi, and even bacteria.  The sum of all chemical reactions to build up and break down materials is called metabolism.
• All living things respond to their environment.  A stimulus is a signal to which an organism responds.  When you get pollen in your nose, you sneeze.  When soil is moist and warm, a seed germinates.  When you turn on a light, roaches run away!
• All living things maintain a stable internal environment.  No matter what goes on outside the body, all organisms keep their internal conditions stable.  The process to do this is called homeostasis.  When you get cold, your body tries to keep your internal temperature from dropping too much.  So you begin to move involuntarily.  We call this shivering.  Likewise, if you’re too hot, you’re body sweats to cool you off.

Check out the headline:

A high-fructose diet raises blood pressure in men, while a drug used to treat gout seems to protect against the blood pressure increase, according to research reported at the American Heart Association’s 63rd High Blood Pressure Research Conference.

“This is the first evidence of a role of fructose in raising blood pressure and a role for lowering uric acid to protect against that blood pressure increase in people,” said Richard Johnson, M.D., co-author of the study and professor and head of the division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado-Denver medical campus in Aurora, Colo.

You know what else can lower it – or keep it from rising in the first place? Getting the sugar out of the diet. But why do that when you can just take a pill, right?

Really, if we want to do something to lower health care costs in this country and improve health (which itself would lower costs), we’d do well to have a lot less medicine.

And indeed, a lot of “conditions” (read: symptoms) that people commonly seek medical attention for are, as an excellent Wall Street Journal article points out, conditions that will improve on their own without any special medical intervention whatsoever.

“Most people’s bodies and immune systems are wonderful in terms of handling things—if people can be patient,” says Ted Epperly, a family physician in Boise, Idaho, and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

“I have a mantra: You can do more for yourself than I can do for you,” says Raymond Scalettar, a Washington, D.C., rheumatologist and former chairman of the American Medical Association. But, he says, “some patients are very medicine-oriented, and when you tell them they aren’t good candidates for a drug they’ve heard about on TV, they don’t come back.”

An estimated one-third to one-half of the $2.2 trillion Americans spend annually on health care in the U.S. is spent on unnecessary tests, treatments and doctor visits. Much of that merely buys time for the body to heal itself.

Notably, a lot of those treatments are for things that don’t cure anything but do suppress symptoms – cough suppressants, pain relievers, chest rubs, nasal sprays and so on. In the short term, they can make the illness easier to live with, but in the long-term, they simply add to the body’s toxic burden and push symptoms deeper, making the body less resistant to future assaults, whether from microbes or viruses, or environmental pollutants.

It’s one of the most important things to remember when it comes to health matters and is the foundation of a sound approach to healing: the human body is a self-regulating organism, always striving to achieve a state of balance known as homeostasis – literally, the condition of remaining the same. This is the the phenomenon referred to by Dr. Epperly above: your body has mechanisms for healing itself. Symptoms are the signs that your body is doing what it was designed to do.

So if the particular illness or dysfunction is such that the expertise of a physician, dentist or other health care professional is required, the conscientious practitioner will do two basic things: 1) pinpoint the source of the illness or dysfunction – its cause, and 2) provide treatment that addresses the cause by supporting the body’s natural abilities in self-regulation and self-healing.

This is precisely why it’s so important that we live healthy lifestyles. By eating well, exercising, seeking balance, nurturing our social connections and all the other qualities that go into healthful living, we stay resistant to illness by supporting the body’s ability to stay well.

La afonía de sus palabras retumbó en el espacio vacío:

“¡Deténganse por favor!

Me están matando”

Pero el verdugo era implacable,

Se sentía elegido por la divinidad para sojuzgar la tierra,

Para consumir la vida.

Entonces,

Sin saber cómo,

Brotaron de sus entrañas los instrumentos de una sinfonía Universal.

Y con movimientos imperceptibles se enfrentaron al verdugo,

Golpearon sus talones

E hicieron escuchar sus voces.

Le dieron voz a la esfera azul para gritar:

“¡Deténganse por favor!

Me están matando”

Pantera Aparcera

Cuando un organismo vivo está en peligro de muerte evidencia algunos signos que permiten conocer esta situación, y si le es posible, intenta evitar su propia desaparición. Un ser humano, por ejemplo, liberaría una gran cantidad de adrenalina, su corazón se agitaría, empezaría a sudar copiosamente, finalmente trataría de escapar o gritaría esperanzado en que alguien pudiera ayudarlo. Pareciera que hoy, el planeta tierra corre un grave peligro de muerte, pero ¿será posible que evite su propia desaparición, será posible que eleve algún grito de esperanzada angustia?

Gaia es el nombre que los griegos daban a la diosa de la tierra, pero también es el nombre de una teoría muy audaz cuyas primeras hipótesis presentó el inglés James Lovelock. Habla de un macro organismo planetario que por medio de un proceso llamado homeóstasis se autorregula permitiendo de esta manera la existencia de vida en él. En este sentido los seres que cohabitan en el planeta azul actúan como parte de un sistema, de la misma manera que las células de un cuerpo.

Uno pensaría entonces que el ser humano, como miembro de ese macro organismo tendría que comportarse como un elemento más del proceso homeostático, pero contrario a esto, muchos de sus actos están destruyendo el equilibrio que permite la subsistencia de la vida en el planeta. Es algo así como un cáncer que, emergiendo desde el individuo mismo, se va expandiendo por sus órganos, consumiéndolo y poniendo en serio peligro su vida. Durante la modernidad se nos hizo creer que de la mano de la ciencia y la técnica se vendría un irrefrenable progreso hacia unas inmejorables condiciones de vida para la especie humana; la sociedad del bienestar. Pero los filósofos, científicos y artistas que quisieron convencer a la humanidad de esto no contaban con ese cáncer que suponen los dueños de los aparatos de producción, y sus aliados; los hombres en el poder. Seres avaros y egoístas que por el contrario nos dieron guerras, desigualdad social, hambre y contaminación. Los líderes mundiales, en su afán por controlar la naturaleza, han construido lo que algunos teóricos han dado en llamar, sociedad de riesgo, donde la amenaza de destrucción de la vida del planeta, incluido el hombre, es constante.

No obstante y para continuar con la que algunos consideran una gastada metáfora, pareciera que el planeta sigue buscando formas de generar equilibrio, y no me refiero a las guerras, los virus o la pobreza, que diezman día a día la población humana, hablo de ciertos procesos más acordes con las capacidades intelectuales que, uno esperaría, permiten al hombre aportar conscientemente en el proceso de conservación de la vida. Un fenómeno que podríamos denominar mentalidad ecologista, está permeando con mucha fuerza, especialmente desde el siglo pasado, casi todas las esferas de la vida social. Esta mentalidad se evidencia en la ciencia, a través de la ecología, pero también en movimientos político-sociales de trascendencia internacional como el proyecto Seikywia, arte por la tierra, que a través del arte, pretende recuperar las enseñanzas de los Tayrona, habitantes de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, sobre la adecuada convivencia del hombre con la Pacha Mama. O proyectos locales como el caso de los Cuida Palos en Quimbaya, quienes, entre otras cosas, están preocupados por educar a los ciudadanos sobre la importancia de cuidar la quebrada Buenavista, principal fuente de agua del municipio. Muchos otros movimientos han logrado que los estados firmen acuerdos sobre el cuidado del medio ambiente (como el protocolo de Kyoto), que los medios de comunicación informen a la población sobre diferentes formas de cuidar el entorno, y poco a poco han ido alcanzando metas, aún en franca oposición a los hombres más poderosos y por ende, peligrosos del mundo.

De esta manera podríamos pretender, que aunque la vida en el planeta corre peligro, algunos hombres han logrado generar nuevas formas de participar en la homeóstasis estabilizadora del sistema de la vida en la tierra, hombres que ofrecen la posibilidad a Gaia de dar su grito de esperanzada angustia.

If Biology is the study of life, how do we define life?  Is there one characteristic that defines all life?  If you ask a room of students “how can you tell if something is alive” you’ll hear things like “poke it with a stick and see if it moves.”  Unfortunately, that isn’t right.  In fact, there is not one characteristic that defines all life.  Living things are defined by a few characteristics.

All living things:

• are made up of 1 or more cells.
• reproduce.
• are based on a genetic code .
• grow and develop.
• obtain and use energy.
• respond to their environment.
• maintain a stable internal environment.

