Beardall.Blog – Page 10 – projects

Gunpowder Plot

One example of how much change and chance we live in

Guy Fawkes was neither the ring leader nor the instigator of the atrocity he was thwarted from concluding. A few readings this evening and I know this little pocket of history a little better.

1605 was a torrid time in European history. Martin Luther and the protestant break from the Catholic church (1517 onwards) was still a major new force of change. The might of the Spanish charge over Catholic Europe facing up to this new threat. The Spanish Armada limping home in 1588 still a recent memory. A recurring revolt from the vassalage of the protestant Netherlands refusing to acknowledge new Spanish suitors in their realm. Uprising, rebellions, and a regularity of revolt facing monarchy of all nations through this time.

If I wished, I could write many more chapters on the wars between Catholics and Protestants. But I won’t. It was a dreadful era.
Ernst Gombrich “A little history of the world” opening line of Chapter 30 – Terrible Times

Confessions to priests was a cleansing of the soul but was it more than just God listening in? In the power games of this era there was fear in both this world and the next. There was paranoia aplenty and every court of every King was a place of high visibility of riches on display, the favours of high office and of church.

In England, Henry VIII had made much of the protestant opportunity. A period thereafter of short-lived reigns and then a strength of a Virgin Queen to whom all England stayed openly intolerant of Catholic practice

Throughout Queen Elizabeth’s reign, until 1603, Catholics were forced into hiding, enforced conversion, forced into debt, or required to die at the stake for their faith.

Not that Catholic Spain or France were offering more tolerance. We can observe this at much greater scale. The first encounter between the Inca and Spain was in 1532. On 16th November the Conquistador Francisco Pizzaro met the absolute monarch and most powerful leader of the Inca. This was Atahuallpa, a man held to be a sun-god by his people. And these were the most advanced civilisation of the New World. Conquerors or unifiers of all lands they knew. A Conquistador of Spain, meeting the deity of a race.

They met at a Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca. Pizzaro represented the Holy Empire of Spain and led 168 men, in unfamiliar surroundings, and one thousand miles from any support. Atahuallpa was in the middle of his empire of millions of people, accompanied by a war-ready 80,000 troops. Yet within minutes of the first encounter, the Catholic faith had been offered and declined, melee quickly ensued, and with great loss of their Elite men, Atahuallpa was captured and forcibly detained. He was to be held hostage for 6 months until a ransom of gold able to fill a 22ftx11ftx8ft space was paid. Atahuallpa was a sun-god to his people. His capture was a shock to the core of an existence. It was the first time horse or gunpowder had been seen, heard, and keenly felt. With a sun-god imprisoned, the Spanish could insist upon safe passage of scouts to map the wider terrain. The delivery of gold marked the execution of their sun-god. Reinforcements had arrived to drop off more troops and carry away the gold. And Europeans advanced across a new map (Jared Diamond, 2015 pp67 ff).

In these times, we can better understand the motivations of people through their faith. Everything was at stake between European powers. The Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order of priests founded by St Ignatius Loyola – 1534 – were Men of high education, high resolve, and zealous in opposing the Reformation. These Jesuits acting by sanctioned authority of the Pope from 1541 and soon at the front line of education in Europe, missionary settlement in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. For the world was now being connected, and Europe was gearing up for new cause in the name of their faith, their Kingdoms, or themselves. To understand the politics of Guy Fawkes, this greater tension and ambition must be known.

New coin from new world metals were being imported (exploited) from South America, repurposed as coin, and exchanged for foods from a more arable north. A dynamic of trade in a time of intolerance, tensions, fear of starvation, and war.

Food stuffs were being introduced from the new world too. New influences and new reasons to be taking interest in seeking to influence, even more so than what the feudal era had been.

The potato beginning to feed a European population

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 sits amidst this wider history. Fireworks representing the 35 kegs of gunpowder retrieved from under the Houses of Westminster. Bonfires are lit with a Guy upon them. Whether we know it or not, what we celebrate was the foil of a terrorist plot. In an age when terror was a weapon of faith, power, and vanquish. This one act, motivated by a persecuted Catholic supporting minority, in one pocket of a much bigger political plot. Two sides made this plot. The reforming others delicately balancing their own powers, that unites behind a feared Catholic ambitions. Ambition to return former outside political influence back to a British (and wider European) set of thrones.

In England, Rome’s excommunication of a Queen’s power (1570) was a formal acknowledgement to which fractures of faith were destined to remain inflamed. A unifying King of England and Scotland anointed in 1603. Power base splits born of a basic choice, as influence and interests at home or in Rome. Add to this the Netherlands breaking from Spain. A European wide 30 Year War not far away (1618-1648). In England a war of three Kingdoms awaited the next King – a King who lost his divinity, his crown, and his head.

These were terrible times to live through indeed.

Not that this era of reformation (of the Western Christian Church) can be considered an isolated incident of power and monotheistic belief colliding with violence. History reflects many such moments. From Roman rise once Christianity found its way in. Or the splits reflected at the Battle of Karbala which was as much about control of tributes as it was a divine hereditary or meritocracy dispute. This has been a reality of life and death since the Axial Revolution.

Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. A religion that recognises the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth. Since monotheists have usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions. Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition.
Yuval Noah Harari 2011 “Sapiens : A brief history of Humankind” pp243

So what of Guy Fawkes, what now does he represent? If he had succeeded the power vacuum would have been immense. The opposing force of interest at home and abroad ever ready to steer interests their way. But the Gunpowder plot was betrayed from within. Per the London Encyclopaedia 3rd edition 2008, he was betrayed from within a conspiracy party of 30. His original co-conspirators had planned their deed at Hart’s Horn Tavern, Carter Lane, EC4. They were Robert Catesby, Thomas Winwith, Thomas Percy, John Wright, and Guy Fawkes (pp365). There is some debate as to who betrayed the plot, but a tight group of five needed to swell to a looser thirty trusted men. Lives of a King, his family of all heirs, a parliamentary elite and the great and the good were saved. On arrest gruesome torture would have awaited at the Lieutenant’s lodgings within the Tower of London (pp929). Guy Fawkes was tried at Westminster Hall – (Parliament Sq. SW1, (pp1011). Executed by hanging, but taken down alive to know of the drawing out of all innards, before being quartered by horses at Old Palace Yard SW1, 1606 (pp601). The four quartered limbs would have been sent to the four corners of Britain. Heads of all conspirators would have been left atop spikes to look upon a London now readying for world-wide change.

