August 13th, 2017

August 13th, 2017


Affirmation:  I am not finished growing, changing, and evolving.

I am worthy of love.

I say yes only when I mean it.


Word of the Day: Occam’s razor (n):

1. a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

phantasmagoria (n):

1. an exhibition of optical effects and illusions

2. a) a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined

b) a scene that constantly changes

3. a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage

nescience (n):

1. lack of knowledge; ignorance.

2. agnosticism.

Sky-Circles

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

The Face

So the frowning teacher came and left.

He is very consistent with that vinegar face.

But maybe he shows that to us and smiles with others.

Such a beautiful teacher, but so sour.

He is a pure standard for tartness.

Consider how your face is a source of light.

If you enter a grieving room

with the Friend in your eyes,

light will bloom there

according to the laws of sweet and sour.

Locked in a cell, you grow bitter, but out walking

in morning sunlight with friends,

how does that taste?

There are exceptions. Joseph caught the rose

fragrance down in his abandoned wellhole.

In this quietness now

I feel someone seated on my right

like a kindness that will never leave.

A Cleared Site

The presence rolling through again

clears the shelves and shuts down shops.

Friend of the soul, enemy of the soul,

why do you want mine?

Bring tribute from the village.

But the village is gone in your flood.

That cleared site is what I want.

Live in the opening where there is no door

to hide behind. Be pure absence.

In that state everything is essential.

The rest of this must be said in silence

because of the enormous difference

between light and the words

that try to say light.

_____

Emergence 

In the 17th century, statistician, sociologist, and anthropologist Sir Francis Galton - who also happened to be Charles Darwin's half cousin - came upon a carnival game that piqued his interest. In the game, players were asked to guess the weight of a large ox in order to win a prize.  

Sir Francis Galton wanted to find out whether anybody was able to accurately guess the precise weight of the ox. Thus, he collected the roughly 800 guesses submitted by carnival attendees. He found that the average guess for the ox's weight was 1187 pounds...

... And the exact weight of the ox was 1188 pounds!

In other words, the average of the collective was far more accurate that any one individual. Galton took this evidence to hypothesize that there is an unseen intelligence of the whole that does not exist in the parts. 

Since that time, this theory has been tested time and again (often in psychology classes, where students are asked to estimate the number of beans/ jelly beans in a large jar). The average of the group's estimates is consistently more accurate that any one individual in the group.

Today, this science is known as "Emergence." In simple terms, emergence can be described as a phenomenon whereby complex or bigger entities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities such that these complex/larger entities display characteristics that the smaller/simpler entities do not. 

Nature holds countless examples of emergence: beehives, animal herding, coral reefs, ant colonies, schools of fish that work together as one, microbial intelligence, and so much more.

So what does emergence have to do with medicine?

Well, most everything encountered in medicine is emergent:

"Osteoporosis is an emergent phenomenon as it develops out of the interplay of two opposite principles, the osteoclasts and the osteoblasts, integrated into a larger regulating network. Asthma is an emergent condition of the breathing. Depression has been found to be a stress-induced overdrive of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis creating a stable neurophysiological recursion, a typical emergent state, sometimes triggered by external factors like an abuse in early childhood (Holden 2003), financial or erotic stressors (Capsi et al 2003) and maintained by environmental factors."

The interplay and relationship between the individual and the group has always been of interest to me - personally, sociologically, politically, and more. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that independence vs. dependence is a false dichotomy. Rather, I believe that interdependence is what we as individuals - and as systems and societies - should strive for. Each person's definition and expression of interdependence will look different. But I believe that the goal is to strike a balance between reliance and self-sufficiency, between autonomy and vulnerability.

What is your relationship with independence and dependence? What do these words mean to you?