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Mental Maps
December 2009 
Designer Lives! (2) Potential, Performance
JM
"The world is chaotic, disorganized and vexing. Medicine is no exception "says one of my dialogue partners and friend, the surgeon. He advises government on health policy issues in addition to his hectic and often punishing routine. The only issue on which we come together is our morning routine and on all the rest we take the polar opposite positions.
This is why inner ecology is important. If we don't find order in our own self, what we see in the world outside is chaos, disorder and when you advise the world, you could be contributing to more of the chaos and disorder. The intentions are always good but the effect is disastrous.
Since you come at the end of the assembly line in the health system where surgery is the only option, most of what you see influences your world view.
That is ridiculous.
The more you see the conflicts, violence, absence of harmony outside, you are more likely to be caught up in it. You become what you pay attention to and come to believe that this is the nature of reality. The opposite also is true, the more you look for order and organization, one becomes more ordered in one's own SELF. You will then be contributing more to order than chaos. The choice is yours. What you see depends on where you stand, your position.
What are you driving at, change my career/ position at this stage?
I am not suggesting anything. I say that this should not be your invariant position which would emerge from a larger perspective of the true potential, a better understanding of the design, so that when the system goes out of order, one can restore order without resorting to extreme measures. These extreme measures are contingent on taking such a position and nothing but belated inferior solutions.
When our car or the net book does not perform, we go back to the design to put it right. Our system doesn't come with a User Manual which helps us diagnose and bring back the system to order. Without understanding the design we cannot decide whether the system is true to the design. Most of our expectations are based on ill- informed assumptions about the design and we pay a heavy price for it.
To repeat, our most well meaning intentions create the most disastrous results.
You are getting ready for more jugglery.
Simplicity is a noble goal but it should not be at the cost of truth. What I suggest is that we go up together and get the lunar perspective. Perhaps we might come to share the dog's perspective.
Shoot.
We will first take a look at the potential quadrant, the left front wheel of the learning engine. Though when we drive the four wheels move together the car is now at rest and we are looking at each of the wheel assemblies in isolation. In juggling all the balls should be in the air but we are just studying the ball which is at rest. The eye at ground zero stands for the compass perspective. The compass is hidden here. To use the compass one has to climb up the 10 storey lighthouse. Or we assume that within the potential ball there are 9 more balls and we start from the small to the large. If we miss any one ball or storey, potential is zilch. These are the 10 heads of the Asura King, Ravana in the epic journey of Rama, the Ramayana. (In spite of the ten heads Ravana fails and in spite of defeating Ravana, Rama fails to win the heart of Sita. Men better take a cue from the feminists. The other epic Mahabharata is all about our inabilithy to SEE in which the leader is blind, both in terms of light and the light that enlightens the blind)
Start climbing? We step in to the ground level.
1. The compass is buried in the foundation of the lighthouse.
2. The ground level is the repository of all existing maps, results from all previous climbs what other climbers have left for us which might make the climb a lot easier.
A map could be on almost anything, not just a map of the terrain. It could be a story a myth, music, dance, art, science, technology, religion, from any discipline or aspect of knowledge. The periodic table is a good example.
These maps might as well create a bias. We will look at them on our way back. Let us move up the stairs to the next level.
3. We come to the world of simple machines. Clocks, compasses, guns. All of those machines which have no ‘mind' of their own. The bullet does not come back to the gun nor does the clock change its pace to suit our whims.or haste.They dont do any regulation on their own. They are on the path of entropy.
4. We have all the advanced machines with a 'machine mind' here. The compressor in the fridge works only till the desired temperature is reached.
5. The world of the unicellular. A cell in our body, a diatom, an amoeba, bacteria, virus. No machines come anywhere near in terms of its degree of self regulation.
6. All the plants
7. The animal
8. The human, individual.The cell is to the body what the individual is to the organisation.
9. Groups, organisations, communities, community
10. Perfect knowledge
We are on top. We SEE from horizon to horizon, the past and the future. The view is complete. We stand on a 10 layered sandwich. No single layer stands on its own. If any step of the ladder is amiss we don't reach the top. All the levels are indispensable for the emergence of true potential which is infinite. No limits here, in time or in space.