If they had succeeded, how different the world may have been.

Sources:

Overy, R. “Complete History of the World : the ultimate work of historical refence” 6th Edition, 2004. The Times, Mapping History. Illustrations pp201-213
Yuval Noah Harari “Sapiens : A brief history of Humankind” 2011. Vintage edition 2015, pp243
Gombrich, EH. “A little history of the world” 1936. English translation 2008
Weinreb, B., Hibbert, C., Keay, J., Keay, J. “The London Encyclopaedia : Completely revised third edition”. ed. 3, 2008 MacMillan London Limited
This YouTube video is also worth a watch

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

behaviour, fireworks, gunpowder plot, guy fawkes, history

Take a pill and chill

IMAGE SOURCE. MERCK, via BBC

Is this the end, for SARS-CoV-2?

If this pill is as effective as widely claimed, the potential for Covid19 to be confined to the history books may be close at hand. The speed of advancement of the medical science behind this progress is a marvel to behold. Even compared to vaccination this new weapon being dispatched to the front line is game changing. It destroys the virus from within its host. Destroyed to the core of it’s replicating genes.

A moment of hope that we can soon turn all attention back to the bigger challenges in hand. The next test more fundamental. But if this first is overcome, we must be living with hope of future breakthroughs more profound than even micro-biology at its best…

…we have advanced our understanding of both the behaviour and the control of viral threats. Next is reappraising the behaviours of us all, and what we need to turn new attentions toward. Next is regards our collective selves, the system of systems upon which we live, and the frameworks of our own forward-focused control.

BBC article here (reporter Jim Reed)
Dr. John Campbell here

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

behaviour, control, covid, covid19, research

CoP26 – cometh the hour

A quandary of Leadership

If you are democratically elected to serve a community, how can you not? Yet if that service is set in the now, and the future need is not what is on the minds of the electorate you serve, what to do?

This is the quandary of every government official at all levels of leadership or management at the CoP26. My own view is we need diplomats not warriors to unravels problems that we attempt to share and solve in times of peace. We have tough discussions ahead but also need of time spent listening, learning, empathising, and understanding. Bringing our best expectations of representation and respect, and expecting the same in return. But with that comes a need to be strong in action, not words. To take the strain and persuade those that you serve, that they should take the strain too.

v | b | t

visibility | b | t

That starts with clarity of goal, vision, or simply visibility of the whole – by the quality of our enquiry not just the easy factoid to bend into truth. This clarity comes from the ground up, and from the top down. It comes from being seen to be acting as one would want the other to you.

v | behaviour | t

As leaders we then have behaviours in mind, and the manner of control. As directed by motivations. Addressing attitudes that are not fit for the purpose at hand. Addressing the goals of others so that goals are then shared rather than required by coercion or force. We take on the hard, because we know we should.

v | b | trust

That is where we build trust. By our actions and set against the better path. This starts with each of us, as self-control. By what ends we seek to choose, and with the other party’s needs not just our own. Knowing the path ahead may have unknowns. Leaders making decisions from being present to the task, and not simply to keeping decision-blame at another’s home.

This is why I become ever more determined to find better ways to bring projects into one space. To bring more collaborative effort and cooperative ideals to the more difficult challenges ahead. I found my self somewhat bemused at several LinkedIn exchanges this week. From leaders who seem intent on being anything but. I will return to all in due course, but the below reflects well enough why we need leaders who can find hope, and not simply share their own impotent despair.

Below: A written response (not addressed to me) from an MP who seems to have decided there is no point in being present to the challenges we all face.

Philip Davies MP

Screen shot from a third-party LinkedIn post

The above letter has been a news item and general social media fodder for a week. This MP has allegedly responded with encouragement to circulate it further on the grounds it represents the attitude of many of his constituents. It has legitimacy as a perspective – all Members of Parliament are voted for as the representative voice of those they serve.

My quote opposite was made on LinkedIn. The position expressed by this MP one I found to reflect all who seem to have taken to despair. But equally, I reflect upon this sentiment being a very human response, that I think many will hold true. We are after-all programmed to act in defence of our own communities first. But what is democracy to do when the popular and easy comes face to face with the harder position to take? On the basis of looking after your own first leadership, this attitude can become the default and convenient position for all.

One observational riposte

It’s refreshing to at least see a defeatist elitist open up. “It’s too hard. It’s their fault not ours. Why should we if they don’t?”
Bonkers to think this counts as leadership or even representation.
We [UK] are the 5th biggest economy in the world. We have historic connections to more of the planet than most. We hold the guilt of past endeavour to hold and overcome. But we also have means and a presence on the world stage. We are the persuaders, and the influence. The diplomats. And when needed the front foot accountability demanding bureaucrats.
I don’t see much Churchill, Nietzsche, or Ayn Rand here. “We will fight them on the beaches; or spite them with our meekness”
“The will of power (naps)”.
Maybe he reflects the real darkest hour…the hour we chose not to choose. Reneged on service as leaders of more than one flock. Instead counting cash in a vault and doubling the locks.
Be present, and be leaders. Or give way.
LinkedIn feed

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

behaviour, being present, CoP26, having to being, leadership, trust

Earth history, our future

We have choice, we have self-control

A blog addressing self-control. The piece of the environmental puzzle we each own. A contribution to the whole, if we so choose.

As CoP26 gets moving past the administrative tasks of state, I find myself wondering on what it is we all do that makes changes for the common good so hard to follow through.