Even nonliving things can meet some of these descriptions, so it’s important to be able to tell living from nonliving. For example, a car obtains and uses energy and maintains a stable internal environment.  Some can even respond to their (external) environment!  To be defined as living an object must meet ALL of these requirements.

Technically, viruses don’t meet this description of life and many scientists don’t  consider them to be living things.  However, since they act like living things, they are studied under the umbrella of biology in a field either specifically called Virology or as a broader biology field called Microbiology.

Again, just posting these few links as notes from the internet for the Facilitator’s contemplation.

First, a tragedy in Vietnam is soon followed by a much larger tragedy on a massive scale.

Mob. police force nuns to leave Vietnam monastery. (event September 27, 2009)

Second, the massive tragedy (who remembers?):

In Vietnam (event September 30, 2009)

In Indonesia, BBC (follow up October 1, 2009)

Just curious.

The principle of Chiropractic and alternative health is that you help the body do what its supposed to do.   Some examples:

• it makes its own steroids
• its balances its own blood thickness
• it heals cuts and wounds
• it replaces itself constantly cell by cell

And its INTELLIGENT 24/7 even while you are sleeping it keeps on working and keeps things in BALANCE or homeostasis.  You get it hot, its sweats to cool.  You get cool, you shiver – it knows, its automatic. Truly amazing.

Body in Balance – Homeostasis: If you want to make a change from the outside, let’s say “thin the blood a little bit” or “add steroids to reduce inflammation” or “take pills to stop headaches” the body does not sit back and accept the chemicals without a response.  As soon as they are imbibed the body tries to reverse and rebalance the changes in chemistry back to the prior state - the kidneys and liver try to detoxify the body until the original balance is maintained.

This rebalancing can be demonstrated on a graph showing the setpoint, that returns once the balancing mechanism, the homeostatic mechanism of the body is engaged and eventually rebalanced at the point  just above the X on the axes.

• if the setpoint is blood glucose and the environmental disturbance is lunch, we call the chart “normal”
• If the setpoint is blood glucose and the homeostatic mechanism does not kick in and the levels go up and up , we call it “diabetes.”
• If the setpoint is body temperature and the environmental disturbance is going for a run the homeostatic mechanism could be sweating, again “normal”
• If the set point is body temperature and it keeps going up and does not come back down, we call it “heat stroke”.

How the body rebalances a disturbance in homeostasis

Overriding homeostatis – medicine: To affect change to the body’s chemistry,  medicine has to be added continually to keep the body off its own balance. In the graph the goal would be to change the setpoint above or below.  If the body did not try to back to its balance you could take one aspirin and never need another.  An addict would get high, and never need another fix.  While the medicine continues to be added to produce a wanted effect, side-effects, unwanted effects demonstrate unwanted changes in chemistry occur at the same time.  The graph is overly simplistic.

The advantage of alternative health, of eating better foods, of chiropractic is that these methods only support what the body is already trying to do.  If your nerve system is working better it should make the changes that are best for the body at the pace the body can handle WITHOUT side-effects.

Blood Pressure - an example:  Take blood pressure.  The body regulates its own.  If you are out of shape, or getting older, or stressed, the body raises the blood pressure.  Heck, you can even think about something and if it’s the wrong thing, the blood pressure goes up.

There are medicines to take it down.  And they work for a bit so you have to take more to get the blood levels up.  And if they become ineffective you may need another one or a stronger one.  Some don’t work so well so you might have to take several to get the numbers where the doctor wants them.  That’s the easy fix.  And as I said, the liver and kidneys work overtime to eliminate that medicine.

For every pound of extra fat, (someone must have measured it – thankless job) its  said there are 30 miles of blood vessels so if you are overweight, blood pressure tends to be up to get the blood through it.  Its a natural response.  As arteries are less elastic as we age, or thicken with plaquing, your body puts blood pressure up.  If you live a busy city, just that alone might put your blood pressure up vs. living in a thatched hut in Tonga.

Some people have higher blood pressure because the need it. Yes NEED it, either genetically or to keep their tissues perfused with blood and oxygen to stay alive.  I’ve seen cases where feet went black and gangrenous when patients were on blood pressure medication. The blood could not get through without a higher than normal pressure – I’m not sure losing feet was a price worth paying for “normal” blood pressure.  Often our body knows best exactly what is right for us.

Baroreceptors that control blood pressure

Control of blood pressure, indeed control of all body mechanisms is by the brain and runs through the neck.  Sensors for blood pressure (called baroreceptors) are in the neck.  In our society with vehicular impacts i.e. whiplash, rough delivery as babies, contact sports etc. necks get lots of injuries.  On top of all the other issues related to blood pressure, nerve system control from the neck is a big one, and based on my practice may be as big or bigger than all the factors we see in the news.

It’s possible to be the perfect patient and have high blood pressure if the neck receptors, or neck function is not correct.  You can have normal weight, perfect diet, be fit as an athlete and still have high blood pressure.  On the contrary, patients that don’t do much of what I ask can still have better blood pressure with just chiropractic alone.  The nerve system is a powerful modifier of body function.  .

The Tipping Point: The mechanisms for homeostasis, for keeping the body in balance, can only go for so long – life takes it toll and if not life our vices.  The alcoholic eventually wears out his liver; Type II diabetes occurs when the body is at a certain weight; blood pressure can show up very quickly and without symptoms.  We don’t know where that tipping point occurs; it’s a dice throw we would prefer not to lose.  I don’t condone ignoring healthy living –  I work on my weight, my fitness and my diet but like the rest of America, I lead a spoiled life with weight and too much good food.

So the wellness approach to make constructive effort before the body is out of balance, to not take a chance at rolling the dice.   We don’t know how little exercise, how bad your diet can be, how much plaquing you have to have, how bad your neck can be before the body cannot balance your blood pressure or other symptoms.  Some patients don’t get a warning with dire if not fatal consequences.

Black Family Embrace

The oneness theory and its essence become ever more fascinating as you elucidate how it fuses into many levels of reality. An instance of this is the human body.  When things in life are patterned after the design of the body, the body is then able to present effective solutions to problems with a similar context.

Like how architecture is essentially modeled after the human body (the skeletal, circulatory and nervous systems), we can learn a few lessons from the function of adrenaline.

Adrenaline (epinephrine) is a chemical released by the adrenal glands when your body senses or detects stress. Adrenaline gives a mother who has seen her child pinned under a massive object the strength to remove it with relative ease.

“When we feel fear or are faced with a sudden dangerous situation, the human body undergoes an amazing change.” – Josh Clark, HowStuffWorks.com

Upon the emission of this substance, the muscles can contract beyond their normal capacity.  The heart rate of the body increases, respiration increases, pupils dilate and digestion is significantly reduced.  In the process, the body is capable of utilizing more energy.

“Why don’t we walk around in a constant heightened state of agitation? The short answer is, it would kill us,” says Josh Clark. If the body is using greater energy, than it must be taking a toll on the body as a whole.  The law of conservation states that energy is neither created nor destroyed but transforms.

According to HowStuffWorks.com, the adrenal response system undergoes three major stages.  The first stage is the alarm reaction; this is when your body detects danger and begins to enter a fight-or-flight mode.  The second stage is the stage of resistance, where your body’s defense mechanisms are heightened.  The third stage is the state of exhaustion.  In the state of exhaustion the body’s immune defenses are down and the body is more susceptible to illnesses, like catching a cold.  If the body is over agitated for a prolonged period of time it can also suffer a heart attack.

How does this relate to a nation?  Black individuals and black people as a collective are under attack.  Our communities are heavily stressed.  Collectively, black people are in an extremely unsavory and precarious condition.

In this case, as a collective and subsequently individually, black people must work in overdrive to balance an external imbalance.  This is essentially means sacrifice.  The body innately knows sacrifice when it produces a condition where it sacrifices the health of its organs for a temporary gain in strength to fend off its enemies.  Everything God does follows the principles of Ma’at.  Scientists describe a fraction of Ma’at as homeostasis.  Ma’at has everything to do with balance (and more).  When the body is presented with an external force that perturbs its calmness, its tranquility or balance, the body must balance this external force by utilizing an internal force.  The body enters a perturbed state provoking the release of adrenaline, which then evokes a greater supply of energy to the body, drawing energy from nonessential body functions for which your body has called a moratorium on.