This is why we need all the ten heads / avatars to realise the fully human, the ideal, perfect, conceptual human. Here everything is perfect, heaven.
We climb down. We check our new map with the old maps. All of them are correct in some ways but not complete as the one which is fresh in our memory. We start checking our new map against the physical world (hell?) represented by the rear right wheel of the learning engine.
We are in for the surprise of our life! NONE OF US HAVE EVOLVED BEYOND THE LEVEL OF THE CLOCK ! and we claim outselves to be civilized and cultured ! We need to revisit Newton, Einstein and Darwin at the same time. Have a webcon !
All the levels match one to one in terms of their potential and performance till the level of the animal. The gap begins at the level of the human. It widens as we move up the level of groups, organisations, communities and community. The waste, unrealised potential becomes visible. We SEE and we can SHOW. This is the first step to the first step of the journey of the learning engine, the shift in direction to TRUE NORTH. Before we take the first step in that journey of a 1000 x miles we need to make certain that we place that step in the right direction.
The design and delivery do not match. The system is not in order. There is no alignment between the two wheels. ( forget the other two for now) We could run the diagnostics to set right the alignment between the two wheels at various levels. .
When we set right the alignment, all the four wheels need to be corrected at the same time, because any small change in any one affects all. To do that we need to understand the design of the other two wheels also.
What about the metrics?
The process involved in metrics comes first. It is about reflecting over performance with the design in mind and that the system is designed to continually improving on its previous best performance, in terms of quantity, quality and time. All metrics are approximations and is not an exact science. The actual indicators, criteria of performance, could be quite simple which shows us the progress to true north and reduction in WASTE. We will come back to the issue of metrics after an overview of all the sub- assemblies.
It is becoming dense. Let us take a break.
You claim to be a virtual Perma - Culturist?
My father was the original. He believed that doing nothing is Doing Everything. It took me a lifetime to understand what he stood for. By the time all the land was gone and I could only be a virtual Perma 'culturist' !
Perma culture is about understanding the design of nature and allowing the design to express itself, not to stand in the way of nature. The templates of nature are perfect and beyond improvement. Our best efforts to improve them most often fail. We need to live with them.
Learning has no cost. It always fetches the best ROI. The metrics need to take into account the future savings of costs associated with not learning.(eg: savings from avoiding a cardiac arrest)
We need to start with culture before we get into Perma - Culture.
What is common to the Amazon forest dweller and the Wall Street investment banker is the basic template? One stakes his claim to be civilized and from the first world while . the other does not make any such claims. One is blissfully unaware of the design whereas the other claims to have all the keys to unlock the potential. We need to strike the miiddle path between the two.
When Vasco Da Gama reached Malabar, he was shocked to find the women going topless. Now when the tourists come to the very same beaches and bare themselves, they are ogled at. The wheel has come back full circle in just around five centurires!It is not even two centuries since we abolished slave labour. We abolished it when we found better ways to achieve the very same purpose 'in style'. Same goes for dictatorships.
Why does the emperor shout that he is the emperor?
The emperror is not certain that he is the real one !
You have a Freudian fixation with the Ps
My professor (Ramaswamy) was much better at it. He would juggle with 100s of Ps and make them dance in the air while my professor of maketing was juggling with just 4 Ps. I am told that he has gone up to 7 now. I am just using around 40 Ps, the very minimum to show you what I want you to see. This is a minor fixation, synchronicity at work.
Why do you always take recourse to myths?.
Beware of myths because they will survive all the mass wipe outs. It is better to understand them so that we go beyond them. The myth is the key to our unconscious, the silent sub-surface driver of the engine, a source of mis-alignment. We will get to this much later.
Where do we go on from here?
We take a look at the other two wheels, the engine and the driver of the learning engine.
It is getting complex.
Complexity is the best challenge to stretch your self. It is a headache but I peddle a 'one minute cure' for headache. Complexity feeds me.
Enough. Good day.
(to continue. Designer Lives ! 3)
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