The piece I think we all lose sight of, is self-control. Behavioural control in its most personal form. There is contemporary debate as to what consciousness is, and whether it is even a thing at all. Whether free will or biology, given the magnitude of the dilemma we all now face together, I am minded to think that the answer to that matters little. This is our moment to make action our goal. That starts at home. With a little reorientation of our self-control

Success requires clarity of purpose and self-control

For every self-made success these two factors seem to me present. There is clarity of purpose. And intent on keeping to this task, and thereby enacting self-control. When people talk in admirable terms of ambition, effectiveness, or being on the ball. When addressing ourselves as being present. In the moment. As one person, as a team, or collaborators in a project. We purposefully take to action and all distraction is kept under control.

v | b | t

The achievement accomplished is appraised based upon what was before, compared to what is now. Or what is now possible, that was not possible before. This achievement required a visibility, a clear directed change by the actor(s). It then took behaviours directed towards this goal. A determination to overcome unforeseen event. And a personal and/or shared trust that this could be seen through.

Managing behaviour is what we do

What makes consciousness interesting here is what is going on within. We are permanently being distracted. Distraction is at the heart of what our competing systems within us do. They present us with choice, or bring to our awareness wider issues, opportunity, or threat, to give option to reprioritise some more.

The privilege of the human condition is the extent to which we have put ourselves at the fulcrum of this distraction. We can act upon distraction with additional strategic inference. We can move our inference to higher levels of perspective. We can move our enquiry to lower levels of insight but higher levels of detail. We can seek more detail or bigger picture or put time to both. We can communicate this enquiry or we can do this from within. We can place ourselves in externally different, better, more challenging, less certain, or more exciting, places to be distracted over and over again.

Choice

That is what I take choice to mean today. These days of global need. We have basic needs as individuals. Our brain and body collude to make us ever aware of that fact. Our social instincts enable that need to be embraced as family concern. Tribal influence. National pride. And now, if we choose, global unity to inform a global act.

Competition

What this also reflects is the fundamentals of our biology. Fundamentals of our chemistry before life was even a thing. There is finite resource and more demand than supply. Nature and chaos find their own delicate equilibrium. We are gifted with the means to make something of that equilibrium. By our action we do some nudging of our own.

Competing towards collaborative ends

But now we compete not for ourselves. Instead we compete for the future versions of us. As our biology today reflects from all before. Whatever happens at CoP26, that all begins right here. In each home. With our manner of self-control. Making choice toward future generations we will not know. Or taking more for ourselves, eating more seeds than we sow.

We are each a project | within this project. This is our project of correction. Of planned redirection. To find the ultimate equilibrium. The platform that can sustain us all. This place on earth remains our ultimate system. We can choose it. Or it can consume us all.

—//—

Supplemental note: Earth History as observed in terms of behaviour

Intended change by us as humans vs the behaviours of chemistry or biology – a reflection on which is which. The latter requires none of the choice decisions we can make, but for all our talking is this road we passively take.

Archean Era to now

~3.5 Billion years of earth history. A few basics of what behaviours came before.

Settled chemistry

Any dynamic system can be said to behave. Predictably, or not. Well, or not. Living, or not. Nor is there anything in life that holds a privileged place in playing a part in change. In geology you can study what happens when the same chemistry plays out in different arenas with different agents of change. Deep within the Earth’s crust, in magma chambers, minerals and crystals can emerge differently from the chemical grabs that are made for the same finite resource. Time, heat, and gravity playing roles in what ingredients sit where. The conditions of what is left, dictating what is next. Some ingredients becoming heavy, others relatively light. Gravity settling occurring through relative viscosity. More pressure from above, or more heat from below can change the rates and settled nature within. There is only temporary stability and rates of change. Add more pressure or more heat, some of the solid masses return to liquid form, and what chemistry had been claimed becomes free to be reclaimed by new crystallising processes once again.

Change is inevitable

There was therefore behaviour before there was life. Chemical reaction and physical change well studied in timespans we humans have geologically categorised. At global scale this reflected atmospheric conditions where greenhouse effects were a positive influence. A young sun with heat held within a primitive atmosphere enabling temperatures that support liquid water to prevail. Pillow lava flows from 3.5 billion years ago evidence of this early water. Spewing into this water, were volcanic vents depositing chemical mixtures with energy and ingredients for life all mixing and settling within. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) settling amidst amino acids and other key components that would eventually make biological cells (cf. Science Direct).

Acting not settling

We are not rocks. Bacteria and archaea made the early headway there. How we define the precise moment that there was life is still not completely clear. At its most basic level however, the sentiment of passive chemical action makes way for biologically active intent. Perhaps. Settling into the chemical glue still brings about reactions, but the objective action may have some process its form is additionally enabling it to do.

Passive to active as regulated behaviour

An autopoiesis is what is now termed to describe these, and all subsequent, emerging first choices made. A regulation of the first defended boundary. A containment within the first cell. An inner influence to the outside chemical glue. Early life. Mobility in water. Gathering, collecting, interacting. Then finding new heat from the sun. Converting wider bandwidths of energy in the form of light.

Therein presenting a growing need for biologically active regulations.

Definition of autopoiesis

…the property of a living system (such as a bacterial cell or a multicellular organism) that allows it to maintain and renew itself by regulating its composition and conserving its boundaries… the mechanisms of self-production are the key to understand both the diversity and the uniqueness of the living.— Francisco J. Varela, in Self-Organizing Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 1981
…the ancient common ancestor which evolved autopoiesis and thus became the first living cell.— Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is Life?, 2000
Merriam-Webster

Still several billion years ago, amidst the trillions of chance events, an archaea and a bacteria were conjoined – rather than the one consumed – a Union. A first inkling into the power upgrade available if cooperation can resume. A repeatable fact that ballooned. This is mitochondrial symbiosis, that is still evidencing that chance happening today. Adding advantage of symbiosis, to the advancement and specialisms of two cells not dividing but instead remaining together and acting as one, and diversity of chance exponentially grows.

This is more than just selfish genes. This is life and 2 billion years of it as competing in rates of growth, not rates of evolution to hunt or avoid being the prey.

The predator age is much more recent. The Cambrian period. It begins in earnest 550 million years ago. With such predation the fashion of the age, competition steps up another gear.