Black men and woman can reflect on the wisdom of God in the design of the body to realize that sometimes you must sacrifice your state of calmness to achieve a level of success, a level of safety.  You must make yourself uncomfortable for a while to provide yourself and your progeny a state of true tranquility.

Black people’s health is already taking a toll because of the nature of adrenaline.  The daily stress blacks feel triggers adrenal gland activity (especially because of higher spiritual sensory abilities provided by greater concentrations of melanin).  This gradual, consistent emission of adrenaline taxes our organs causing them premature failure, high blood pressure and other stress-induced diseases.

Our bodies feel the stress.  Our bodies respond to the stress.  But because we have been mis-educated and more importantly mis-politicized, we fail to correctly identify our enemies.  Thus we squander our ability to exercise this greater potential created by conditions of stress, ultimately leading to taxing our organs to the point of death and demise.

Recuerda que tendrás un profesor en directo a tu cargo un día a la semana mientras dure el curso.
En este año incluimos la preparación de reflexología podal y reflexología de las manos.

Hemos puesto un precio de promoción para América Latina por el añadido que supone transferir el importe del curso.

Si tienes dudas consulta en reflexologiaparati@gmail.com
Si quieres contacto telefónico puedes hacerlo al 958586609/606264006
Recuerda poner los prefijos de España.

A man with Alzheimer’s and his wife of many years finish lovemaking when he rolls over and tells her, “You’d better hurry up and get your things because my wife will be home soon." ……….

This comes from a thought provoking article here. I believe this is a subject which needs to be addressed on many levels. Life doesn’t stop when someone becomes demented. All of our physiological needs persist throughout the course of our lives..

We all follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Click on the picture to open it up. Notice that the red portion of the triangle is the foundation of our being.

Physiological needs include:

• Breathing
• Homeostasis
• Water
• Sleep
• Food
• Sex
• Clothing
• Shelter

Tell me what you think…………..David

Estos días una de las luces que mantengo a mi alrededor es la reflexión que Bert Hellinger hace de las relaciones y los procesos de premio y castigo que se dan para que los sistemas permanezcan. Sobre todo me resuena el sentimiento de culpabilidad que acompaña cada decisión que nos aleja de los caminos y las relaciones de “toda la vida”, separarnos de lo que conocemos y pisar otros terrenos.

equlibrio sistémico by gallas

Ahonda en la premisa sistémica de homeostasis. Los sistemas, las personas, las organizaciones, vivimos en un equilibrio precario bombardeado de nuevas y provocadoras experiencias. La decisión –por decirlo de alguna manera- tiene dos posibles salidas: Aceptas la nueva información, revolucionas tus creencias, entras en crisis y recolocas todo en un nuevo equilibrio más amplio, más matizado, integrando ideas que parecían contradictorias, abandonando alguna idea mágica y creciendo, o cierras las puertas a eso que consideras una distorsión y decides permanecer, más estrecho pero permanecer.

Hellinger matiza este proceso, necesario para el crecimiento, explorando la parte más intuitiva y los posos más “emocionales” de las apuestas que rompen con lo que éramos. Vuelvo a compartir un texto que traslada la experiencia en contenido y forma mucho mejor de lo que yo pueda hacerlo hoy.

“En el trato con personas y grupos nos vincula un “sentido que sabe” que nos mantiene en relación con ellos, impulsándonos y dirigiéndonos constantemente. Es comparable a aquel otro sentido sapiente que, en contra de la fuerza de gravedad, nos impulsa y dirige constantemente para mantener nuestro cuerpo en equilibrio. Bien podemos, si queremos caernos hacia delante o hacia atrás, hacia la derecha o hacia la izquierda, pero un reflejo nos obliga a buscar la compensación antes de producirse la catástrofe, centrándonos a tiempo.

Asimismo, existe un sentido superior a nuestra voluntad y a nuestros deseos, que vela por nuestras relaciones. Al igual que un reflejo, tiende a la corrección y a la compensación en cuanto nos desviamos de las condiciones necesarias para una relación lograda, poniendo en peligro nuestra pertenecía al grupo. Al igual que nuestro sentido del equilibrio, este sentido relacional percibe al individuo junto con su entorno, distingue el espacio libre y los limites, y nos guía a través de los sentimientos de placer y desplacer.

Culpa e inocencia, por tanto, se experimentan en relaciones y se refieren a relaciones, ya que todo actuar que repercute en otros va acompañado de un sentimiento sapiente de inocencia o de culpa. Comparable al ojo que, al ver, constantemente distingue entre claridad de la oscuridad, este sentimiento en cada momento distingue si nuestro actuar perjudica o favorece la relación. Así, pues, sentimos como culpa aquello que perjudica la relación y, como inocencia, lo que la favorece.”

Y en otro momento recuerda que “Inocencia y culpa no son lo mismo que “bueno” y “malo”. Frecuentemente es más bien al revés”. Crecer significa coger distancia de algo que fue bueno, que fue nuestro, mío. Hay una idea mágica que yo compré hace mucho tiempo; haciendo bien las cosas y cuidando a las personas, estas me van querer más. Mágica en la medida que hay parte de la premisa que no está en mis manos y por lo tanto jamás podré controlar y además porque santifica al equilibrio, al que las cosas permanezcan como están y me imposibilita hacer el “daño suficiente” para seguir creciendo.

De momento estos son mis dolores. En el libro de los “ordenes del amor” y sobre la evolución del libro de “la psicología de las masas” de Le Bon a otro del mismo autor “La psicología de las elites” dice Hellinger que la diferencia está en que “no buscan culpables, sino que en seguida se hacen cargo de las consecuencias de su propio comportamiento. De esta manera, siempre disponen de la capacidad de actuar. Pero desgraciadamente, sólo unos pocos pertenecen a la élite”.

Yes, I know, I’m slack. I’ve had this sitting in textual space for a week hoping this episode would rewrite itself into something remotely publishable and amusing.

But as usual, I have to do all the work. It’s God’s punishment for my sarcasm.

So here’s the rundown on Wildcard night, where the unchosen, like vampires get to rise from the dead, belt their lungs out and get un-unchosen by the adoring, disturbing public who actually want to watch this show.

But first, we need to know, oh so enthusiastically, which two divas or divans (which is the male version of diva, I assure you, it’s true) from the last group semifinal, are in the top twelve.

Would you know it? The first person chosen is James, the guy who looks like a fifteen year old, because this show is watched by tweenies. In my day tweenies were too young to have hormones and were reading Enid Blyton and wishing they were one of the Famous Five drinking lashings of ginger beer and giving smugglers their comeuppance. James, the tweenie tart, tries to look macho but fails superbly and you want to ruffle his hair or just push him over, quite hard, to see if he’ll giggle or cry.

Chosen number two is Kim, which is fucking right, because the girl is a hot funky gutsy chick and if I was a lesbian I’d do her. Andy G is oh so happy and dripping with hormone juice because he wants to hump her which means he is a lesbian.

Dicko and Marcia say the last group was the hardest to vote for, which really means they’re all disappointed about the guy that looks like a fifteen year old getting chosen.

So, on with the wildcard night. Out of the sixteen unchosen, nine will get the chance to rise from the dead and shed their vocal cords of all that phlegm that builds up when you’re buried. After they’ve sung their little corpse hearts out, the judges will pick two and the public will pick two.

Dicko picks his first for tonight’s resurrection singalong. He’s all about the package, which means he’s going to pick pop tarts. He says these three are fantastic singers – Aliqua, who was named after her mother’s favourite dishwashing soap, Casey, who was in the second group so I missed him because I had better things to do that night and Lucie, who had a good voice, but I got distracted from watching. They are, surprise, pop tarts,

JD (who can’t spell his own name, so I have to spell it for him and seriously, this is the age of text messaging so why the hell is he spelling it Jay Dee instead of JD) picks Toby because he has the sex factor and all the female population of Australia swoon and get a little wet between the legs and all caring, maternal and shit because the guy’s puppy frown just does it to them. JD then picks Ed who is made from a template for rockers and Hayley which is a ‘yay’, because she rocks even if she does have a very sideways parting (though it is notably further up her head tonight, thanks to the vertically aesthetic hairdressers behind the scenes). Needless to say Hayley’s as happy as Larry, not that I know who Larry is and wouldn’t it be a bummer if Larry was a really miserable guy whose wife had left him for a lesbian (because lesbian is our theme for tonight), found out he had a hereditary boozing disease and had five nipples rather than your requisite three. In that case, let’s just say Hayley’s as happy as Hayley or Andy G humping Kim, the hot chick’s fine hot chick leg.

