Meshworkers of the World Unite

© Marilyn Hamilton PhD CGA

It may be, as philosopher Andy Clark has suggested, that our minds are a kludge (or bricollage) of different kinds of intelligence: some intelligent abilities arise out of decentralized and parallel processes, others from centralized and sequential ones….  (Delanda, 1995)

 What is Meshworking?

Several years ago I borrowed the term “Meshwork” to describe the work that I do. On my website www.integralcity.com , I introduced meshworking as “a term derived from brain science. Meshworks integrate hierarchies and self-organizing webs of relationships. Meshworking in the city, coordinates different capacities, functions, and locations so that alignment and coherence result in an integrated operating strategy and/or emergency response. Meshworking creates highly sensitive vital signs monitors, able to signal important events that can be effectively remembered and acted upon.”

Meshworking as a general term appealed to me because it seemed to combine both the self-organizing results of complex-adaptive human systems with the replicatable backbone of hierarchical organization. In other words it seemed to capture the best of two operating systems.

In strict terms, the brain scientists use meshworks in relation to self-organizing neural nets, and hierarchies in relation to reinforcing levels of hierarchical operations. In pondering this distinction, I am gaining a new appreciation of what I mean by meshworking – read on.

I was fascinated that the brain builds itself by laying down large synaptic highways which become the scaffold of communication corridors from which secondary and tertiary corridors emerge, until a vast “hairnet of axons” covers the brain. Once this hairnet is in place then we have a brain that is able to self-organize an infinite number of connections, thoughts, ideas, innovations and learnings while at the same time behave and direct behaviour in dependable, learned ways.

Some researchers even relate key synaptic connections in the brain (modulated by the major neurotransmitters like serontonin, dopamine, choline, noradrenalin etc.) to sets of values that allow for regulated brain/body function. These values appear themselves to be modifiable, based on life conditions. The appearance of this modern brain science evidence of intelligence-based values, seems to vindicate Clare Graves’  (Graves, 1974) proposition that intelligences are triggered in the brain by dissonance (ie. constraints) in the environment. It appears that it is the brain’s very capability of re-organizing itself and releasing new potentials that allows for the emergence of new values systems. In other words, if the brain lacked its self-organizing capacity, it would be constrained from emerging new capacities. At the same time if it lacked hierarchical capacity, it would not have the sorting and selection mechanisms that allow it to make survival choices.

What an amazing combination of qualities our brain demonstrates: an organism capable of forever re-inventing itself by meshing neural nets and an organism that is able to sort and choose amongst options by producing useful hierarchies.

Moreover, it appears that meshworks link heterogeneous capacities or entities and hierarchies link homogenous elements or functions. But as values systems emerge, then a level of complexity emerges where our brains meshwork hierarchies (eg. connect organ systems like heart, lung, liver) and make hierarchies out of meshworks (eg. the circadian sequences of the meridian energy system). It is this two-way combination of enabling hierarchal meshes and meshing hierarchies that lies at the heart of my use of the term “meshworking”.

Beyond the appeal of the meshed neural networks, I recognized that the application of meshworking was not limited to brain function, but that it might offer a powerful explanation of how communities and cities function. Because communities and cities are artifacts of human life, I reasoned that if our brains had the capacity to meshwork hierarchies and to make hierarchies of meshworks, this might be the key to understanding how cities are working and evolving.

Thus, I set up the “Meshworker” sign on my market stall (aka website), and started to learn the art of this science and the science of this art. In the process of doing so, I have noticed how others are doing similar work.

Who is meshworking?

Meshworking seems to entail both an art and a science. Are we limited to seeing the art as relating to self-organizing systems and the science to organizing hierarchies? Or can it work both ways? The practice of meshworking involves both simultaneously.  The art and science of meshworking is related to making generative connections. We know the connections are generative when new capacities and/or new values emerge from the meshworking process.