Here is where a split of opinion in contemporary science exists. Whether the nature of us all is as savage as some would hold. Or whether a collaborative realism exists borne of that bacterial age. As explained by biochemist Dr. Nick Lane.

This discrepancy is partly responsible for the schism that has opened between Margulis and neo-darwinists like Dawkins. Dawkins’ ideas about selfish genes are equivocal when applied to bacteria (which he does not try to do). For Margulis, however, the whole tapestry of evolution is woven by the collaborations of bacteria, which form not just colonies but the very fabric of individual bodies and minds, responsible even for our consciousness, via the threadlike networks of microtubules in the brain. Indeed, Margulis pictures the entire biosphere as the construct of collaborating bacteria – Gaia, the concept that she pioneered with James Lovelock
Dr. Nick Lane pp10

Not that Dawkins deems the selfish gene to be opposing others.

My first book, The Selfish Gene, could equally have been called The Cooperative Gene without a word of the book itself needing to be changed… Selfishness and cooperation are two sides of a Darwinian coin. Each gene promotes its own selfish welfare, by cooperating with other genes in the sexually stirred gene pool which is the gene’s environment, to build shared bodies
Richard Dawkins “The ancestors tale” cited by Lane pp11-12

From a behavioural perspective, the underlying point is the active role now played. The finite resources now in chemical soups that may be ingested, breathed, absorbed, or converted within, becoming increasingly complexed, and biology finding new ways to play. The passive competition of process of chemical reactions now a regulated phenomena. All now biological actions as determined by a need.

Complex enough to choose

It is only very recently – once the rarity of a brain cortex became sufficiently engorged that chemistry, biology, and the increasing complexity of organisation of process – that the divisions and specialisms of more and complex multi-cellular organisms became a means of influence with an awareness of their all. The mammalian brain, surrounding an emotionally reactive middle, but still influenced by the compulsions of a reptilian spinal column and stem. It is with this growing complexity that the external world, offering a momentary window of stability, that symbology and learning had a chance to stay.

Even now we debate what is real. Not only of this account of a history, but also of what is real by the perceptions of own minds. What the brain translates – from messages as smells, recoding from light-sensitive retinas, vibrations of sound, and an array of felt messaging from our boundary edges coated in skin – are the best guessed of a collective system of cells in the brain (only 10% of which are neurons) is a translation of sensed experience. From this space inside a skull shaped prison, a dark and silent space between our ears and behind our eyes, our brain perceives what is real. Who are we to be so bold as to think what each brain holds true? We can but presume and suppose. Only we.

Even our close cousins see through different eyes. Pay different attention to smell. And as for other possible consciousness such as our octopus cousins – of shared simple worm like grandparents from 350 million years ago – they skulk alone. One per 5 million or so offspring making it to their version of adulthood. Their wits tested in the extreme with plenty of interest in decision-making. Neuronal connections but in a very different home.

Each system of systems we each represents by the boundary layer of our skin, is in competition within. As it is with all complexity of life. Our distractions of our systems are just more complete in their means to make all feel as one.

How do we all win and compete?

Against this shared history of everything, this is the challenge of our time. Our whole chemical-biological-history has been about taking what our own internal systems need. Reward of survival via our selfishness, our greed. Social instinct a more recent win bonus for the biology that is able to collaborate and become more and with greater speed. That is the lesson I think we now all need to take heed.

Socially mobile, individually doomed

That it is our social skills that make us more adaptive to environments than all other living beings we oppose. Our shared ability to abstractly take constraints and limitations, add new perspective, introduce outside chemistry with our mathematics and our physics, our metallurgy, and technology, and become more. Yes, we compete. Neanderthals once vouched for how good we are at that. But we compete best together.

Now we need to compete as nothing has ever competed before. We compete beyond our inner need, and greed. Define better our tasks and our goals. Seek solutions to global problems we all now own.

Whether free will or not our biology gives us choice. What we now choose is with intent. We actively direct our next actions. We find new motivations for shared self-control. Or like rocks, we all passively sink. Let’s not leave it to nature to decide.

Why the Williams’ Inquiry must not narrow its Horizons

This is a great series of blogs. This is to the heart of visibility | behaviour | trust. Leadership having to answer allegations of enabling legal process to obfuscate behaviours that would undermine trust. Did they, did they not? No idea as of yet but the v | b | t outline reflects the totality of the question. Simples.

The global witching hour

Be more than a-woke by ghosts today

A blog to offer an alternative way to scare the living without disturbing the dead.

Halloween night is when the witches come. Except that’s not really the original point. Nor is it the manner of celebration many traditions choose this day to represent.

Leaders of the world step up

There are leaders in Glasgow tomorrow. But there are leaders within us all every day. I say we should each start there. Demanding less of others, and more of ourselves. Maybe then, mother nature can know we still care.

If you think this is you. There are a few words more.

—//—

Halloween | All Saints | Day of the Dead

Before the conquistadors and James Bond had their say, there was an Aztec tradition that enabled reflection upon time with forbearers. Re-engage with the sacrifices of time and toil of lives now given up. The progress they made, and unknowns they faced. Or the labours they were forced to provide. Or the lives forced to take or give up.

That was the 9th month in the Aztec Calendar. In Japan, the Buddhist tradition of Oban is celebrated in mid-August with similar ancestral homage respected. In Celtic tradition the end of summer, Samhain, it was believed the world of gods and people combined with much mischief abounding upon a fearful mortal domain. Western Christendom had means to integrate all such tradition with its own feasts around All Saints Day, and the beginning of Allhallowtide (all per Britannica.com).

Think on that hollowed out message as pumpkin lights fade.

All Saints Day v | b | t

So what then of tomorrow? A new day. 1st November 2021 is when our leaders gather in Glasgow to debate our shared fate. To decide what traditions and behaviours we can all dare to change. What sacrifice we all must forsake. What future toil we all are prepared to make. Or what further study we sanction, for further visibility of unbelievable harm. What trusts we deny, and deem the next generation better placed to palm. What risk to the future generations of selves do we therein choose to pass on? What will we all opt out of a 26th time, at CoP26? Forsake, and in our place ask the yet born to take.