Marcia then picks her three and because she’s actually a singer I want to have faith. She picks Lauren who was in last year’s wildcard group. Be yourself no matter what, Marcia motivates. Then Marcia picks Tim, which is like what? I lose my faith, drastically. I then have an objective moment and observe that it’s all about marketing, my delicious little Idolophiles and we do have a large Christian audience out there.  Her final choice is Tenielle which is also a ‘yay’ as she has character and an interesting voice.

The unchosen, unchosen for a second time, want to cry. I want to cry because I have to watch this stuff. The world wants to cry because people in it make shows like this. God wants to cry because he/she/it has now realised if shows like this exist, he/she/it can’t possibly exist.

Sigh.

Back to the show. First chortler tonight is Lucie. She has been doing some deep thinking since her performance and is considering how to make herself different like a pop tart. She sings Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind and Fire. All credit to her she does have a lovely voice and is a confident singer and performer.

Dicko thinks she sang well. He says it’s interesting that she says she’s R&B. He says that R&B these days is edgier than the song she chose.

Marcia says she was good and gives her full marks.

JD thinks she did a sensational performance because he loves that song and subtextually (yes, I make up words, editors) flips the bird at Dicko.

Casey is next. Since I missed his performance on Tuesday night, I’m not sure what to expect. He tried out for Idol a few years ago but didn’t make it. He looks like another pub rock singer. It’s his last chance because he’s thirty years old which means he’s over the hill, ready for the dust pile, should be writing out his will and moving into an old people’s home anytime soon.

He sings popular rock: The Fray’s Never Say Never. As he sings the camera does this weird turn around thing with him following it. It’s all so staged I want to grab the camera and scream, ‘stop moving!’ and ‘keep it real, will ya’ because that’s what authenticity is all about. In terms of performance he’s ok but lacks vim.

Marcia tells Casey to come forward towards the audience and ‘present’ himself to connect with the audience. That’s sounds a little rude, but then it’s not my fault if people put naughty thoughts in my head. That’s what happens with mass media. It turns people into dirty thinking, bad, soulless hussies.

JD asks him how he thinks he did tonight. He says that to everyone because he’s an amateur shrink. JD says it wasn’t enough of an improvement this time from Tuesday night’s performance.

Dicko says Casey’s vocals were enough, but he needs to find a different image. Then he calls Casey Ned Flanders. I have to Google Ned Flanders as I haven’t watched much of The Simpsons and find out Ned Flanders is a caricature of the Christian Right. Poor Casey asks ‘who is Ned Flanders?’ He appeals to the audience, who look just as blank as he does, because they either don’t know or are thinking Dicko’s comment was just a little bit mean, but can’t show it, because they want their best blank face on national television.

Third up is sudsy Aliqua. Oh fuck, she’s singing Celine Dion, The Power of Love. I have a moment of panic when I realise I’m about to go into a hyperglycaemic state from all the song sugar. I pretend I’m a Buddhist monk and breathe slowly and regularly to ensure homeostatic regulation.

Aliqua starts nervously, poor thing, and I want to give her a big hug, but I don’t because I might get my earlobes stuck on the metal on her teeth and she’s on the TV screen and not actually in my living room. She’s got an impressive big voice but her nerves are making it a little shaky.  She relaxes a little as she goes along. She still got a few years ahead of her and once she gets the toxins from metal poisoning out of her system she’ll be a great performer.

JP says sensitively ‘nah, not for me.’ He says she does big notes well and points out she was nervous. He wanted to see her shaking her booty. She’s sixteen, dude.

Dicko says she knew she was committed to that song, but it was not for a sixteen year old girl. He wants her to sing something more suited for her age. We’ve had this conversation before, Dicko. What the fuck else is she going to sing? Something by  Hi-5?

Marcia asks Aliqua what she thinks. Aliqua says she agrees with the constructive criticism. She’s a gutsy little thing. Marcia wants to see the girl with attitude she’s seen before; the rough and tumble girl who’s so much fun.

Next up is Lauren Street. I give her marks for a great performer’s name. I missed her semifinal but the flashbacks show she’s got a big voice. She also got to wildcard night last year.

She comes out and sings Low by Kellie Clarkson in a mature, gutsy voice with a mature, gutsy performance. She’s likely to appeal more to females older than tweenies. Then there’s a bit where it almost seems she’s yelling and it puts me off a little. But it’s a more professional performance than the other contestants tonight.

Dicko said it was an unusual song and said it wasn’t her best performance and her voice was a little bit out. Then he says she captivates him and he thinks she’s one of their top three performers.

Marcia said her pitch was a little bit out and doesn’t give me anything snarky to say.

JP really liked Lauren’s performance. Her voice intrigues him and there’ s an edge to her voice. He then says he’s not sure she’s an Idol or someone who might go work on a cruiseship. Which is all like, what the fuck? That doesn’t sound like a compliment, though he’s meaning it to be, in a weird way. She’s cool and collected because she realises he’s a fuckwit.

Tim, the gospel singer is next. I earnestly prepare for tedium and hyperglycaemia. He’s singing The Beatles, Yesterday. He actually does a nice job with his own little flavoursome interpretation. It’s a bit different to the R&B he favours. The girls in the audience think it’s hot. They don’t know the truth about gospel singers. And neither do I, so if anyone knows, please tell me.

Marcia’s all ‘now, see that’s what I’m talking about’. She says his eyes were sparkling and he sang from the depth of himself. That means he was squeezing from way down there when he sang which is what they teach you at how to sing school.

JP gives his sleazy smile. He could see Tim was committed. JP narks ‘white boys can sing’, which is a dig at Marcia who made a comment last week along the lines that black American singers sing R&B more naturally.

Dicko says Tim’s not allowed to sing the Beatles because he’s not a scouser. Then Dicko says it was good and it shows Casey’s place in the market is pop flavoured soul. Dicko adds that Tim reached his heart which means Tim’s dug to the depths of hell.

Ed, the template rocker, is next. He does his version of White Noise and I find it a little underwhelming. It’s missing something.

JP says it was a good performance but it was similar to the last one and JD likes to be surprised a bit.

Dicko says it was out of pitch all the way through and Ed chose a muscle bound song that doesn’t suit his voice.

Marcia says it was intense and Ed had some pitch problems. She says you have to be spot on when the song grows into a crescendo.

Ed’s followed by Teneille, the traindriver, who perches on a stool to sing Kiss me by Sixpence None the Richer.

The song really suits her voice; it’s different, sweet and lovely. She needs to move a little bit more; she’s a little bit stiff and scared, but you can’t really blame her when JD and Dicko are sitting there slobbering.

Dicko tells her she looks fantastic, like a country music queen and that she could sing country. He says it was a really good choice for her and she was perfectly in tune. He would have liked her to put more passion or action into it. He knows she probably wouldn’t want to kiss him, (everyone chokes as their dirty uncle antennae begin vibrating) but she really sang to the audience.

Marcia suggests maybe Tenielle didn’t move so much because she was trying to be cool. She says she really enjoyed it and it was a great song choice.

JP gives Teneille a weird look like he wants to ask her to shag him, but knows it would be inappropriate. He says the song suits her voice, but it wasn’t 100%. Then he says he’d like her to kiss him. (Vibrating antennae everywhere go into overdrive). Teneille laughs and says she has a boyfriend and is pretty sure JP is married. Ha. You tell him, girl. JP says this is not the only entrance to the song industry for her as she also writes her own songs. Tenielle says she’s played Kiss me at gigs and it usually gets a good response.

Ricky Lee then talks to Scott, the DIY singer, about the fact he’s been in the newspapers, because he came out his loungeroom and onto the stage. Scott says it’s weird because he would sometimes bring the paper to work and now he’s in it. He’s obviously a man of great wisdom. While I lower my left sardonic brow, Ricky Lee says people don’t believe that he’s had no performance experience before. I snort at the screen, I believe him and I’m people. Throughout the discussion he’s trying hard to be funky and cool but it comes off awkward and if his head gets stupid big, I am going to want to smack it.