Meshworking is noticeable in my work when I act as an intentional catalyst. Interestingly, in the brain sciences, it is recognized that catalytic function directs a flow of energy-matter through a system so it shifts from one steady state to another. Much of my work involves using information to re-direct energy-matter; for example, introducing the work of one person to another whom they have never met, so together they can combine resources and produce something that neither would be able to do on their own. Or achieving consciousness development in individuals and groups in training processes designed to discover complex integral paradigms. Or assisting clients to reframe linear processes and analyses into systemic, evolutionary perspectives.

My work brings me into contact with other meshwork and intentional Meshworkers. Let me introduce you to several exemplary Meshworkers, some who are meshing existing hierarchies and others who are creating new hierarchies of existing meshes.

Dialogue Meshes Hierarchies

Sustainable Community Infrastructure

The first example is the research of Dr. Ann Dale (Canada Research Chair on Sustainable Community Development) into sustainable community infrastructure. Ann has networked together a progression of hierarchies. She has intentionally created a cross-disciplinary research team, where the members come from academic, NFP, private sector and public sector hierarchies. She has designed e-dialogues where participants represent hierarchies within specialized city infrastructures: Energy, Waste Management, Transportation, Land Use Planning and Governance. Within a structured online dialogue platform, Ann has catalyzed connections within sectors, but across widespread geographies by inviting participants to share their views of leading-edge practices, barriers to progress and solutions to sustainability challenges. She has also made visible observed and potential connections between sectors by archiving the e-dialogues and by documenting over twenty Best Practise Case Studies. (Check out some of Ann’s work at http://www.sustainableinfrastructure.crcresearch.org/ )

 

Imagine BC, Imagine Abbotsford

The second example is the multi-year dialogue process of Imagine BC, directed by Dr. Joanna Ashworth (Executive Director of Simon Fraser University’s Morris Wosk Dialogue Centre). Like Ann, Joanna has been able to network a progression of hierarchies – in this case from across BC to envision the province in thirty years. The five year process has linked thought leaders from diverse backgrounds around three focused attractor themes: Environment/Economy, Learning/Culture, and Health/Community. For each theme (and year) three separate face-to-face dialogues attract different stakeholders: about fifteen to twenty thought leaders, policy makers and the public (which is also broadcast on CBC Radio).

Likewise at four regional levels, like Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley, the dialogue process is adapted to capture local voices, stakeholders and perspectives. Thus across the province, the dialogic process of Imagine BC is intentionally meshing hierarchies and using hierarchies to create new self-organizing meshes around the themes and amongst the participants and through the feedback loops. (See Imagine BC’s website at http://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/imaginebc/ )

 

Hierarchies Create New Meshes

Prior Learning Becoming Community Learning

In Nova Scotia, Mary Morrissey, co-founder of the Prior Learning Assessment Centre (PLAC) is building on an appreciative portfolio development process for capturing individual learning. One of the unexpected outcomes of this life changing experience, is that a number of individuals in several small communities have noticed they have made connections beyond the individual level at the community development level. Their self-organizing process has lead them to inquire, “Why couldn’t the prior learning recognition be adapted to community learning?  What would happen if we adapted this to the scale of recognizing community capacities for the purpose of developing new opportunities?”

Mary responded to this self-organizing challenge, by organizing a conference where she invited stakeholders in community development from across the community and across Canada. Essentially she brought together in one room, representatives of a whole community system (from education, health, private, public ( federal, provincial, city), NFP, international). She created a process where participants could explore:  what is working for PLAC; what to consider when changing scales; how to energize self-organizing systems; how to springboard from existing hierarchies. Mary also mixed the media for the discovery process, combining inquiry, graphic facilitation, PowerPoint content, and face-to-face dialogue.