Trick or treat?

Treat – more than we can chew

We are now connected. Feasting as we go. All hungry caterpillars upon the one tree. Gestating today. Digesting our yesterday. Cocooning our decisions and letting loose butterfly effects we cannot rewind.

Trick – fooling all including ourselves

Maybe it is time to stop looking to others. Look again at our past, but think upon ourselves as a living influence to the next. The global village is now here whether we like it or not.

Can we look beyond greed?

What is at the heart of our project mission is the pursuit of more. Individually a greater share. But also collectively more for the earth to have to bare. And perhaps it is this that we all need to help stop.

My greed is good?

Adam Smith

Capitalists are not going to stop growing with individualist greed.

Adam Smith was about optimising the output from the land by the few. Labour a resource to factor into such process. The invisible hand that steers individualistic ambition to bring about trickle down growth for all. Nietzsche’s will of individual power.

Our greed is good?

Karl Marx

Communists are not going to stop growing with collectivist need.

The early Karl Marx was about addressing alienation. The hands of the worker having no ownership of what they make. Getting too little of what the few take. The effort of all, the land owned by none but the state. Trotsky’s power of shared will.

Green is good – less greed is better

My point here is not political. Other than to say all our politics, and the nation states that hold flavours of individualism or collectivism at the helm, all amount to more of the same.

Have this at the heart of what is visible. Of the finite resource there is, it is our nation states that must thrive. Regardless of culture and ethics, political sentiment, or personal faith, it is this fact that wills us all to claim a bigger stake. Determines how we each and all behave. Trust becomes easier offered, when yours is the whip hand to extend.

The Earth provides-enough to satisfy everyone’s needs but not any one’s greed
Ghandi

Think therefore upon each of the green solutions being presented. The ways we are being offered to change our behaviours, in all that we do. They each still equate to the same.

We are being shown how to consume more, but in cleaner ways.

Enough and no more

I am not sure any of us has the right to question the needs of another. But I do think we should be able to explain what it is that we need. And what it is we intend to do with what we have. Not in any draconian or anti-establishment way, or as naïve power of love simple life ways. Simply by the questions we ask of ourselves and of each other. And the messages we therein convey.

Some of these first steps then become a little easier. And meaningfully challenging to those that drive growth without consideration to wider cost. Those seem the simplest and easiest first steps for east and west. This is not about ownership and what we can have. This is about service to the future, and what we can be. Take what you need; to do with that what you must. But once you have got there, its time to give something back.

What we give back is time at the wheel – or that spare time is what each of us chooses to steal.

Our hierarchy of needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains this well enough. We all need to feed. We all need to breath. We then need safety. Then kinship and personal and societal esteem. Finally, however, we then want to be the best versions of what we can be.

We are many who now sit at this final impasse. This pinnacle of existence but declining to acknowledge that grasp. Instead we keep all. Claiming time left as our own. And taking all of that to the last. Our kinship is retained because we all do the same. We then look around and wonder who is to blame. Why our self-actualisation feels unreached, as hollow as the pumpkin on the doorstep.

The golden rule for all self-actualisation stewards

There seems a golden thread of truth running through our shared history. Requiring us all to consider life from the other side. Perhaps all of those messages combine, and stand now not just in place but also in time.

Ask not what other projects can do for you. Ask yourself what project you can now do for the whole
Globally said from a golden thread

These are then projects | within projects connecting each mind to the totality of our management. Management of the one project we are all now required to play our part.

v | b | t – ask better questions for more insight

In game theory there is a game called Tragedy of the Commons. In it we are each shown to take more from common ground than we should, because the rules said that we could. The game reflects low trust, and shared bad behaviour. The long-game sees us all lose.

The solution starts with checking our own behaviour. But then increasing visibility on the whole, so that all behaviour is seen. In open sight we become compelled to do right. Trust in the shared objective becomes the shared trust in us all. The more secrets we can keep, the more compelled each feels, and entitled to cheat.

Question yourself, and therein question all others

It seems to me clear, that any of us sitting near the top of a hierarchy of needs is required to justify our time. Whether you are a Jeff Bezos or a Sheikh, a pension pot aggregator, or an executive on the make, born of privilege or humble beginnings and self-made. As individuals or as nation states. There are questions we need to ask of ourselves. Towards what, is your next project’s aim? Are you playing more than a zero sum game?

Infinite complexity, ultimate simplicity

The human condition is complex beyond measure. The systems of organisation we represent, a multiple of the same. But at the core there is a simplicity. We are mortal. We are fragile. And we will each always want more.

On this Halloween night perhaps give an extended nod to our forbearers. A moment of thanks to the shared sacrifice all have so far made. But tomorrow, the day we can all be saints, perhaps we each take stock of our time, and no more.

—//—

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

behaviour, being present, CoP26, earth, halloween, leadership, Project, trust

Are we the CoP out?

Conference of Parties #26

A blog linking infinite discussion and lines. Iterations of recurring themes that can get bigger or smaller, but will they always look the same?

Mandelbrot Sets

Netflix managed to have 55 minutes of my time tonight. Rare indeed these days. “The colours of infinity,” a 1995 film hosted by Arthur C Clarke. Explaining the discovery of a particular fractal geometry that surrounds us. Needing the computations of machines to help us observe what we have always blindly seen.

26 years of the same

It is a fantastic documentary from last century. Reflecting upon what is perhaps ever nearing us in this century, or the next. The mathematics that shows us how in nature there need be no straight lines. Not even necessarily any beginnings or ends. But that at whatever level we look, the patterns and basic formulas that can go to infinities all the same.

Filmed 26 years ago. By coincidence COP26, Conference of the Parties #26, is the same age. Perhaps also a coincidence that fractal symmetry seems the agenda mainstay of this event. The Kyoto Protocol was COP3, December 1997 but not ratified until 2005. Is it to be the “Glasgow Protocol” that our grandchildren’s children look upon with global pride – will this be the start of the change? I have dug out the two agendas and placed them side by side below. Fractal symmetry perhaps, but I am just not sure if we travel to infinitely bigger or infinitely smaller upon this path.