Ricky Lee then talks to Sabrina who is such a little performer and wants to know if everyone likes her hair, at which point she completely alienates the audience and I want to smack her as well as Scott. She didn’t sing for a year because she was clinically depressed. She compares singing now with being told you can’t have chocolate for a year then having chocolate. She’s going to have to tone down the performer when she speaks, because she will be voted out the first week, which would be a shame because she actually is talented.

Toby, every female’s potential husband, is up next. He’s singing U2’s With or Without You. He walks on the stage looking school teacherish and his worry brow is gorgeous and lovable. He’s nervous and flushed. All the females go ‘oooh’ and want to soothe his feverish brow. He sings in a mellow, gorgeous way, at first a little bit shaky. Then, females are throwing their panties and bras on the stage. Everyone loves it, especially the other idols who give him a standing ovation.

Marcia says ‘thank God for U2′ and says it’s great to see the contestants congratulate him. He says he really enjoyed singing and is so genuinely humbled by his fellow contestants that girls and women pass out in the aisles and he wins all the votes.

JP says he has been told by an ex-marketing executive that he (JP) has rocks in his head because he hasn’t seen the marketing opportunity that is Toby. I suspect the ex-marketing exec was female. JP says he likes Toby with the bit of stubble.

Dicko likes Toby’s look then says he doesn’t want to kiss Toby by the way, which the women can’t understand and really know is Dicko’s denial of the man love he’s suddenly found inside him. Dicko says Toby’s performance was absolutely captivating.

Hayley, rock chick, Warner is up next and she’s singing a Kelly Clarkson song. What would Australian Idol singers sing without American Idol winners and their songs? Hayley has verve and she uses it on stage. She brings something different to the competition. It’s a great rendition of the song. She gets a stand up from the co singers and big cheer from the audience.

JP asks her how she went because he’s gone into shrink mode again. She says it was fun. JP says she seems very comfortable on the stage and he hopes Australia likes her. He says he thinks she’s got room to grow.

Dicko tells her not to go off the stage into the audience as it’s not right to be that arrogant when she doesn’t have an audience, yet. He gets a resounding boo from the audience. Dicko then adds that she’s terrific and that she’s 50% invincible, 50% vulnerable, which I kind of get.

Marcia says Hayley’s got so much to show and doesn’t really give me much more to rant about.

So then it’s over for the night and up to the Aussie public to choose two and the judges to choose two. We’ll find out next Sunday night which gives me a week’s relief to watch fulfilling things like The Wire which is now being shown on ABC2 and Spicks and Specks and get my sugar levels balanced.

I have reached the first point where I want to return to equilibrium. I have been exercising nearly daily for about three weeks and, aside from a couple of minor pitfalls, I am doing well. Now I’m plagued with thoughts about not wanting to continue with my nutrition plan. My body is giving me feedback about the exercise I’ve been doing, though I’ve been pushing through. Now it’s time to review how I’ve been doing and adjust.

My failings have been fairly minor, one day events. A work outing with beer, snack food, and grilled meat; a work lunch with high calorie and hard-to-record food; and a family birthday party with pizza and snack food have all passed by, yet I’ve managed to progress. This sort of event occurs and limiting damage is an important and difficult skill.

I have been practising tai chi chuan almost daily. I need to make this more routine, perhaps moving tai chi to the mornings. I’ve also been working out with tae bo, a much more intense activity that I cannot keep up every day. If I can manage to do tae bo 3-4 evenings a week as well, I’ll be doing as perfectly as possible.

Some habits are hard to break. I get up early in the morning, but I don’t really get moving for an hour or two afterward. The habit of morning Tai Chi will be a good undertaking, but I have a rule requiring daily practice (with no more than one day off per week).

My body has been responding to both practices. Tai chi has seen some response in my right knee. I absolutely must turn with my waist, not the knee (not even a little). The knee is a hinge and must only move in the direction of my pointed toes. Tae Bo has seen more positive pain. The last few days have seen me with ab pain all over my torso. I attempted a set that was primarily ab work. Now the pain is gone, leaving me free to make another attempt. It will be the quickest way to a strong core.

This third week should see reasonable progress again, but more important is my daily practice. The more routine it gets, the closer I am to the path of mastery.

In reading through Bousquet’s The Scientific Way of Warefare (aspects of which I have already engaged, here), there are pockets of useful summation that one runs into in his narrative that simply call for investigation. I’m going to have to pass on an elaborate presentation of the ideas of Cybernetics and Complexity, but Bousquet provides excellent, essential cartography. In particular is his emphasis that Cybernetic thinking from the 40s, 50s and 60s concerned itself with a borrowing of the concept of “entropy” from thermodynamics, organization processes of “negative feedback” in pursuit of system homeostasis, with a concentration upon system “control”. Systems were seen as hermetically closed loops which worked inwardly to organize themselves to fight off entropy, noise, confusion, and establish an unending homeostasis which required no fundamental change in their own internal structure. The most basic form of the system was one that was able to note internal deviations from system “norm” which promoted external actions which would affect either a change in the environment or within, which then directed the system back to where it was before disturbed.

As some concerned with the philosophy of Spinoza there are some immediate prima facie correspondences here, enough to suggest that Spinoza seems something of a proto-cyberneticist. Spinoza’s stoic-like internal regulation of one’s own thinking processes, especially on the order of the avoidance of “confused” ideas, along with his doctrine that the conatus (essential striving) of a person or a thing was a driving force to preserve itself against outside destruction, seem to hold true to a cybernetic framing of the question of epistemology and power/control. Add to this that cybernetic models were of a distinctly linear mathematical nature (marked by the additive property of cause), and that at times Spinoza seems to treat causes in the same linear fashion (for instance the idealized assertion that two men of the same nature, when combined produce a new body twice as powerful), suggests deep conceptual ties been Spinoza’s self-regulating bodies of conatus continuation and early information theory, cybernetic concepts of the control of “noise” and pursuant homeostasis. (There is of course the signficant difference in the concept of entropy itself, as Spinoza reads all degradation as caused by external influence, and not natural to any system itself.)

To this comparison of affinities we also have to add a significant metaphysical homology, something that struck me as rather surprising. I have long emphasized that Spinoza’s onto-epistemology partakes in an unusual though very distinct way in the Neoplatonic model of Being as read in degrees. This is to say, things do not simply have Being or not, but rather have degrees of Being. And, as I also emphasized, Augustine was probably the greatest purveyer of this Neoplatonic doctrine, taken from Plotinus, to through the Christian Middle Ages to post Renaissance thinking. In such a view, “evil” is under a non-Manichean, and one wants to stress, non-Dualistic defintion. Evil was simply the absence of good (and not a force in its own right).

Historical Digression: Handled briefly so as to give a sketch of the historical ground we are covering, the Augustianian, Neoplatonic position is perhaps expressed in his Enchiridion. There  the ontology of the Good is equated with Being (an argument also found in the City of God  XI, chap. 9, where the relative non-Being of evil is also briefly stated. As with Spinoza so many centuries later, the question of the Being of evil becomes one merely one of privation:

CHAPTER IV. The Problem of Evil

12. All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all. For no matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good which is its “nature” cannot be destroyed without the thing itself being destroyed. There is good reason, therefore, to praise an uncorrupted thing, and if it were indeed an incorruptible thing which could not be destroyed, it would doubtless be all the more worthy of praise. When, however, a thing is corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where there is evil, there is a corresponding diminution of the good.

One can see the correspondence between Augustine’s “privation” and Spinoza’s theorizing on falsity wherein the “Good” has been transposed into issues of truth; in the Ethics the gradated Being resolution of traditional dualisms has taken on its most systematic character. As Spinoza writes, ultimately echoing Plotinus’ radiating conception of Being (Enn. 3.2,5; 4.5,7):

E2p33 There is nothing positive in ideas whereby they can be said to be false.

Proof: If this can be denied, conceive, if possible, a positive mode of thinking which constitutes the form [forma] of error or falsity. This mode of thinking cannot be in God [E2p32], but neither can it be conceived externally to God [E1p15]. Thus there can be noting positive in ideas whereby they can be called false.

E2p35 Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge which inadequate ideas, that is, fragmentary and confused ideas, involve.

