Beating Dead Horses

Dear Dialog & Dialecticians
Environmentalists, Sustainable-ists
& Colleagues Across the Curriculum.

Gregory Bateson (biologist, anthropologist:
author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind) thought
of MIND minding mindfully in terms of systems,
inter-active relays in circuits of informational
transforms by which a “whole” sustained
some kind of purpose.

Think of a guided missile (smart bomb), designed
to self-correct by informational relays so that it will
hit its target.

Think of how cruise control works: feedback
relationship of conditions and sensors passing
information so as to maintain a constant speed
regardless of change in terrain.

Think of thermostatic regulation maintaining
(sustaining) a constant temperature—no matter
what the weather outside is doing.

Think of how Plato modeled VIRTUE in terms
of the governance of a republic.

Ways of thinking.
Got to have an image for it.
A representation.

Sailing to Byzantium
( this is no country for old men)

“Cybernetics” was the early term for this kind of
self- correcting system design and pattern language.
(Helmsmen: a pilot, steering; cybernaut: a navigational
term for how a system “navigates” (grows, evolves,
“thinks”…) pulling NEWS out of NOISE (also
a navigational term, as is nausea: from IE nau—navy.)



2 systems, ok?
Call one the Wood-Chopping System;
call the other the Blindman Navigational System.

NOW put your finger where MIND is located in
these two working purposive systems.

Most would naturally point to heads—some
where under the hat and between the ears.
(A student told me and in the orient they
might could point to belly. )

Our occidental species bias locates “mind”
between the ears—some kind of
epiphenomenon dancing off the electric
synapse circuitry of that meat machine
called brain.

MIND on the other hand:
that whole circulating feedback of
information that gets the job done—wood cut,
blindman-down-the-street: wood chips &
chiaroscuro sunlight & heft of ax & wind &
tree-wound vulnerable and gape-ing & white
cane tap tap taping information from sign
board and side walk. to hand and arm and
nervous system?

Calling IT a system changes
the way we consider IT, true?

MENTAL PROCESS.

Mind, for Bateson is like converse-action,
a communicational process

1.of interacting parts
2. triggered by DIFFERENCE
3. requiring collateral energy
4. and circular chains of informational delivery
5. which are transforms of DIFFERENCE
6. organized in a hierarchy of logical levels (types)
immanent in the phenomena

(differences that make a difference but not THAT
much of a difference; differences that make a
difference; differences that really make a difference;
differences that really really make a difference--or
if that don’t do justiceto a hierarchy of logical levels—
see Russell & Whitehead’s Theory of Logical Types)

This “systems” way of talking and thinking about
MIND and mental process offers the advantage of
dis-locating identification of “mind” from individual
“terminals” located between ears and thinking about
“it” in terms of circuits of information whose process
is composed of an environment of living and non-living
parts and parties.

After all: IT’s not a thing. Can’t touch mind, weigh
or measure or balance or assess except in our various
manners of speaking that reify and reduce it to a thing.

Mind Minding Mindfully: a convention— a shared
way of talking. You say tomato: we say tomahto.

“God is no respecter of persons”
(literally: sound-thrus: persona):
makes a kind of sense in “systems” talk.

Collaborative Genius going on: Great Spirit as some
native Americans might say: auto poetic system self-
correcting, meta-sustainability & homeostatic security
agencies: Our Environ-Mentalism begins to take on
fuller description and ways of talking.. Parts to Whole
(more than sum-of-parts) relationship: OLHOholekkd f an All in the
Family thanksgiving dinner going on, chairs and smells
and linoleum kitchen floor, turkey baster and arguments
as to cooking variables, heat and light and it’s all MIND
MINDING MINDFULLY if you care to frame it in
“systems” (relationship) terms as opposed to the
traditional Me, My Self, and I, damnit.

Or maybe you like nu-age talk of vibes and energy
or perhaps the old way of thinking & imaging: angels
and demons. Whatever. The more ways of talking
about the ways we talk the better, maybe even the
merrier,.

Depends on the context. The environmental issues
and concerns, studies & leadership programs
and how many ways of talking about these
manners and matters. We could count them...

xxxooo, Sam