Projects | within Projects

Projects | Within Projects sits here as little more than an idea. But what it does reflect is one person’s attempt to redefine problems we all share. On scales that we can all compare. We are in the same project. We are each a project. And each moment another aggregation of projects our planet actor must wear.

To my mind and my perspective on management, this is just a question of scale. There is fractal symmetry in nature. We follow it everywhere. From the truncations of the tiniest capillaries in our brains and the neural networks that make us think we have a say. To the near infinite networks of galaxies beyond the milky-way. There is a pattern within the chaos, or a chaos within the pattern. Either way, we sit as a pin point in our abstract notions of time and space. One species on one world. Perhaps uniquely, perhaps too discretely, we are different. Different because we have some semblance of intent in what we change. In our momentary time frame, we get to direct, to learn, to grow. Choose to play. Choose to give our chance away. In the heat of this day we now choose to help, or we choose to fade away.

v | b | t

A project of change of behaviour. That is what our leaders speak of next week. Compared to the talk a generation before – what has changed in this rhetoric of change? But perhaps that is not just their question to answer. Perhaps it is not their visibility, and behaviour, or trust we need to ponder.

I am cynical. I am a hypocrite. But I am silent no more. The merry-go-round is easy to step off of when all privilege has fallen ones way. I am not gluing myself to a road. Or finding politics, or charitable ends to compensate for my guilt. My squandered inheritance is time. I am not alone. So the time I have left is aimed at asking better questions. Finding the better questions others in our history have asked. And hoping I get lucky in leaving a few better questions for others to help direct their future-generational task.

If we, the human project, are truly made to intend change. Perhaps it is this visibility we awaken. This goal to the future versions of ourselves we turn our behaviour toward. And from this, our present day, we present ourselves better. Turn ourselves to the service of this future. Rebuild this trust owed as future ancestors. Otherwise – what is this all really for?

Here is the CoP26 2021 agenda, alongside that of 1997. Regardless of its outcomes, maybe it is the personal agendas of us all, that are better answers to nature’s call.

COP3 Kyoto 1997

The Climate Change Convention seeks to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [human-induced] interference with the climate system”. There are three requirements: (1) this “ultimate objective” should be achieved early enough to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change; (2) food production should not be threatened; and (3) efforts to minimize greenhouse gas emissions and climate change should be consistent with sustainable economic development.
There is no agreed definition of what is meant by “dangerous”. Individuals and cultures differ in their understanding of what is safe and what is dangerous. In addition, some people and countries are more vulnerable to the expected consequences of climate change than are others. While science can provide a useful basis for decision-making, determining how much climate change is “safe” or how much risk is “acceptable” is essentially a political judgment. The judgment of the international community is expressed through the Conference of the Parties to the Convention.
The faster the climate changes, the greater the danger is likely to be. While human beings are extremely flexible and can cope with many different climates and conditions, human institutions and natural ecosystems tend to adapt more slowly. This is why the Convention specifically highlights the need to protect food production and ecosystems.
Certain ecological thresholds may be important indicators of the risks of rapid climate change. Such thresholds could be used to set policies for limiting the risk of irreversible damage. For example, paleoclimatic records of forest growth suggest that trees have migrated in the past by as much as four to 200 km in 100 years. But with scientists predicting that a global warming of 1–3.5^oC over the next 100 years would shift climate zones poleward by 150–550 km, many tree populations may fail to adapt fast enough. Thus even if policymakers cannot agree on what constitutes a dangerous climate change for people, they may be able to identify dangerous thresholds for ecosystems that are vital to human well-being.
Food production may suffer in some regions. Changes in crop yields are expected to vary greatly by region and locality. Therefore, while global agricultural production may be maintained at or near the present level, the food security of some countries may worsen as a result of climate change. To the people affected this may well seem to be “dangerous”.
The overall implications of climate change for sustainable development are not well understood. While the net effect is expected to be negative, global warming is likely to have both positive and negative impacts on human societies, national economies, and natural ecosystems. A warmer climate could extend growing seasons in one region while increasing the risk of droughts in another. Similarly, new energy taxes and other policy responses may hurt some countries while energy-efficiency innovations may help others by reducing production costs and opening up new markets.
The Convention sets out a number of principles that should guide action to achieve the objective. They include equity between countries; concern for both present and future generations; the specific needs and special circumstances of developing countries; and the importance of cost-effectiveness, sustainable development, and a supportive and open international economic system. In addition, the precautionary principle states that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, the lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing action.
The Convention requires policymakers to decide on concrete actions. The Parties to the Convention must come to some consensus on the changes that could be considered dangerous. They must choose the level at which they want to stabilize atmospheric concentrations, a schedule for limiting greenhouse gas emissions over time, and appropriate technologies and policies for meeting this schedule.
Fortunately, a wealth of knowledge and information is available to decision-makers. The scientific, technical, and socio-economic literature describes possible future scenarios and the likely consequences of various stabilization levels and emissions trends. It explores Ano regrets and other cost-effective measures for cutting emissions and enhancing “sinks”. The literature also describes options for adapting to climate change impacts and indicates promising avenues of scientific and technological research. By choosing amongst these policies and measures, and by carefully weighing costs and benefits, uncertainties and risks, and the various principles that should guide action, the international community can move towards achieving the Convention’s objective.

COP26 Glasgow 2021

The supplementary provisional agenda for COP 26, proposed after consultation with
the President of COP 25, is as follows:

Opening of the session.
Organizational matters:
(a) Election of the President of the Conference of the Parties at its twenty-sixth session;
(b) Adoption of the rules of procedure;
(c) Adoption of the agenda;
(d) Election of officers other than the President;
(e) Admission of organizations as observers; (f) Organization of work, including for the sessions of the subsidiary bodies; (g) Dates and venues of future sessions; (h) Adoption of the report on credentials.