Return to Our Main Point: What is interesting is that Bousquet brings to our attention that Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, actually subscribed to an Augustinian concept of evil. That is to say, he regarded informational “noise” as that which a cybernetic system fought to overcome, understood as the absence, or non-recognition of order (pattern). When a cybernetic system fails it is due to a confusion resultant from an inability to read clearly the pattern of the events outside of it. And Wiener felt that cybernetic systems not only described thermostats and computer negative feedback loops, but also human beings and social systems.

The passage Bousquet evocatively cites is this:

I have already pointed out that the devil whom the scientist is fighting is the devil of confusion, not of willful malice. The view that nature reveals an entropic tendency is Augustinian, not Manichaean. Its inability to undertake an aggressive policy, deliberately to defeat the scientist, means that its evil doing is the result of a weakness in his nature rather than of a specifically evil power that it may have, equal or inferior to the principles of order in the universe which, local and temporary as they might be, still are probably not to unlike what the religious man means by God. In Augustinianism, the black of the world is negative and is the mere absence of white. (190)

The human use of human beings: cybernetics and society

One can see an immediate base similarity of project, in which the scientist looks to make clear and distinct the noise of the world, presumably by ordering his/her own ideas and internal organization as best that he/she. This, coupled with Spinoza’s own significant ontological tie of ordered and clear ideas with self-affirmations which render real changes in power in the world seems to place both Wiener and Spinoza within a world of potentiating noise and confusions, in which systems of every sort create islands of relatively more self-acting, clearer idea’d, internally coherent workings. The internal patterns of recursive coherence are those which recognize and order themselves amid a general pattern producing world. And there is ever the sense that the patterns, the coherence, the rationality is already out there. In Bateson, this is the “pattern that connects”.

But There Are Other Aspects of Spinoza

This is the way that Spinoza is often read, as the devote, internally turned Rationalist. Neglected though is an entirely countervailing second aspect of Spinoza’s thinking. His Letter 12 skepticism towards mathematics, which he relates to products of the imagination (often overlooked), exposes a general distrust of ANY finite, localized expression of the universe, especially on the aspect of “control”. This is to say, Spinoza is ever suspect of the human mind/body’s ability to direct itself in the world, and as such, this skepticism yields to distinctly non-linear, non-equilibrium prescriptions which go far beyond Cybernetic science presumptions.

As Bousquet tells it, it is the realization that negative feedback isn’t the only primary organizing principle in systems. Indeed if a system is ever going to be able to adopt to environments which themselves are changing, it must have the ability to rewrite and change its own internal interpretative relations. And in order to do so they must be able to move from equilibrium pursuit (that ordered Good), to other equilibrium states. In fact in a certain sense the more semi-stable states a system is able to move into, the greater the chance it will have the flexibility to adapt to expected (unwritten yet) events. In short, one might want to say in a dangerously rhetorical way, a bit of “chaos” has to be introduced into the system. It is here where the conservation oriented, evil noise fighting cybernetic model gives way to Chaos theory and Complexity theory, fused into what has been called Chaoplexic thinking.

Positive feedback loops are those of a kind that do not push the system backdown to a homeostatic state, negating the effects of some outside perturbation. Instead they excite the system and work to produce more external events which, in what could be a vicious cycle, stimulate the system into further action. Positive feedback loops are those which can be self-exstinguishing, as they through the system forward into states from which it might not ever be able to return.

Now one can definitively say that just such mad chases are what Spinoza most often theorizes against. The burn-out amplifications of the imagination are just the kind that produce violence and hatred among peoples, and, as Spinoza artfully worked to show, these hatreds are logically linked to loves as well. Love and hate each can produces amplified destructions of reverberation. But if we look closer, is it not the case that negative feedback closure is also what Spinoza sees as insufficient? And, can we not agree with some systems theorists, that it takes a combination of negative-feedback groundings, and positive feedback exposures, flights, in order to produce a viable and self-preserving system? And, at the most fundamental level must we not also admit that for Spinoza behaviours and conditions of rationality are themselves positive feedback in their nature: rationality and clear understanding tends to produce more rationality and clear understanding (however contingently contextualized). What I suggest is that Spinoza’s cybernetic model of clearer self-organization amid a potentially threatening environment of noise is tempered (or one should say spiked) with an alternate Chaoplexic embrace of positive feedback amplifications, and that these amplifications help us read out some of core prescriptions in Spinoza’s advisement.

I feel a turn to an excellent diagram offered in Linda Beckerman’s informative essay “The Non-Linear Dynamics of War” will be of some help in uncovering the non-linear thinking of Spinoza. The diagram along with some of her explication hopefully will show the numerical, as well as still determinative aspects of chaoplexic organization, such that Spinoza skepticism of finite systems/expressions may dovetail with such thinking.

In explanation of the diagram Beckerman writes in a passage so clear it is worth quoting at length…

3. Bifurcation

3.1  Non-linear systems have the capacity to exhibit multiple stable states. This is illustrated in Figure 1 in what is termed a bifurcation diagram. The far left hand side of the diagram represents systems that are mono-stable and upon perturbation will eventually settle down to a single static or steady state condition. Just to the right of this region, the system “bifurcates”. This merely means that there are two states available to the system. For one range of perturbations and conditions, the system will settle down to one state and for another range of perturbations and conditions, it will settle down to another state. As we progress towards the right, each branch splits, and then each branch further splits resulting in a rapid increase the number of stable states. On the far right hand side are those that are Chaotic. Chaotic systems appear to have an infinite number of potentially stable states. But they never settle down to any of these for long and are therefore considered to be unstable…

…3.3 Systems that are mono-stable or in steady state are so stable that any perturbation causes them to snap back to their stable state, leaving no opportunity for adaptation. Change requires “surgery”. An example of this would be a nation that solely uses attrition warfare to achieve its aims, regardless of the perturbation and underlying conditions (e.g. nature of adversary) causing them to go to war.

3.4 Figure 1 also shows an opportunistic region for adaptation. It is opportunistic precisely because there are so many states available. Many non-linear systems can be caused to bifurcate repeatedly merely by increasing the magnitude of the control parameters (see section 4). The most opportunistic portion is that immediately preceding the chaotic region (referred to as the “Edge of Chaos). The difficulty is the danger that a high amplitude perturbation (input) or change in system configuration (number of interconnections) could push the system into the chaotic region.

What I would like to put into immediate juxtaposition to such a Chaos-oriented framework is Spinoza’s famously suggestive numerical, and physical equation of “the Good”, where the Good is understood as “useful”…

E4p38 – Whatever so disposes the human Body that it can be affected in a great many ways, or renders it capable of affecting external Bodies in a great number of ways, is useful to man; the more it renders the Body capable of being affected in a great many ways, or of affecting other bodies, the more useful it is: on the other hand, what renders the Body less capable of these things is harmful.

Hopefully you can see clearly how deviant this axiom of use is to the perturbation-shrinking model of negative feedback elimination. Indeed, much more suitably does Spinoza view of the enhanced body seem to reside – not in some fixed, closed off organization – but actually in the twilight region so described above in the diagram, the place between rigid stable states and pure chaos. Once in such a mathematical and determinative sweet-spot too much a deviation, either towards stability or toward turbulance, reduces the number of ways a body can effect and be affected. Only in the wave-line is this ideational maximality found, and one could say that for Spinoza it is this asethetic line – caught between a hubris of excessive control and a reckless amplitude of destruction – that constutes the proper, which is to say living, positive feedback loop.

It is Spinoza’s skepticism both towards finite expressions of knowledge, and also towards the human being’s capacity to become self-determined, that ever directs any individual outward, towards the surface of its interactions. But not only outward, where the border between self and world, self and other is ultimately broken down and reconfigured, but so breadthwise, across the horizontal of explanations. It is Spinoza’s pursuit of the maximization of interactive powers that undermines any primary subject/object, or subject/world concerns. Instead, it would seem, that all our interally directed, cybernetic-like orderings, all our reductions of informational “noise” must also then turn back towards the very interface that composes them, to the living line of a multiplicity of possible states.