Thus Mary is creating the conditions to emerge community learning from individual learning, by building on the structured hierarchical pattern that has worked for (homogenous) individuals to bridge into self-organizing clusters of heterogeneous community organizations. (You can find PLAC information at www.placentre.ns.ca )

 

Structured Toolkit Enables SAS² and Sorting and Selection

An impact evaluation of an international youth exchange organization, has enabled Ginger Group Collaborators, Kate McLaren, Paul Turcot and Helen Patterson along with Jacques Chevalier to utilize the Social Analysis Systems² toolkit assembled by Jacques Chevalier and Daniel Buckles. This powerful set of tools allows for a collaborative analysis of actors, problems and options.  It uses advanced frameworks (and software) to support any group of people (whether homogenous or heterogeneous) to accelerate the identification of disparate elements related to situational actors, problems and options.  It then creates the conditions for self-organizing of a selection and sorting process. The end result could be a plan, design or profile that everyone supports. This improves decision making, while clearly prioritizing options and choices, expanding agreements and speeding up implementation.  The evaluation involved active participation of people from community organizations, government and academic institutions around the world and in Canada, and opened the door to reframing core ideas about learning in community settings. (Check out www.gingergroup.net  and SAS² http://200.87.140.91/misc/site/internacional/documents/tools/techniques/stakeholder_sampling.pdf )

Why is Meshworking Important?

… humanity finds it much easier to think in terms of articulated homogeneities rather than articulated heterogeneities. But it is the latter, I believe, that hold the secret for a better future. Perhaps we can learn from birds, - and why not even rocks? - the secrets of non-homogenous thinking.  (Delanda, 1995)

These few examples of meshworking illustrate that the “practice” can originate from the bottom of a system (where multiple hierarchies are meshed together in a self-organizing way as in Nova Scotia) or the top of a system (where hierarchies bring together existing meshes as in Imagine BC). In both cases, as the process matures, meshworking catalyzes a shift in the system, so that new capacities emerge and it reorganizes itself into something more internally resonant and externally coherent with life conditions.

In a recent Integral City teleconference on Meshworking, participants recognized that the practice of meshworking requires an understanding of boundaries that contain whole systems, along with simultaneous acceptance of the interconnection of all the systems within the larger systems. This is the essence of paradox, like the tension in boundaries that both contain and separate the city and the country.

Teleconference participants related their experiences of creating life conditions and holding space long enough for leaders to let go of old ways of doing things so they could create an entirely new approach. This process of dismantling the old, so that innovation can emerge may take a long time (years). It literally entails the rearrangement of the brain, body, relationships, expectations and paradigms. The facilitation of this act of re-arranging often requires the use of non-verbal processes (like art, music, dance and other expressive arts) to access collective wisdom and tap into new ways of knowing. One Meshworker suggested that this feels like a shift from entropy (where the loss of energy from a system causes it to wind down) to syntropy – where the release of energy from the old structure disintegrating, enables the creation of entirely new patterns.

It seems that the both/and approach of meshworking, essentially re-values and re-calibrates hierarchies. (This is a process of evolving complexity, into what some now call panarchy or holarchy.)  Instead of denigrating hierarchies as outdated organizational forms, meshworking recognizes that healthy hierarchies under gird all natural systems. In these holarchies the flow of information, energy and matter is enabled for the wellbeing of the whole. At the same time, meshworking makes possible the newness that can be injected into a system through self-organizing processes.

The building of bridges, connections, collaborations and links between hierarchies and across self-organizing systems, means that meshworking is highly relationship based. The world has great need of more meshworks to release and reorganize the intelligences that are currently blocked by silos of “articulated homogeneities”. Has the time come for Meshworkers of the world to unite, to release the secrets of non-homogenous thinking, and meshwork the simplicity on the other side of complexity?

 

References:

 Delanda, M. (1995). Homes: Meshwork or Hierarchy? http://www.mediamatic.net/article-200.5956.html  Special: Home issue. Retrieved Dec. 4, 2004

Graves, C. (1974). Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap. The Futurist.

 

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