Reports of the subsidiary bodies:
(a) Report of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice;
(b) Report of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation.
Reporting from and review of Parties included in Annex I to the Convention.
Reporting from Parties not included in Annex I to the Convention.
Report of the Adaptation Committee (for 2019, 2020 and 2021).
Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with
Climate Change Impacts.2
Matters relating to finance:
(a) Long-term climate finance;
(b) Matters relating to the Standing Committee on Finance:
(i) Report of the Standing Committee on Finance – Convention
matters;
(ii) First report on the determination of the needs of developing
country Parties related to implementing the Convention and the
Paris Agreement;
(iii) Fourth (2020) Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate
Finance Flows;
(iv) Review of the functions of the Standing Committee on Finance;
(c) Report of the Green Climate Fund to the Conference of the Parties and
guidance to the Green Climate Fund (for 2020 and 2021);
(d) Report of the Global Environment Facility to the Conference of the
Parties and guidance to the Global Environment Facility (for 2020 and
2021);
(e) Seventh review of the Financial Mechanism;
(f) Compilation and synthesis of, and summary report on the in-session
workshop on, biennial communications of information related to
Article 9, paragraph 5, of the Paris Agreement.
Development and transfer of technologies:
(a) Joint annual report of the Technology Executive Committee and the
Climate Technology Centre and Network (for 2020 and 2021);
(b) Linkages between the Technology Mechanism and the Financial
Mechanism of the Convention;
(c) Review of the constitution of the Advisory Board of the Climate
Technology Centre and Network;
(d) Second review of the Climate Technology Centre and Network.
Capacity-building under the Convention.
Matters relating to the least developed countries.
Report of the forum on the impact of the implementation of response measures.

Gender and climate change.
Consideration of proposals by Parties for amendments to the Convention under
Article 15:
(a) Proposal from the Russian Federation to amend Article 4, paragraph
2(f), of the Convention;
(b) Proposal from Papua New Guinea and Mexico to amend Articles 7 and
18 of the Convention;
(c) Proposal from Turkey to delete the name of Turkey from the list in
Annex I to the Convention.
Second review of the adequacy of Article 4, paragraph 2(a–b), of the
Convention.
Equitable, fair, ambitious and urgent real emission reductions now consistent
with a trajectory to reduce the temperature below 1.5 °C.
All matters of adaptation.
Achieving equitable geographic representation in the composition of
constituted bodies under the Convention.
Administrative, financial and institutional matters:
(a) Audit report and financial statements for 2019 and 2020;
(b) Budget performance for the bienniums 2018–2019 and 2020–2021;
(c) Programme budget for the biennium 2022–2023;
(d) Decision-making in the UNFCCC process.
High-level segment:
(a) Statements by Parties;
(b) Statements by observer organizations.
Other matters.
Conclusion of the session:
(a) Adoption of the draft report of the Conference of the Parties on its
twenty-sixth session;
(b) Closure of the session.

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

behaviour, change, climate change, CoP26, earth, environment, global village, mother earth, Project

Troll patrol

Who let the trolls in?

A blog asking the psychological question of what explanations we have to address the phenomena of the internet troll.

A couple of uncompromising – or just plain rude and spiteful – comments on social media and my mind is immediately wondering again about cause and effect. What prompts someone to be the internet troll?

Out of character behaviour

It is easy to become complacent to the troll. Lurking in the shadows or projected on a screen. A few months ago, I would have offered explanation from Carl Jung, and his archetypes. I would have been satisfied with that. The shadow parts within us that lash out because we ignore them, causing them to lurk as subconscious parts within. Parts we have repressed. Rejected persona. Carl Jung and the neo-Jungians (who develop their models still to this day) will explain how these parts occasionally break their silence and act out.

linear cause and effect

Modern day behaviourists like Stephen Ledoux, author of “What causes human behaviour – stars, selves, or contingencies” would call such Jungian theorising mystic or scientifically baseless. And just discredit the entire discipline now standing beyond these philosophical starts. He would look to the behaviour itself, reflect upon the knowable factors leading up to the event as cause. The radical behaviourism which permits physiological conditions to be considered beyond the external environmental that the first in the field would have considered. He might offer a detailed linear cause and associated effect chain of events.

Subconscious emotional response

Joseph Ledoux by contrast, a neuroscientist and author of “The emotional brain” might be a little more sympathetic to the theorising of early 20^th Century psychologists. “Emotional responses are for the most part generated unconsciously. Freud was right on the mark when he described consciousness as the tip of the mental iceberg”, states Joseph Ledoux, as quoted by Rita Carter in her detailed 1998 illustrative book “Mapping the Mind” – which Joseph Ledoux offers a full page to the influences of the Limbic System over the Frontal Cortex, (ibid pp98).

External influence – chemical

In this same book, Rita Carter also highlights the impacts of neurotransmitter levels if impaired or kept artificially high. Dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and noradrenaline. Recreational drug use also impacting receptor effectiveness – both at the time of use and through longer term abuse. That includes alcohol. Similar cause can be outlined from diseases and associated medications that can cause chemical or physiological alterations.

External factor – prompting hormone response

Regulation of other hormones are relevant too. Robert Sapolsky presents at some length in his lectures how the complexity of these interactions can cause short-term change to likelihood of response. He also presents the changing structures in the brain through prolonged stress or how combined factors can directly attribute to action potentials that are enacted or overridden within the Limbic System, the Cortex, or beyond. Or perhaps we are tired, and the frontal cortex becomes slower in enacting a more diplomatic response. Still acting to intervene but weaker or slower and too late because we have already pressed send on that reply.

External factor – language

In written exchanges this can be easily misinterpreted. We are all capable of ambiguity in our writing, but misunderstanding could arise from more fundamental starts. In his book “Language and Social Relationships”, Asif Agha (2007) writes extensively about the nuances of language and the implications in various forms of dialogue. “Register” for example may offer a multitude of inference but anyone of us is only capable of sounding out a few, but more adept in recognition of many more (pp147). All are lost in written form, but our tone is still sounded as we write. It may be heard quite differently by the reader.