Valuably Bousquet notes that the passage from Cybernetics to Chaoplexic thinking has been characterized as the move from concerns of “control” to those of “coordination”, what has been called the “coordination revolution”. Bousquet cites Arquilla and Ronfelt who put the case in the context of military theorization. No longer is the ultimate thought for the control of all events internal to a network or system, but rather in terms of the loosely configured relatability of elements:

In these and related writings, we see a trend among theorists to equate information with “organization,” “order,” and “structure”—to argue that embedded information is what makes an object have an orderly structure. As this trend has developed, its emphasis has shifted. At first, in the 1940s and 1950s, information theorists emphasized the concept of “entropy”—and were thus concerned with exploiting feedback to improve “control.” Now, the emphasis has shifted to the concept of “complexity”—and this has led to a new concern with the “coordination” of complex systems. Control and coordination are different, sometimes contrary processes; indeed, the exertion of excessive control in order to avoid entropy may inhibit the looser, decentralized types of coordination that often characterize advanced forms of complex systems. What James Beniger called the “control revolution” is now turning into what might be better termed a “coordination revolution.” Entropy and complexity look like opposing sides of the same coin of order. About the worst that can happen to embedded information is that it gives way to entropy, i.e., the tendency to become disorganized. The best is that it enables an object to grow in efficiency, versatility, and adaptability (148)

In Athena’s camp: preparing for conflict in the information age John Arquilla, David F. Ronfeldt

The reason for this is that, in perhaps a rediscovery of many rule-of-thumb warnings against excessively directed control, if one too strictly links internal elements within a finite system, the very improvements of the system when under stress might actually lead to the catastrophic collapse of it. Instead of tightly organized linkages, loosely based, more chaotic and therefore flexible relations are desired. Bousquet citing John Urry:

In loosely coupled systems by contrast there is plenty of slack in terms of time, resources and organizational capacity. They are much less likely to produce normal accidents since incidents can be coped with, so avoiding the interactive complexity found within tightly coupled systems. In the latter, moreover, the effects are non-linear. Up to a point, tightening the connections between elements in the system will increase efficiency when everything works smoothly. But, if one small item goes wrong, then that can have a catastrophic knock-on effect throughout the system. The system literally switches over, from smooth functioning to interactively complex disaster. And sometimes this results from a supposed improvement in the system.

Global complexity  John Urry

At the risk of having steered too far from our course, the genuine skepticism over finite, linear, rationalistic, internally directed and corrective, often hierarchial organizations, shows itself in the truism of how such linearity can switch into non-linear collapse, blindside to the episteme of the system itself. Instead a skepticism towards rational systems in general directs our attention between towards horizon creating interactions themselves, towards the notion of co0rdination and agreements, out towards an aesthetic of mutual bodies forming a crest of living, self-producing edge-of chaos complexification.

If it is so that Spinoza possesses such a non-equalibrium appeal, where is it to be found? Is it enough to invoke his defintional awareness of the usefulness of numerical interactions? Does his skepticism towards mathematics and any finite division of magnitudes establish a non-linear bent, enough to quell the dominant linearity of his age with Newton just around the corner? Is there a radical non-equalibrium pursuit that balances out the conservatism of his conatus doctrine? I think there is. And it falls to the entire directionality of the Ethics, in particular the acme psychologies of the fourth book, and at last the passing into Intuition of the fifth book.

This is the determinative passage I feel. Spinoza is an interesting writer, for as he is often times at such pains to draw out and weave concepts into an extensive web of taken-to-be luminous clarity, pages and pages of definition, proof, axiom, proposition, all interlinked. His very best stuff can be expressed gnomically, small statements whose interpretation is that upon which everything else turns:

E5p2 If we separate out aggitations (commotiones) or affects (affectus) from the cognition (cogitatione) of an external cause, and we join them to other cognitions, then Love and Hate, toward the external cause, as are the vacillations of the soul (animi fluctuationes) arising from affects, are destroyed (destruuntur).

Carefully consider this proposition in the context of the Cybernetic/Complexity dichotomy. It subsumes the whole of Spinoza’s quantifiable psychology of the preceeding fourth book. It is the very cognitive temptation to give wholesale systemic valuation (“good”/”bad”) to external events that Spinoza has called into question. To put it into cybernetic terms, when the human body/mind system passes away from a state of equalibrium (moves to a condition of greater or lesser power), the credit is inordinately attributed to an external event. That external “cause” is given the valuation of good or bad given the changes in the system. When the experience is negative, that is, a breakdown of the internal coherence of the system experienced as Sadness, the system steers itself away from such events, back to equalibrium (risking a fixed, conservative stasis induced by fear). But when it is experienced as positive, that is, an increase in the internal coherence of the system experienced as happiness, then a positive feedback loop ensues, and the system steers towards the amplification of such events, promoting their increase (risking runaway dissolution).

Spinoza’s psychology is based upon moving clear from either of these determinatives, each of which are governed from an inordinate assessment of the power of an external cause. He at first directs the eye inwards, in a cybernetic-like valuation. It is not in the nature of the external event (alone) that the passage from one desired or undesired state has occurred, but rather in the very orders of our bodies and minds. We were predisposed to be affected a certain way, but it is our cognitive tendency to attribute the cause of these changes to some external thing that ultimate weakens our self-determination and freedom.

Compellingly, once this internal self-check is conducted separating out the affect from any one-to-one dichotomization of some state of our bodies/mind and some state of the world, the affect itself, the very feeling of the body in change is to be joined to other cognitions besides those of the thought of some overt external cause. I find this fascinating because Spinoza is advocating a kind of turning the body and its feelings over to the very interface with the world, wherein the world is seen as a great screen of causal effects. This is to say, our affects continue to distribute themselves across our bodies (minds), but they do so in a broad-spectrum fashion that invokes the edge chaos sweet-spot of Beckerman’s diagram. One can see this I believe in Spinoza claim that the fluctuations of the soul are “destroyed” in this process of opening up and cognitive awareness. This is not for him a passage into a conservation of the Self, so defined apart from the world, a falling back into an equilibrium of maintainance, but rather an expansion. The oscillations he has in mind are the oscillations of Love and Hate, the way in which loves generate fears and conservative retrenchments of the self against the world. And hates open up into flights that can disintegrate into turbulent chaotic flow. Instead there is an aesthetic place, between the two. It is a kind of equilibrium of perpetual growth, or the openness to a complexity of states that defies the equilibriums of the past, a literal opening up of the finite to the Infinite. A rift of becoming. Because the affect itself becomes separated out from its distinct (and false because partial) conscious interpretation, the affect exists almost as pure bodily thinking, or put another way, thinking purely through Joy (transitions towards perfection, power, freedom).

Thoughts Tending Towards Deleuze and Guattari

This is I think what Guattari and Deleuze called the Body Without Organs. And while for some it makes difficult sense to see where Guattari and Deleuze can find common ground with the sobriety of Spinoza, I believe it is here, in the intermediate, where the BwO meets Chaoplexic edge that the two/three find their home. And while Spinoza’s aesthetic setting seems closer to “stable” and D&Gs closer to chaos, they are operating in the bandwidth, in proximity, as each takes Joy as its compass heading. What Spinoza provides is a careful analytic of the powers of Cybernetic organization, at the level of epistemology and psychology. Indeed the rewriting of internal codes, the reorientation of cognitions toward each other, within the understanding that the affects of our body serve as material guide, is essential to seeing that Spinoza’s Rationalism is ever an A-Rational theory of growth, a search for the line of complexity that is ever re-inscribing anew the boundary between self and world.

Are Networks Networks?

One of the weaknesses of a Latourian sense of the world as Networking is that though such sociological analytic takes its traction from the fashion in which actual networks have been coming to dominate our communications and industry, it is not really the Internet or other literal networks Latour and ANTS are talking about. Indeed, everything is to be explained by the transformations of networks, and it may be that literal networks are some of the things that are least explanable in such terms. Which is to say that the dispositions of any of the actants and their various trials of strength really are not the best, or at least the most compelling causal narratives by which we should come to understand them. For while it does something to undress prima facie non-network social phenomena such as Scientific discovery so as to reveal their networked, actant natures, something else seems to occur when we consider networks themselves, things that don’t nearly have to be demystified to such a degree. In the past I have argued that Latour is in need of a Spinozist rationality of cause (here, here and here), but Latour is not so much the aim here as the context for an interesting historical example which gives me pause to ANTism.

The source of my series of thoughts is The Scientific Way of Warfare by Antoine Bousquet. I got the title from Nick at Accursed Share. I can say that he does a much better job then I ever would in reviewing the book. Instead I would like to take a very small snippet from the quite interesting analysis which attempts to expose the conceptual schema of modern warfare organization, as exemplified or inspired by the four devices: clock, engine, computer, network. Really the first two are only cursorily handled without much historical depth, providing only conceptual framework for the latter two of which the author has the most knowledge and interest.