He reflects upon cultural influence, but also dialect, sociolect, and denotational footings, all of which create differences

such differences are sometimes exploited strategically to create social partitions or boundaries within an interaction, but social boundaries can result willy-nilly too. In multi-party encounters where multilinguals and codemixing mark off monolingual interlocutors as out-group (or non-participants) with respect to certain utterances, whether intentionally or not; social boundaries enacted in such cases may coincide with differences of propositional uptake and thus involve cognitive boundaries too.
Asif Agha 2007, pp133

External Factors – socio-cultural

Or maybe our societal psychological interactions have played a part. The compartmentalised elevated hierarchy we have earned in another social group. This group has rewarded our selfish acts, and we therefore take these lessons into groups anew. Perhaps this is behavioural Operant conditioning? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is the amygdala and the hippocampus now working slightly differently because of a newly connected neural network response. Sitting above this however is our socialised understanding within the frontal cortex. Maybe this directs us to a safer experiment in this new group. It is safer to pull down a minnow, than attack the silverback we know we will never be.

So many possible explanations. So many factors we could blame. It could be as simple as seeking a few minutes of safe combat, or a moment of anonymous fame. Perhaps all are offering cause. Or perhaps it is illusory to think we have any input to offer at all.

Know your troll

One thing I can conclude is giving more time to the response would offer a modicum of control. This I know, because this was my control tonight. For these troll-like comments – that prompted this thought – the troll comments were my own. The troll was me.

Except, I wrote them in my journal instead. Researched some of these alternative explanations. By the time I had finished those comments no longer belonged. My attitude had changed. My mindset. The responses offered all became less interesting, less funny, less necessary to make. And now they are gone. As has whatever temporary state of mind, or chemistry, or environmental impact which willed the troll along.

The ultimate control. Time. And my immediate behavioural response was gone.

v | b | t in action?

More visibility of my own mindset by giving it longer to be seen. More understanding from the extra learning in-between the moment and the next. Understanding increased by perspectival change. Available with more time.

My behaviour better defined. Constraints changed by the removed deadline of time. Still no nearer to understanding how to better control the root-cause, but proof that a control can be implemented anyway. Even if that is just finding more time.

Trust in myself. I consider myself a diplomat at the best of times. Even so, a little more trust afforded with this time frame in a moment the diplomat, I nearly was not.

Concluding remarks

This is not my first time of stepping back to gain time. It will certainly not be my last. My journal holds many pithy remarks of similar tone. I conclude with a few below.

Calm your jets and write your thoughts. Hedge your bets, in measured pause. Quiet reflection not defended pride. Will you troll beneath, or bridge both sides?
Adapted from my journal, 10th February 2020

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

behaviour, psychology, troll

Show and tell

A trickster mask unpacked

This is how I created the Trickster image that ends each of my blog entries. I also share some other work to emerge from the same learning journey this represents.

I do more than just work and research from my desk…

There is a dabble of psychology here. A reflection upon flow. Mostly however, this is just a tentative peak into my creative process. Amidst those tougher moments I am sure we all have to make our way through from time to time. In any collaborative process, communication is key. Sometimes that communication and understanding is necessary from within…

Free hand shapes can be drawn in VisioPro. This mask and cave-drawing were adapted from numerous stock images, mouse controlled freehand. Thereafter repurposed, fragmented, shaded. All within VisioPro.

Jack-a-lope (unpacked) – completed 7th February 2021

Visio (Microsoft Visio Professional 2016) is a tool I use for preparing workshop materials in my consulting role. I find using such software as artistic mediums both a means of creative release and reason to be learning new skills I can bring back to the workplace.

I discovered easier ways to fragment images using Visio – YouTube full of tutorials on how to create logos in using this tool. It takes a little practice but basic shapes such as this are surprisingly straight-forward. If considered in the context of flow, these skill improvements are incremental, but each leads to the next, empowering an inner confidence to try more difficult things.

Jaq O’byte (see below) was produced using similar start points of imagery, and built up over several days. I was having a tough time in my head in these few days. Visio becoming a creative outlet. With some increasing ambition as new tricks, tips, and visual effects were learned, discovered, applied and adapted. Even on the tough days flow becomes easier to find when basics are built upon over time.

These characters are more than random images. They each became intermingled with narratives, short-stories, and psychological examinations with my therapist. Typically these moments of high creative activity become directed toward wider thought, but inner struggle directed me inwards. The art-work sometimes cause and sometimes effect of the ebb and flow. Much of this is symbolic and with personal meaning. Maybe I will elaborate on this at some point. But not today.

This logo began life as an ambitious attempt at explain how critical controls between parties need a connecting piece to be shared – projects | within projects was in mind as this emerged on a page.

A project of integration to connect two projects of control (completed 16th March 2021)

Thanks for reading to the end. Not directly research or work related, but hopefully a little more visibility upon a process. A little understanding of how behaviours turned toward inner need can become productive. A little trust derived from better understanding of such demands and needs.

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

art, creative, creativity, depression, digging deep, flow, positive, show and tell, visibility, visio Pro

Goldilocks blog length

What length is just right for a blog?

A little experiment – a case of less is more, more or less

Too hot, too cold, or just right?

Knowing an audience is pretty hard when visibility is low. I am experimenting with form and content. Seeing what’s hot. And what’s not.

How much to bear?

How much to share. Before gnawing an annoyed ear.

A paws for thought. As I rethink a few bear necessities of the content to pair.

These become crucial questions, as I rest upon my Why? To what do I direct my behaviours, my interests, my passions.

Appealing to others’ interests, or Panda‘ing to my own. Or perhaps the trust comes from knowing not to panda to any demands, and just to be.

Photo by Mike van Schoonderwalt on Pexels.com

The moral of the story

There is no fairy tale ending here. Or an end of any kind. This blogging journey I am starting reflects my interests, my research, and a desire to write in a public space. Some days I write in essays. Others not. Most days it is easy, but the odd day – not so hot…

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

being present, blog, chill, content, goldilocks, humour