What Antoine Bousquet contends is that with the advent of the computer military organization took on a largely cybernetic concern of command and control wherein, like a computer, military action was thought of as a closed organization whose interrelatability of parts had to be perfected in terms of information processing so as to best rule out informational “noise” from the environment. And this was achieved through negative feedback, the steering of the close system away from events that disturbed its homeostasis. Bousquet this suggests that with the rise of the real network in the world, principally the Internet (which began as a military program that become civilized) coupled with Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory, decentralized organization which was far more resilient and adaptable than the Closed System – which followed Positive Feedback instead of Negative - became the new paradigm for vital military and security organization. As he traces, this paradigm has only been adopted by the United States military to only a limited degree, as heirarchial, topsight priorities have used growing network connections for increasedly centralized control.

Deviations From Homeostasis

Rather, the best example of military chaoplexic warfare seems to be rather that of al Qaeda, the description of which I will quote at length:

Since September 11, the focus has naturally been on al-Qaeda and the wider movement of radical Islamist militancy and terrorism. The nebulous and dispersed nature of these organizations has invited their analysis in terms of decentered networks and complex adaptive systems. Thus al-Qaeda is seen as a decentralized and polymorphous network “with recursive operational and financial interrelationships dispersed geographically across numerous associated terrorist organizations that adapt, couple and aggregate in pursuit of common interests” [citing "Observing Al Qaeda Through the Lens of Complexity Theory: Recommendations for the National Strategy to Defeat Terrorism," Beech]. For Marion and Uhl-Bien, interactive non-linear bottom-up dynamics are behind the self-organization of al-Qaeda in which bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership are an emergent phenomena: “leaders do not create the system but rather are created by it, through a process of aggregation and emergence” [citing "Complexity Theory and Al-Qaeda: Examining Complex Leadership," Marion and Uhl-Bien].While a diffuse movement of Islamic radicalism coalesced to create terrorist networks from which the leadership could spring, the latter has also assisted the continued development of a decentralized movement by maintaining and fostering “a moderately coupled network, but one possessing internal structures that were loosely and tightly organized as appropriate.” The authors distinguish between loosely coupled networks in which the parts have functional independence, thus granting the system great resilience to large scale perturbations, and tightly coupled networks in which the leadership imposes control mechanisms that enable it to direct activities and receive regular reports. In between these two poles, we find moderately coupled networks which allow some degree of directing by leadership but retain great resiliency. [note the rhetorical disbalance here: modest "some" vs. the still threatening "great"]. If the wider radical Islamist movement is only loosely coupled and individual terrorist cells are tightly coupled, the pre-9/11 al-Qaeda leadership network sat somewhere in between, performing the function of a galvanized interface.

Even in the case of [a] single operation such as September 11, it has become increasingly clear that its planning and execution were far more decentralized than initially supposed. The different cells in the plot, although tightly coupled internally, functioned quasi-autonomously, and although they received some financial, logistical and training support from other parts of the organisation, were not exclusively dependent on them. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to be the operational “mastermind” behind September 11 (a designation which, although commonly used in the media, is problematic as it suggests highly centralized planning and control) and now in American military custody, is alleged to have claimed that “the final decisions to hit which target with which plane was entirely in the hands of the pilots.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was only then subsequently informed of their decision in July 2001. According to this same testimony, bin Laden and the high ranks of the al-Qaeda organisation were only loosely informed of specific details and had only a very limited directing role. Many of bin Laden’s close associates were never even made aware of the plot. This form of organisational and operational structure is one that is particularly alien to Western states and their heirarchial military and security apparatuses, as Mohammed himself recognises, “I know that the materialistic western mind cannot grasp the idea, and it is difficult for them to believe that the high officials in al-Qaeda do not know about operations carried out by its operatives, but this is how it works.”

The Scientific Way of Warfare, 208-209

 And here are three worthy quotes explaining how complex organization is to be thought of…

Complex adaptive systems constitute a special case of complex systems that are capable of changing and learning from experience. Complexity theorist John Holland defines a complex adaptive system as a dynamic network of many agents acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing. Since the control of a complex adaptive system tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized, any coherent behavior in the system arises from competition and cooperation among the agents themselves. It is the accumulation of all the individual decisions taken by the multitude of agents which produces the overall behavior of the system, which can thus be said to be emergent. (175)

The worldview constituted by chaoplexity marks a seismic shift away from the dominant conceptions of the natural world. No longer is order to be seen a product of the natural tendency towards equilibrium. On the contrary, it is with non-equalibrium that order emerges from chaos, at the point where instability and creative mutation allow for the genesis of new forms and actions. Consequently, the systems produced through these processes of self-organisation have distinct emergent features which cannot be understood solely through an analysis of their atomized components since it is their pattern of interaction which constitute their complexity. (181)

“Up to a point, tightening the connections between elements in the system will increase efficiency when everything works smoothly. But, if one small item goes wrong, then that can have a catastrophic knock-on effect throughout the system. The system literally switches over, from smooth functioning to interactively complex disaster”

Global Complexity, Urry

We can see the beauty of this particular kind of networked conception one which Bousquet reads as perched between order (systematic, heirarchial, negative feedback restrictive control) and chaos. A non-equilibrium juxtaposition that uses its very instability as an advantage of its own becoming. And indeed there is something of a parallel to philosophies of becoming that want to read things in terms of primary deterrorializations. When one considers something like Latour’s notion of actants in network somehow the critical analogy which seems to hide within many of our non-network seeming processes don’t really seem to explain what is happening, or how information and organization is aquired in al Qaeda:

in order to spread far…. an actant needs faithful allies who accept what they are told, identify itself with its cause, carry out all the functions that are defined for them, and come to its aid without hesitation when they are summoned. The search for these ideal allies occupies the space and time of those who wish to be stronger than others. As soon as an actor has found a somewhat more faithful ally, it can force another ally to become more faithful in its turn. “despite everything, networks reinforce one another and resist destruction. Solid yet fragile, isolated yet interwoven, smooth yet twisted together, [they] form strange fabrics.” (199)

 The Pasturization of France

Beds of Chaoplexic Organization

It is not enough to say that bin Laden has performed a trial of strength and created allies, or that each of the cell groups have identified with his cause, and then carry out “the functions”. There is something more going on here. It is true that networks such as al Qaeda are resilient and reinforced (though their persistant media image as THE threat no doubt goes a long way in preserving and overstating this); yet this is not just a story of alliances. As Bousquet tells it, it is a story of patterns. It is the very distinct pre-Chaotic level of al Qaeda organization that the figure of its strength lies, such that it cannot be either predicted (only perturbed), nor destroyed (only fragmented). One suspects rather strongly that it is not even in the pattern itself that the whole causal story is told, but as well in the ideological substrate, the entire imaginary, affective pool of Middle Eastern, and indeed global Islamic realities, as well as very concrete political-economic stratifications, which serve as immanent possibility for such a Chaoplexic organization. It is not just that they are braided into alliances, but also that the ideaological well-spring is rich enough that fragmentation does not kill operation.

In this way the initial conditions prove significant sources for the possibilities of Chaoplexic collectivity, whole-cloth ideational dispositions that work as a body upon which organization can express itself so as to arise with emergent (and fluctuating) powers of action. There is something more than actants and their transformations.

In this way ideology and economy serve as a kind of perspective intermediate stage between full-blown metaphysics (which once only had the State as its avatar), a pseudo-divinity of effects which is neither object (actant) or its relationships (network). Not a material plasma, but an affective/conceptual coherence between bodies that readies actants for a change in the degree of order/chaos ratios, hence adaptive intelligence. In a sense, al Qaeda structures exhibit the very radicality of democracy itself, perhaps governed (made possible via Negative feedback) as it is by other significant anti-Western cultural factors.

Addendum: Here is a interesting, well-summed blogged review by Chet Richards, over at Defense and the National Interest, an electronic source even cited by Bousquet, with mention of Boyd’s OODA loops which is perhaps the most compelling aspect of the book, something I hope to post on soon. Included in the review is link to the influential essay by Linda Beckerman “The Non-Linear Dynamics of War” (1999), also cited by Bousquet.